> _We all know that falsifying data is bad._ But if that's the way the incentives point (and that's a very important if!), then it's _also_ bad to call people out for doing it. If you do that, then you're using moral indignation as a weapon—a way to not only coerce other people into using up their willpower, but to come out of it looking good yourself.
-In an email (Subject: "LessWrong.com is dead to me"), Jessica identified the thread (in particular, moderator Ray Arnold's comments) as her last straw:
+In an email (Subject: "LessWrong.com is dead to me"), Jessica identified the thread as her last straw:
> LessWrong.com is a place where, if the value of truth conflicts with the value of protecting elites' feelings and covering their asses, the second value will win.
>
> I['m] sorry it made you sad. From my perspective, the question is no[t] "can we still be friends with such people", but "how can we still be friends with such people" and I am pretty certain that understanding their perspective if an important part of the answer. If clarity seems like death to them and like life to us, and we don't know this, IMHO that's an unpromising basis for friendship.
+
+
+
[TODO—
* Jessica: scortched-earth campaign should mostly be in meatspace social reality
* my comment on emotive conjugation (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qaYeQnSYotCHQcPh8/drowning-children-are-rare#GaoyhEbzPJvv6sfZX)
* secret posse member: level of social-justice talk makes me not want to interact with this post in any way
]
-On 4 July, Scott Alexander published ["Some Clarifications on Rationalist Blogging"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/), disclaiming any authority as a "rationalist" leader. ("I don't want to claim this blog is doing any kind of special 'rationality' work beyond showing people interesting problems [...] Insofar as [_Slate Star Codex_] makes any pretensions to being 'rationalist', it's a rationalist picnic and not a rationalist monastery.") I assumed this was inspired by Ben's request back in March that Scott "alter the beacon" so as to not confuse people about what the current-year community was. I appreciated it.
+On 4 July 2019, Scott Alexander published ["Some Clarifications on Rationalist Blogging"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/), disclaiming any authority as a "rationalist" leader. ("I don't want to claim this blog is doing any kind of special 'rationality' work beyond showing people interesting problems [...] Insofar as [_Slate Star Codex_] makes any pretensions to being 'rationalist', it's a rationalist picnic and not a rationalist monastery.") I assumed this was inspired by Ben's request back in March that Scott "alter the beacon" so as to not confuse people about what the current-year community was. I appreciated it.
[TODO: "AI Timelines Scam"
* I still sympathize with the "mainstream" pushback against the scam/fraud/&c. language being used to include Elephant-in-the-Brain-like distortions
In August 2019's ["Schelling Categories, and Simple Membership Tests"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests), I explained a nuance that had only merited a passion mention in "... Boundaries?": sometimes you might want categories for different agents to _coordinate_ on, even at the cost of some statistical "fit." (This was of course generalized from a "pro-trans" argument that had occured to me, [that self-identity is an easy Schelling point when different people disagree about what "gender" they perceive someone as](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/).)
-In September 2019's ["Heads I Win, Tails?—Never Heard of Her; Or, Selective Reporting and the Tragedy of the Green Rationalists"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoPo4PDjgSySquHX8/heads-i-win-tails-never-heard-of-her-or-selective-reporting), I presented a toy mathematical model of how censorship distorts group beliefs. I was surprised by how well-received it was (high karma, Curated within a few days, later included in the Best-of-2019 collection), especially given that it was explicitly about politics (albeit at a meta level, of course). Ben and Jessica had discouraged me from bothering when I sent them a draft.
+In September 2019's ["Heads I Win, Tails?—Never Heard of Her; Or, Selective Reporting and the Tragedy of the Green Rationalists"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoPo4PDjgSySquHX8/heads-i-win-tails-never-heard-of-her-or-selective-reporting), I presented a toy mathematical model of how censorship distorts group beliefs. I was surprised by how well-received it was (high karma, Curated within a few days, later included in the Best-of-2019 collection), especially given that it was explicitly about politics (albeit at a meta level, of course). Ben and Jessica had discouraged me from bothering when I sent them a draft. (Jessica said that it was obvious even to 10-year-olds that partisan politics distorts impressions by filtering evidence. "[D]o you think we could get a ten-year-old to explain it to Eliezer Yudkowsky?" I asked.)
In October 2019's ["Algorithms of Deception!"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fmA2GJwZzYtkrAKYJ/algorithms-of-deception), I exhibited some toy Python code modeling different kinds of deception. A function that faithfully passes observations it sees as input to another function, lets the second function constructing a well-calibrated probability distribution. But if the first function outright fabricates evidence, or selectively omits some evidence, or gerrymanders the categories by which it interprets its observations as evidence, the second function comes up with a worse (less accurate) probability distribution.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff