But if Stalin is committed to convincing gender-dysphoric males that they need to cut their dicks off, and you're committed to not disagreeing with Stalin, you _shouldn't_ mostly believe it when gender-dysphoric males thank you for providing the final piece of evidence they needed to realize that they need to cut their dicks off, for the same reason a self-aware Republican shill shouldn't uncritically believe it when people thank him for warning them against Democrat treachery. We know—he's told us very clearly—that Yudkowsky isn't trying to be a neutral purveyor of decision-relevant information on this topic; he's not going to tell us about reasons not to transition. He's playing on a different chessboard.
-### A Fire of Inner Life
+### People Who Are Trying to Be People Want to Improve Their Self-Models
"[P]eople do _know_ they're living in a half-Stalinist environment," Yudkowsky claims. "I think people are better off at the end of that," he says. But who are "people", specifically? One of the problems with utilitarianism is that it doesn't interact well with game theory. If a policy makes most people better off, at the cost of throwing a few others under the bus, is enacting that policy the right thing to do?
[He put a check-mark emoji reaction on it](/images/davis-amounts-to-giving-up-on-the-concept-of-intellectual-honesty.png), indicating agreement or approval.
-If the caliph has lost his faith in the power of intellectual honesty, I can't necessarily say he's wrong on the empirical merits. It is written that our world is [beyond the reach of God](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god); there's no law of physics that says honesty must yield better results than propaganda.
+If the caliph has lost his [belief in](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/duvzdffTzL3dWJcxn/believing-in-1) the power of intellectual honesty, I can't necessarily say he's wrong on the empirical merits. It is written that our world is [beyond the reach of God](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god); there's no law of physics that says honesty must yield better results than propaganda.
-But since I haven't relinquished my faith, I have the responsibility to point out that the formerly rightful caliph has relinquished his Art and lost his powers.
+But since I haven't relinquished my belief in honesty, I have the responsibility to point out that the formerly rightful caliph has relinquished his Art and lost his powers.
The modern Yudkowsky [writes](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1096769579362115584):
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff