The "where you could hear it" clause is particularly bizarre—as if Yudkowsky assumes that people in "the community" _don't read widely_. It's gratifying to be acknowledged by my caliph—or it would be, if he were still my caliph—but I don't think the points I've been making, about the relevance of autogynephilia to male-to-female transsexualism, and the reality of biological sex (!), are particularly novel.
-I think I _am_ unusual in the amount of analytical rigor I can bring to bear on these topics. Similar points are often made by authors such as [Kathleen Stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock) or [Corinna Cohn](https://corinnacohn.substack.com/) or [Aaron Terrell](https://aaronterrell.substack.com/)—or for that matter [Steve Sailer](https://www.unz.com/isteve/dont-mention-the-autogynephilia/)—but those authors don't have the background to formulate it [in the language of probabilistic graphical models](/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/) the way I do. _That_ part is a genuine value-add of the "rationalist" memeplex—something I wouldn't have been able to do without [the influence of Yudkowsky's Sequences](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/), and all the math books I studied afterwards because the vibe of the _Overcoming Bias_ comment section in 2008 made that seem like an important and high-status thing to do.
+I think I _am_ unusual in the amount of analytical rigor I can bring to bear on these topics. Similar points are often made by authors such as [Kathleen Stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock) or [Corinna Cohn](https://corinnacohn.substack.com/) or [Aaron Terrell](https://aaronterrell.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-my-agp-normalization)—or for that matter [Steve Sailer](https://www.unz.com/isteve/dont-mention-the-autogynephilia/)—but those authors don't have the background to formulate it [in the language of probabilistic graphical models](/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/) the way I do. _That_ part is a genuine value-add of the "rationalist" memeplex—something I wouldn't have been able to do without [the influence of Yudkowsky's Sequences](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/), and all the math books I studied afterwards because the vibe of the _Overcoming Bias_ comment section in 2008 made that seem like an important and high-status thing to do.
But the promise of the Sequences was in offering a discipline of thought that could be applied to everything you would have read and thought about anyway. This notion that if someone in the community didn't say something, then Yudkowsky's faithful students wouldn't be able to hear it, would have been rightfully seen as absurd: _Overcoming Bias_ was a gem of the blogoshere, not a substitute for the rest of it. (Nor was the blogosphere a substitute for the University library, which escaped the autodidact's [resentment of the tyranny of schools](/2022/Apr/student-dysphoria-and-a-previous-lifes-war/) by [selling borrowing privileges to the public for $100 a year](https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/access-library-collections-by-external-users).) To the extent that the Yudkowsky of the current year takes for granted that his faithful students _don't read Steve Sailer_, he should notice that he's running a cult or a fandom rather than an intellectual community.
He [later clarified on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404821285276774403), "It is not trans-specific. When people tell me I helped them, I mostly believe them and am happy."
-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 playing on a different chessboard.
+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