-It did not escape my notice that when "rationalist" authorities _in real life_ considered public knowledge of some paraphilia to be an infohazard (ostensibly for the benefit of people with that paraphilia), I _didn't take it lying down_.
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-This parallel between dath ilan's sadism/masochism coverup and the autogynephilia coverup I had fought in real life, was something I was only intending to comment on in passing in the present memoir, rather than devoting any more detailed analysis to, but as I was having trouble focusing on my own writing in September 2022, I ended up posting some critical messages about dath ilan's censorship regime in the "Eliezerfic" Discord server for reader discussion of _Planecrash_, using the masochism coverup as my central example.
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-What happens, I asked, to the occasional dath ilani free speech activists, with their eloquent manifestos arguing that Civilization would be better off coordinating on maps that reflect the territory, rather than coordinating to be a Keeper-managed zoo? (They _had_ to exist: in a medianworld centered on Yudkowsky, there are going to a few weirdos who are +2.5 standard deviations on "speak the truth, even if your voice trembles" and −2.5 standard deivations on love of clever plots; this seems less weird than negative utilitarians, who were [established to exist](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1789623#reply-1789623).) I _assumed_ they get dealt with in the end, but there had got to be an interesting story about someone who starts out whistleblowing small lies (which Exception Handling allows; they think it's cute, and it's "priced in" to the game they're playing), and then just keeps _escalating and escalating and escalating_ until Governance decides to unperson him.
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-Although Yudkowsky participated in the server, I had reasoned that my participation didn't violate my previous intent not to bother him anymore, because it was a publicly-linked Discord server with hundreds of members. Me criticizing the story for the benefit of the _other_ 499 people in the chat room wouldn't generate a notification _for him_, the way it would if I sent him an email or replied to him on Twitter.
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-In the #dath-ilan channel of the server, Yudkowsky elaborated on the reasoning for the masochism coverup:
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-> altruistic sadists would if-counterfactually-fully-informed prefer not to know, because Civilization is capped on the number of happy sadists. even if you can afford a masochist, which requires being very rich, you're buying them away from the next sadist to whom masochists were previously just barely affordable
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-In response to a question about how frequent sadism is among Keepers, Yudkowsky wrote:
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-> I think they're unusually likely to be aware, nonpracticing potential sexual sadists. Noticing that sort of thing about yourself, and then not bidding against the next sadist over for the limited masochist supply, and instead just operating your brain so that it doesn't hurt much to know what you can't have, is exactly the kind of cost you're volunteering to take on when you say you wanna be a Keeper.
-> that's archetypally exactly The Sort Of Thing Keepers Do And Are
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-> They choose not to, not just out of consideration for the next person in line, but because not harming the next person in line is part of the explicit bargain of becoming a Keeper.
-> Like, this sort of thing is exactly what you're signing up for when you throw yourself on the bounded rationality grenade.
-> Let the truth destroy what it can—but in you, not in other people.
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-I objected (to the room, I told myself, not technically violating my prior intent to not bother Yudkowsky himself anymore) that "Let the truth destroy what it can—in yourself, not in other people" is such an _incredibly_ infantilizing philosophy. It's a meme that optimizes for shaping people (I know, _other_ people) into becoming weak, stupid, and unreflective, like Thellim's impression of Jane Austen characters. I expect people on Earth—not even "rationalists", just ordinary adults—to be able to cope with ... learning facts about psychology that imply that there are desirable sexual experiences they won't get to have.
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-A user called Numendil insightfully pointed out that dath ilani might be skeptical of an Earthling saying that an unpleasant aspect our of existence is actually fine, for the same reason we would be skeptical of a resident of Golarion saying that; it makes sense for people from richer civilizations to look "spoiled" to people from poorer ones.
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-Other replies were more disturbing. One participant wrote:
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-> I think of "not in other people" not as "infantilizing", but as recognizing independent agency. You don't get to do harm to other people without their consent, whether that is physical or pychological.
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-I pointed out that this obviously applies to, say, religion. Was it wrong to advocate for atheism in a religious Society, where robbing someone of their belief in God might be harming them?
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-"Every society strikes a balance between protectionism and liberty," someone said. "This isn't news."
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-It's not news about _humans_, I conceded. It was just—I thought people who were fans of Yudkowsky's writing in 2008 had a reasonable expectation that the dominant messaging in the local subculture would continue in 2022 to be _in favor_ of telling the truth and _against_ benevolently intended Noble Lies. It ... would be interesting to know why that changed.
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-Someone else said:
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-> dath ilan is essentially a paradise world. In a paradise world, people have the slack to make microoptimisations like that, to allow themselves Noble Lies and not fear for what could be hiding in the gaps. Telling the truth is a heuristic for this world where Noble Lies are often less Noble than expected and trust is harder to come by.
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-I said that I thought people were missing this idea that the reason "truth is better than lies; knowledge is better than ignorance" is such a well-performing injunction in the real world (despite the fact that there's no law of physics preventing lies and ignorance from having beneficial consequences), is because it protects against unknown unknowns. Of course an author who wants to portray an ignorance-maintaining conspiracy as being for the greater good, can assert by authorial fiat whatever details are needed to make it all turn out for the greater good, but _that's not how anything works in real life_.
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-I started a new thread to complain about the attitude I was seeing (Subject: "Noble Secrets; Or, Conflict Theory of Optimization on Shared Maps"). When fiction in this world, _where I live_, glorifies Noble Lies, that's a cultural force optimizing for making shared maps less accurate, I explained. As someone trying to make shared maps _more_ accurate, this force was hostile to me and mine. I understood that secrets and lies are different, but if you're a consequentialist thinking in terms of what kinds of optimization pressures are being applied to shared maps, it's the same issue: I'm trying to steer _towards_ states of the world where people know things, and the Keepers of Noble Secrets are trying to steer _away_ from states of the world where people know things. That's a conflict. I was happy to accept Pareto-improving deals to make the conflict less destructive, but I wasn't going to pretend the pro-ignorance forces were my friends just because they self-identify as "rationalists" or "EA"s. I was willing to accept secrets around nuclear or biological weapons, or AGI, on "better ignorant than dead" grounds, but the "protect sadists from being sad" thing was _just_ coddling people who can't handle the truth, which made _my_ life worse.
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-I wasn't buying the excuse that secret-Keeping practices that wouldn't be OK on Earth were somehow OK on dath ilan, which was asserted by authorial fiat to be sane and smart and benevolent enough to make it work. Or if I couldn't argue with authorial fiat: the reasons why it would be bad on Earth (even if it wouldn't be bad on dath ilan) are reasons why _fiction about dath ilan is bad for Earth_.
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-And just—back in the 'aughts, Robin Hanson had this really great blog called _Overcoming Bias_. (You probably haven't heard of it, I said.) I wanted that _vibe_ back, of Robin Hanson's blog in 2008—the will to _just get the right answer_, without all this galaxy-brained hand-wringing about who the right answer might hurt.
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-I would have expected a subculture descended from the memetic legacy of Robin Hanson's blog in 2008 to respond to that tripe about protecting people from being destroyed by the truth as a form of "recognizing independent agency" with something like—
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-"Hi! You must be new here! Regarding your concern about truth doing harm to people, a standard reply is articulated in the post ["Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hs3ymqypvhgFMkgLb/doublethink-choosing-to-be-biased). Regarding your concern about recognizing independent agency, a standard reply is articulated in the post ["Your Rationality Is My Business"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/anCubLdggTWjnEvBS/your-rationality-is-my-business)."
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-—or _something like that_. Not that the reply needed to use those particular Sequences links, or _any_ Sequences links; what's important is that someone needs counter to this very obvious [anti-epistemology](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XTWkjCJScy2GFAgDt/dark-side-epistemology).
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-And what we actually saw in response to the "You don't get to do harm to other people" message was ... it got 5 "+1" emoji-reactions.
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-Yudkowsky [chimed in to point out that](/images/yudkowsky-it_doesnt_say_tell_other_people.png) "Doublethink" was about _oneself_ not reasonably being in the epistemic position of knowing that one should lie to oneself. It wasn't about telling the truth to _other_ people.
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-On the one hand, fair enough. My generalization from "you shouldn't want to have false beliefs for your own benefit" to "you shouldn't want other people to have false beliefs for their own benefit" (and the further generalization to it being OK to intervene) was not in the text of the post itself. It made sense for Yudkowsky to refute my misinterpretation of the text he wrote.