[^internship]: "Internship" is in scare quotes, because the Singularity Institute at the time was not the kind of organization that offered formal _internships_; what I mean is that there was a house in Santa Clara where a handful of people were trying to do Singularity-relevant work, and I was allowed to sleep in the garage and also try to do work, without being paid.
-[^siai]: The "for Artificial Intelligence" part was a holdover the organization's founding, from before Yudkowsky [decided that AI would kill everyone by default (and that this was a bad thing)](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SXurf2mWFw8LX2mkG). People soon started using "SingInst" as an abbreviation more than "SIAI", until the organization was eventually rebranded as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2013.
+[^siai]: The "for Artificial Intelligence" part was a holdover from the organization's founding, from before Yudkowsky [decided that AI would kill everyone by default (and that this was a bad thing)](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SXurf2mWFw8LX2mkG). People soon started using "SingInst" as an abbreviation more than "SIAI", until the organization was eventually rebranded as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2013.
[^twenty-sixth]: Writing this up years later, I was surprised to see from the dates (26 March 2016) that my date with the escort was the same day as the "20% of the ones with penises" post (and my comment thereon and following conversation with "Wilhelm"). They hadn't been stored in my long-term episodic memory as "the same day", likely because the Facebook post only seems overwhelmingly significant in retrospect; at the time, I did not realize what I would be spending the next seven years of my life on.
As a mere heretic, it was also nice to have an outright _apostate_ as a friend.
+I kept in touch with "Wilhelm".
+
[TODO: election thoughts; Clinton vs. Trump on Russia hawkishness]
I shared with him an early draft of ["Don't Negotiate With Terrorist Memeplexes"](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/), which fleshed out his idea from back in March about political forces optimizing for people to adopt an identity as a persecuted trans person.
"Wilhelm" summarized the NRx response:
> 1. Women should never have been weaponiz[ed] by democracy into being cultural/corporate commissars
-> 2. Why is an unmarried woman making a nuisance of herself in a mostly male community? Where is her family? Why is she not married yet?
+> 2. Why is an unmarried woman making a nuisance of herself in a mostly male community? Where is her family? Why is she not married yet?
I said that #2 still seemed monstrously unfair to the non-nuisance woman contributing to the community's endeavor; even if biology had something to do with their rarity, not giving them a chance was way worse than the problem thereby solved (with respect to my historically aberrant pro-androgyny utility function that I would defend to the death).
-----
-The thread on the "Totally Excellent Rationalist Friends" post continued. Someone who I'll call "Kevin" (whom I had never interacted with before or since; my post-visibility settings were set to Public) said that the concept of modeling someone based on their gender seemed weird. Correlations with gender were weak enough to be irrelevant after talking with someone for half an hour.
+The thread on the "Totally Excellent Rationalist Friends" post continued. Someone who I'll call "Kevin" (whom I had never interacted with before or since; my post visibility settings were set to Public) said that the concept of modeling someone based on their gender seemed weird. Correlations with gender were weak enough to be irrelevant after talking with someone for half an hour.
I replied, but this was circular, right?—that the concept of modeling someone based on their gender seemed weird. If gender didn't have any (probabilistic!) implications, why did getting gendered correctly matter so much to people?
[^transcel]: Of course, a lot of the effect is going to be due to the paucity of cis women who are willing to date trans women.
-The comment thread under the "nice/mean versions" post would eventually end up with 180 comments, a large fraction of which were, again, a thread mostly of me arguing with "Noreen." At the top of the thread (at 1:14 _a.m._, she asked if there was something that concisely explained why I believed what I believed, and what consequences it had for people.
+The comment thread under the "nice/mean versions" post would eventually end up with 180 comments, a large fraction of which were, again, a thread mostly of me arguing with "Noreen." At the top of the thread (at 1:14 _a.m._), she asked if there was something that concisely explained why I believed what I believed, and what consequences it had for people.
-I replied (at 1:25 _a.m._ on 14 February 2017):
+I replied (at 1:25 _a.m._):
>> why you believe what you believe
>
"Chaya" explained why she was holding "Noreen" to a different standard of discourse than me: I was walking into this after years of personal, excruciating suffering, and was willing to sacrifice social connections to present a model. My brash tone should have been more forgivable in light of that—that I was ultimately coming from a place of compassion and hope for people, not hate.
-I messaged "Chaya", "I wouldn't call it 'personal, excruciating suffering', but way to play the victim card on my behalf". She offered to edit it. I declined: "if she can play politics, we can play politics??"
+I messaged "Chaya": "I wouldn't call it 'personal, excruciating suffering', but way to play the victim card on my behalf". She offered to edit it. I declined: "if she can play politics, we can play politics??"
"Chaya" speculated that "Noreen" might not be reacting as vehemently had I not recently asked her out in public, that she was now distancing herself from me as part of a signaling game—as if to say, "See? See, everyone? I rejected him! Don't burn me at the stake, too!"
> In the last hour of the world before this is over, as the nanobots start consuming my flesh, I try to distract myself from the pain by reflecting on what single blog post is most responsible for the end of the world. And the answer is obvious: ["The Categories Were Made for the Man, Not Man for the Categories."](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/) That thing is a _fucking_ Absolute Denial Macro!
-At 4:18 _a.m._, I pulled the trigger on the email I had started drafting to Yudkowsky earlier (Subject: "the spirit of intervention").
-
-A couple hours later, I was starting to realize I had made a mistake, as reflected to emails sent to Anna Salamon at 6:16 _a.m._ (Subject: "I love you and I'm scared and I should sleep to aboid being institutionalized") and to Michael Vassar 6:32 _a.m._ (Subject: "I'm scared and I can't sleep but I need to sleep to avoid being institutionalized and I want to be a girl but I am not literally a girl obviously you delusional bastards (eom)").
+At 4:18 _a.m._, I pulled the trigger on the email I had started drafting to Yudkowsky earlier (Subject: "the spirit of intervention"), arguing that neoreaction was onto something really important. It wasn't about politics _per se_; it was about reflectivity and moral progress skepticism. Instead of _assuming_ that we know better than people in the past, we should look at the _causal processes_ that produced our current morality, and reevaluate whether it makes sense (in light of our current morality, which was itself created those same causal processes). Insofar as we could see that the egalitarian strain of our current morality was shaped by political forces rather than anything more fundamental, it was worth reëvaluating. It wasn't that right-wing politics are good as such. More like, being smart is more important than being good (for humans), so if you abandon your claim to goodness, you can think more clearly.
+A couple hours later, I was starting to realize I had made a mistake, as reflected to emails sent to Anna Salamon at 6:16 _a.m._ (Subject: "I love you and I'm scared and I should sleep to aboid [_sic_] being institutionalized") and to Michael Vassar 6:32 _a.m._ (Subject: "I'm scared and I can't sleep but I need to sleep to avoid being institutionalized and I want to be a girl but I am not literally a girl obviously you delusional bastards (eom)").
+Michael got back to me at 10:37 _a.m._:
-Michael's reply 1037—
> I'm happy to help in any way you wish. Call any time. [...] I think that you are right enough that it actually calls for the creation of something with the authority to purge/splinter the rationalist community. There is no point in having a rationalist community where you get ignored and silenced if you talk politely and condemned for not using the principle of charity by people who literally endorse trying to control your thoughts and bully you into traumatic surgery by destroying meaning in language. We should interpret ["Noreen"] and ["Kevin"], in particular, as violent criminals armed with technology we created and act accordingly.
-I said in an email to Anna on 14 February 14:22, "I don't know what's real. I should lie down? I'm sorry", and messaged Ben at 16:09 with "I just woke up", which suggests that I may have gotten an hour and a half of sleep in between
+Records suggest that I may have gotten as much as an hour and a half of sleep that afternoon: in an email to Anna at 2:22 _p.m._, I wrote, "I don't know what's real. I should lie down? I'm sorry", and in a message to Ben at 4:09 _p.m._, I wrote, "I just woke up". According to my records, I hung out with Ben; I have no clear memories of this day.
-]
+That night, I emailed Michael and Anna about sleep at 12:17 _a.m._ 15 February 2017 (Subject: "Can SOMEONE HELP ME I REALLY NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SLEEP THIS IS DANGEROUS") and about philosophy and the nature and amount of suffering in the universe at 1:55 _a.m._ and 2:01 _a.m._ (Subjects: "I think I'm starting to understand a lot of the stuff you used to say that I didn't understand!" and "none of my goddamned business").
---------
+[TODO: going off the rails—
+ * morning 15 February Facebook posts, "I got even more sleep and feel even more like a normal human! Again, sorry for the noise!", "Arguing on the internet isn't that important! Feel free to take a break!", and promising to leave Facebook for a week
+ * total meltdown encompassed 31 posts between Saturday 11 February and promising to leave Facebook for a week 0844 15 February
+ * I was not, actually, a normal human
+ * some delusional emails to Kay Brown
+ * I told Sophia I couldn't make it (Subject: "I don't think I can make it to Portland/Wizardworld after all, sorry (eom)")
-email Michael and Anna "Can SOMEONE HELP ME I REALLY NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SLEEP THIS IS DANGEROUS" Wed 15 Feb 0017
+ * what else happened on 15 February??
- * total meltdown encompassed 31 posts between Saturday 11 February and promising to leave Facebook for a week 0844 15 February
+]
15 Feb 0803
> I'm taking the week off work; today I'm trying to stay grounded and then I'm going to Portland later; I wanna talk to you but not now
-marked TODO blocks—
-- sleepless Valentine's Day [pt. 2]
-_ "arrogance is offputting" (1:51 p.m. 13 Feb, 88 comments)
+marked TODO
+✓ sleepless Valentine's Day [pt. 2]
+✓ "arrogance is offputting" (1:51 p.m. 13 Feb, 88 comments)
_ fully off the rails 15–17 February [pt. 2]
-- Eliezerfic fight: Big Yud tests me [pt. 6]
+✓ Eliezerfic fight: Big Yud tests me [pt. 6]
+_ Eliezerfic fight: grading rubric [pt. 6]
_ Eliezerfic fight: derail with lintamande [pt. 6]
_ Eliezerfic fight: knives, and showing myself out [pt. 6]
- December 2019 winter blogging vacation [pt. 4]
_ plan to reach out to Rick [pt. 4]
+_ Somni [pt. 4]
_ reaction to Ziz [pt. 4]
_ State of Steven [pt. 4]
-_ Somni [pt. 4]
_ culture off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver [pt. 4]
_ complicity and friendship [pt. 4]
_ out of patience email [pt. 4]
_ "counterfactual boyfriend"/It's California in the year 2016
_ not talking about pivotal acts, downstream of not believing in Speech?
_ Alyssa lying about me [pt. 4]
+_ Brian Skyrms??
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—
+_ 72 virgins-like comic
+_ what 93 said about my third bluebook
+_ Guessing the Teacher's Password
+_ Original Seeing
+_ is the Glowfic author "Lintamande ... they" or "Lintamande ... she"?
_ Hidden Figures
_ do I have the definition of "paramour" right?
_ truth and reconciliation
_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation)
_ Ray
_ Ruby
+_ Kay Brown?? (assuming I include the delusional emails to her)
marketing—
_ Twitter
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff