------
-I made plans to visit Portland for the weekend of 18 February 2017, for the purpose of meeting Sophia, and two other excuses. There was [a fandom convention](http://wizardworld.com/comiccon/portland) in town, and I wanted to try [playing Pearl from _Steven Universe_ again](/2016/Sep/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/)—but this time with makeup and breastforms and a [realistic gem](https://www.etsy.com/listing/236067567/pearl-gem-cosplay). Also, I had been thinking of obfuscating my location as being part of the thing to do for keeping my secret blog secret, and had correspondingly adopted the conceit of setting my little [fictional](/2017/Jan/the-counter/) [vignettes](/2017/Jan/title-sequence/) in the Portland metropolitan area, as if I lived there.[^portland-vignettes] I thought it would be nice to get some original photographs of local landmarks (like TriMet trains, or one of the bridges over the river) to lend versimilitude to the charade.
+I made plans to visit Portland for the weekend of 18 February 2017, for the purpose of meeting Sophia, and two other excuses. There was [a fandom convention](https://web.archive.org/web/20170126112449/http://wizardworld.com/comiccon/portland) in town, and I wanted to try [playing Pearl from _Steven Universe_ again](/2016/Sep/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/)—but this time with makeup and breastforms and a [realistic gem](https://web.archive.org/web/20190407185943/https://www.etsy.com/listing/236067567/pearl-gem-cosplay). Also, I had been thinking of obfuscating my location as being part of the thing to do for keeping my secret blog secret, and had correspondingly adopted the conceit of setting my little [fictional](/2017/Jan/the-counter/) [vignettes](/2017/Jan/title-sequence/) in the Portland metropolitan area, as if I lived there.[^portland-vignettes] I thought it would be nice to get some original photographs of local landmarks (like TriMet trains, or one of the bridges over the Willamette River[^river-fka]) to lend versimilitude to the charade.
-[^portland-vignettes]: Beaverton, referenced in ["The Counter"](/2017/Jan/the-counter/) is a suburb of Portland; the Q Center referenced in ["Title Sequence"](/2017/Jan/title-sequence/) does exist in Portland and did have a Gender Queery support group, but the vignette was inspired by my attendance of a similar group at the Pacific Center in Berkeley.
+[^portland-vignettes]: Beaverton, referenced in ["The Counter"](/2017/Jan/the-counter/) is a suburb of Portland; the Q Center referenced in ["Title Sequence"](/2017/Jan/title-sequence/) [does exist in Portland](https://www.pdxqcenter.org/) and [did have a Gender Queery support group](https://web.archive.org/web/20160507101938/http://www.pdxqcenter.org/gender-queery/), but the vignette was inspired by my attendance of a similar group at the [Pacific Center](https://www.pacificcenter.org/) in Berkeley.
I would later get to attend a support group at the Q Center on a future visit to Portland (and got photos, although I never ended up using them on the blog). I snuck a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies_ into their library.
+[^river-fka]: Formerly known as William River??
+
At the close of a 4 February 2017 email confirming the plans with Sophia (Subject: "Re: February??"), I wrote:
> (Thanks very much for your promise not to be offended by things that I might say, which I am interpreting literally, and without which I wouldn't _dare_ meet you; unfortunately, I kind of feel motivated to generally avoid trans women now, because the conjunction of validate-everyone's-identity social norms and my continuing obsession with last year's shocking mega-update make me feel like I'm made out of social antimatter: better to quietly (except for pseudonymous internet yelling) stay out of everyone's way rather than risk the temptation to say the wrong thing, mutually annihilating me and my interlocutor and killing everyone in the room in a shower of gamma rays.)
... the "quietly stay out of everyone's way" policy lasted about 3 days.
-In a comment thread on the Facebook wall of MIRI Director of Communications Rob Bensinger, someone named Amelia[^amelia-rip] said something about closeted trans women (linking to the ["I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out"](https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42) piece).
+In a 7 February 2017 comment thread on the Facebook wall of MIRI Director of Communications Rob Bensinger, someone named Amelia[^amelia-rip] said something about closeted trans women (linking to the ["I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out"](https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42) piece).
[^amelia-rip]: Clicking on Amelia's profile years later, it's a memorial page, which is ominous.
[TODO public meltdown—
- * Elsewhere on Facebook, "Noreen" complained about the difficulty of dating, I used the opportunity to ask her for a date. (I later commented to "Chaya", "I wouldn't have asked her out at all, except that I'm going through a "well, maybe it's not morally wrong to do male-typical things like try to spin a complaint ("As if only guys have trouble getting dates") into a date")
-
* I ended up escalating into a full-on public meltdown on my own Facebook wall. First posts, 11 Feb "some of you may have noticed" and 12 Feb "Dear Totally Excellent Rationalist Friends; summarize discussion
* My terrible, terrible date with "Noreen" was on Sunday 12 February. We saw _West Side Story_ at the Castro Theater. We walked around the Castro and debated the gender thing beforehand. I was so distracted!!
+ * Elsewhere on Facebook, "Noreen" complained about the difficulty of dating, I used the opportunity to ask her for a date. (I later commented to "Chaya", "I wouldn't have asked her out at all, except that I'm going through a "well, maybe it's not morally wrong to do male-typical things like try to spin a complaint ("As if only guys have trouble getting dates") into a date")
+
* more discussion on "nice, mean versions" 13 February
> **"Chaya"** — 02/14/2016 3:26 AM
✓ Eliezerfic fight: will-to-Truth vs. will-to-happiness [pt. 6]
✓ Eliezerfic fight: Ayn Rand and children's morals [pt. 6]
✓ AI timelines scam [pt. 4]
-- regrets, wasted time, conclusion [pt. 6]
-
✓ "Helen" crash [pt. 2]
✓ confronting "Helen" [pt. 2]
✓ Sophia [pt. 2]
✓ Sophia correspondence details [pt. 2]
✓ plans to visit Sophia [pt. 2]
✓ technical discussion with Sophia
-- Rob's thread, first contact with Ben [pt. 2]
-_ A/a alumna consult details [pt. 2]
-_ terrible date with "Noreen"
-_ Facebook tantrum and discussion pileup
-_ "Chaya's" commentary on "Noreen"'s behavior
-_ going crazy (the first time)
-
+✓ Rob's thread, first contact with Ben [pt. 2]
+✓ A/a alumna consult details [pt. 2]
- Eliezerfic fight: Big Yud tests me [pt. 6]
_ Eliezerfic fight: derail with lintamande [pt. 6]
_ Eliezerfic fight: knives, and showing myself out [pt. 6]
+_ Facebook tantrum [pt. 2]
+_ psych ward [pt. 2]
+_ emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence [pt. 2]
+
+- regrets, wasted time, conclusion [pt. 6]
+
- "Lesswrong.com is dead to me" [pt. 4]
_ secret thread with Ruby [pt. 4]
_ progress towards discussing the real thing [pt. 4]
_ plan to reach out to Rick [pt. 4]
-
_ reaction to Ziz [pt. 4]
_ State of Steven [pt. 4]
_ Somni [pt. 4]
_ "EA" brand ate the "rationalism" brand—even visible in MIRI dialogues
_ Anna's heel–face turn
_ "counterfactual boyfriend"/It's California in the year 2016
-
+
it was actually "wander onto the AGI mailing list wanting to build a really big semantic net" (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9HGR5qatMGoz4GhKj/above-average-ai-scientists)
With internet available—
-_ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ (name authors, and include details from the paper as appropriate)
-_ Willamette river? What's the name of the river?
-_ Gender Queery group / Pacific Center
-_ WizardWorld 2017 archive link?
-_ "realistic gem" check link
-_ autism/sane Tweet, footnote on "making people autistic"
-_ October 11th? https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154424272680199
-_ "Helen" key photo
-_ what does "rebuffed" mean
-_ correct "Wicked Transcendence" comment link
-_ heliocentrism tag
+✓ matchmaking thread (thread was 4 February, relevant comments were 7 February): https://www.facebook.com/Katie.Cohen821/posts/pfbid02PNKKSCBTC99ULzPsueKvZkYmpNvELrkEfGymcrAfWZPu39LRCyh2bE4a9Ht3yg3Dl
+✓ download Weisberg et al.
+✓ https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1633396201427984384 "As somebody who's sane but not autistic, it's been very odd to watch the meaning of the formerly technical term 'autistic' expand and mutate to mean 'sane'."
+✓ Nate would later admit that this was a mistake: https://intelligence.org/2015/12/11/openai-and-other-news/
+✓ my October 11th? https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154424272680199
+✓ Sophia's October 11?
+✓ "Helen" key photo
+✓ heliocentrism tag
+_ "pretty productive blogging spree" should be links to minor posts
+_ look back at all the Facebook posts I cite in my outline
+-----
_ click-to-reveal spoiler block image
_ more Discord italics-correction
-_ comments on "The Legend of the Extortion War"
-_ "pretty productive blogging spree" should be links to minor posts
-_ comment on "Timelines Scam" re "The Two-Party Swindle"
-_ "they had to know at some level": link to "why we can't take expected values literally"
-_ publication date of "The AI Timelines Scam"
_ "around plot relevant sentences" ... only revealing, which, specifically?
_ what was I replying to, re: "why you actually don't want to be a happier but less accurate predictor"?
_ relevant screenshots for Eliezerfic play-by-play
_ lc on elves and Sparashki
-_ Nate would later admit that this was a mistake (or ask Jessica where)
_ Michael Bailey's new AGP in women study
_ footnote "said that he wishes he'd never published"
_ replace "Oh man oh jeez" Rick & Morty link
_ David Xu? (Is it OK to name him in his LW account?)
_ afford various medical procedures
_ Buck? (get the story about Michael being escorted from events)
+_ A/a alumna??
marketing—
_ Twitter
_ dropping "and Scott" in Jessica's description of attacking narcissim
_ I think it's OK to copy my friends' language from emails; plagiarism instincts
+Jack Clark's language model editor prompt: "Read this essay and give constructive and critical feedback, paying particular attention to logical inconsistencies or clunky phrasing:"
+
-------
Friend of the blog Ninety-Three has been nagging me about my pathetic pacing—looking at the diffs of my wordcount spreadsheet, I have four thousand-word days in January, two in February, and two in March (which is half-over). He ... has a point. With no dayjob and no responsibilities, four-figure wordcount days should be normal, something that happens four times a week, not four times a month.
(The story was actually Yudkowsky's ["The Sword of Good"](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good), but I was still enjoying the "Robin Hanson's blog" æsthetic.)
And the moral was—or at least, the moral _I_ got out of it was—there's something messed-up about the way fiction readers just naïvely accept the author's frame, instead of looking at the portrayed world with fresh eyes and applying their _own_ reason and their _own_ morality to it.
+
+need to fit this in somewhere—
+"Gee, I wonder why women-who-happen-to-be-trans are so much more likely to read Slate Star Codex, and be attracted to women, and, um, have penises, than women-who-happen-to-be-cis?"
+
+Everyone believed this in 2005! Everyone _still_ believes this!
+
+https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154424272680199
+> Happy Coming Out Day! I'm a male with mild gender dysphoria which is almost certainly causally related to my autogynephilic sexual/romantic orientation, which I am genuinely proud of! This has no particular implications for how other people should interact with me!
+> I believe that late-onset gender dysphoria in males is almost certainly not an intersex condition. (Here "late-onset" is a term of art meant to distinguish people like me from those with early-onset gender dysphoria, which is characterized by lifelong feminine behavior and a predominantly androphilic sexual orientation. Anne Vitale writes about these as "Group Three" and "Group One" in "The Gender Variant Phenomenon": http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm ) I think it's important to not let the political struggle to secure people's rights to self-modification interfere with the pursuit of scientific knowledge, because having a realistic understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying one's feelings is often useful in helping individuals make better decisions about their own lives in accordance with the actual costs and benefits of available interventions (rather than on the basis of some hypothesized innate identity). Even if the mechanisms turn out to not be what one thought they were—ultimately, people can stand what is true.
+> Because we are already enduring it.
+Too subtle? (40 Likes, one comment from my half-brother)