Agree with this.

Though, in my, case it was not through the binary presentation of gender from transmedicalists, but through the general binary representation of gender in media and in everyone I met in person.

I now have multiple cis guy friends who have pretty cool genders, and if I knew being like them was a thing I could do as a teen, I might not have transitioned.

This post feels very close to how I decided to transition.  I was also a lonely nerdy teen stuck on the Internet most of the time, who fixated on transitioning once it became the default strategy in my internet circles to cope with depression (which was mostly social contagion on my side. I never got depressed since leaving this group).

However, I was also an obvious biological outlier, so I agree with @marisa that the social setting is compatible with biological factors. In my case, I had a very mild puberty: barely any hair growth, erectile dysfunction, even some breast growth for a few months. I had no trouble passing when I socially transitioned at 18, and regularly got people confused whether I had transitioned FtM or MtF.

A third factor, beside the saliency of being trans as a solution to depression and the low body masculinity, is that I had quite a narrow view of gender. Basically full on gender binary, with men and women being very clear and narrow roles exactly as depicted in media. I knew I did not fit in the man box, so when I discovered being trans was a thing, the solution seemed obvious, just go to the other box, woman.

Oh, and of course fourth is that I have strong AGP. Although, that was more of a reason to continue my transition than a reason to start, as that only appeared after I had already started thinking of myself as trans from the first reason.

Ten years later, I now feel like I'm stuck being trans because it's been a part of my life for too long. I'm happy with my life and my body, but I know that my preferences for being like I am are path dependent.

I'm confident that there are adjacent universes where I have not fallen into the same toxic internet communities, fixed my low testosterone issue, expanded my gender role models beyond heteronormative, and ended up happy as a somewhat gender non-conforming guy who sometimes has AGP fantasies.

Although I considered it, I'm not going to detrans, because I'm now so used to my new identity, and because I lucked out on transition and ended up with a body I like and that looks hot. There's not much to find back on the other side for me.

So yeah, I get it, transitioning to get accepted and loved sucks, because in the end it's not what's going to bring it about. I get the rage at the society that pushed us towards this as a way to unhealthily cope with being unloved outcasts. I hope you'll figure out who you want to be and how to get there.

Some of my experiences meeting people at bars when going with one or more friends:

• With two friends in a lefty bar in Berlin. We started talking French, the group next to us joined our conversation because they spoke French too.
• In another lefty bar, as part of a weekly meetup of an online social group. This group evolved all the time, so there was a smooth boundary between regulars we knew, newbies to the group, and people just in the bar, so we could smoothly move to conversations with random people.
• With a friend at a nerd bar in Paris. We decided to play a board game, chose one for four people, and asked the group of two next to us if they wanted to join.
• In queer bars in Paris, generally when I come with a friend, we say hi to someone alone, and start talking with them. (people alone at bars are probably waiting for someone to chat!)

at the bar, how do you know which groups of people are open to talking to another group and which groups are not?

I usually just ask. I also have good intuitions of which groups might be open to chatting, like groups with a more casual "we're just chilling" vibe, who are taking breaks in their conversations and looking around at who's in the bar. Usually, the moment when they're scanning is a good time to approach.

what sort of bars are good for this?

The bars where people go to meet new people. In my experience, it's the ones that have more of a third space vibe, where people go there just to chill, read a book, relax after their work day, attend an event there. I think a sufficient condition to check if it's a good place to meet new people is if there are people not part of a group, who are sitting alone.

• isn't it awkward if it turns out you don't like the other group?
• isn't it awkward if you are just making the rounds, speaking to one group after another?
• how do you even talk and get to know people when the music is so loud?

Those would only happen in a bar that's not the right place to meet people anyway. In my experience, in bars where people are here to be open to new encounters, they're also expecting people to move in and out of conversations as they please. And in those bars, the music is never an issue (either none, low volume, or people are drunk and talking louder than the music anyway)

I am in this picture, and I'm unsure how to feel about it

They casually-but-frantically google "wuckles" in the background to try to figure out what I meant.

I now need the "I'm in this picture and I am uncertain how to feel about it" react

Great to know! Thank you for taking the time to tell me.

I'm currently building scripts to automate cross-platform event creation, so it takes less time for me to send to so many different platforms. I'll always try to keep LW + Discord, so if you Subscribe to the LW group you should receive notifications.

¹

Noting that your footnotes redirect to the substack version of your article instead of the LW footnotes

In https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback, "2022 (Or, "Where Ray's Coming From")" has the lyrics of "Five Thousand Years", which seems incorrect.

Edited to say it is not your position. I'm sorry for having published this comment without checking with you.

EDIT: Originally I said that was my best understanding of Mikhail's point. Mikhail has told me it was not his point. I'm keeping this comment as that's a point that I find interesting personally.

Before Mikhail released this post, we talked for multiple house about the goal of the article and how to communicate it better. I don't like the current structure of the post, but I think Mikhail has good arguments and has gathered important data.

Here's the point I would have made instead:

Anthropic presents itself as the champion of AI safety among the AI companies. People join Anthropic because of their trust that the Anthropic leadership will take the best decisions to make the future go well.

There have been a number of incidents, detailed in this post, where it seems clear that Anthropic went against a commitment they were expected to have (pushing the frontier), where their communication was misleading (like misrepresenting the RAISE bill), or where they took actions that seem incongruous with their stated mission (like accepting investment from Gulf states).

All of those incidents most likely have explanations that were communicated internally to the Anthropic employees. Those explanations make sense, and employees believe that the leadership made the right choice.

However, from the outside, a lot of those actions look like Anthropic gradually moving away from being the company that can be trusted to do what's best for humanity. It looks like Anthropic doing whatever it can to win the race even if it increases risks, like all the other AI companies. From the outside, it looks like Anthropic is less special than it seemed at first.

There are two worlds compatible with the observations:

• One where Anthropic is still pursuing the mission, and those incidents were just the best way to pursue the mission. The Anthropic leadership is trustworthy, and their internal explanations are valid and represent their actual view.
• One where the Anthropic leadership is not reliably pursing the mission anymore, where those incidents are in fact evidence of that, but where the leadership is using its capacity of persuasion and the fact that it has access to info employees don't have, to convince them that it was all for the mission, no matter the real reasons

In the second world, working at Anthropic would not reliably improve the world. Anthropic employees would have to evaluate whether to continue working there in the same way as they would if they worked at OpenAI or any other AI company.

All current and potential Anthropic employees should notice that from the outside, it sure does look like Anthropic is not following its mission as much as it used to. There are two hypotheses that explain it. They should make sure to keep tracking both of them. They should have a plan of what they'll do if they're in the least convenient world, so they can face uncomfortable evidence. And, if they do conclude that the Anthropic leadership is not following Anthropic's mission anymore, they should take action.