X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2Fdrafts%2Fi-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end.md;h=85dc84d171b0880a4420381e9fd4d9d3a417f942;hb=05fdbe3776ba25f3c8ae93aeff0c82d04e0b43a3;hp=9dd66117ad88375a1deba4bd9bb2cb8d4c722f5e;hpb=4b9d266b1377975a202c855cd47acd2275f26567;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git diff --git a/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end.md b/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end.md index 9dd6611..85dc84d 100644 --- a/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end.md +++ b/content/drafts/i-tell-myself-to-let-the-story-end.md @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ -Title: "I Tell Myself to Let the Story End" +Title: "I Tell Myself to Let the Story End"; Or, A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning Date: 2020-01-01 -Category: commentary -Tags: personal +Category: other +Tags: personal, my robot cult Status: draft > _And I tell myself to let the story end @@ -14,30 +14,3 @@ Status: draft > > —Sara Barellies, ["Gonna Get Over You"](https://genius.com/Sara-bareilles-gonna-get-over-you-lyrics) -I haven't been doing so well for the past five months. - -Explaining this requires some context-setting. - -So, I've spent basically my entire adult life in this insular little intellectual subculture that was founded in the late 'aughts on an ideal of _absolute truthseeking_. Sure, anyone will _say_ that their beliefs are true, but you can tell most people aren't being very serious about it. _We_ were going to be serious: starting with the shared canon of knowledge of cognitive biases, reflectivity, and Bayesian probability theory bequeathed to us by our founder, _we_ were going to make serious [collective](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XqmjdBKa4ZaXJtNmf/raising-the-sanity-waterline) [intellectual progress](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Nu3wa6npK4Ry66vFp/a-sense-that-more-is-possible) in a way that had [never been done before](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-the-skulls/), to forge and refine a new mental martial art of _systematically correct reasoning_ that we were going to use to optimize ourselves and the world. - -(Oh, and there was also this part about how the uniquely best thing for non-math-geniuses to do with their lives was to earn lots of money and donate it to our founder's nonprofit dedicated to building a recursively self-improving artificial superintelligence to take over the world in order to save our entire future light cone from the coming robot apocalypse. That part's complicated.) - -I guess I feel pretty naïve now, but—I _actually believed our own propoganda_. I _actually thought_ we were doing something new and special of historical and possibly even _cosmological_ significance. - -And so, when I moved to "Portland" (which is actually Berkeley) in 2016, - - -if you're doing systematically correct reasoning, you should be able to get the right answer even on things that don't matter - - -guided by the beauty of our weapons - - -Blanchard ... categories - -cognitive dissonance - -smart people clearly know - - -I'll be alright. Just not tonight.