long confrontation 1: begging Alexander December 2018

It's okay to leave TODOs on a first pass, as long as we're ploughing
forward in the ms.

The lower-left box on my "Electric 8's" scratcher revealed a "ROLL"
roll-of-bills symbol.

diff --git a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
index 63c4bf3..cc8fd3f 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
+++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
@@ -142,20 +142,23 @@ I was physically shaking. I remember going downstairs to confide in a senior eng
 
 It seemed better to try to clear this up in private. I still had Yudkowsky's email address. I felt bad bidding for his attention over my gender thing _again_—but I had to do _something_. Hands trembling, I sent him an email asking him to read my ["The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/), suggesting that it may qualify as an answer to his question about ["a page [he] could read to find a non-confused exclamation of how there's scientific truth at stake"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067482047126495232), and that, because I cared very much about correcting what I claim are confusions in my rationalist subculture, that I would be happy to pay up to $1000 for his time, and that, if he liked the post, he might consider Tweeting a link.
 
+[TODO (Subject: "another offer, $1000 to read a ~6500 word blog post about  (was: Re: Happy Price offer for a 2 hour conversation)")]
+
 The monetary offer, admittedly, was awkward: I included another paragraph clarifying that any payment was only to get his attention, and not _quid quo pro_ advertising, and that if he didn't trust his brain circuitry not to be corrupted by money, then he might want to reject the offer on those grounds and only read the post if he expected it to be genuinely interesting.
 
-Again, I realize this must seem weird and cultish to any normal people reading this. (Paying some blogger you follow one grand just to _read_ on of your posts? Who _does_ that?) To this, I again refer to [the reasons justifying 2016 cheerful price offer](/2022/TODO/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#cheerful-price-reasons).
+Again, I realize this must seem weird and cultish to any normal people reading this. (Paying some blogger you follow one grand just to _read_ on of your posts? Who _does_ that?) To this, I again refer to [the reasons justifying my 2016 cheerful price offer](/2022/TODO/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#cheerful-price-reasons)—and that it was a way to signal that I _really really didn't want to be ignored_.
 
+[TODO: and cc'd Michael and Anna as character references]
 
-I wanted some way to signal that I _really really didn't want to be ignored_.
+[TODO: I did successfully interest Michael, who chimed in—Michael called me up and we talked about how the "rationalists" were over]
 
-(A nobody like me 
+[TODO: as with earlier cheerful price offer, I can't confirm or deny whether Yudkowsky replied or whether he accepted the cheerful price offer]
 
-[and cc'd Michael and Anna as character references]
+[TODO: "not ontologically confused" concession. You might think that should be the end of the matter—but this little "not ontologically confused" at the bottom of the thread was much less visible and loud than the bold, arrogant top-level pronouncement insinuating that GCs are philosophically confused. Was I greedy to want something louder? https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1068071036732694529 ]
 
-[TODO: Michael called me up and we talked about how the "rationalists" were over]
+Greedy or not, I wasn't satisfied. On 1 December, I wrote to Scott Alexander, asking if there was any chance of an _explicit_ and _loud_ clarification or partial-retraction of ["... Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) (Subject: "super-presumptuous mail about categorization and the influence graph"). _Forget_ my boring whining about the autogynephilia/two-types thing, I said—that's a complicated empirical claim, and _not_ the key issue.
 
-[TODO: "not ontologically confused" concession. You might think that should be the end of the matter—but this little "not ontologically confused" at the bottom of the thread was much less visible and loud than the bold, arrogant top-level pronouncement insinuating that GCs are philosophically confused. Was I greedy to want something louder? https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1068071036732694529 ]
+The _issue_ is that category boundaries are not arbitrary (if you care about intelligence being useful): you want to draw your category boundaries such that things in the same category are similar in the respects that you care about predicting/controlling, and you want to spend your [information-theoretically limited budget]() of short words on the simplest and most wide-rangingly useful categories
 
 [TODO: email Scott 1 December (cc Anna Jonah Sarah Michael) "is there any chance of getting an explicit and loud clarification and/or partial-retraction of "The Categories Were Made for Man"?"—writing to him because marketing is a more powerful force than argument;