(Oh, and there was also [this part about](https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf) how [the entire future of humanity and the universe depended on](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GNnHHmm8EzePmKzPk/value-is-fragile) our figuring out how to reflect human values in a recursively self-improving artificial superintelligence. That part's complicated.)
-I guess I feel pretty naïve now, but—I _actually believed our own propoganda_ that we were a systematically-correct-reasoning community. I _actually thought_ we were doing something new and special of historical and possibly even _cosmological_ significance.
+I guess I feel pretty naïve now, but—I _actually believed our own propoganda_. I _actually thought_ we were doing something new and special of historical and possibly even _cosmological_ significance.
-This does not seem remotely credible to me any more. I should explain—_not_ because I expect anyone to actually read this incredibly boring and petty Diary entry, much less change their mind about anything because of it. I should explain for my own mental health. For closure. The sooner I manage to get the Whole Dumb Story _written down_, the sooner I can stop grieving and _move on with my life_. (However many decades that turns out to be. The part about superintelligence eventually destroying the world still seems right; it's just the part about there existing a systematically-correct-reasoning community that seems fraudulent now.)
+This does not seem remotely credible to me any more. I should explain. _Not_ because I expect anyone to actually read this petty Diary-like post, much less change their mind about anything because of it. I should explain for my own mental health. For closure. The sooner I manage to get the Whole Dumb Story _written down_, the sooner I can stop grieving and _move on with my life_. (However many decades that turns out to be. The part about superintelligence eventually destroying the world still seems right; it's just the part about there existing a systematically-correct-reasoning community that seems fake now.)
-I fear the explanation requires some personal backstory about me and my special interests. I ... almost don't want to tell the backstory, because the thing I've been upset about all year is that I thought a systematically-correct-reasoning community should be able to correct a _trivial_ philosophy-of-language mistake that has nothing to do with me, and it was pretty frustrating when people
+(A _secondary_ reason for explaining, is that it could _possibly_ function as a useful warning to the next guy to end up in an analogous situation of trusting the branded systematically-correct-reasoning community to actually be interested in doing systematically correct reasoning, and incurring a lot of wasted effort and pain desperately trying to correct the situation. But I don't know how common that is.)
-[...]
+I fear the explanation requires some personal backstory about me. I ... almost don't want to tell the backstory, because the thing I've been upset about all year is that I thought a systematically-correct-reasoning community should be able to correct a _trivial_ philosophy-of-language mistake which has nothing to do with me, and it was pretty frustrating when some people seemed to ignore the literal content of my careful very narrowly-scoped knockdown philosophy-of-language argument, and dismiss me with, "Oh, you're just upset about your personal thing (which doesn't matter)." So part of me is afraid that such a person reading the parts of this post that are about the ways in which I _am_, in fact, _really upset_ about my personal thing (which I _don't_ expect anyone else to care about), might take it as vindication that they were correct to be dismissive of my explicit philosophical arguments (which I _did_ expect others to take seriously).
+
+But I shouldn't let that worry control what I write in _this_ post, because _this_ post isn't about making arguments that might convince anyone of anything: I _already_ made my arguments elsewhere, and it _didn't work_. _This_ post is about telling the story about that, so that I can finish grieving for the systematically-correct-reasoning community that I _thought_ I had, but which turned out to be a gaudy delusion.
+
+So. Here it is. The Whole Dumb Story about my obsessive special interest and how I lost faith in the alleged systematically-correct-reasoning community. I don't know why you would want to read this, but I need to write it.
Ever since I was thirteen years old—
(I _still_ don't want to be blogging about this, but somebody has to and no one else will)
-my _favorite_ masturbation fantasy has always been some variation
+—my _favorite_—and basically only—masturbation fantasy has always been some variation on me getting magically transformed into a woman. I ... want to write more about the phenomenology of this, some time. I don't think the details are important here.
+
+So, there was that erotic thing, which I was pretty ashamed of (at least, at first), and _of course_ never told a single soul. (It would have been about three years since the fantasy started that I even worked up the bravery to tell my Diary about it, the addendum to entry number 53 on 8 March 2005.)
+
+But within a couple years, I also developed this beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing, where I was also having a lot of thoughts about being a girl. Just—little day-to-day thoughts. Like when I would write in my pocket notebook as my female analogue. Or when I would practice swirling the descenders on all the lowercase letters that had descenders (_g_, _j_, _p_, _z_) because I thought my handwriting look more feminine.
+Now, of course I had _heard of_ there being such a thing as transsexualism.
[...]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff