I followed it up the next morning with a hastily-written post addressed, "Dear Totally Excellent Rationalist Friends".[^terf-allusion] As a transhumanist, I believed that people should get what they want, and that we should have social norms designed to help people get what they want. But fantasizing about having a property (in context, "being a woman", but apparently I felt like being vague) without yet having sought out interventions to acquire the property, is not the same thing as somehow already literally having the property in some unspecified metaphysical sense. The process of attempting to acquire the property does not _propagate backwards in time_. I realized that explaining this in clear language had the potential to hurt people's feelings, but as an aspiring epistemic rationalist, I had a _goddamned moral responsibility_ to hurt those people's feelings. I was proud of my autogynephilic fantasy life, and proud of my rationalist community, and I didn't want either of them being taken over by _crazy people who think they can edit the past_.
-[^terf-allusion]: An allusion to TERFs, "trans-exclusionary radical feminists."
+[^terf-allusion]: The initial letters were a [deliberate allusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_topics#Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminists_(TERFs)).
-It got 170 comments, a large fraction of which were me arguing with a woman whom I'll call "Noreen" (who I had _also_ had an exchange with in the thread on Bensinger's wall on 7 February).
+It got 170 comments (!), a large fraction of which were me arguing with a woman whom I'll call "Noreen" (who I had _also_ had an exchange with in the thread on Bensinger's wall on 7 February).
"_[O]ne_ of the things trans women want is to be referred to as women," she said. "This is not actually difficult, we can just _do_ it." She was pretty sure I must have read the relevant _Slate Star Codex_ post, ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/).
------
-The first time I went insane from sleep deprivation, in 2013, I remember having a distinct mental sensation where two words kept running through my head, over and over. That time, the words had been "science" and "female." Maybe a Society with a more advanced discipline of psychiatry would be able to pinpoint the nature and origin of this symptom more exactly, but I suspect it might be a real regularity, because around this time, it started happening to me again. This time, the words were "cooperate" and "defect".
+The first time I went insane from sleep deprivation, in 2013, I remember having a distinct mental sensation where two words kept running through my head, over and over. That time, the words had been "science" and "female." Maybe a Society with a more advanced discipline of psychiatry would be able to pinpoint the nature and origin of this symptom more exactly, but I suspect it might be a real regularity, because around this time, it started happening to me again. This time, [the words were "cooperate" and "defect"](/2017/Sep/grim-trigger-or-the-parable-of-the-honest-man-and-the-god-of-marketing/).
I wandered around downtown San Francisco, and used my phone to repeatedly message the word "Cooperate" to various people—to "Rebecca" (six times), to Ben (five times), to "Noreen" (six times), to "Thomas" (twice), to my insufficiently requited love "Beatrice" (five times), to Ziz (six times), to Brent Dill (five times) ... a few other people. (I was imagining the act of saying or sending the word constituting an act of playing cooperate in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma; it didn't occur to me that it could also be interpreted as a command.)
After being released from psych prison, arrangements were made for made for me to attend the Intensive Outpatient Program at Kaiser Walnut Creek—more school-like group sessions where they talk about feelings and coping strategies. That was also anti-helpful, but it was much less of a problem. The outpatient psych authorities are of course just as stupid and overbearingly paternalistic as the inpatient psych prison authorities, with the crucial difference that they don't have any power. In psych prison, the doors are locked; you physically can't leave.
-The outpatient program has a few social-pressure sales tactics meant to persuade you that you have some underlying condition that requires their "care". They were unpersuaded by my cause-and-effect reasoning that I had gone crazy due to stress-induced sleep deprivation, and was now fine after having gotten sleep. Getting sleep _fixed the problem_.
+The outpatient program has a few social-pressure sales tactics meant to persuade you that you have some underlying condition that requires their "care". They were unpersuaded by my cause-and-effect reasoning that I had gone crazy due to stress-induced sleep deprivation, and was now fine after having gotten sleep, that getting sleep _fixed the problem_.
But the doors aren't locked; they don't actually have any power over you that you don't give them.
If we—my sense of the general culture of "we"—were obviously getting gender wrong, plausibly got the election wrong, plausibly were getting AI timelines wrong, and I thought Moldbug and neoreactionary friends were pointing to some genuinely valuable Bayes-structure ... it seemed like we were doing a _really poor_ job of [pumping against cultishness](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yEjaj7PWacno5EvWa/every-cause-wants-to-be-a-cult). Was it maybe worth bidding for a cheerful price conversation with Yudkowsky again to discuss this? (I wasn't important enough for him to spontaneously answer my emails, and I was too submissive to just do it without asking Michael first.)
-Michael said there were better ways to turn dollars into opposition to cultishness. Then I realized that I had been asking Michael for permission, not advice. (Of _course_ Michael was going to say No, there's a better way to turn dollars into anti-cultishness, which would turn out to be apophenic Vassarian moonspeak that will maybe later turn out to be correct in ways that I wouldn't understand for eight years; I shouldn't have asked.) I went ahead an emailed Yudkowsky. (Again, I won't confirm or deny whether a conversation actually happened.)
+Michael said there were better ways to turn dollars into opposition to cultishness. Then I realized that I had been asking Michael for permission, not advice. (Of _course_ Michael was going to say No, there's a better way to turn dollars into anti-cultishness, which would turn out to be apophenic Vassarian moonspeak that will maybe later turn out to be correct in ways that I wouldn't understand for eight years; I shouldn't have asked.) I went ahead and emailed Yudkowsky. (Again, I won't confirm or deny whether a conversation actually happened.)
------
In artificial intelligence, [the credit-assignment problem](https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/12908/what-is-the-credit-assignment-problem) refers to the difficulty of attributing success or failure to particular actions whose connection to the end result might be indirect and remote: if the outcome of an hour-long game might have ultimately hinged on your good or bad instincts during a critical moment in the 24th minute, you'd want to know that, so that you could re-train your instincts appropriately—but it's not trivial to figure out which moments were critical, which actions helped or hurt.
-Money and status are human civilization's credit-assignment tokens. It's not trivial to figure out what actions help or hurt, but to the extent that the economy works at all, it works because productive actions being appropriately rewarded. (A Society in which it was more profitable to steal than to produce would soon have much less to steal.)
+Money and status are human civilization's credit-assignment tokens. It's not trivial to figure out what actions help or hurt, but to the extent that the economy works at all, it works because productive actions being appropriately rewarded: a Society in which it was more profitable to steal than to produce would soon have much less to steal.
Similarly, it's not trivial to figure out what actions helped or hurt during a major life crisis, but to the extent that you _can_ figure it out, you want to dispense rewards appropriately, supplying a tiny gradient update to Society's instincts by allocating more resources to the people who have caused major life crises to be successfully navigated.
------
-Also on 12 March, I asked Anna if she would be willing to promise not to contact the authorities even if she really did think I would successfully kill myself if she didn't (Subject: "trust establishment"). "I don't expect this scenario to come up," I said, "but I want to know who I can trust in scenarios where my will comes into conflict with social reality."
+Also on 12 March 2017, I asked Anna if she would be willing to promise not to contact the authorities even if she really did think I would successfully kill myself if she didn't (Subject: "trust establishment"). "I don't expect this scenario to come up," I said, "but I want to know who I can trust in scenarios where my will comes into conflict with social reality."
She said she'd want to have a more detailed conversation about it before offering any such promise, which I agreed was a more sensible answer than the Yes I was fantasizing about.
------
+At 5:08 _p.m._ on 2 April 2017, Michael wrote to me that someone else was in psych prison, and could use help along lines that matched my focus and experience (Subject: "Another autogynophilic [_sic_] rationalist is in a psych ward").
+
+"Thanks for telling me", I said, "What can I do to help?"
+
+He asked if I knew anyone in Pittsburgh (perhaps, effective altruists at Carnegie Mellon) who would be willing to help, if I could visit a hospital there if needed, and—
+
+> Do you feel that you can provide the sort of attentive, active listening that would emotionally support someone in a high integrity agitated state where their ideas may not be literally true, and also may be true but hard to justify, but the ideas are at least honest metaphorical pointers at something that they think is there and needs to be recognized for safety?
+
+I made a Facebook post asking if I knew anyone in Pittsburgh available for a "Azkaban[^azkaban] (psych ward) rescue mission", and waited for more information.
+
+[^azkaban]: A reference to the magical prison in Yudkowsky's [_Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_](https://www.hpmor.com/), where inmates are subjected to psychic torture.
+
+ (It seems right for the attribution here to go to Yudkowsky rather than J. K. Rowling, because while Rowling invented Azkaban, it was Yudkowsky's depiction that established it in our subculture as a metonym for a _bad place that shouldn't exist_, which is how I was using the allusion.)
+
+More information came in an email that night from Lex Gendel[^lex-name] to me, Michael, and a few other people. The person in distress was a trans woman of my acquaintance whom I'll call "Roberta". Apparently, "Roberta" had had a psychotic episode. Her parents bought her a plane ticket back to Europe, but when she attempted to board the plane, she was committed to an unknown psych ward in Pittsburgh. As far as Lex knew, "Roberta" was currently too psychotic to play nice with the authorities. Our contact point with the family was her brother, who wasn't that cooperative and was also in Europe. (I'm imagining he was the source of this information—that the authorities at least called the family?)
+
+[^lex-name]: The "From" header was still using Lex's deadname (he's transmasculine), but when I asked on 4 April 2017 which name was preferred, he said that he strongly preferred Alexander or variants thereof except where that would out him to his family.
+
+Our mission was to find out where "Roberta" was and how to contact her. "Stacy" (also on the email) was local to Pittsburgh. "Kyle" and I started looking up Pittsburgh-area psych wards on Google Maps and calling them.
+
+"Kyle" made much more progress than me at calling hospitals. (Maybe he had a smarter Maps query, but maybe he was just less inhibited than me and could get more things done per minute.) I added "Roberta"'s email address to the thread so that she could look at it later and judge our competence as friends.
+
+Sewickley Hospital, the closest to the airport, told "Kyle" that "Roberta" was not there, but that they wouldn't be able to tell him if she were, which wasn't information-theoretically smart of them—if you actually care about not leaking information, you're supposed to [refuse to confirm or deny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response), not agree to deny but refuse to confirm—but fortunate for us, insofar as it clued us in to what was probably going on when Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC said that they couldn't confirm whether "Roberta" was there.
+
+UPMC Presbyterian _did_ have a record of "Roberta" that they were willing to tell "Kyle" about: she was discharged—and probably taken to the aforementioned Western Psychiatric Institute.
+
+Western Psych continued to refuse to confirm—although they did take down my number (and "Kyle"'s, and Lex's) for "Roberta" to call _if_ she was there and wanted to.
+
+I kept calling, at intervals. I tried bluffing ("No, I _know_ she's there", I told Madeline at Western Psych). I tried prompting for advice ("I realize that you're just doing your job and that you can't help me, but as a person, can you tell me who I should send next?—a lawyer, or a psychiatrist?" I told Cathy). I tried asking for a manager. (The manager, Laura, had just left.) Cathy volunteered to forward me to Patient's Rights. (It went to voicemail.)
+
+I asked Scott Alexander (whom I had tagged into the thread earlier) if _he_ could call, following up on the "sending a psychiatrist" guess (Subject: "a plea to our inside man (was: Re: information centralizing thread for [roberta] situation)").
+
+Finally, on the evening of 3 April, inspiration struck: I asked Debbie when visiting hours were. Then I asked "Stacy" to just visit physically. ("Let me know if there's any way I can sweeten the deal for you if this is at all inconvenient. (Eternal gratitude? Cash bounty to be negotiated? Any programming work you need done?)" I added.) The theory here was that the psych prison employees had been programmed not to be helpful over the phone for fear that HIPAA demons would eat them, but that they're not afraid of a physical person on-site, especially a nonthreatening nonmale person (Subject: "a plea to our on-site woman (was: Re: a plea to our inside man)").
+
+I was not reassured by the staff's claims that "Roberta" could call us back if she was there. I believed that they wrote down the number. (Someone read it back to me on my second call.) I was not confident in "Roberta" actually getting the number and the opportunity to make a phone call.
+
+I wrote to the thread:
+
+> In this situation, I don't think we should be modeling ourselves as people having meaningful conversations with other people over the phone. We are _extracting our friend from the bowels of an unaligned AI_. The reason we're using words rather than force isn't because force would be wrong; it's because we'd lose. Don't be fooled by the fact that the AI happens to use humans as components.
+
+Scott got back to me. His being a psychiatrist wasn't going to make any difference. All we could do was leave a message; if "Roberta" didn't call back, then either she wasn't there or didn't want us meddling.
+
+I harshly took exception to that disjunction. What if the bastards never gave her the message? What if she was too impaired from the psychotic break and the kidnapping to place a call herself, but would _really appreciate_ being handed a phone with someone she knows on the line?
+
+(There had been a moment during my psych imprisonment the other month, when I had noticeable diffculty dialing a phone. I was still a _person_, even when not all of my usual cognitive abilities were online.)
+
+I offered to bet him $500 at 20:1 odds:
+
+(Subject: "in which gratitude and skepticism is expressed; and, a profit opportunity (was: Re: a plea to our on-site woman)")
+
[TODO: "Roberta" situation
- * Michael writes to me, not sure that I wanted to be notified, but that someone needs help along lines that match my focus and experience (Subject: Another autogynophilic rationalist is in a psych ward)
- * Asks if we know anyone in Pittsburgh, any CMU EAs there to help, if needed could I visit
- * Asks if I could provide the "attentive, active listening that would emotionally support someone in a high integrity agitated state where their ideas may not be literally true, and also may be true but hard to justify, but the ideas are at least honest metaphorical pointers at something that they think is there and needs to be recognized for safety"
- * I post to Facebook: "Do I know (or know anyone who knows) any EA/rationalist folk in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, PA available to help with an Azkaban (psych ward) rescue mission? Not a joke."
- * Lex (whose email From field still used deadname) starts information centralizing thread, got commited while trying to board a plane
- * based on Google Maps, we started calling hosptials in the area
- * we found reason to believe she was at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, in contrast to getting explicit denials from Sewickley Hospital (closest to airport but not there. Said he would not be able to tell me she was there if she was, but can tell me she is *not* there.), Forbes Regional, and Mercy Behavioral
- * "UPMC presbyterian has a record of a devi borg. she was discharged. he said she was probably taken to western psych and recommended calling them"
- * I called, still getting stonewalling
- * "adding Devi's address to the thread so that she can look at it later and decide whether we deserve to be condemned for not being competent enough to rescue her faster"
- * The next day, I call in the morning, and in the afternoon, Cathy keeps Glomar'ing me; I ask to speak to manager; manager Laura just left; I leave a voicemail message to patient's rights; I ask Scott if he can claim to be Devi's Magical Authority Figure (offer to bribe him) (Subject: "a plea to our inside man")
- * I call again and get visiting hours and ask Chana to visit (offer to bribe her) (Subject: "a plea to our on-site woman (was: Re: a plea to our inside man)")
- * I believe that they wrote a number down, but I don't believe that Devi actually got the opportunity to call; we're extracting our friends from the bowels on an unaligned AI
- * Michael backchannels to me: "Exactly the right characterization Zack. I would tone it down right now but write these things down and we can discuss them after the fact."
- * Scott: no point in me calling, agree with what you're doing
- * I get angry at Scott for the "no meddle" suggestiong (Subject: "Re: in which gratitude and skepticism is expressed; and, a profit opportunity (was: Re: a plea to our on-site woman)")
* Steven on increasingly black-arts methods
* Lex: systems are corrupt, when even Scott writes about lacking the agency to not commit people who should not be committed
* Scott: accepts the bet, it's illegal to keep patients incommunicado
* I'm treating this as a kidnapping (Subject: "Hijack Innocent People And Abscond")
* I talk to Karen Robinson, the manager of patient relations, who is a Christian
* Lex says one of us might have to fly to Pittsburg; might think some of us are agents
- * I ask for clarification, and clarification about name (I took off the trailing 'a' in the To: header)
* I concede the bet based on Chana's testimony
* Scott offers to nullify; I insist
]
------
-[TODO: starting to overheat]
+[TODO: starting to overheat
+ * meanwhile, I had made arrangements with my dayjob to a 2 day/wk contracting on Portal (I had originally said 60/hr, Orion pointed out that was low and went to 75!!); I signed a contract!
+ * "Roberta" situation wrapped up with Chana's report on 4 April
+ * I concede my bet to Scott on 4 April
+ * on 2 April, I had sent the wire transfer reciept to AllDayChemist, on 5 April they said, "Please send us the transfer receipt as we are missing that information from your email."
+ * I pick implicitly pick a fight with James, bring up the idea of hiring him as my music teacher
+ * I said that I don't want Michael and Anna to be fighting (Subject: "Anna-Michael realignment project"); I send "cooperate with James Cook (eom)" messages to Michael and Anna
+ * (14 April 2017 was a Friday, the 7th was also a Friday)
+ *
+]
[TODO: staying at Volterra, Hamilton purchase]
[TODO: "my call with Western Psychiatric's Manager of Patient Relations"]
-[TODO: chat transcript relevant to War on Optimization for Generalized Secrecy]
-
[TODO: final $18200 credit-assignment ritual: $5K to Michael, $1200 each to "Rebecca", 3 care team members (Alicorn Sarah Anna), Ziz, "Helen", and Sophia, $400 each to Steve, A.M., Watson, "Thomas", Jonah, James, Ben, Kevin, Alexei (declined), Andrew, Divia, Lex, Devi
http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/03/friends-can-change-the-world-or-request-for-social-technology-credit-assignment-rituals/
]
+
+------
+
+Anyway, that, briefly—I mean it—is the story of how the stress of confronting people on Facebook about the illogic of gender-identity ideology caused me to go insane from sleep deprivation, twice, shattering most of my remaining faith in Society and institutions along the way.
+
+It's probably not that interesting! If it weren't somewhat-informative backstory presaging my accidental instigation of a full-on robot-cult religious civil war two years later, I wouldn't have bothered to tell this substory of my Whole Dumb Story in this much detail—as evidenced by the fact that, later in 2017, I [started](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [telling it in considerably less detail, and didn't even end up finishing that](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/).
+
+I think I learned a lot during this period, but I wish there could have been some way to learn it with less drama—to take the form I took, without the disastrously formative experience. I wonder how the rest of this Whole Dumb Story would have gone, if I had just _shrugged and logged off_ earlier in February 2017, rather than losing sleep—if I would have had the strength to fight, later, without the memory of fighting until it broke me. Sometimes, I worry that human psychology is built such that things couldn't have been too much otherwise—that the _realistic_ alternative to taking things too seriously (to the detriment of one's health, and severely inconveniencing others) is taking them lying down.
+
+But that's almost certainly giving me too much credit. To be continued.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff