Hard to say.

I personally wouldn't think twice about reporting whatever data I found. I suspect I'd be blindsided by the backlash (which I'm inferring would exist, from your comment) for publishing true findings, but then think in hindsight that I ought to have foreseen it.

But then, I'm pretty inept at social status games. I can entertain the notion that most people in such a situation would either not publish, or worse, fudge the data.

Yeah, I agree about the "clearly invoking 'bathroom segregation [is intended to] reduce violence' ". I do think "they" are mistaken about that, however.

I had heard that the actual historical cause of bathroom segregation was originally an attempt to obstruct women's (at that time) attempt to do more things outside the home.

The story goes: various places made bathroom segregation laws (using the "reducing violence" justification as a maybe-true-if-actually-implemented-as-implied excuse), and then built only men's bathrooms, or a very disproportionate number of toilets in men's rooms as compared to toilets in women's rooms, or placed the women's rooms in much more inconvenient locations like on different floors. This regime ended years later with further laws requiring certain equalities in men's versus women's bathrooms, leaving behind the actual bathroom segregation as a historical artifact, rather than it today being a measure implemented for the purpose of addressing a known violence problem.

Non-sequitur: it's my estimate that more total violence results in the hypothetical where strict bathroom-matching-birth laws send trans folks into bathrooms in which they visibly do not belong, than in the hypothetical where t is is not the case. (Recall Social Dark Matter: the vast majority of trans folks do not stand out as such -- they look like their chosen gender.) Despite it (supposedly) slightly reducing violence targeting cisgender folks in exchange for an increase in violence targeting transgender folks, I worry this trade-off is acknowledged and considered acceptable.

In the absence of these laws, the standard advice I hear trans folks give each other is "use the bathroom that matches your appearance, even if that means using a dispreferred bathroom because you don't yet or can't look the part" "or you know, keep an eye out for the rare nonsegregated or single-occupancy bathroom".

It appears from my point of view that the expected exploitation isn't happening (or is happening very rarely, far below the expected rate.)

I can't say I know of any such cases (trans or "trans" persons cheating, exploiting, grifting) first-hand, nor even second-hand without mass media having amplified the story.

Quite to the contrary, four of the five trans people I've met have been far more than average concerned with being prosocial. This cashes out in a few different ways. Least-healthily as experiencing difficulty asking for help or advocating for themselves, for fear of inconveniencing anyone else. Two as just being very trustworthy and moral. And one who is extraordinarily helpful, jumping in and assisting with any heavy manual labor (ex: moving residences) or home improvement tasks among this person's extended social circle, that come to this person's attention. (The fifth is in chronic pain from a spinal injury, a bit unpleasant of demeanor, but notably not cheating/exploiting/grifting.)

My mental model for why we don't observe the expected exploitation is that "not using a false trans label for antisocial personal gain" is mostly self-enforced by the risk that a potential transgressor would be susceptible to gender dysphoria (which, I'm guessing from very sparse data, about half of cisgender people are), and might inflict gender dysphoria upon themselves if engaging in unneeded gender transition. Similarly to honesty/morality self-enforced by guilt, as in Guilt: Another Gift Nobody Wants.

Also in my model: transition is mostly slow and/or expensive, so there are easier ways to cheat, if one was so inclined.

I think that "seeking a reasonable interpretation that allows a statement to be true, which you're pretty sure the speaker did not mean" is probably ill-advised. I'm having trouble articulating why I have that intuition though.

Update: had the thought that this might be advisable in high-trust contexts, for example with a significant other. Taking from this that "it depends" is a better take than my original "seems ill-advised".

I call shenanigans on that. I fully expect tech to eventually advance far enough to enable tinkering with whatever implements that computation. Arguably, one could make nontrivial edits to the source of their thoughts via applying current best known neuroscience. ...and in a world where edits are possible, then even "making no change" is itself a choice.

Yeah, I guess that's what I was alluding to when I wrote "I don't even know what the desirable outcome is here"; my intuitions seem to produce nigh-impossible requirements which suggest a confused ontology embedded in said intuitions.

Feels like there's a problem out there, (increasingly more powerful influencing tech) but I haven't a clue what to do with it.

A few years ago, I already concluded that exposure to the wider culture is harmful and started partially isolating. X and Reddit and 4chan and TikTok seem to me to mess people up, via a combination of rage-bait, fake news, and plain-old optimization for engagement. It had not yet occurred to me that the problem is very likely to continue intensifying, although it probably should have; seems obvious in hindsight.

Isolation looked good for me, and looked like it fit into my picture of The Good. I do think it would be a shame if in general nobody would be able to freely associate safely with anyone outside their bubble ever again, though.

Thanks for pointing out this issue. As ever, I hope someone develops defensive tech that decisively settled the influence/cognitive-security arms race in favor of defense.

...which probably would end up with people preaching that the Earth is 6000 years old in the year 3000. Which seems bad. I don't know what outcome is even desirable here.

Does anyone have any other recommended easy practice questions? I feel like dissolving free will produced useful insights (notably, it seems I found a small portion of ideas not already present in posted solutions to free will), and I'd like to attempt more such problems at which it is suspected I'm likely to succeed.

I figured Harry himself was just aro/ace and it was showing through even at a young age. I admit this was a bit of typical mind fallacious reasoning; people could tell I was unusual like that when I was 10.

Yeah, feels like it's at a similar difficulty level as I've been experiencing trying to transcribe my own thought process as pseudocode. And I get the impression that few insights would be readily transferrable across different egregores, in which case each and every one might need its own individual effort.

Reminds me of the work that was done which caused the decline of the Ku Klux Klan: someone infiltrated, learned all the rituals and coded language used, then published that information -- and that was all it took to cripple their power.

I wish you all the luck re: human enhancement.