-At 1:47 _p.m._, I had messaged Ziz, "humans aren't smart enough to be Kirutsugu [_sic_][^kiritsugu-spelling]; that's why I've chosen the confessor route"—a reference to Yudkowsky's story ["Three Worlds Collide"](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qWoFR4ytMpQ5vw3FT), in which an alien rationalist trained for command (the _Kiritsugu_) is contrasted with her human counterpart (the Confessor), who is tasked only with telling the truth, for others to decide what to do about it.
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-[^kiritsugu-spelling]: The spelling [used in the story is _Kiritsugu_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qCsxiojX7BSLuuBgQ/the-super-happy-people-3-8).
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-[(I don't do policy.)](/2021/Sep/i-dont-do-policy/)
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-After I asked for "positive reinforcement" and sent some "Cooperate" messages at 3:15 _p.m._, Ziz responded with some heartwarming anecdotes about how others thought of me. She said that Michael Vassar had been talking approvingly about me, in the context of a war between gaslighting _vs._ having the ability to think, that I was one of the three fronts in "the community" that the war was playing out on: Sarah _vs._ Ben, Rob _vs._ Ben Todd, and Zack Davis _vs._ the world.[^war-fronts]
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-[^war-fronts]: I'm not sure if "Rob" was referring to Rob Wiblin or Rob Bensinger. When I asked Michael later how Sarah and Ben were in conflict (Subject: "request for clarification re war fronts"), he said that Sarah and Ben were allies and that he wasn't sure how the misunderstanding happened.
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-Eventually I made it to my office. My boss said he hadn't seen my email about wanting to meet. I wasn't sure I believed him—not particularly because I thought he had read it and had reason to lie about that, but because I wasn't sure I believed self-reports were meaningful in general. Maybe everyone was just bluffing, playing improv, all the time: maybe it was common for people to not actually know how to read, and chose at random whether to claim to have read or not-read something.
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-At this point, my memories aren't very clear or detailed. I think I said something that caused my coworkers to be very concerned for me, but I remember being very careful about the wording, to make sure I _wasn't_ saying one of the things that would give people cause to lock me up. I think it was something like, "I think I'm in the mental state that causes people to perform the verbal behavior of saying they want to commit suicide."
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-In retrospect, I don't think people pay attention to such distinctions.
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-A coworker volunteered to secure me a ride home. There was some question about whether the relevant "home" was my apartment in Berkeley, or the house in Walnut Creek where my mother lived, and where I had lived until just ten months before. As a newly awakened-social conservative, I intuited that staying with family was the right choice. (I was wrong.) At 6:22 _p.m._, I sent an email from my work computer to my parents, Anna, and Michael (Subject: "I want to go to my parents' house; do we still own the house? (eom)").
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-We still owned the house. My coworker took an Uber with me to the house in Walnut Creek, and talked to my mother.
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-(Meanwhile, Ziz had made her way to my apartment. "Brought chocolate, allegedly good against dementors," she messaged at 5:43 _p.m._. "Believe I can cooperate better if I can see your face." I was apparently in no state to appreciate the gesture; I messaged back "OK" a couple times when she asked to be let in, and confirmed which address she was at, even though I wasn't there. My flatmate eventually arrived and let her in.)
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-I tried to sleep that night, at my mom's house. It wasn't very effective. I was scared of being attacked by criminals. (There may have been a racial angle on this fear? I don't think I can remember, and if I could, I'm not sure I would be able to type it.) Sure, I _remembered_ feeling physically secure at almost all times in my life; I _remembered_ Walnut Creek being a safe place. But how trustworthy were memories from life inside an ideological bubble? Maybe people like me got assaulted and brutalized all the time, but our culture had trained us to block out all the evidence and even memories that good smart nice liberals _prefered not to see_.