...
+I remember pacing the tiled halls of a the first facility where they took me. I was exhausted, but also feeling a sort of manic euphoria, pacing around, tapping demonstratively at the signs on the walls, thinking it was my duty to teach the other inmates how to read. Ziz's report of Vassar's comment about "Zack Davis _vs._ the world" stuck with me; I had of vision of myself as one of the seven most important people in the world in the lead-up to the intelligence explosion, as reckoned by future historians. Being a world–historically important genius wouldn't have _felt like_ being a genius at the time, most of the time. It must have felt like being pretty smart, and the rest of the world seeming dumb and crazy. (A young Albert Einstein working in the Swiss patent office wouldn't have had the mononymic aura of "Einstein" _to his contemporaries_.) Notwithstanding that I was having psychotic delusions of grandeur at the time, I do think I had reason to feel pretty smart, and that the rest of the world was dumb and crazy.
-I remember pacing the tiled halls of a the first facility where they took me. I was exhausted, but also feeling a sort of manic euphoria, pacing around, tapping demonstratively at the signs on the walls, thinking it was my duty to teach the other inmates how to read.
+There were two rooms with beds, in that first facility: one for women, and one for men. I didn't end up sleeping there that I recall. Before long, I was taken to a separate facility, with individual rooms. (Or was I incredibly lucky to not have been assigned a roommate?)
-There were two rooms with beds: one for women, and one for men.
+...
-I got taken to a separate facility pretty soon, with separate rooms. (Was I incredibly lucky to not have been assigned a roommate?)
+My memories of life in psych prison aren't very clear, partially because of how out-of-it I was, and partially because it's been more than six years since then, and memories decay if you don't _write them down_ (within hours, days, weeks—not _six years_). I wrote a [little](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [bit](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/) about my experiences in 2017. I think I would have written more if I had remembered that the consequence of not confronting [the challenge of](/2017/Nov/the-blockhead/) recording painful memories is that you lose them. I retain some access to my psychotic [sense of life](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sense_of_life.html), but only episodic fragments of specific events. ("Now memories are blurred, and their faces are obscured, but I still know the words to this song" ...)
-...
+My beliefs about game theory and evolutionary psychology—the theory and practice of making friends and avoiding enemies as a animal—seemed much more salient and actionable than anything about the world that was made of words, or the right way to behave as a person in civilization (as contrasted to an animal).
- * ("Now memories are blurred, and their faces are obscured")
- * racist/sexist intuitions: avoid the gaze of males; males physically smaller than me are OK
- * a moment of solidarity with a black male smaller than me?
- * beliefs about evolutionary psychology (make friends, avoid enemies) very salient
+It seemed important to avoid the gaze of males, particularly males physically larger than me. (If they noticed me noticing them, they would try to threaten me.)
+
+An Asian woman named Joy seemed to hurt herself on the hinges of the
* fragmented memory: Joy intentionally hurt herself while I was trying to help her, football coach-like orderly said he was only trying to help; Joy says, this never happened
- * black woman named "Tone" asked what we had for breakfast
+
+A young black woman named Tone asked me what we had for breakfast—as if
+
* black man saying something about his mother, I explained that his mother probably did love him, he got angry, and I hid behind my door
- * doing better than in 2013 precisely because I was modeling the place as a prison
+
+ * a moment of solidarity with a black male smaller than me?
...
...
+I remember having Anna on the phone, and asking if I was a political prisoner. (The Soviet Union had declared its dissidents sick from sluggish schizophrenia as a pretext for locking them away.)
+
+She answered in the negative. "Really?" I said. (If I _was_ a political prisoner, she might not be able to say so over )
+
+She repeated her answer. "Really–really?"
+
* asking Anna on the phone whether I was a political prisoner "Really?" "Really really?" followups (if I were a political prisoner; she might not be able to say so)
...
- * other males pacing the way I pace
+I remember seeing other males pacing the hallways, the way that I pace sometimes.
...
-----
-[TODO Vassar
- * 22–23 February —
+[TODO: interacting with the outpatient program]
+
+[TODO I interact more with Vassar
+ * 22–23 February—
* he asks for my phone number
* I messed up by revealing secret info to Michael (I can say _that_ I messed up a secret, without revealing what the secret was)
* Michael says that he can easily keep committments; "I'm not being sloppy and accidentally defecting against the generalized optimization for secrecy, I'm actively at war with it."
* 28 February "Re: You're really bad at communicating!", nonprofit suggestion
* "I really think that fill documentation of your experience would be maximum leverage for your time"— my reply, "Too narcissitic!" (oops!)
* Between my checking and brokerage account, I have ~$97K to play with
-
+ * "rationalist community health check?? asking for one bit of advice"
+ * going through a "Having a nervous breakdown, suddenly understanding all the things Michael has been trying to tell me for eight years that I didn't understand at the time, and subsequently panicking and running around yelling at everyone because I'm terrified of the rationalist community degenerating into just another arbitrary Bay Area humanist cult when we were supposed to be the Second Scientific Revolution" phase of my intellectual development
+ * nice people doing their jobs
+
7 March—
> As I recall, at the time, I was thinking that people may know far less or far more than I might have previously assumed by taking their verbal behavior literally with respect to what I think words mean: people have to gently test each other before really being able to speak the horrible truth that might break someone's self-narrative (thereby destroying their current personality and driving them insane, or provoking violence). I thought that you and Anna might be representatives of the "next level" of scientists guarding the human utility function by trying to produce epistemic technology within our totalitarian-state simulation world, and that I was "waking up" into that level by decoding messages (e.g., from the Mike Judge films that you recommended) and inferring things that most humans couldn't.
reply—
> What you were thinking is about right I think. But we still know that animals sleep.
-[another happy price offer to Yudkowsky on 2 March
-> That makes sense. Sorry for being boring; I'm kind of going through a "Having a nervous breakdown, suddenly understanding all the things Michael has been trying to tell me for eight years that I didn't understand at the time, and subsequently panicking and running around yelling at everyone because I'm terrified of the rationalist community degenerating into just another arbitrary Bay Area humanist cult when we were supposed to be the Second Scientific Revolution" phase of my intellectual development. Hopefully this is not too socially-disruptive! Michael said he thinks I'm doing good work??
]
]
-[28 February, I email Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence]
-
-/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/
+[TODO: 28 February, I email Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence]
[emailed Gunni on 26 Feb (still haven't gotten that inteview, 5 years later?!)]
-
[Blanchard Tweets my blog "again" on 3 March]
-
12 March—
> You can tell that recent life events have made me more worried than I used to be about unFriendly/unaligned possibly-AI-assisted institutions being a threat to humane values long before an actual AI takeoff in however many decades
-
-------
On 12 March 2017, I made a Facebook post trying to explain my new outlook:
At standup meeting on my last day, I told my coworkers that I was taking a sabbatical from my software engineering career to become a leading intellectual figure of the alternative right. That was a joke (ironically using the label "alt-right" to point to my break with liberal orthodoxy), although after the [Charlottesville incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally) later that year, I would look back at that moment with a little bit of [shame](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/guilt-shame-and-depravity/) at how the joke hits differently in retrospect.
-/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/
-[TODO: ... continue harvesting email to see what happened in April]
-
-[TODO: credit assignment ritual ($18200 credit-assignment ritual): $5K to Michael, $1200 each to "Chaya", 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]
+[TODO: credit assignment ritual ($18200 credit-assignment ritual): $5K to Michael, $1200 each to "Chaya", 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/
+]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff