I decided on "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception" as the title for my advanced categorization thesis. Writing it up was a large undertaking. There were a lot of nuances to address and potential objections to preëmpt, and I felt that I had to cover everything. (A reasonable person who wanted to understand the main ideas wouldn't need so much detail, but I wasn't up against reasonable people who wanted to understand.)
-In September 2020, Yudkowsky Tweeted [something about social media incentives prompting people to make insane arguments](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1304824253015945216).
-
-Something in me boiled over. The Tweet was fine in isolation, but I rankled at it in the context of his own incentive-driven insanity remaining unaddressed. I left [a snarky reply](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1304838486810193921) and [vented on my timeline](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1304838346695348224) (with preview images from the draft of "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception"):
+In September 2020, Yudkowsky Tweeted [something about social media incentives prompting people to make nonsense arguments](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1304824253015945216). Something in me boiled over. The Tweet was fine in isolation, but I rankled at it in the context of his own incentive-driven nonsense remaining unaddressed. I left [a pleading, snarky reply](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1304838486810193921) and [vented on my own timeline](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1304838346695348224) (with preview images from the draft of "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception"):
> Who would have thought getting @ESYudkowsky's robot cult to stop trying to trick me into cutting my dick off (independently of the empirical facts determining whether or not I should cut my dick off) would involve so much math?? OK, I guess the math part isn't surprising, but—
>
> As far as your public output is concerned, it *looks like* you either changed your mind about how the philosophy of language works, or you think gender is somehow an exception. If you didn't change your mind, and you don't think gender is somehow an exception, is there some way we can _get that on the public record **somewhere**?!_
>
-> As an example of such a "somewhere", I had asked you for a comment on my explanation, ["Where to Draw the Boundaries?"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) (with non-politically-hazardous examples about dolphins and job titles) [... redacted ...] I asked for a comment from Anna, and at first she said that she would need to "red team" it first (because of the political context), and later she said that she was having difficulty for other reasons. Okay, the clarification doesn't have to be on _my_ post. **I don't care about credit! I don't care whether or not anyone is sorry! I just need this _trivial_ thing settled in public so that I can stop being in pain and move on with my life.**
+> As an example of such a "somewhere", I had asked you for a comment on my explanation, ["Where to Draw the Boundaries?"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) (with non-politically-hazardous examples about dolphins and job titles) [...] I asked for a comment from Anna, and at first she said that she would need to "red team" it first (because of the political context), and later she said that she was having difficulty for other reasons. Okay, the clarification doesn't have to be on _my_ post. **I don't care about credit! I don't care whether or not anyone is sorry! I just need this _trivial_ thing settled in public so that I can stop being in pain and move on with my life.**
>
-> As I mentioned in my Tweets today, I have a longer and better explanation than "... Boundaries?" mostly drafted. (It's actually somewhat interesting; the logarithmic score doesn't work as a measure of category-system goodness because it can only reward you for the probability you assign to the _exact_ answer, but we _want_ "partial credit" for almost-right answers, so the expected squared error is actually better here, contrary to what you said in [the "Technical Explanation"](https://yudkowsky.net/rational/technical/) about what Bayesian statisticians do). [... redacted]
+> As I mentioned in my Tweets today, I have a longer and better explanation than "... Boundaries?" mostly drafted. (It's actually somewhat interesting; the logarithmic score doesn't work as a measure of category-system goodness because it can only reward you for the probability you assign to the _exact_ answer, but we _want_ "partial credit" for almost-right answers, so the expected squared error is actually better here, contrary to what you said in [the "Technical Explanation"](https://yudkowsky.net/rational/technical/) about what Bayesian statisticians do). [...]
>
> The *only* thing I've been trying to do for the past twenty-one months
is make this simple thing established "rationalist" knowledge:
>
> This is **literally _modus ponens_**. I don't understand how you expect people to trust you to save the world with a research community that _literally cannot perform modus ponens._
>
-> [redacted ...] See, I thought you were playing on the chessboard of _being correct about rationality_. Such that, if you accidentally mislead people about your own philosophy of language, you could just ... issue a clarification? I and Michael and Ben and Sarah and [redacted] _and Jessica_ wrote to you about this and explained the problem in _painstaking_ detail, **and you stonewalled us.** Why? **Why is this so hard?!**
+> [...] See, I thought you were playing on the chessboard of _being correct about rationality_. Such that, if you accidentally mislead people about your own philosophy of language, you could just ... issue a clarification? I and Michael and Ben and Sarah and ["Riley"] _and Jessica_ wrote to you about this and explained the problem in _painstaking_ detail, **and you stonewalled us.** Why? **Why is this so hard?!**
>
> [redacted]
>
> No. The thing that's been driving me nuts for twenty-one months is that <strong><em><span style="color: #F00000;">I expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth</span></strong></em>. I remain,
>
-> Your heartbroken student,
+> Your heartbroken student,
> Zack M. Davis
I followed it up with another email after I woke up the next morning:
> Date: Sunday 13 September 2020 11:02 _a.m._
> Subject: Re: out of patience
>
-> [... redacted] The sinful and corrupted part wasn't the _initial_ Tweets; the sinful and corrupted part is this **bullshit stonewalling** when your Twitter followers and me and Michael and Ben and Sarah and ["Riley"] and Jessica tried to point out the problem. I've _never_ been arguing against your private universe [... redacted]; the thing I'm arguing against in ["Where to Draw the Boundaries?"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) (and **my [unfinished draft sequel](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Category_War/blob/cefa98c3abe/unnatural_categories_are_optimized_for_deception.md)**, although that's more focused on what Scott wrote) is the **_actual text_ you _actually published_, not your private universe.**
+> [...] The sinful and corrupted part wasn't the _initial_ Tweets; the sinful and corrupted part is this **bullshit stonewalling** when your Twitter followers and me and Michael and Ben and Sarah and ["Riley"] and Jessica tried to point out the problem. I've _never_ been arguing against your private universe [...]; the thing I'm arguing against in ["Where to Draw the Boundaries?"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) (and **my [unfinished draft sequel](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Category_War/blob/cefa98c3abe/unnatural_categories_are_optimized_for_deception.md)**, although that's more focused on what Scott wrote) is the **_actual text_ you _actually published_, not your private universe.**
>
-> [... redacted] you could just **publicly clarify your position on the philosophy of language** the way an intellectually-honest person would do if they wanted their followers to have correct beliefs about the philosophy of language?!
+> [... redacted ...] you could just **publicly clarify your position on the philosophy of language** the way an intellectually-honest person would do if they wanted their followers to have correct beliefs about the philosophy of language?!
>
> You wrote:
>
> Your heartbroken student,
> Zack M. Davis
-[TODO: Sep 2020 categories clarification from EY—victory?!
-https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228
-_ex cathedra_ statement that gender categories are not an exception to the rule, only 1 year and 8 months after asking for it
- * this ruins my chances for being a "neutral" bridge between the Vassarites and the Caliphate, but that's OK
-]
+These emails were pretty reckless by my usual standards. (If I was entertaining some hope of serving as a mediator between the Caliphate and Vassar's splinter group after the COVID lockdowns were over, this outburst wasn't speaking well to my sobriety.) But as the subject line indicates, I was just—out of patience. I had spent years making all the careful arguments I could make. What was there left for me to do but scream?
+
+The result of this recklessness was ... success! Without disclosing anything from any private conversations that may or may not have occurred, Yudkowsky did [publish a clarification on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228), that he had only meant to criticize the naïve essentialism of asserting that a word Just Means something and that anyone questioning it is Just Lying, and not the more sophisticated class of arguments that I had been making.
+
+In particular, the post contained this line:
+
+> you are being the bad guy if you try to shut down that conversation by saying that "I can define the word 'woman' any way I want"
+
+There it is! A clear _ex cathedra_ statement that gender categories are not an exception to the general rule that categories aren't arbitary. (Only 1 year and 8 months after [asking for it](/2023/Jul/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning/#ex-cathedra-statement-ask).) I could quibble with some of Yudkowsky's exact writing choices, which I thought still bore the signature of political maneuvering, but it would be petty to dwell on quibbles when the core problem had been addressed.
+
+I wrote to Michael, Ben, Jessica, Sarah, and "Riley", thanking them for their support. After successfully bullying Scott and Eliezer into clarifying, I was no longer at war with the robot cult and feeling a lot better (Subject: "thank-you note (the end of the Category War)").
+
+I had a feeling, I added, that Ben might be disappointed with the thank-you note insofar as it could be read as me having been "bought off" rather than being fully on the side of clarity-creation. But not being at war actually made it emotionally easier to do clarity-creation writing. Now I would be able to do it in the spirit of "Here's what I think the thing is actually doing" rather than the spirit of "I hate you lying motherfuckers _so much_. [It, it—the fe—it, flame—flames. Flames—on the side of my face.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrqxmQr-uto)"
-----
If this were an autobiography (which existed to tell my life story) rather than a topic-focused memoir (which exists because my life happens to contain this Whole Dumb Story which bears on matters of broader interest, even if my life would not otherwise be interesting), there's a dramatic episode that would fit here chronologically.
-I was charged by members of the "Vassarite" clique in New York with the duty of taking care of a mentally-ill person at my house on 18 December 2020. (We did not trust the ordinary psychiatric system to act in patient's interests.) I apparently did a poor job, and ended up saying something callous on the care team group chat after a stressful night, which led to a chaotic day on the nineteenth, and an ugly falling-out between me and the group. In the interests of brevity and the privacy of the person we were trying to help, I think it's better that I don't expend the wordcount to give you a play-by-play. The details aren't particularly of public interest.
+I was charged by members of the "Vassarite" clique in New York with the duty of taking care of a mentally-ill person at my house on 18 December 2020. (We did not trust the ordinary psychiatric system to act in patients' interests.) I apparently did a poor job, and ended up saying something callous on the care team group chat after a stressful night, which led to a chaotic day on the nineteenth, and an ugly falling-out between me and the group. In the interests of brevity and the privacy of the person we were trying to help, I think it's better that I don't expend the wordcount to give you a play-by-play. The details aren't particularly of public interest.
My poor performance during this incident [weighs on my conscience](/2020/Dec/liability/) particularly because I had previously been in the position of being crazy and benefitting from the help of my friends (including many of the same people involved in this incident) rather than getting sent back to psychiatric prison ("hospital", they call it a "hospital"). Of all people, I had a special debt to "pay it forward", and one might have hoped that I would also have special skills, that remembering being on the receiving end of a psychiatric tripsitting operation would help me know what to do on the giving end. Neither of those panned out.
And really, that _should_ have been the end of the story. At the trifling cost of two years of my life, we finally got a clarification from Yudkowsky that you can't define the word _woman_ any way you like. I didn't think I was entitled to anything more than that. I was satisfied. If I hadn't been further provoked, I wouldn't have occasion to continue waging the robot-cult religious civil war.
-(To be continued.)
+It turned out that I would have occasion to continue waging the robot-cult religious civil war. (To be continued.)
✓ recap of crimes, cont'd
✓ Dolphin War finish
✓ lead-in to Sept. 2021 Twitter altercation
-- out of patience email
+✓ out of patience email
_ Michael Vassar and the Theory of Optimal Gossip
-_ plan to reach out to Rick / Michael on creepy men/crazy men
_ reaction to Ziz
+_ plan to reach out to Rick / Michael on creepy men/crazy men
_ State of Steven
_ complicity and friendship
_ repair pt. 5 dath ilan transition
_ mention that "Not Man for the Categories" keeps getting cited
-
pt. 3 edit tier—
_ fullname Taylor and Hoffman at start of pt. 3
_ footnote clarifying that "Riley" and Sarah weren't core members of the group, despite being included on some emails?
_ Ben on "locally coherent coordination": use direct quotes for Ben's language—maybe rewrite in my own language (footnote?) as an understanding test
_ set context for "EA Has a Lying Problem" (written by Sarah, likely with Michael's influence—maybe ask Sarah)
_ clarify schism (me and Vassar bros leaving the EA/rat borg?)
-_ set context for Anna on first mention in the postq
+_ set context for Anna on first mention in the post
_ more specific on "mostly pretty horrifying" and group conversation with the whole house
_ paragraph to explain the cheerful price bit
_ cut words from the "Yes Requires" slapfight?
_ cut many words from "Social Reality" scuffle
_ is "long May 2020" link still good?
_ better context on "scam" &c. earlier
+_ meeting with Ray
_ Ben's "financial fraud don't inquire as to the conscious motives of the perp" claim may be false
_ later thoughts on jump to evaluation, translating between different groups' language
_ mention that I was miffed about "Boundaries?" not getting Curated, while one of Euk's animal posts did
_ do I have a better identifier than "Vassarite"?
_ maybe I do want to fill in a few more details about the Sasha disaster, conditional on what I end up writing regarding Scott's prosecution?—and conditional on my separate retro email—also the Zolpidem thing
_ mention "Darkest Timeline" and Skyrms somewhere
+_ footnote explaining quibbles? (the first time I tried to write this, I hesitated, not sure if necessary)
pt. 4 edit tier—
_ mention Nick Bostrom email scandal (and his not appearing on the one-sentence CAIS statement)
_ revise and cut words from "bad faith" section since can link to "Assume Bad Faith"
_ cut words from January 2020 Twitter exchange (after war criminal defenses)
_ revise reply to Xu
-_ 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)
+
pt. 5 edit tier—
_ quote specific exchange where I mentioned 10,000 words of philosophy that Scott was wrong—obviously the wrong play
_ Scott got comas right in the same year as "Categories"
_ 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)
------
_ Alyssa lying about me [pt. 4]
_ Brian Skyrms??
_ mr-hire and pre-emptive steelmanning (before meeting LW mods)
-_ meeting with Ray
_ is the Glowfic author "Lintamande ... they" or "Lintamande ... she"?
_ explain plot of _Planecrash_ better
_ CfAR's AI pivot??
https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1435856644076830721
> The error in "Not Man for the Categories" is not subtle! After the issue had been brought to your attention, I think you should have been able to condemn it: "Scott's wrong; you can't redefine concepts in order to make people happy; that's retarded." It really is that simple! 4/6
+
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff