Which brings me to the second reason the naïve anti-extortion argument might fail: [what counts as "extortion" depends on the relevant "property rights", what the "default" action is](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qjaaux3XnLBwomuNK/countess-and-baron-attempt-to-define-blackmail-fail). If having free speech is the default, being excluded from the dominant coalition for defying the orthodoxy could be construed as extortion. But if being excluded from the coalition is the default, maybe toeing the line of orthodoxy is the price you need to pay in order to be included.
-Yudkowsky has [a proposal for how bargaining should work between agents with different notions of "fairness"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z2YwmzuT7nWx62Kfh/cooperating-with-agents-with-different-ideas-of-fairness). Suppose Gerald and Heather are splitting a pie, and if they can't initially agree on how to split it, they have to fight over it until they do agree, destroying some of the pie in the process. Gerald thinks the fair outcome is that they each get half the pie. Heather claims that she contributed more ingredients to the baking process and that it's therefore fair that she gets 75% of the pie, pledging to fight if offered anything less.
+Yudkowsky has [a proposal for how bargaining should work between agents with different notions of "fairness"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z2YwmzuT7nWx62Kfh/cooperating-with-agents-with-different-ideas-of-fairness). Suppose Greg and Heather are splitting a pie, and if they can't initially agree on how to split it, they have to fight over it until they do agree, destroying some of the pie in the process. Greg thinks the fair outcome is that they each get half the pie. Heather claims that she contributed more ingredients to the baking process and that it's therefore fair that she gets 75% of the pie, pledging to fight if offered anything less.
-If Gerald were a causal decision theorist, he might agree to the 75/25 split, reasoning that 25% of the pie is better than fighting until the pie is destroyed. Yudkowsky argues that this is irrational: if Gerald is willing to agree to a 75/25 split, then Heather has no incentive not to adopt such a self-favoring definition of "fairness". (And _vice versa_ if Heather's concept of fairness is the "correct" one.)
+If Greg were a causal decision theorist, he might agree to the 75/25 split, reasoning that 25% of the pie is better than fighting until the pie is destroyed. Yudkowsky argues that this is irrational: if Greg is willing to agree to a 75/25 split, then Heather has no incentive not to adopt such a self-favoring definition of "fairness". (And _vice versa_ if Heather's concept of fairness is the "correct" one.)
-Instead, Yudkowsky argues, Gerald should behave so as to only do worse than the fair outcome if Heather also does worse: for example, by accepting a 48/32 split in Heather's favor (after 100−(32+48) = 20% of the pie has been destroyed by the costs of fighting) or an 42/18 split (where 40% of the pie has been destroyed). This isn't Pareto-optimal (it would be possible for both Gerald and Heather to get more pie by reaching an agreement with less fighting), but it's worth it to Gerald to burn some of Heather's utility fighting in order to resist being exploited by her, and at least it's better than the equilibrium where the entire pie gets destroyed (which is Nash because neither party can unilaterally stop fighting).
+Instead, Yudkowsky argues, Greg should behave so as to only do worse than the fair outcome if Heather also does worse: for example, by accepting a 48/32 split in Heather's favor (after 100−(32+48) = 20% of the pie has been destroyed by the costs of fighting) or an 42/18 split (where 40% of the pie has been destroyed). This isn't Pareto-optimal (it would be possible for both Greg and Heather to get more pie by reaching an agreement with less fighting), but it's worth it to Greg to burn some of Heather's utility fighting in order to resist being exploited by her, and at least it's better than the equilibrium where the entire pie gets destroyed (which is Nash because neither party can unilaterally stop fighting).
It seemed to me that in the contest over the pie of Society's shared map, the rationalist Caliphate was letting itself get exploited by the progressive Egregore, doing worse than the fair outcome without dealing any damage to the Egregore in return. Why?
[The logic of dump stats](/2023/Dec/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles/#dump-stats), presumably. Bargaining to get AI risk on the shared map—not even to get it taken seriously as we would count "taking it seriously", but just acknowledged at all—was hard enough. Trying to challenge the Egregore about an item that it actually cared about would trigger more fighting than we could afford.
-In my illustrative story, if Gerald and Heather destroy the pie fighting, then neither of them get any pie. But in more complicated scenarios (including the real world), there was no guarantee that non-Pareto Nash equilibria were equally bad for everyone.
+In my illustrative story, if Greg and Heather destroy the pie fighting, then neither of them get any pie. But in more complicated scenarios (including the real world), there was no guarantee that non-Pareto Nash equilibria were equally bad for everyone.
I had a Twitter exchange with Yudkowsky in January 2020 that revealed some of his current-year thinking about Nash equilibria. I [had Tweeted](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1206718983115698176):
It's totally understandable to not want to get involved in a political scuffle because xrisk reduction is astronomically more important! But I don't see any plausible case that metaphorically sucking Scott's dick in public reduces xrisk. It would be so easy to just not engage in this kind of cartel behavior!
-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.
+An analogy: racist jokes are also just jokes. Irene says, "What's the difference between a black dad and a boomerang? A boomerang comes back." Jonas says, "That's super racist! Tons of African-American fathers are devoted parents!!" Irene says, "Chill out, it was just a joke." In a way, Irene is right. It was just a joke; no sane person could think that Irene 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.[^offensive-jokes-reflect-conceptual-links]
-Similarly, the "Caliphate" humor only makes sense in the first place in the context of a celebrity culture where deferring to Yudkowsky and Alexander is expected behavior, in a way that deferring to Julia Galef or John S. Wentworth is not expected behavior.
-
-I don't think the motte-and-bailey concern is hypothetical. When I [indignantly protested](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1435059595228053505) the "we're both always right" remark, one David Xu [commented](https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1435106339550740482): "speaking as someone who's read and enjoyed your LW content, I do hope this isn't a sign that you're going full post-rat"—as if my criticism of Yudkowsky's self-serving bluster itself marked me as siding with the "post-rats"!
-
-I once wrote [a post whimsically suggesting that trans women should owe cis women royalties](/2019/Dec/comp/) for copying the female form (as "intellectual property"). In response to a reader who got offended, I [ended up adding](/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff;h=03468d274f5) an "epistemic status" line to clarify that it was not a serious proposal.
+[^offensive-jokes-reflect-conceptual-links]: I once wrote [a post whimsically suggesting that trans women should owe cis women royalties](/2019/Dec/comp/) for copying the female form (as "intellectual property"). In response to a reader who got offended, I [ended up adding](/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff;h=03468d274f5) an "epistemic status" line to clarify that it was not a serious proposal.
But if knowing it was a joke partially mollifies the offended reader who thought I might have been serious, I don't think they should be completely mollified, because the joke (while a joke) reflects something about my thinking when I'm being serious: I don't think sex-based collective rights are inherently a crazy idea; I think something of value has been lost when women who want female-only spaces can't have them, and the joke reflects the conceptual link between the idea that something of value has been lost, and the idea that people who have lost something of value are entitled to compensation.
+Similarly, the "Caliphate" humor only makes sense in the first place in the context of a celebrity culture where deferring to Yudkowsky and Alexander is expected behavior, in a way that deferring to Julia Galef or John S. Wentworth is not expected behavior.
+I don't think the motte-and-bailey concern is hypothetical. When I [indignantly protested](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1435059595228053505) the "we're both always right" remark, one David Xu [commented](https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1435106339550740482): "speaking as someone who's read and enjoyed your LW content, I do hope this isn't a sign that you're going full post-rat"—as if my criticism of Yudkowsky's self-serving bluster itself marked me as siding with the "post-rats"!
-
-
-------
-
-[David Xu writes](https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1436007025545125896) (with Yudkowsky ["endors[ing] everything [Xu] just said"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1436025983522381827)):
+Concerning my philosophy of language grude, [Xu wrote](https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1436007025545125896) (with Yudkowsky ["endors[ing] everything [Xu] just said"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1436025983522381827)):
> I'm curious what might count for you as a crux about this; candidate cruxes I could imagine include: whether some categories facilitate inferences that _do_, on the whole, cause more harm than benefit, and if so, whether it is "rational" to rule that such inferences should be avoided when possible, and if so, whether the best way to disallow a large set of potential inferences is [to] proscribe the use of the categories that facilitate them—and if _not_, whether proscribing the use of a category in _public communication_ constitutes "proscribing" it more generally, in a way that interferes with one's ability to perform "rational" thinking in the privacy of one's own mind.
>
> That's four possible (serial) cruxes I listed, one corresponding to each "whether".
-I reply: on the first and second cruxes, concerning whether some categories facilitate inferences that cause more harm than benefit on the whole and whether they should be avoided when possible, I ask: harm _to whom?_ Not all agents have the same utility function! If some people are harmed by other people making certain probabilistic inferences, then it would seem that there's a _conflict_ between the people harmed (who prefer that such inferences be avoided if possible), and people who want to make and share probabilistic inferences about reality (who think that that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be).
+I reply: on the first and second cruxes, concerning whether some categories facilitate inferences that cause more harm than benefit on the whole and whether they should be avoided when possible, I ask: harm _to whom?_ Not all agents have the same utility function! If some people are harmed by other people making certain probabilistic inferences, then it would seem that there's a conflict between the people harmed (who prefer that such inferences be avoided if possible), and people who want to make and share probabilistic inferences about reality (who think that that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be).
-On the third crux, whether the best way to disallow a large set of potential inferences is to proscribe the use of the categories that facilitate them: well, it's hard to be sure whether it's the _best_ way: no doubt a more powerful intelligence could search over a larger space of possible strategies than me. But yeah, if your goal is to _prevent people from noticing facts about reality_, then preventing them from using words that refer those facts seems like a pretty effective way to do it!
+On the third crux, whether the best way to disallow a large set of potential inferences is to proscribe the use of the categories that facilitate them: well, it's hard to be sure whether it's the _best_ way: no doubt a more powerful intelligence could search over a larger space of possible strategies than me. But yeah, if your goal is to _prevent people from noting facts about reality_, then preventing them from using words that refer those facts seems like a pretty effective way to do it!
On the fourth crux, whether proscribing the use of a category in public communication constitutes "proscribing" in a way that interferes with one's ability to think in the privacy of one's own mind: I think this is mostly true for humans. We're social animals. To the extent that we can do higher-grade cognition at all, we do it using our language faculties that are designed for communicating with others. How are you supposed to think about things that you don't have words for?
_ meeting with Ray (maybe?)
_ friends with someone on an animal level, like with a dog
_ "Density in Thingspace" comment (maybe a footnote in the § explaining the background to "Unnatural Categories")
+_ Ruby fight: "forces of blandness want me gone ... stand my ground" remark
+_ Motta-Mena and Puts probability-of-gynephilia-by-intersex-condition graph, re trans kids on the margin
+_ mention Said rigor check somewhere, nervousness about Michael's gang being a mini-egregore
+_ at some point, speculate on causes of brain damage
+_ the "reducing negativity" post does obliquely hint at the regression point being general ("Let's say that the true level of negativity"), does that seriously undermine my thesis, or does it only merit a footnote?
+_ quote Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy
+_ Said on Yudkowsky's retreat to Facebook being bad for him
+_ I should respond to Ziz's charges that my criticism of concept-policing was a form of concept-policing
+_ Anna's claim that Scott was a target specifically because he was good, my counterclaim that payment can't be impunity
pt. 4 edit tier—
_ body odors comment
_ to-be-continued ending about how being a fraud might be a good idea
_ cite more sneers; use a footnote to pack in as many as possible
_ Litany Against Gurus, not sure humans can think and trust at the same time; High Status and Stupidity
+_ when EY put a checkmark on my Discord message characterizing his strategy as giving up on intellectual honesty
_ honesty and humility, HEXACO
+_ rephrase "gamete size" discussion to make it clearer that Yudkowsky's proposal also implicitly requires people to be agree about the clustering thing
+_ "Common Interest of Many Causes" and "Kolmogorov Complicity" offer directly contradictory strategies
+_ "tossed in a bucket" is ignoring advice from Sept. 2022 clarification to be clear about the type distinction
pt. 5 edit tier—
+_ sucking Scott's dick is helpful because he's now the main gateway instead of HPMOR
_ Previously-on summary
_ graf about Christiano could use a rewrite
_ Dolphin War: after "never been published", insert "still citing it" graf
_ revise reply to Xu
_ cite Earthling/postrat sneers
_ cite postYud Tweet
-_ when EY put a checkmark on my Discord message characterizing his strategy as giving up on intellectual honesty
_ cut lots of words from Scotts comments on Jessica's MIRI post (keep: "attempting to erase the agency", Scott blaming my troubles on Michael being absurd)
-_ sucking Scott's dick is helpful because he's now the main gateway instead of HPMOR
_ Sarah's point that Scott gets a lot of undeserved deference, too: https://twitter.com/s_r_constantin/status/1435609950303162370
_ clarify that Keltham infers there are no mascochists, vs. Word of God
_ "Doublethink" ref in Xu discussion should mention that Word of God Eliezerfic clarification that it's not about telling others
_ https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/vvc2MiZvWgMFaSbhx/book-review-the-bell-curve-by-charles-murray/comment/git7xaE2aHfSZyLzL
-_ cut words from January 2020 Twitter exchange (after war criminal defenses)
_ "Not Man for the Categories" keeps getting cited
_ the hill he wants to die on
_ humans have honor instead of TDT. "That's right! I'm appealing to your honor!"
_ Leeroy Jenkins Option
_ historical non-robot-cult rationality wisdom
_ work in the "some clever gambit to play trans activists and gender-critical feminists against each other"
+_ finale: mention that I'm not doing the dumb reversed-stupidity thing
+_ maybe current-year LW would be better if more marginal cases _had_ bounced off because of e.g. sexism
+_ explain the "if the world were at stake" Sword of Good reference better
+_ better explanation of Scott's jailbreaking accusation against Vassar
+_ "Riley" pointing out that it worked better because it was Oli
+_ mention Michael's influence and South Park recs in late 2016?
+
things to discuss with Michael/Ben/Jessica—
_ Anna on Paul Graham
_ elided Sasha disaster (new)
pt. 3–5 prereaders—
-_ paid hostile prereader (first choice: April)
_ Iceman
_ Scott? (cursory notification)
_ Kelsey (what was that 1 year statute of limitations about??)
_ examples of snarky comments about "the rationalists"
_ 13th century word meanings
_ weirdly hostile comments on "... Boundaries?"
-_ Anna's claim that Scott was a target specifically because he was good, my counterclaim that payment can't be impunity
-_ Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy
+
+
far editing tier—
_ You cannot comprehend it, I cannot comprehend it
_ screenshot key Tweet threads (now that Twitter requires you to log in)
-_ Caliphate / craft and the community
_ colony ship happiness lie in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AWaJvBMb9HGBwtNqd/qualitative-strategies-of-friendliness
_ re being fair to abusers: thinking about what behavior pattern you would like to see, generally, by people in your situation, instead of privileging the perspective and feelings of people who've made themselves vulnerable to you by transgressing against you
_ worry about hyperbole/jumps-to-evaluation; it destroys credibility
-_ Christmas with Scott: mention the destruction of "voluntary"?
-_ Christmas with Scott: mention the grid of points?
_ dath ilan as a whining-based community
_ footnote to explain that when I'm summarizing a long Discord conversation to taste, I might move things around into "logical" time rather than "real time"; e.g. Yudkowsky's "powerfully relevant" and "but Superman" comments were actually one right after the other; and, e.g., I'm filling in more details that didn't make it into the chat, like innate kung fu; and that the fact that I can "enhance" the summaries of my part, but the people I'm talking to don't have the same privilege, should be taken into account—actually, this covers a lot of the memoir; maybe I should mention this earlier (and again in a footnote??)
_ 93's alternate theory of eliezera taste for deception
-_ Ruby fight: "forces of blandness want me gone ... stand my ground" remark
-_ "Even our pollution is beneficial" [pt. 6]
-_ Scott Aaronson on the blockchain of science [pt. 6]
+_ "Even our pollution is beneficial"
+_ Scott Aaronson on the blockchain of science
_ "EA" brand ate the "rationalism" brand—even visible in MIRI dialogues
_ Anna's heel–face turn
_ not talking about pivotal acts, downstream of not believing in Speech?
_ Alyssa lying about me [pt. 4]
-_ Brian Skyrms??
_ mr-hire and pre-emptive steelmanning (before meeting LW mods)
_ is the Glowfic author "Lintamande ... they" or "Lintamande ... she"?
_ explain plot of _Planecrash_ better
-_ everyone *who matters* prefers to stay on the good side
_ CfAR's AI pivot??
_ example of "steelman before criticize" norm
_ explain mods protect-feelings
-_ explain MOPs better
-_ Motta-Mena and Puts probability-of-gynephilia-by-intersex-condition graph, re trans kids on the margin
-
_ squeeze "Darkness and Light" into the Eliezerfic account
_ somewhere in dath ilan discussion: putting a wrapper on graphic porn is fine, de-listing Wikipedia articles is not
-_ maybe current-year LW would be better if more marginal cases _had_ bounced off because of e.g. sexism
_ re "EY is a fraud": it's a _conditional_ that he can modus tollens if he wants
_ NRx point about HBD being more than IQ, ties in with how I think the focus on IQ is distasteful, but I have political incentives to bring it up
_ "arguing for a duty to self-censorship"—contrast to my "closing thoughts" email
_ fold in observations from "trapped priors—at home"
_ Yudkowsky's "Is someone trolling?" comment as counterevidence to narcissim
-_ "typographical attack surface" isn't clear
-_ voting reputation section is weak, needs revision
-_ incoprorate "downvote Eliezer in their head" remark from Jessica's memoir
-_ explain the "if the world were at stake" Sword of Good reference better
-_ D. also acknowledged AGP
-_ "no one else would have spoken" should have been a call-to-action to read more widely
-_ mention Will MacAskill's gimped "longtermism" somehow
+_ incoprorate "downvote Eliezer in their head" remark from Jessica's memoir
_ re-read a DALL-E explanation and decide if I think it's less scary now
_ Scott Aaronson on the blockchain of science https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6821
_ footnote previous race-IQ baiting on "why do I keep bringing this up"
_ acknowledge that
_ pull "agreeing with Stalin" quote earlier in ms. to argue that Yudkowsky apparently doesn't disagree with my "deliberately ambiguous"
_ is the title of pt. 4 OK? (agreeing with Stalin _is_ correct when Stalin is right; the problem is that Stalin isn't right about gender)
-_ illustrate "student dysphoria is worse" with anecdote about leaving physics class and going to the counselor to see if I could graduate earlier?
-_ hate for secrecy probably correlates with autogynephilia blogging
-_ mention Said rigor check somewhere, nervousness about Michael's gang being a mini-egregore
-_ at some point, speculate on causes of brain damage
-_ the "reducing negativity" post does obliquely hint at the regression point being general ("Let's say that the true level of negativity"), does that seriously undermine my thesis, or does it only merit a footnote?
_ footnote on "no one would even consider"
_ post-Christmas conversation should do a better job of capturing the war, that Jessica thinks Scott is Bad for being a psychiatrist
_ conversation with Scott should include the point where I'm trying to do AI theory
_ consistent-ize reference to Somni getting it in pt. 4, with mention of protest in pt. 3
_ Anna "everyone knows" we don't have free speech 2 Mar 2019, self-centeredness about which global goods matter
-_ make sure to quote Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy before calling back to it
_ tie off Anna's plot arc?
-_ explain earlier that my practice of "throw money at things" also applied to my friendship with Anna
-_ mention my robot cult history (I've been here since the late 'aughts)
_ quote one more "Hill of Meaning" Tweet emphasizing fact/policy distinction
-_ explains that the "cut my dick off rhetoric" came from conversation with Ben
_ being friends with Anna desipite being political enemies (~May 2019)
-_ rephrase "gamete size" discussion to make it clearer that Yudkowsky's proposal also implicitly requires people to be agree about the clustering thing
_ smoother transition between "deliberately ambiguous" and "was playing dumb"; I'm not being paranoid for attributing political motives to him, because he told us that he's doing it
_ when I'm too close to verbatim-quoting someone's email, actually use a verbatim quote and put it in quotes
_ I'm sure Eliezer Yudkowsky could think of some relevant differences
-_ 2019 Discord discourse with Alicorner
_ edit discussion of "anti-trans" side given that I later emphasize that "sides" shouldn't be a thing
-_ Said on Yudkowsky's retreat to Facebook being bad for him
-_ erasing agency of Michael's friends, construed as a pawn
-_ when to use first _vs. last names
-_ explain Rob
_ edit the child transition section in a way that Kay Brown would be OK with, have a few sentences about Clever Hans before the wrap-up
_ ask Jessica where Scott clarified his position on antipsychotics?
_ why doesn't he apply his anti-optimism to his gender statements?!
_ notice the symmetry where _both_ E and I want to partition the discussion with "That's a policy question" ... I just think it's unfair to partition after "words don't have intrinsic defn's" rather than 37 ways
_ contract-drafting em, SSC blogroll is most of my traffic
-_ "Common Interest of Many Causes" and "Kolmogorov Complicity" offer directly contradictory strategies
_ Vassar's about-face on gender
_ better introduction of S.K.
-_ risk of people bouncing off progressivism
_ an AGP teen boy could at least consent to transition, and make plans based on knowing what the thing is (you'd actually want to go through a little bit of male puberty)
-_ better explanation of Scott's jailbreaking accusation against Vassar
_ archive.is karma history for Jessica's post
-_ "tossed in a bucket" is ignoring advice from Sept. 2022 clarification to be clear about the type distinction
_ figure out full timeline of which of my Less Wrong posts to mention
-_ update "80,000 words" refs with the near-final wordcount
-_ the "outright bad faith" clause in "Your Price for Joining"
-_ "Riley" pointing out that it worked better because it was Oli
-_ I should respond to Ziz's charges that my criticism of concept-policing was a form of concept-policing
-_ mention "special simulator attention" in cxn with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_reference_and_delusions_of_reference
_ born five years too early
_ you didn't do a good job explaining to me why someone would think that being bullied into selective silence doesn't constitute a conflict strategy
_ "counterfactual boyfriend"/It's California in the year 2016??
-_ mention Michael's influence and South Park recs in late 2016?
+
_ footnote to explain why I always include the year with the month even though it could be inferred from context
_ update "karma at press time"
_ better explain "lie inflation" ambiguity
_ Facing Reality
-_ backlink condemning Emperor Norton Conspiracy
-_ backlink AGP in women post (time permitting) in pt. 2 "don't think it's the same thing"
-_ backlink "I've decided to drop the pseudonym" to pen name drop post
-_ backlink (/2022/TODO/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/)
-_ backlink "I again refer to" Happy Price
-_ backlink "(again) whether he accepted the Cheerful Price"
-_ backlink "alter the beacon"
-_ backlink only seen an escort once before (#confided-to-)
-_ backlink Yudkowsky's implicit political concession
-_ backlink "again grateful" for doctor's notes
people to consult before publishing, for feedback or right of objection—
_ Iceman
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff
