-------
-I wrote to Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence (and Kevin Hsu and James Cantor for good measure) about my new political project. You might think that famous scientists and professors have so many people clamoring for their attention as to be entirely unwilling and unable to field inquiries from rando bloggers, but it turns out the world is not actually large: famous people _do_ often personally answer their mail (if we're talking about "scientist with an h-index of 90" famous, rather than Taylor Swift famous).
+You might think that famous scientists and professors have so many people clamoring for their attention as to be entirely unwilling and unable to field inquiries from rando bloggers, but it turns out the world is not actually large: famous people _do_ often personally answer their mail (if we're talking about "scientist with an h-index of 90" famous, rather than Taylor Swift famous).
-(Subject: "trans infovism against trans activism?? (was: Fwd: The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought)")
+In previous months, I had sent thanks-for-your-work fan mail to Blanchard and to Bailey, and later sent Bailey a link to this blog ("I didn't mention this in my email the other month because it seemed uncouth to self-promote in a thank-you message"). That seemed to have gone over quite well (Bailey shared the link with Blanchard, who [tweeted a link and screenshot–quote](https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/830580552562524160)), such that I felt relatively less presumptuous writing to to Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence (and Kevin Hsu and James Cantor for good measure) about my new political project, where I was in favor of the right to transition on morphological freedom grounds, but believed strongly that in order to help people make the best decisions, it was important to be realistic about the limitations of the existing technology and about what the underlying psychological condition actually is. To the extent that my attempts to be realistic put me in the minority of elite opinion in Berkeley, I feared for our collective epistemology.
-[TODO: correspondence with sex researchers
- * I had sent Blanchard fan mail on 10 August 2016
- * I had sent Bailey fan mail on 7 January 2017, and then followed up on 11 February with a link to the blog
- * "fan mail; and, self-promotion" to Alice Dreger on 2 March
- * Blanchard Tweets my blog in Feb and March 2017: https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/830580552562524160 (11 Feb), https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/837846616937750528 (3 Mar)
- *
- * I wrote to Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence/Cantor
+A lot of intellectuals tried to avoid politics, and for good reason: if a polarized culture were forcing you to make a choice between a "minimize the number of trans people" faction and a "maximizer the number of trans people" faction, the only sane thing to do would be to ignore the noise and sit out the fight. But maybe there was some kind of role for some kind of very _narrowly scoped_ political behavior (making allies and enemies, trading favors and picking fights, _&c_.) with the goal of _just_ getting the correct theory in the standard sex-ed textbooks, but _not_ trying to dictate what the social norms around transitioning should be?—["infovism" rather than activism](/2021/Sep/i-dont-do-policy/). The recipients of this email were implicitly already doing this through their scholarship, but ... was there any way I could help? (Subject: "trans infovism against trans activism?? (was: Fwd: The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought)")
-> It gets worse! I think this absurd situation is illustrative of a flaw in democracy itself: activists who want to change society are both incentivized and self-selected for self-delusion. Whichever activists happen to win get to write the history books, and so most people end up with this Whig history view of the world where people in the past were bad, bad men, but we're so much more progressive and enlightened now. But evolutionarily speaking, there's no fact of the matter as to what's better; there's only what won.
-
- * I mean, you're already doing this with your work, obviously, but I want to know if there's any way I can help?
-
-> If polarizing cultural forces force you to make a choice between joining the "Your gender is whatever you say it is! Maximize the number of trans people!" coalition, or the "Transitioning is against God's will! Minimize the number of trans people!" coalition, the only sane thing to do is ignore the noise and sit out the fight.
-
-> Maybe there's a role for some kind of very narrowly scoped political behavior (making friends and allies, trading favors, alienating people, &c.), with the goal of just getting the correct theory (sexual dimorphism is real, societies have gender roles, there are these two distinct classes of motivation for why transitioning might seem like a good idea to someone) in the standard sex-ed textbooks, but not trying to dictate what the social norms
-
- * Bailey was tentatively working on a website ("Resources for Families with Gender Dysphoria" (RFGD.org).) (not sure what happened with that)
-
- * Lawrence—
-> I think it is a fool's errand to try to convince anyone to accept our ideas about "what the thing actually is." The best one can do, I feel, is to present the autogynephilia model as a potentially useful one and make it available, comprehensible, and perhaps somewhat palatable to those who might benefit from it.
-
-"I'd prefer to pick the fights I think I could win."
-
-]
+I got some friendly replies. Bailey was planning to start a website of resources for families of people with gender dysphoria, which I might be able to help with later. Lawrence was pessimistic about my stated ambition of taking the taxonomy mainstream (as contrasted to the more modest target of making the ideas available and somewhat palatable to those who might benefit from them). "I'd prefer to pick the fights I think I could win," she wrote.
-------
-Michael asked me what I thought of recently disgraced right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos (Subject: "Milo"). I said I hadn't been following that drama, except that I was really annoyed at local effective-altruism priestess Kelsey Piper (then blogging as _The Unit of Caring_) [playing dumb about what was at issue](http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/156812598746/calling-milos-conduct-random-cruelty-to-people) when criticizing Yiannopoulos for calling out a trans student by name during a speech. ("The woman in question was not 'still choosing to present as a man', she was not passing for a cis woman [...] If my university weren't letting me use the women's restrooms I would absolutely file a title IX complaint," Piper wrote.)
+Michael Vassar asked me what I thought of recently disgraced right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos (Subject: "Milo"). I said I hadn't been following that drama, except that I was really annoyed at local effective-altruism priestess Kelsey Piper (then blogging as _The Unit of Caring_) [playing dumb about what was at issue](http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/156812598746/calling-milos-conduct-random-cruelty-to-people) when criticizing Yiannopoulos for calling out a trans student by name during a speech. ("The woman in question was not 'still choosing to present as a man', she was not passing for a cis woman [...] If my university weren't letting me use the women's restrooms I would absolutely file a title IX complaint," Piper wrote.)
I agreed that ridiculing a named individual in a public speech is _mean_, and it's preferable to avoid mean things if there's any way to make the same point with the same force and quality; it would be better if we could just directly renegotiate social norms without being mean. In that sense, I was not pro-Milo. But if we couldn't peacefully coordinate and were doomed to do politics, the victimhood identity-politics mind-virus's strategy of gerrymandering categories seemed like a strategy of [asymmetrical warfare](http://devinhelton.com/afghanistan-fractally-stupid-war), less of a fair fight than just trading insults. I could respect Yiannopoulos as an ordinary soldier.
------
-[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]
+
+[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 the story in this much detail—as evidenced by the fact that, [later in 2017, I started telling the story 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 severe detriment of one's health) is taking them lying down.
+
+But that's almost certainly giving me too much credit. To be continued.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff