1 Title: An Infovist's Advisory; Or, Standing Athwart History Yelling, "Wait! I Like the Idea, but the Execution Needs Work!"
9 OUTLINE OF POINTS TO HIT—
11 POINTS FROM MY EMAIL TO BBL—
13 * the current situation re MtF is crazy
14 * activists who want to change society are both incentivized and selected for self-delusion—
15 * incentivized because: ... ? (Exercise: what was I thinking when I said
17 * selected-for because: ... ? (Exercise)
18 * some kind of Goodheart's-law/Berkson's-paradox-like phenomenon??
19 * Whichever activists happen to win get to write the history books, and so
20 most people end up with this Whig history view of the world where people in
21 the past were bad, bad men, but we're so much more progressive and
22 enlightened now. But evolutionarily speaking, there's no fact of the matter
23 as to what's better; there's only what won.
24 * A lot of intellectuals try to avoid politics: if your only choices are the "maximize the number of trans people" coalition vs. a "minimize the number of trans people" coalition, then it makes sense to sit it out
25 * But maybe there's a role for a more narrowly-targeted form of political
26 behavior (making friends and allies, trading favors, alienating people,
27 &c.), with the goal of just getting the correct theory (sexual dimorphism is
28 real, societies have gender roles, there are these two distinct classes of
29 motivation for why transitioning might seem like a good idea to someone) in
30 the standard sex-ed textbooks, but not trying to dictate what the social
31 norms of who should transition should be, who should pay for it,
32 &c. "Infovism" rather than activism.
35 NRx-inspired (sigh ... yes, unfortunately) points—
37 (most of this should probably be split into a separate post even if I'm happening to do some outlining in this file; evil speculation shouldn't contaminate the solid "Infovism" idea/slogan)—
39 * democracy is government by whichever memes happen to be the most virulent
40 * outcomes of the long run of a one-dimensional conflict can be classified, roughly something like: Left total victory, right total victory, mutually assured destruction, and program equilibrium
41 * program equilibrium isn't easy/possible for humans
42 * the key point here is that "grant this demand, deny all others" isn't a
43 defensible Schelling point; if you yield here, the _same algorithm_ is
44 going to be running the next time
45 * "Berkeley 2009 morality was just right, but this Berkeley 2017 bullshit has
47 * If I were dictator, (Berkeley, 2009) could be made to work, but everyone has her own (city, year) pair
48 * for some reason I thought this was analogous to something from the
49 Coherent Extrapolated Volition document: Dennis thinks he should own
50 the world, but fairness requires that Dennis's name be erased from any
51 such request, and "some X should own the world" is underspecified"
52 * remember my conversation with a certain female bio-/psychologist studying at
53 Harvard who told me that "Trans women are men with a mental illness" made
54 more sense, but that she was afraid to even think that within the privacy of
57 * Moldbug, "The True Meaning of Diversity": "Certainly not every party member
58 is an [X]. Most of them, in fact, are not. Nor is it absolutely guaranteed
59 that every single [X] will be a party member. But most of them, in fact,
60 are"—thus, requiring representaiton of Xes benefits the party
61 * practice of deferring to designated-victim trans women _makes the trans
62 women worse people_: if you know that you can win a dispute by playing the
63 transphobia card, that incentive shapes your life (Moldbug: discussion of
64 "ignoble privilege" in "Gentle Introduction" pt. 3)
65 * kind of like how _the right to be sued_ is an important part of legal
66 personhood: the possibility of recourse is necessary for trust
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