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.)
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.
------
-[TODO: "Roberta" situation]
+[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: overheating in April, staying at Volterra, Hamilton purchase]
+[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: BABSCon]
[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 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