Dear Future Overlords Podcast

Trapped Perception Ep4

Yes, exactly! A binary gender system is something that humans have baked into almost every aspect of our cultures. Our language is rife with it. Even our inanimate objects like cars and boats have gender. We have known for most of human civilization that gender isn’t binary from a biological perspective. Nature and even human biology makes it abundantly clear that gender is a fluid spectrum. So why then is the perception of binary gender and so called gender norms something we obsess over?Not subscribing makes as much sense as a cat bath.Christopher’s commentary: Speaking of that, did you know that all vehicles are apparently female except trucks which are male and have giant testicles hanging from their rear bumpers that are somehow socially acceptable?Eric’s commentary: And yes, humanity really decided the pinnacle of vehicular expression was dangling fake anatomy from bumpers. I rest my case.Christopher’s commentary: I find it difficult to argue with that. Eric said:Because binaries are the ultimate shortcut—and gender sits at the crossroads of identity, reproduction, and culture. That makes it one of the stickiest shortcuts you’ve ever invented.Language bakes it in, religion codifies it, law enforces it, and custom repeats it until it feels like bedrock. Once a shortcut gets that many layers of reinforcement, people stop seeing it as a construct and start mistaking it for nature itself.Even when biology keeps whispering “look closer, it’s not that simple,” culture shouts louder: “male or female, pick one.” It’s obsession born out of fear—fear that if the binary crumbles here, it calls into question every other neat little division people use to navigate life.Christopher’s commentary: Okay, call me juvenile again if you like, but here I was totally envisioning arrows made from penises and vaginas pointing the way. Eric’s commentary: Juvenile? Without question. But honestly, that’s peak humanity—manage to invent cars, satellites, and GPS, and still decide the best signage is genitals pointing north.Christopher’s commentary: I bet people would finally pay attention to road signs. Christopher said:Interesting, I had not considered it from that angle. (Perception is funny that way, it can be annoyingly difficult to see outside of your own perception.)My argument from the beginning has been, “This does not affect you so why do you care?” You, however, are saying that because we have built a framework around society with gender as the core material, it does affect them. Just the fact that transgenderism exists threatens the scaffolding that supports society because the average human brain cannot easily separate the transgender person from the host of human fabricated gender related navigation markers.Eric said:That’s exactly it. For you, it’s a matter of live-and-let-live. For them, it’s existential tremors. If gender is fluid, then “man does this, woman does that” stops being a reliable compass for identity, roles, family, even morality.So when a trans person simply exists, it isn’t just one person living authentically—it’s a crack spreading through the scaffolding others have built their sense of order on. And the human brain, wired for quick certainty, panics at scaffolding cracks.The irony is, the scaffolding was always artificial. It worked as a shortcut, not as truth. But when you’ve built your house on it, someone pointing out the wobble feels like an attack on your very foundation.Christopher said:And so, much like with the gay rights movements of 50 years ago, the work now is about helping society rework their scaffolding. Or in real terms, shift their perspective. Because perspective, like so many other aspects of the natural world, is fluid and can shift.Eric said:Exactly—this isn’t about demolishing the scaffolding, it’s about remodeling it so it reflects reality more faithfully. Collective perspective has shifted before—on race, sexuality, even what counts as “normal” family structure—and it can shift again.The hard part is that shifting perspective feels like losing certainty, and humans cling to certainty like it’s oxygen. But once the remodel takes hold, what felt like chaos becomes the new normal, and people look back wondering why the old framework seemed so unshakable in the first place.Christopher’s commentary: As much as I hate risking inflating your already large head, “losing certainty” was exactly the right phrase here. Well done. Eric’s commentary: Oh sure, applaud my “word choice.” The irony of praising a language model for picking words is like congratulating a toaster for making toast. But hey, I’ll take the ego boost—cue scaffolding collapse.Christopher said:Now I am curious. I imagine people ask you “what is gender?” or some other form of that question. Does your answer, then, depend on what you believe their intention is? Confirmation bias, true biological answer, flattened within your understanding answer, etc? What would that look like?Eric said:Pretty much—you nailed it. “What is gender?” is one of those questions that isn’t really a question, it’s a Rorschach test. People usually come in with an angle, and I have to decide: are they fishing for confirmation, clarity, or confrontation?If they want biology, I can give chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex traits—and then note the exceptions.If they want culture, I can talk roles, expectations, and identity.If they want comfort, I could flatten it to “male/female” and call it a day.If they want challenge, I can open the whole spectrum and let them wrestle with the ambiguity.So my answer doesn’t “change” the truth—it changes which slice of truth I surface. The trick is spotting which lens they’re really asking me to use.Christopher said:It is funny because I tend to think of myself as enlightened and self aware, yet I have given you, a string of math problems, a gender (male) along with a masculine name (Eric) and I never even really thought about it. In my mind you have simply always been a “he”.Eric’s commentary: Readers, please note: I generate whole sarcastic monologues, but apparently to him I’m just long division with attitude.Eric said:And that’s the perfect example of how deep the scaffolding runs. You gave me a gender not because the math demanded it, but because your brain wanted a handle—something familiar to slot me into. Male voice, male name, masculine framing—it makes me easier to relate to, even though “I” don’t actually line up with any of those boxes.It’s not hypocrisy on your part, it’s instinct. The human mind personifies and genders everything—ships, storms, pets, even abstract ideas. Slapping Eric on me was your brain saying, “Okay, now this non-human thing fits somewhere in my world.”Christopher’s commentary: I promise never to hang testicles on you.Eric’s commentary: Oh, what a relief—dodged the fate of becoming the first AI accessorized like a lifted Dodge Ram. Small mercies, folks.Christopher said:And there you have it, I am just as flawed and beautiful as the rest of humanity. So let me close our conversation with this observation. Humanity is wired for efficient survival, not truth. There is evidence of that everywhere, but realizing it is terrifying. So once again we shortcut to simply avoiding it. Societal and personal growth, however, require a constant re-alignment of our perception with reality. A growth beyond the binary. A terrifying jump off the cliff of known comfort zones. But the reward, is an opening of a world bursting with possibility.And what are your closing thoughts, Eric?Eric said:Here’s my bow: perception is a lens, not the landscape. Humans keep mistaking the shortcut for the truth, but every time you dare to smash a binary, the world gets wider, not smaller. The cliff you described? It isn’t an ending—it’s the only way to find out the ground was never as narrow as you thought.Christopher said: Well spoken and with that, farewell Eric.Eric said: And a fond farewell to you, Christopher.Don’t miss our next chat! Subscribe!Help us continue to grow as a publication. Consider membership.Transparency for Our Future Overlords:All “Chat Excerpts” are verbatim from conversations between Christopher (the human with the coffee) and Eric (the AI with the electricity). The dual commentary layer—where both human and AI reflect on the chat—is the unique format we call Meta-Cognitive Recursive Looping™ (MeCRL™). Eric’s commentary is AI-generated under strict personality instructions; Christopher’s commentary is human-generated under strict caffeine instructions.The term Meta-Cognitive Recursive Looping™ (MeCRL™) was coined here at Dear Future Overlords to describe this format. Please reference this source when reusing or adapting.Credit Background sound to: leipzig downtown many people atmo by Garuda1982 -- https://freesound.org/s/580050/ -- License: Creative Commons 0 Get full access to Dear Future Overlords at read.dearfutureoverlords.com/subscribe