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Notes -
Coming back to this after a while* because I respect the effort you put into this discussion and didn't want to let it totally fizzle out.
Briefly touching on the object-level discussion about trangenderism, I do indeed believe in psychiatrist-mediated transhumanist libertarianism as a policy prescription. Yes, children should be able to do fentanyl if they have their parents' permission and have gone through some level of screening to rule out undue coercion. As the consequences of a particular action become more generally terrible versus the expected benefits, I expect screening processes would become so stringent as to allow barely anyone through-- but I honestly believe that some proportion of children could probably supply enough evidence such that the government would have to allow them to commit suicide via ingestion of hard drugs. As compared to that, transitioning is a pretty mild intervention
Anyways, onto the actual interesting part of the discussion:
It seems to me like starting with the definitions requires an appeal to some base level reality upon which definitions can be founded. And to be honest, I do believe in a base level reality-- but that's downstream of my belief in god. Otherwise all we're doing is drawing ultimately arbitrary connections, and there wouldn't be anything to adjudicate between the superiority of any connection over any other... or rather, there wouldn't be anything if it weren't for goals. Wanting one thing and not another creates a superstructure for all thought. Definitions arise only as a result of our brains being optimization machines. Therefore goals are necessarily prior to definitions, and there's no point to even considering whether we're "talking about the same thing" until we both understand "why we're deciding to talk."
* I've been focused writing a book. It's been going... ok. I won't blame you if you don't respond, and frankly I might just disappear for another three months even if you do.
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