> the moment of liberating clarity when you resolve the tension between being a good person and the requirement to pretend to be stupid by deciding not to be a good person anymore đź’–
-Former MIRI president Michael Vassar emailed me about it, and we ended up meeting once. (I had also emailed him back in August, when I had heard from Anna that he was also skeptical of the transgender movement (Subject: "I've heard of fake geek girls, but this is ridiculous").)
+Former MIRI president Michael Vassar emailed me about it, and we ended up meeting once. (I had also emailed him back in August, when I had heard from my friend Anna Salamon that he was also skeptical of the transgender movement (Subject: "I've heard of fake geek girls, but this is ridiculous").)
------
I followed it up the next morning with a hastily-written post addressed, "Dear Totally Excellent Rationalist Friends".[^terf-allusion] As a transhumanist, I believed that people should get what they want, and that we should have social norms designed to help people get what they want. But fantasizing about having a property (in context, "being a woman", but apparently I felt like being vague) without yet having sought out interventions to acquire the property, is not the same thing as somehow already literally having the property in some unspecified metaphysical sense. The process of attempting to acquire the property does not _propagate backwards in time_. I realized that explaining this in clear language had the potential to hurt people's feelings, but as an aspiring epistemic rationalist, I had a _goddamned moral responsibility_ to hurt those people's feelings. I was proud of my autogynephilic fantasy life, and proud of my rationalist community, and I didn't want either of them being taken over by _crazy people who think they can edit the past_.
-[^terf-allusion]: An allusion to TERFs, "trans-exclusionary radical feminists."
+[^terf-allusion]: The initial letters were a [deliberate allusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_topics#Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminists_(TERFs)).
-It got 170 comments, a large fraction of which were me arguing with a woman whom I'll call "Noreen" (who I had _also_ had an exchange with in the thread on Bensinger's wall on 7 February).
+It got 170 comments (!), a large fraction of which were me arguing with a woman whom I'll call "Noreen" (who I had _also_ had an exchange with in the thread on Bensinger's wall on 7 February).
"_[O]ne_ of the things trans women want is to be referred to as women," she said. "This is not actually difficult, we can just _do_ it." She was pretty sure I must have read the relevant _Slate Star Codex_ post, ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/).
------
-The first time I went insane from sleep deprivation, in 2013, I remember having a distinct mental sensation where two words kept running through my head, over and over. That time, the words had been "science" and "female." Maybe a Society with a more advanced discipline of psychiatry would be able to pinpoint the nature and origin of this symptom more exactly, but I suspect it might be a real regularity, because around this time, it started happening to me again. This time, the words were "cooperate" and "defect".
+The first time I went insane from sleep deprivation, in 2013, I remember having a distinct mental sensation where two words kept running through my head, over and over. That time, the words had been "science" and "female." Maybe a Society with a more advanced discipline of psychiatry would be able to pinpoint the nature and origin of this symptom more exactly, but I suspect it might be a real regularity, because around this time, it started happening to me again. This time, [the words were "cooperate" and "defect"](/2017/Sep/grim-trigger-or-the-parable-of-the-honest-man-and-the-god-of-marketing/).
I wandered around downtown San Francisco, and used my phone to repeatedly message the word "Cooperate" to various people—to "Rebecca" (six times), to Ben (five times), to "Noreen" (six times), to "Thomas" (twice), to my insufficiently requited love "Beatrice" (five times), to Ziz (six times), to Brent Dill (five times) ... a few other people. (I was imagining the act of saying or sending the word constituting an act of playing cooperate in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma; it didn't occur to me that it could also be interpreted as a command.)
If we—my sense of the general culture of "we"—were obviously getting gender wrong, plausibly got the election wrong, plausibly were getting AI timelines wrong, and I thought Moldbug and neoreactionary friends were pointing to some genuinely valuable Bayes-structure ... it seemed like we were doing a _really poor_ job of [pumping against cultishness](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yEjaj7PWacno5EvWa/every-cause-wants-to-be-a-cult). Was it maybe worth bidding for a cheerful price conversation with Yudkowsky again to discuss this? (I wasn't important enough for him to spontaneously answer my emails, and I was too submissive to just do it without asking Michael first.)
-Michael said there were better ways to turn dollars into opposition to cultishness. Then I realized that I had been asking Michael for permission, not advice. (Of _course_ Michael was going to say No, there's a better way to turn dollars into anti-cultishness, which would turn out to be apophenic Vassarian moonspeak that will maybe later turn out to be correct in ways that I wouldn't understand for eight years; I shouldn't have asked.) I went ahead an emailed Yudkowsky. (Again, I won't confirm or deny whether a conversation actually happened.)
+Michael said there were better ways to turn dollars into opposition to cultishness. Then I realized that I had been asking Michael for permission, not advice. (Of _course_ Michael was going to say No, there's a better way to turn dollars into anti-cultishness, which would turn out to be apophenic Vassarian moonspeak that will maybe later turn out to be correct in ways that I wouldn't understand for eight years; I shouldn't have asked.) I went ahead and emailed Yudkowsky. (Again, I won't confirm or deny whether a conversation actually happened.)
------
In artificial intelligence, [the credit-assignment problem](https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/12908/what-is-the-credit-assignment-problem) refers to the difficulty of attributing success or failure to particular actions whose connection to the end result might be indirect and remote: if the outcome of an hour-long game might have ultimately hinged on your good or bad instincts during a critical moment in the 24th minute, you'd want to know that, so that you could re-train your instincts appropriately—but it's not trivial to figure out which moments were critical, which actions helped or hurt.
-Money and status are human civilization's credit-assignment tokens. It's not trivial to figure out what actions help or hurt, but to the extent that the economy works at all, it works because productive actions being appropriately rewarded. (A Society in which it was more profitable to steal than to produce would soon have much less to steal.)
+Money and status are human civilization's credit-assignment tokens. It's not trivial to figure out what actions help or hurt, but to the extent that the economy works at all, it works because productive actions being appropriately rewarded: a Society in which it was more profitable to steal than to produce would soon have much less to steal.
Similarly, it's not trivial to figure out what actions helped or hurt during a major life crisis, but to the extent that you _can_ figure it out, you want to dispense rewards appropriately, supplying a tiny gradient update to Society's instincts by allocating more resources to the people who have caused major life crises to be successfully navigated.
------
-[TODO: starting to overheat]
+[TODO: starting to overheat
+ * meanwhile, I had made arrangements with my dayjob to a 2 day/wk contracting on Portal (I had originally said 60/hr, Orion pointed out that was low and went to 75!!); I signed a contract!
+ * "Roberta" situation wrapped up with Chana's report on 4 April
+ * I concede my bet to Scott on 4 April
+ * on 2 April, I had sent the wire transfer reciept to AllDayChemist, on 5 April they said, "Please send us the transfer receipt as we are missing that information from your email."
+ * I pick implicitly pick a fight with James, bring up the idea of hiring him as my music teacher
+ * I said that I don't want Michael and Anna to be fighting (Subject: "Anna-Michael realignment project"); I send "cooperate with James Cook (eom)" messages to Michael and Anna
+ * (14 April 2017 was a Friday, the 7th was also a Friday)
+ *
+]
[TODO: staying at Volterra, Hamilton purchase]
Anyway, that, briefly—I mean it—is the story of how the stress of confronting people on Facebook about the illogic of gender-identity ideology caused me to go insane from sleep deprivation, twice, shattering most of my remaining faith in Society and institutions along the way.
-It's probably not that interesting! If it weren't somewhat-informative backstory presaging my accidental instigation of a full-on robot-cult religious civil war two years later, I wouldn't have bothered to tell the story in this much detail—as evidenced by the fact that, [later in 2017, I started telling the story in considerably less detail, and didn't even end up finishing that](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/).
+It's probably not that interesting! If it weren't somewhat-informative backstory presaging my accidental instigation of a full-on robot-cult religious civil war two years later, I wouldn't have bothered to tell this substory of my Whole Dumb Story in this much detail—as evidenced by the fact that, [later in 2017, I started telling it in considerably less detail, and didn't even end up finishing that](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/).
-I think I learned a lot during this period, but I wish there could have been some way to learn it with less drama—to take the form I took, without the disastrously formative experience. I wonder how the rest of this Whole Dumb Story would have gone, if I had just _shrugged and logged off_ earlier in February 2017, rather than losing sleep—if I would have had the strength to fight, later, without the memory of fighting until it broke me. Sometimes, I worry that human psychology is built such that things couldn't have been too much otherwise—that the _realistic_ alternative to taking things too seriously (to the severe detriment of one's health) is taking them lying down.
+I think I learned a lot during this period, but I wish there could have been some way to learn it with less drama—to take the form I took, without the disastrously formative experience. I wonder how the rest of this Whole Dumb Story would have gone, if I had just _shrugged and logged off_ earlier in February 2017, rather than losing sleep—if I would have had the strength to fight, later, without the memory of fighting until it broke me. Sometimes, I worry that human psychology is built such that things couldn't have been too much otherwise—that the _realistic_ alternative to taking things too seriously (to the detriment of one's health, and severely inconveniencing others) is taking them lying down.
But that's almost certainly giving me too much credit. To be continued.
âś“ asking Anna for promise
âś“ Vassar discourse III
âś“ proposed credit-assignment ritual
-- emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence/Cantor/Dreger
------
+âś“ emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence/Cantor/Dreger
_ "Roberta" situation
_ overheating in April, staying at Volterra, Hamilton purchase
_ BABSCon
_ "my call with Western Psychiatric's Manager of Patient Relations"
-_ chat transcript relevant to War on Optimization for Generalized Secrecy
_ final credit assignment ritual
-_ "Lenore" psychiatric disaster (not in pt.s 1–3, but I want this drafted before I hit Ben and Jessica)
+_ tie-off
+
pre-edit phase—
_ footnote about "density of outright falsehoods"
_ Anna
_ "Noreen"
_ "Bill"
-_ "Rebecca" (pseudonym choice)
+_ "Rebecca" (consent, pseudonym choice)
_ Alicorn: briefly, and for Melkor Glowfic reference link
-_ hostile prereader (first-choice: April)
-_ professional editor
_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation)
_ Ben/Jessica (Michael)
+_ Scott
+_ Divia?
+_ hostile prereader? (first-choice: April)
+_ professional editor?
+_ Lex?
--------------
----------------
+_ "Lenore" psychiatric disaster
- Eliezerfic fight conclusion
_ Michael Vassar and the Theory of Optimal Gossip
_ plan to reach out to Rick
------
With internet available—
+_ double-check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_topics#Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminists_(TERFs) link
+_ gauche (I almost feel like it should be italicized as a foreign word?)
+_ check that the Feb. Blanchard Tweet is the one with the screenshot-quote
_ look up Blanchard's h-index
_ link to Kevin Hsu and James Cantor
_ Is http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/01/be-a-charity-angel.html the best link for after-the-fact prize funding?
_ Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy
far editing tier—
+_ NRx explanation should include the "there's only what won" line
+_ explain who Michael Bailey is earlier
+_ mention "Beatrice" earlier!!
_ mention "special simulator attention" in cxn with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_reference_and_delusions_of_reference
_ make sure I mention father asking me to wait before re-starting HRT
_ "People": say something about the awkward racial/political dynamics of three of my four anecdotes being about black people? Salient because rare? Salient because of my NRx-pilling?
_ eliezera
+
+
people to consult before publishing, for feedback or right of objection—
-_ Tail (pt. 2 AGP discussion)
_ Iceman
-_ Ben/Jessica (Michael)
-_ "Wilhelm" (not leaking info about his identity, and damage to him if info was leaked)
_ Scott
-_ Anna
-_ "Noreen"
-_ secret posse member
-_ "Rebecca" (pseudonym choice)
-_ Alicorn: about privacy, and for Melkor Glowfic reference link
_ hostile prereader (April—if not, J. Beshir, Swimmer, someone else from Alicorner #drama)
_ Kelsey
_ NRx Twitter bro
_ afford various medical procedures
_ Buck? (get the story about Michael being escorted from events)
_ A/a alumna??
-_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation)
_ Ray
_ Ruby
_ Kay Brown?? (assuming I include the delusional emails to her)
When I was borrowing someone's computer, I thought I saw an icon peek out from the side of the screen, as if a possibly-malevolent agent were spying on me—a disturbing visual hallucination. Later that year, when trying out the stock Ubuntu Unity desktop on my new computer, I discovered that the app-notification animation actually does feature an app icon "sliding out" and shaking, like I remembered seeing—I wasn't imagining it!
-I remember seeing text on my phone and being distinctly convinced that it was misspelled. Five years later, looking at the distorted lettering output by text-to-image models that can't spell seemed subjectively similar. (Good news for alignment, if it looks like deep learning and sleep-deprived human brains are doing "the same thing"?)
\ No newline at end of file
+I remember seeing text on my phone and being distinctly convinced that it was misspelled. Five years later, looking at the distorted lettering output by text-to-image models that can't spell seemed subjectively similar. (Good news for alignment, if it looks like deep learning and sleep-deprived human brains are doing "the same thing"?)
+
+[TODO: correspondence with sex researchers
+
+ * Blanchard Tweets my blog in Feb and March 2017: (11 Feb), https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/837846616937750528 (3 Mar)
+ *
+
+> It gets worse! I think this absurd situation is illustrative of a flaw in democracy itself: activists who want to change society are both incentivized and self-selected for self-delusion. Whichever activists happen to win get to write the history books, and so most people end up with this Whig history view of the world where people in the past were bad, bad men, but we're so much more progressive and enlightened now. But evolutionarily speaking, there's no fact of the matter as to what's better; there's only what won.
+
+ * I mean, you're already doing this with your work, obviously, but I want to know if there's any way I can help?
+
+> If polarizing cultural forces force you to make a choice between joining the "Your gender is whatever you say it is! Maximize the number of trans people!" coalition, or the "Transitioning is against God's will! Minimize the number of trans people!" coalition, the only sane thing to do is ignore the noise and sit out the fight.
+
+> Maybe there's a role for some kind of very narrowly scoped political behavior (making friends and allies, trading favors, alienating people, &c.), with the goal of just getting the correct theory (sexual dimorphism is real, societies have gender roles, there are these two distinct classes of motivation for why transitioning might seem like a good idea to someone) in the standard sex-ed textbooks, but not trying to dictate what the social norms
+
+ * Bailey was tentatively working on a website ("Resources for Families with Gender Dysphoria" (RFGD.org).) (not sure what happened with that)
+
+activists who want to change society are both incentivized and self-selected for self-delusion. Whichever activists happen to win get to write the history books, and so most people end up with this Whig history view of the world where people in the past were bad, bad men, but we're so much more progressive and enlightened now. But evolutionarily speaking, there's no fact of the matter as to what's better; there's only what won.
+
+(link to Moldbug on 20 year fashion flowing from academia)
+> I do not think a sane society could deal with 3% of males transitioning [...] I can't quite visualize what such a world would look like
+me—
+> It looks like my social circle. (This is why I'm worried about suboptimal social norms getting locked in for the wrong reasons—what's fashionable in Berkeley in year X is likely to be mainstream in year X+20.)
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