-It was me, once. I had a couple [psychotic](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [episodes](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) last year, including some delusions of grandeur. At various points, I thought that I had been appointed Gender Czar of this equivalence class of instances of Earth across the multiverse, that I was objectively one of the seven most important people in the world with a key role to play in the [intelligence explosion](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Intelligence_explosion).
+It was me, once. I had a couple [psychotic](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [episodes](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) last year, including some delusions of grandeur. At various points, I thought that I had been appointed Gender Czar of this equivalence class of instances of Earth across the multiverse, that I was objectively one of the seven most important people in the world, with a key role to play in the [intelligence explosion](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Intelligence_explosion). I thought that powerful transgender activists might be plotting to murder me (in retaliation for this blog) at a fandom convention that I [had](/2017/Apr/surprise-reader-meetup/) [broadcast](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/04/an-algorithmic-lucidity-surprise-reader-meetup/) [that](/images/facebook_meetup_hint.png) I would be at, but that maybe they could be bargained with, or that I might escape if they were to mistakenly kill someone else who erroneously believed that they were me. I thought that you could reward or punish people by writing simple computer programs praising or condemning them, thereby leveraging the acausal economy to affect the distribution of [superintelligences simulating them](https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html)—and so on.
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+I got better after a few nights of good sleep—but also with the help of friends who cared not just about my immediate happiness, but also my sanity, who didn't automatically dismiss everything I said as wrong, but who also _told me_ when I wasn't making sense.
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+If the delusions had persisted—if I had _gone on_ thinking in terms of simulation hijinks and the literal transgender mafia, we could imagine my having friends who eventually decided to play along. Maybe it would be fun for them or for me. Maybe it would be fascinating to read about.[ref]Psychotic-me's worldview makes _great_ science fiction.[/ref] But I don't think it would be _helping_ me, because ultimately, I live in the real world. Anything else [isn't there to be lived](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Litany_of_Gendlin).
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+I want you to imagine yourself as a resident of 1870s San Francisco, someone who Norton trusts as one of his chief imperial advisors. One day, you encounter him at his favorite café looking very distressed.