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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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For the folks here who talk heatedly about trans issues - I want to pose a thought experiment. Let's say it's the year 2300, and people can quickly, cheaply and painlessly switch their sex from male to female, and vice versa. There are no long term side effects, and it's as simple as going to buy a pill from the corner store.

On top of that, fertility issues have been handled, babies are grown/raised by artificial wombs and many different types of family structures are available with parents being able to choose what works best for their preference. Gender and sex can play a role if needed, but only for those who wish to have traditional families. It is not socially stigmatized to raise a family with two women, or two men, etc.

If this all were the case, would you have issues with people transitioning genders/sex still? If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?

This isn't even the first time we've done this hypothetical in this week's thread but I suppose it wasn't a top level so here we go again. The major impact it would have isn't probably the direction you would naively expect and that impact isn't really possible until we get the whole instant easy safe complete 100% magic transition. My largest problem with trans theory is the epistemics. Currently, and until we have this magical transformation tech there is no way to actually know the qualia of the other sex/gender. Because of this it is impossible for a theory of mind to differentiate between the internal states of "I have man/male qualia despite having a woman/female body" and "I am a woman/female having a particular subset of the woman/female qualia that I am incorrectly interpreting as the man/male qualia". It's impossible, no human has ever genuinely experienced both to compare and contrast.

So in comes your treatment. I'm going to skip a giant problems with it in that given the above problems there actually really isn't any way for us to conclusively test that this procedure works and just assume that the black box AI that is never wrong told us that it works and we believe it implicitly. It actually does solve my problem, but not because it would make the trans people pass better but because it would actually genuinely let us run the experiment. I think a lot of people would run that experiment and come out of it thinking "Man, I was really really wrong about what it would be like to genuinely be the opposite sex". Hell, I'd definitely run the experiment, it's be fascinating.

Finally I want to be clear that I don't think this hypothetical is actually realistic. I doubt there'd really be any meaningful continuity in this magical transition, No longer having any of your previous chromosomes or nervous system is colloquially referred to as dying. You will probably not meaningfully be distinguishable from a fresh clone with your implanted memories afterwards.

If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?

I actually think it is ok now for adults to freely switch despite thinking it's probably stupid. If an adult thinks they'll be more happy being an imitation of the opposite sex so long as they don't bring me into it in any way, and I mean any way, then more power to them. Definitely do not proselytize to children. Definitely do not demand exceptions be made for you. Definitely do try to force me to use preferred pronouns with threat of repercussions and I actually am perfectly happy to use preferred pronouns. But it's an act and everyone should be allowed to know it's an act. No one gets to force me to pretend reality is different than it is, that is tyranny.

Dang, I missed the follow up to that question. The direct link is this comment in case people are curious.

I know I looked at the post earlier, but when I saw it it hadn't gotten nearly as much discussion at it has now. I wish there was a way to jump to the comments downthread you haven't read.