There was a brief, beautiful moment from 2014, the first year of my life (that I feel comfortable admitting to), until mid-2016—a year-and-a-half long moment when I _didn't_ have to fight a desperate and obviously hopeless [ideological war](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/) of survival against a Society that's _trying to kill me_.
-(Technically, trying to impose the use of [gerrymandered concepts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) that raise the [message length](TODO: linky "Beyond the Binary") of my existence in social reality. Like I said, _trying to kill me_.)
+(Technically, trying to impose the use of [gerrymandered concepts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) that raise the [message length](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length) of my existence in social reality, which is the same thing as lowering the probability social reality assigns to my existence. Like I said, _trying to kill me_.)
Peacetime was _amazing_. I was so happy—not ecstatic, but happy in the ordinary way of moral patient, someone whose life is valuable simply in the experience of living of it, rather than for its effects on some grand Cause. I [wrote a _chess engine_](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/05/minimax-search-and-the-structure-of-cognition/); I [gave money to _charity_](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/12/philanthropy-scorecard-through-2016/); I [drank _pumpkin spice_](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/09/pumpkin-spice/) and played that tower defense game where the bad ponies are the good ponies and the good ponies are the bad ponies.
>
>—[/r/SneerClub reader's commentary on the present author](https://archive.is/bPPyk)
-"I can easily imagine being a villain, in a nearby possible world in which my analogue read different books in a different order," is—or should be—a deeply unsettling thought.
+"I can easily imagine being a villain, in a nearby possible world in which my analogue read different books in a different order," is—[or should be](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8bWbNwiSGbGi9jXPS/epistemic-luck)—a deeply unsettling thought.
-In all philosophical strictness, a [physicalist](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/) universe such as our own isn't going to have some objective morality that all agents are compelled to obey, but even if there is necessarily _some_ element of subjectivity in that we value sentient life rather than [tiling the universe with diamonds](https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/diamond_maximizer/), we usually expect morality to at least not be completely arbitrary: we want to _argue_ that a villain is in the _wrong_ because of _reasons_, rather than simply observing that she has her values, and we have ours, and we label ours "good" and hers "evil" because we're us, even though she places those labels the other way around because she's her.
+In all philosophical strictness, a [physicalist](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/) universe such as our own isn't going to have some objective morality that [all agents are compelled to recognize](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PtoQdG7E8MxYJrigu/no-universally-compelling-arguments), but even if there is necessarily _some_ element of subjectivity in that we value sentient life rather than [tiling the universe with diamonds](https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/diamond_maximizer/), we usually expect morality to at least [not be completely arbitrary](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RBszS2jwGM4oghXW4/the-bedrock-of-morality-arbitrary): we want to _argue_ that a villain is in the _wrong_ because of _reasons_, rather than simply observing that she has her values, and we have ours, and we label ours "good" and hers "evil" because we're us, even though she places those labels the other way around because she's her.
If good and evil aren't arbitrary, but our _understanding_ of good and evil depends on which books we read in what order, and which books we read in what order _does_ seem like an arbitrary historical contingency, then how do we _know_ our sequence of books led us to actually being in the right, when we would have predictably thought otherwise had we encountered the villain's books instead?—how do we break the symmetry? If the villain is at all smart, she should be asking herself the same question.
-And that's how I break the symmetry.
+And that's how I break the moral symmetry: by acknowledging it. I _don't_ think I have fundamentally different _values_ from those whom I [happen to be fighting](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/). I think I happen to _know_ some decision-relevant facts and philosophy that they don't, and I can [trace the causal chain of what I think I know how I think I know it](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6s3xABaXKPdFwA3FS/what-is-evidence). They see me as complicit with their oppressors, and mine; I see them as _not understanding what I'm trying to do_.
+I'm trying to construct a map that reflects the territory. If this entails some risk of self-fulfilling prophecies, if the act
-[We each see the other as bulldozing the territory to fit a preconcieved map]
+
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/
\ No newline at end of file
_ TV Review: "The Trouble With Edward"
_ Comment on "One Size Does Not Fit All: In Support of Psychotherapy for Gender Dysphoria" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-020-01844-2 (tag: `review (paper)`)
_ Nixon on IQ quotepost? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwXOEFK6Swo more on don't say it 18:30
+_ Glenn and Amy show linkpost??
optimized to confuse and intimidate people trying to use language to reason about the concept of biological sex, even if your conscious verbal narrative never says 'and now I will confuse and intimidate people who want to use language to reason about the concept of biological sex'!"
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff