X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2Fdrafts%2Fcomments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md;h=cb2a17be374d001c6a61b079d6aab0950ffce425;hb=89acf74a0d6ecb5bb23812305149429ca88b12ea;hp=786f2c2c149632bce3623b26a80d75801d727923;hpb=c66b6b7dbc8970d0f9c9238bdab16c9b12695275;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git diff --git a/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md b/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md index 786f2c2..cb2a17b 100644 --- a/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md +++ b/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md @@ -4,34 +4,24 @@ Category: commentary Tags: Eliezer Yudkowsky, worldbuilding Status: draft -If we believe that IQ research validates the "Jews are clever" stereotype, I wonder if there's a distinct (albeit probably correlated) "enjoying deception" trait that validates the "Jews are sneaky" stereotype? - -[TODO: link "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence"] +"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" (I was tempted to tag that as "epistemic status: low-confidence speculation", but that's _frequentist_ thinking—as if "Jews and gentiles are equally sneaky" were a "null hypothesis" that could only be rejected by data that would be sufficiently unlikely assuming that the null was true. Ha ha, that would be _crazy!_ Obviously, I should have a _prior_ on the effect size difference between the Jew and gentile sneakiness distributions, that can be updated as sneakiness data comes in. I think the mean of my prior distribution is at, like, _d_ ≈ 0.1? So it's not "low confidence"; it's "low confidence of the effect size being large enough to be of much practical significance".) -Anyway, if dath ilan is very high in the sneakiness trait (relative to Earth), that would help explain all the conspiracies! - -Not-actually-plausible conspiracies that everyone is in on (like "Spatahski are real") are a superstimulus like zero-calorie sweetener: engineered to let everyone enjoy the thrill of lying, without doing any real damage to shared maps. - -[TODO: sp alien alien name?] For context on why I have no sense of humor about this, on Earth (which _actually exists_, unlike dath ilan), when someone says "it's not lying, because no one _expected_ me to tell the truth in that situation", what's usually going on (as Zvi Mowshowitz explains: ) is that is that conspirators benefit from deceiving outsiders, and the claim that "everyone knows" is them lying to _themselves_ about the fact that they're lying. -[TODO: exact language ] - (If _you_ got hurt by not knowing, well, it's not like anyone got hurt, because if you didn't know, then you weren't anyone.) -It's very striking to me that one of the corrupt executives in _Moral Mazes_ uses very similar language to the narrator of the Merrin thread: "We lie all the time, but if everyone knows that we're lying, is a lie really a lie?" + Okay, but if it were _actually true_ that everyone knew, what would be _function_ of saying the false thing? On dath ilan (if not in Earth boardrooms), I suppose the answer is "Because it's fun"? Okay, but what is the function of your brain giving out a "fun" reward in this context? It seems like at _some_ point, there has to be the expectation of _some_ cognitive system (although possibly not an entire "person") taking the signals literally. That's why, when I _notice_ myself misrepresenting my actual beliefs or motivations because I think it's funny or rhetorically powerful (and it takes a special act of noticing; humans aren't built to be honest by default), I often take care to disclaim it immediately (as was observed in the message this is one a reply to), precisely because I _don't_ think that "everybody knows"; I'm not going to give up on humor or powerful rhetoric, but I'm also not going to delude myself into thinking it's "zero-calorie" (people who don't "get the joke" _are_ going to be misled, and I don't think it's unambigously "their fault" for not being able to read my "intent" to arbitrary precision) -[TODO: link to "teeth" earlier in the thread commenting on it'd be funnier if I didn't] - But maybe dath ilan is sufficiently good at achieving common knowledge in large groups that they _can_ pull off a zero-calorie "everyone knows" conspiracy without damaging shared maps?? + I'm still skeptical, especially given that we see them narratizing it as "not lying" (in the same words that corrupt executives on Earth use!), rather than _explicitly_ laying out the evopysch logic of sneakiness superstimuli, and the case that they know how to pull it off in a zero-calorie (trivial damage to shared maps) way. In general, I think that "it's not lying because no one expected the truth" is something you would say as part of an attempted nearest-unblocked-strategy end run around a deontological constraint against "lying" (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly); I don't think it's something you would say if you _actually cared_ about shared maps being accurate @@ -42,11 +32,13 @@ I had some insightful discussion with someone in 2017, in which I was saying tha In 2021, _the same person_ says she feels "disgusted and complicit" for having talked to me. -[TODO: find Devi commment and quote exactly without linking] +> At some point during this time I started treating this as a hidden truth that I was proud of myself for being able to see, which I in retrospect I feel disgusted and complicit to have accepted + +> above exchanges did in retrospect cause me emotional pain, stress, and contributed to internalizing sexism and transphobia. I think it's very significant that she _didn't_ say that she encountered _new evidence_ that made her _change her mind_, and decided that she was _actually wrong_ in 2017. The claim is just that the things we said in 2017 are "harmful." -[TODO: wrap-up dath ilan is fictional +wrap-up dath ilan is fictional the reason I'm paranoid and humorless about @@ -58,7 +50,6 @@ I certainly don't think Yudkowsky is consciously "lying" (natural language is very flexible, you can _come up with_ some interpretation) -] You can cosplay an elf _at a designated fandom convention_, where people have temporarily _opted in_ to that false social reality. But I don't think you can cosplay an elf _at work_ (in "real life") and have everyone play along for extended periods of time, without dealing damage to real-life shared maps. @@ -80,3 +71,8 @@ But if we could drive Keltham contradicts himself _in the same tag_ +https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1865236#reply-1865236 + +> The sneakiest thing dath ilan did was covertly shape him to never notice he was a sadist +> [...] +> Obviously past-Keltham was shaped in all sorts of ways as a kid, but those shaping-targets are matters of public documentation on the Network. They're not _covert_ intended effects of the alien technology.