--------
-Another consequence of my Blanchardian enlightenment is that around this time was my [break with progressive morality](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/). I had never _really_ been progressive, as such. (I was registered to vote as a Libertarian, the legacy of a teenage dalliance with Ayn Rand and the [greater](https://web.archive.org/web/20070531085902/http://www.reason.com/blog/) [libertarian](https://praxeology.net/unblog07-06.htm) [blogosphere](https://cafehayek.com/).) But there was still an embedded assumption, reflected in [my antisexist faith](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism), that, as far as America's culture wars went, I was unambiguously on the right (_i.e._, left) side of history, [the Blue Team and not the Red Team](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/brand-rust/).
+Another consequence of my Blanchardian enlightenment is that around this time was my break with progressive morality. I had never _really_ been progressive, as such. (I was registered to vote as a Libertarian, the legacy of a teenage dalliance with Ayn Rand and the [greater](https://web.archive.org/web/20070531085902/http://www.reason.com/blog/) [libertarian](https://praxeology.net/unblog07-06.htm) [blogosphere](https://cafehayek.com/).) But there was still an embedded assumption, reflected in [my antisexist faith](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism), that, as far as America's culture wars went, I was unambiguously on the right (_i.e._, left) side of history, [the Blue Team and not the Red Team](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/brand-rust/).
Even after years of devouring heresies on the internet—I remember fascinatedly reading everything I could about race and IQ in the wake of [the James Watson affair back in 'aught-seven](https://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php)—I had never really questioned my coalitional alignment. With some prompting from "Wilhelm", I was starting to question it now.
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+If I had to pick a _date_ for my break with progressive morality, it would be 7 October 2017. Over the past couple days, I had been having a frustrating Messenger conversation with some guy, which I would [later describe as feeling like I was talking to an AI designed to maximize the number of trans people](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/).
+
+Over the previous week and months, I had been frustrated with the _Zeitgeist_, but I was trying to not to be loud or obnoxious about it, because I wanted to be a good person and not hurt anyone's feelings and not lose any more friends. ("Helen" had rebuffed my last few requests to chat or hang out. "I don't fully endorse the silence," she had said, "just find talking vaguely aversive.")
+
+The conversation made it very clear to me that I could have no peace with the _Zeitgeist_. It wasn't the mere fact that some guy in my social circle was being dumb and gaslighty about it. It was that fact that his gaslighting was an unusually pure distillation of _socially normative_ behavior in Berkeley 2016. There were more copies of him than there were of me.
+
+It was a Huckleberry Finn moment for me: opposing this was worth losing friends, worth hurting feelings, and, actually, worth the other thing. I posted on Facebook and [on my real-name blog](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/late-onset/):
+
+> the moment of liberating clarity when you resolve the tension between being a good person and the requirement to pretend to be stupid by deciding not to be a good person anymore đź’–
+
+Michael Vassar emailed me about it, and we ended up meeting once. (I had also emailed him back in August, when I had heard from Anna that he was also skeptical of the transgender movement (Subject: "I've heard of fake geek girls, but this is ridiculous").)
+
+------
+
I wrote about my frustrations to Scott Alexander of _Slate Star Codex_ fame (Subject: "J. Michael Bailey did nothing wrong"). The immediate result of this is that he ended up including a link to one of Kay Brown's study summaries (and expressing surprise at the claim that non-androphilic trans woman have very high IQs) in his [November links post](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/01/links-1116-site-unseen/), and he [got some pushback even for that](https://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/post/152736458066/hey-scott-im-a-bit-of-a-fan-of-yours-and-i).
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------
-[TODO SECTION: conversations with "Wilhelm" late 2016, early 2017]
-
-As a mere heretic, it was also nice to have an outright _apostate_ as a friend.
-
-I kept in touch with "Wilhelm".
-
-[TODO: election thoughts; Clinton vs. Trump on Russia hawkishness]
+As a mere heretic, it was also nice to have an outright _apostate_ as a friend. I had kept in touch with "Wilhelm", who provided a refreshing contrary perspective to the things I was hearing from everyone else. When the rationalists were anxious that the election of Donald Trump in 2016 portended an increased risk of nuclear war, "Wilhelm" pointed out that Clinton was actually much more hawkish towards Russia.
I shared with him an early draft of ["Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes"](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/), which fleshed out his idea from back in March about political forces optimizing for people to adopt an identity as a persecuted trans person.
-[TODO: egregore theory; negotiating with egregores and Aumann agreement; coalition of the fringes burning down organic structure
+He identified the "talking like like an AI" phenomenon as possession by an egegore, a group-mind that held sway over the beliefs of the humans comprising it. The function of the traditional wisdom of having kings and priests was about putting an individual human with judgement in the position of being able to tame, control, or at least negotiate with egregores. Individualism was flawed because [individual humans couldn't be rational on their own](http://sett.com/aesop/memes-are-people-humans-arent). Being an individualist in an environment full of egregores was like being an attractive woman alone at a bar, yelling, "I'm single!"—practically calling out for unaligned entities to wear down your psychological defenses and subvert your will.
-I've heard of [patterns of refactored agency](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/11/27/patterns-of-refactored-agency/), but this is ridiculous.
+Rationalists implicitly seek [Aumann-like agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann's_agreement_theorem) with perceived peers: when the other person is visibly unmoved by one's argument, there's a tendency to think "hm, they must know something I don't" and update towards the other's position. Without an understanding of egregoric possession, this is disastrous: the possessed person never budges on anything significant, and the rationalist slowly gets eaten by their egregore.
-I said I was modeling him as possessed by the NRx egregore, and myself as experiencing a lower (but still far from zero) net egregoric force by listening to both him and the mainstream rationalist diaspora.
-]
+I was nonplussed: I had heard of [patterns of refactored agency](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/11/27/patterns-of-refactored-agency/), but this was ridiculous. The "egregore" framing was an interesting alternative way of looking at things, but it seemed kind of—nonlocal. There were inhuman patterns in human agency that we wanted to build models of, but it seemed like he was attributing too much agency to the patterns. In contrast, "This idea creates incentives to propogate itself" was [a mechanism I understood](https://devinhelton.com/meme-theory.html). (Or was I being like one of those dumb Dawkins critics who protests that genes aren't _actually_ selfish? We know that, but the anthropomorphic language is convenient.)
-[TODO: NRx the nice parts, Brazil vs. South Africa]
+I supposed I was sort of modeling "Wilhelm" as being possessed by the neoreaction egregore, and myself as experiencing a lower (but still far from zero) net egregoric force by listening to both him and the mainstream rationalist egregore.
-[TODO: comics and 72 virgins]
+He was a useful sounding board when I was frustrated with my so-far-mostly private trans discussions.
"If people with fragile identities weren't useful as a proxy weapon for certain political coalitions, then they would have no incentive to try to play language police and twist people's arms into accepting their identities," he said.
"[A]s long as you are resisting the dark linguistic power that the left is offering you," he said, with a smiley emoticon.
-[TODO: hypomasculine men, more paperclips]
+In some of my private discussions with others, Ozy Frantz (a.f.a.b. nonbinary author of _Thing of Things_) had been cited as a local authority figure on gender issues—someone asked what Ozy thought about the two-types theory, or wasn't persuaded because they were partially deferring to Ozy. I remarked to "Wilhelm" that this implied that my goal should be to overthrow Ozy (who I otherwise liked and respected) as _de facto_ rationalist gender czar.
-[TODO: Susan Fenimore Cooper]
+"Wilhelm" didn't think this was feasible. The problem, he explained, was that ""hypomasculine men are often broken people who idolize feminists, and worship the first one who throws a few bones of sympathy towards men". (He had been in this category, so he could make fun of them.) Thus, in feminist communities, the female person would win a priestly battle, regardless of quality of arguments. It wasn't Ozy's fault, really. She—"Wilhelm" used feminine pronouns for Ozy, although I always said _they_ in public—wasn't power-seeking; she just happened to fulfill preexisting demand for a feminist manic pixie dream girl intellectual slut confessor.
I mentioned that there was a woman who had been hanging around the "rationalist"[^scare-quotes] community despite being mildly contemptuous of our disrespect for academic philosophy, who was very trigger-happy with sexism accusations, who I privately thought would be _less_ respected if she were a man making similar-quality arguments—but there was no way to give her feedback on the matter without alienating her. I supposed that in a NRx (_i.e._, evil) space, they would probably say, "who cares if you alienate the bitch". But she was a _woman paying attention to us_.
I said that #2 still seemed monstrously unfair to the non-nuisance woman contributing to the community's endeavor; even if biology had something to do with their rarity, not giving them a chance was way worse than the problem thereby solved (with respect to my historically aberrant pro-androgyny utility function that I would defend to the death).
-[TODO: further counter-replies, eminence]
+"Wilhelm" said that exceptions could be made for intellectually eminent women at the discretion of the authorities, but that the vast majority of young women didn't have the temperment to participate in male communities, instead having incentives to behave like busybodies, cause drama, and test males for mates. This wasn't something "Wilhelm" had previously wanted to believe, even in his anti-feminist (but not yet fully reactionary) days. But once you understood how past generations would have seen certain behavior, upon seeing it in the wild, among people who claim to be "above" gender roles—it was hard to unsee.
+
+I said that I was done pretending to be stupid; I didn't want to not see the pattern if the pattern was there, even if I wasn't going to adopt the solutions of our ancestors.
+
+("Restore patriarchy!" "_Never!_ I mean, I see the point you're trying to make, but the real solution is embryo selection for more nerd girls!")
-[TODO: egalitarian relationships don't work]
+[TODO:
+ * (check the date break between this part and the previous)
+ * I mentioned re-reading the part of the "Gentle Introduction" about ignoble privilege
+ * "Wilhelm" mentions this as a reason not to seek the approval of women; they have not be ennobled by being used as a proxy weapon
+ * androgynous women (the kind of women I particularly like!!) have the "chip on their shoulder" effect particularly amplified
+ * mention "Beatrice" somewhere in here? (99% OKCupid match; "nowhere to go but down")
+ * actionable advice: if I find an androgynous women I'm into; don't feel the need to seek her approval or treat her as a moral authority; she will have plenty of flaws of her own due to the ignobling forces she's been exposed to
+ * if your goal is to have an egalitarian relationship, and do what most sensitive men think of as equality, it degenerates into female moral superiority which wrecks the relationship (women want to win arguments in the moment, but they don't actually want to lead the relationship)
+ * a strange conclusion: the man needs to lead the relationship _into_ equality; a "dab" of patriarchy
+ * what I wanted was to have the kind of meta-psychological engineering conversation we were having now, with the woman herself; but the few hyper-reflective nerdy women who could do that were out of my league
+]
Even if I didn't like the theory and didn't trust the theory, I admitted that it was refreshing that someone _actually had a theory_, which was more than you could say for the blank slate.
------
-"Helen" had rebuffed my last few requests to chat or hang out. "I don't fully endorse the silence," she said, "just find talking vaguely aversive." In a Facebook thread in January 2017 about the mystery of why so many rationalists were trans, she said something about the metacognition needed to identify the strange, subtle unpleasantness of gender dysphoria.
+In a Facebook thread in January 2017 about the mystery of why so many rationalists were trans, "Helen" said something about the metacognition needed to identify the strange, subtle unpleasantness of gender dysphoria.
I messaged her, ostensibly to ask for my spare key back out of security fastidiousness, but really (I soon let slip) because I was angry about the deceptively pompous Facebook comment: _maybe_ it wouldn't take so much _metacognition_ if someone would just mention the _other_ diagnostic criterion!
-She sent me a photo of the key with half of the blade snapped off, next to set of pliers (which had presumably done the snapping), and told me to go away.
+She sent me a photo of the key with half of the blade snapped off (next to set of pliers, which had presumably done the snapping), sent me $8 (presumably for the cost of the key), and told me to go away.
+
+On my next bank statement, her deadname appeared in the memo line for the $8 transaction.
------
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+In another post from 4:25 _p.m._ that afternoon, I acknowledged my right-wing influences. You know, you spend nine years reading a lot of ideologically-inconvenient science, all the while thinking, "Oh, this is just interesting science, you know, I'm not going to let myself get _morally corrupted_ by it or anything." And for the last couple years you add in some ideologically-inconvenient political thinkers, too.
+
+But I was still a nice good socially-liberal Free-to-Be-You-and-Me gender-egalitarian individualist person. Because I understood the is–ought distinction—unlike _some_ people—I knew that I could learn from people's _models_ of the world without necessarily agreeing with their _goals_. So I had been trying to learn from the models of these bad people saying the bad things, until one day _the model clicked_. And the model was _terrifying_. And the model had _decision-relevant implications for the people who valued the things that I valued_—
+
+The thing was, I actually _didn't_ think I had been morally corrupted after all! I thought I was actually _really good_ at maintaining the is–ought distinction in my mind. But more people who hadn't followed by exact intellectual trajectory, the mere fact that I was saying, "Wait! Stop! The things that you're doing may not in fact be the optimal things!" made it _look_ like I'd been morally corrupted, and there was no easy way for me to prove otherwise.
+
+So, people probably shouldn't believe me. This was just a little manic episode with no serious implications. Right?
+
+-------
+
Somewhat awkwardly, I actually had a date scheduled with "Noreen" that evening. The way that happened was, elsewhere on Facebook, earlier, on 7 February, Brent Dill had said that he didn't see the value in the community matchmaking site _reciprocity.io_, and I disagreed, saying that the hang-out matching had been valuable to me, even if the romantic matching was useless for insufficiently high-status males.
"Noreen" had complained: "again with pretending only guys can ever have difficulties getting dates (sorry for this reaction, I just find this incredibly annoying)". I had said that she shouldn't apologize; I usually didn't make that genre of comment, but it seemed thematic while replying to Brent. Incidentally, I added, I was thinking of seeing seeing that new _Hidden Figures_ movie if I could find someone to go with? It turned out that she had already seen it, but we made plans to see _West Side Story_ at the [Castro Theatre](https://www.castrotheatre.com/) instead.
The person also said it was hard because it seemed like there were no moderate centrists on gender: you could either be on Team "if you _ever_ want to know what genitals someone has for _any reason_, you are an _evil transphobe_ who should _die_", or Team "trans women are disgusting blokes in dresses who are _invading_ my female spaces for _nefarious purposes_ and we should burn them all".
-I added that the worst part is that "trans women are disgusting blokes in dresses who are invading my female spaces for nefarious purposes" view is basically _correct_. It was _phrased_ in a really dismissive manner. But words don't matter! Only predictions matter!
+I added that the worst part is that "trans women are disgusting blokes in dresses who are invading my female spaces for nefarious purposes" view was basically _correct_. It was _phrased_ in a really dismissive manner. But words don't matter! Only predictions matter!
-----
> She had a delusional mental breakdown; you're a little bit manic; I'm in the Avatar state.[^avatar-state]
-[^avatar-state]: A reference to _Avatar: The Last Airbender_/_The Legend of Korra_, in which our hero can enter the ["Avatar state"](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar#Avatar_State) to become much more powerful—and also much more vulnerable.
+[^avatar-state]: A reference to _Avatar: The Last Airbender_/_The Legend of Korra_, in which our hero can enter the ["Avatar state"](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar#Avatar_State) to become much more powerful—and also much more vulnerable (not being reincarnated if killed in the Avatar state).
I made plans to visit a friend's house that evening, but before I left the office, I spent some time drafting an email to Eliezer Yudkowsky. I remarked via PM to the person whose house I was to visit, "oh, maybe I shouldn't send this email to someone as important as Eliezer". Then, "oh, I guess that means the manic state is fading". Then: "I guess that feeling is the exact thing I'm supposed to be fighting". (Avoiding "crazy" actions like emailing a high-status person _wasn't safe_ in a world where all the high-status people where committed to believing that _men could be women by means of saying so_.) I did eventually decide to hold off on the email, and make my way to the friend's house. "Not good at navigation right now", I remarked.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff