X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=blobdiff_plain;f=notes%2Fa-hill-of-validity-sections.md;h=3c64573a21e86ec029ce42b578a475ab0b38be11;hb=b20ecc2958895d159f6923322375aeece933c69a;hp=435789f464bf6868091e3649819b9722192f3d4d;hpb=d7b688ae10a904fbce0b2e4a69a1c4666f7fa617;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md index 435789f..3c64573 100644 --- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md +++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md @@ -1,17 +1,16 @@ on deck— -- § about privacy norms, and my secret research project (research report on gout) -_ finish and polish § on reaching out a fourth time -_ talk about the 2019 Christmas party _ Let's recap _ If he's reading this ... _ Perhaps if the world were at stake _ ¶ about social justice and defying threats _ ¶ about body odors _ regrets and wasted time +_ talk about the 2019 Christmas party _ excerpt 2nd "out of patience" email with internet available— +_ Sarah Barellies cover links _ "watchful waiting" _ Atlantic article on "My Son Wears Dresses" https://archive.is/FJNII _ in "especially galling" §: from "Changing Emotions"—"somehow it's always about sex when men are involved"—he even correctly pinpointing AGP in ordinary men (as was obvious back then), just without the part that AGP _is_ "trans" @@ -28,9 +27,11 @@ _ more examples of Yudkowsky's arrogance _ "The Correct Contrarian Cluster" and race/IQ _ taqiyya _ refusing to give a probability (When Not to Use Probabilities? Shut Up and Do the Impossible?) +_ retrieve comment on pseudo-lies post in which he says its OK for me to comment even though far editing tier— +_ quote one more "Hill of Meaning" Tweet emphasizing fact/policy distinction _ conversation with Ben about physical injuries (this is important because it explains where the "cut my dick off rhetoric" came from) _ context of his claim to not be taking a stand _ rephrase "gamete size" discussion to make it clearer that Yudkowsky's proposal also implicitly requires people to be agree about the clustering thing @@ -175,7 +176,12 @@ Because of the particular historical moment in which we live, we end up facing p I view this conflict as entirely incidental, something that [would happen in some form in any place and time](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cKrgy7hLdszkse2pq/archimedes-s-chronophone), rather than having to do with American politics or "the left" in particular. In a Christian theocracy, our analogues would get in trouble for beliefs about evolution; in the old Soviet Union, our analogues would get in trouble for [thinking about market economics](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/) (as a [positive technical discipline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics#Proof_of_the_first_fundamental_theorem) adjacent to game theory, not yoked to a particular normative agenda). -Incidental or not, the conflict is real, and everyone smart knows it—even if it's not easy to _prove_ that everyone smart knows it, because everyone smart is very careful what they say in public. (I am not smart.) Scott Aaronson wrote of [the Kolmogorov Option](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376) (which Alexander aptly renamed [Kolmorogov complicity](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/): serve the cause of Truth by cultivating a bubble that focuses on truths that won't get you in trouble with the local political authorities. This after the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov, who _knew better than to pick fights he couldn't win_. +Incidental or not, the conflict is real, and everyone smart knows it—even if it's not easy to _prove_ that everyone smart knows it, because everyone smart is very careful what they say in public. (I am not smart.) + + +(which Alexander aptly renamed [Kolmorogov complicity](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/): + + Becuase of the conflict, and because all the prominent high-status people are running a Kolmogorov Option strategy, and because we happen to have to a _wildly_ disproportionate number of _people like me_ around, I think being "pro-trans" ended up being part of the community's "shield" against external political pressure, of the sort that perked up after [the February 2021 _New York Times_ hit piece about Alexander's blog](https://archive.is/0Ghdl). (The _magnitude_ of heat brought on by the recent _Times_ piece and its aftermath was new, but the underlying dynamics had been present for years.) @@ -812,7 +818,13 @@ The HEXACO personality model considers "honesty" and "humility" a single factor —and would be unforgivable if it weren't so _inexplicable_. -... not _actually_ inexplicable. There was, in fact, an obvious explanation: that Yudkowsky was trying to bolster his reputation amongst progressives by positioning himself on the right side of history, and was tailoring a fake rationality lesson to suit that goal. But _Eliezer Yudkowsky wouldn't do that_. I had to assume this was a honest mistake. +... not _actually_ inexplicable. There was, in fact, an obvious explanation: that + + +Yudkowsky was trying to bolster his reputation amongst progressives by positioning himself on the right side of history, and was tailoring a fake rationality lesson to suit that goal. + + +But _Eliezer Yudkowsky wouldn't do that_. I had to assume this was a honest mistake. At least, a _pedagogy_ mistake. If Yudkowsky _just_ wanted to make a politically neutral technical point about the difference between fact-claims and policy claims _without_ "picking a side" in the broader cultural war dispute, these Tweets did a very poor job of it. I of course agree that pronoun usage conventions, and conventions about who uses what bathroom, are not, themselves, factual assertions about sex chromosomes in particular. I'm not saying that Yudkowsky made a false statement there. Rather, I'm saying that it's @@ -833,9 +845,11 @@ https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/weekly-recap-lia-thomas-birth-certificates Z ] -Writing out this criticism now, the situation doesn't feel _confusing_, anymore. Yudkowsky was very obviously being intellectually dishonest in response to very obvious political incentives. That's a thing that public intellectuals do. And, again, I agree that the distinction between facts and policy decisions _is_ a valid one, even if I thought it was being selectively invoked here as an [isolated demand for rigor](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/) because of the political context. Coming from _anyone else in the world_, I would have considered the thread fine—a solidly above-average performance, really. I wouldn't have felt confused or betrayed at all. Coming from Eliezer Yudkowsky, it was—confusing. +Writing out this criticism now, the situation doesn't feel _confusing_, anymore. Yudkowsky was very obviously being intellectually dishonest in response to very obvious political incentives. That's a thing that public intellectuals do. And, again, I agree that the distinction between facts and policy decisions _is_ a valid one, even if I thought it was being selectively invoked here as an [isolated demand for rigor](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/) because of the political context. Coming from _anyone else in the world_, I would have considered the thread fine—a solidly above-average performance, + +really. I wouldn't have felt confused or betrayed at all. Coming from Eliezer Yudkowsky, it was—confusing. -Because of my hero worship, "he's being intellectually dishonest in response to very obvious political incentives" wasn't in my hypothesis space; I _had_ to assume the thread was an "honest mistake" in his rationality lessons, rather than (what it actually was, what it _obviously_ actually was) hostile political action. +Because of my hero worship, > People probably change their mind more often than they explicitly concede arguments, which is fine because intellectual progress is more important than people who were wrong performing submission. @@ -852,10 +866,6 @@ My 28 November 2018 text to Michael— I remember going downstairs to impulsively confide in a senior engineer, an older bald guy who exuded masculinity, who you could tell by his entire manner and being was not infected by the Berkeley mind-virus, no matter how loyally he voted Democrat—not just about the immediate impetus of this Twitter thread, but this whole _thing_ of the past couple years where my entire social circle just suddenly decided that guys like me could be women by means of saying so. He was sympathetic. -[TODO: paraphrase remaining interaction with Scott, or not worth the space? - -> I don't have a simple, mistake-theoretic characterization of the language and social conventions that everyone should use such that anyone who defected from the compromise would be wrong. The best I can do is try to objectively predict the consequences of different possible conventions—and of conflicts over possible conventions. - helping Norton live in the real world Scott says, "It seems to me pretty obvious that the mental health benefits to trans people are enough to tip the object-level first-pass uilitarian calculus."; I don't think _anything_ about "mental health benefits to trans people" is obvious @@ -884,9 +894,6 @@ The McGongall turning into a cat parody may actually be worth fitting in—McCon Michael on EA suppressing credible criticism https://twitter.com/HiFromMichaelV/status/1559534045914177538 -"epistemic hero" -https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1096769579362115584 - zinger from 93— > who present "this empirical claim is inconsistent with the basic tenets of my philosophy" as an argument against the _claim_ @@ -1177,7 +1184,7 @@ If you _don't_ have intent-to-inform, but make sure to never, ever say false thi ---- -comment on pseudo-lies post in which he says its OK for me to comment even though + bitter comments about rationalists— https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/qXwmMkEBLL59NkvYR/the-lesswrong-2018-review-posts-need-at-least-2-nominations/comment/d4RrEizzH85BdCPhE @@ -1195,6 +1202,9 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ndtb22KYBxpBsagpj/eliezer-yudkowsky-facts?commen Never go in against Eliezer Yudkowsky when anything is on the line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_facts +"epistemic hero" +https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1096769579362115584 + https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1434906470248636419 > Anyways, Scott, this is just the usual division of labor in our caliphate: we're both always right, but you cater to the crowd that wants to hear it from somebody too modest to admit that, and I cater to the crowd that wants somebody out of that closet. @@ -1210,3 +1220,10 @@ It's totally understandable to not want to get involved in a political scuffle b An analogy: racist jokes are also just jokes. Alice says, "What's the difference between a black dad and a boomerang? A boomerang comes back." Bob says, "That's super racist! Tons of African-American fathers are devoted parents!!" Alice says, "Chill out, it was just a joke." In a way, Alice is right. It was just a joke; no sane person could think that Alice was literally claiming that all black men are deadbeat dads. But, the joke only makes sense in the first place in context of a culture where the black-father-abandonment stereotype is operative. If you thought the stereotype was false, or if you were worried about it being a self-fulfilling prophecy, you would find it tempting to be a humorless scold and get angry at the joke-teller. Similarly, the "Caliphate" humor only makes sense in the first place in the context of a celebrity culture where deferring to Scott and Eliezer is expected behavior. (In a way that deferring to Julia Galef or John S. Wentworth is not expected behavior, even if Galef and Wentworth also have a track record as good thinkers.) I think this culture is bad. _Nullius in verba_. + + [TODO: asking Anna to weigh in] (I figured that spamming people with hysterical and somewhat demanding physical postcards was more polite (and funnier) than my recent habit of spamming people with hysterical and somewhat demanding emails.) + +https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-ftx-future-fund-needs-to-slow +> changing EA to being a social movement from being one where you expect to give money + +when I talked to the Kaiser psychiatrist in January 2021, he said that the drugs that they gave me in 2017 were Zyprexa 5mg and Trazadone 50mg, which actually seems a lot more reasonable in retrospect (Trazadone is on Scott's insomnia list), but it was a lot scarier in the context of not trusting the authorities