In retrospect, I was not, entirely, feeling like a normal human. The world was starting to seem much more mysterious—and threatening—than it previously had. I told Sophia I wouldn't actually be able to make it to Portland that weekend (Subject: "I don't think I can make it to Portland/Wizardworld after all, sorry (eom)"). I presumably told my work I wouldn't be in at all anymore this week.
-I want to be fair to my past self. In retrospect, it's clear that I was having a paranoid nervous breakdown due to stress and sleep deprivation. Looking back at a lot of the things I thought at the time, I no longer think those thoughts were correct. Actually, they were pretty crazy. But in a world where all the _sane_ people were insisting that men could be women by means of saying so, can you blame me for finding it hard to tell? If the paranoid hypotheses I was starting to generate didn't match ordinary social reality, how much reason did I have to believe that ordinary social reality was actually in the right?
+I want to be fair to my past self. In retrospect, it's clear that I was having a paranoid nervous breakdown due to stress and sleep deprivation. Looking back at a lot of the things I was thinking at the time, I no longer think those thoughts were correct. Actually, they were pretty crazy. You might hope that people who are going crazy for largely "biological" reasons (like stress and sleep deprivation) would notice this, and correct for it by trusting their own thoughts less, deferring more to ordinary social reality when it disagreed with their own altered perceptions.
+
+But in a world where all the _sane_ people were insisting that men could be women by means of saying so, can you blame me for finding it hard to tell? If the paranoid hypotheses I was starting to generate didn't match ordinary social reality, how much reason did I really have to believe that ordinary social reality was actually in the right?
I don't want to say that I was having persecution _delusions_, exactly—just that persecution hypotheses were much more _salient_ than they usually were; I was a little bit fixated on the idea of scary men coming to kill me. Somehow, I developed the idea that an HSTS transsexual I had been corresponding with was actually AGP and in denial. I sent her an email trying to gently hint about it (Subject: "one last thing before I disappear for a while"), and then I felt scared—scared that she would she would track me down and take revenge? In a followup email, I disclaimed that I was kind of losing my mind right now, and disavowed the offensive hypothesis. ("But if you're sure, I believe you!") She replied, mentioning that she also questions people's self-reports of being HSTS. She said that her husband had a knack for spotting AGPs, and did not find them attractive, calling them "cross dressers on steroids." I said I was afraid that the husband wanted to kill me.
[(I don't do policy.)](/2021/Sep/i-dont-do-policy/)
-After I asked for "positive reinforcement" and sent some "Cooperate" messages at 3:15 _p.m._, Ziz responded with some heartwarming anecdotes about how others thought of me. She said that Michael Vassar had been talking approvingly about me, in the context of a war between gaslighting _vs._ having the ability to think, that I was one of the three fronts in "the community" that the war was playing out on: Sarah _vs._ Ben, Rob _vs._ Ben Todd, and Zack Davis _vs._ the world.
+After I asked for "positive reinforcement" and sent some "Cooperate" messages at 3:15 _p.m._, Ziz responded with some heartwarming anecdotes about how others thought of me. She said that Michael Vassar had been talking approvingly about me, in the context of a war between gaslighting _vs._ having the ability to think, that I was one of the three fronts in "the community" that the war was playing out on: Sarah _vs._ Ben, Rob _vs._ Ben Todd, and Zack Davis _vs._ the world.[^war-fronts]
+
+[^war-fronts]: I think "Rob" was referring to Rob Wiblin. When I asked Michael later how Sarah and Ben were in conflict (Subject: "request for clarification re war fronts"), he said that Sarah and Ben were allies and that he wasn't sure how the misunderstanding happened.
Eventually I made it to my office. My boss said he hadn't seen my email about wanting to meet.
A coworker volunteered to secure me a ride home. There was some question about whether the relevant "home" was my apartment in Berkeley, or the house in Walnut Creek where my mother lived, and where I had lived until just ten months before. As a newly awakened-social conservative, I intuited that staying with family was the right choice. (I was wrong.) At 6:22 _p.m._, I sent an email from my work computer to my parents, Anna, and Michael (Subject: "I want to go to my parents' house; do we still own the house? (eom)").
-We still owned the house. My coworker took an Uber with me to the house in Walnut Creek, and explained the situation to my mother.
+We still owned the house. My coworker took an Uber with me to the house in Walnut Creek, and talked to my mother.
(Meanwhile, Ziz had made her way to my apartment. "Brought chocolate, allegedly good against dementors," she messaged at 5:43 _p.m._. "Believe I can cooperate better if I can see your face." I was apparently in no state to appreciate the gesture; I messaged back "OK" a couple times when she asked to be let in, and confirmed which address she was at, even though I wasn't there. My flatmate eventually arrived and let her in.)
-[TODO— my recent madness
-
- * I tried to sleep that night, but I was scared. Moldbug had said that everyone was lying about crime statistics; how did I know that I wouldn't be attacked by criminals in the night?
- * (check if KP records corroborate this happening on 17 February) Mom taking me to Kaiser, me resisting, saying over and over again, "People are better at taking care of each other than institutions"; having quasi-religious visions of prying seeing AGP as a separate taxon, and negotiating to pry apart the concept
- * I messaged "Chaya": I couldn't sleep because I was scared; I had built up a distinction between "social reality" and "physical reality" that got undermined (Fri Feb 17 14:32:50)
- * I messaged Ben. I was so sorry; I wanted to be part of the coalition, but I was so confused, and I said Defect a bunch of times. I was scared that my boss (who was black) was going to kill me.
- * He said he wouldn't ask a trading partner not to consider defecting; that would be silly—and pointed out that saying the word "defect" is like wearing black robes; it's not the same as the thing it represents. He pointed out that my boss was not personally coming to kill me. ("There's probably some symbolic truth to the worry but it might not resemble the literal content at all and is almost certainly not urgent on the order of hours")
- * "I think I can get to my apartment" I said (14:42:35); "I just realized that you're allowed to not be submissive all the time" / "I didn't know this before and it feels like an impossible superpower"
- * stopped by cops before entering the Walnut Creek BART station
- * (Walnut Creek police must not have very much to do, that they responded to my mom's call so quickly?)
- * when questioned by the cops, I said that I had been awake for a couple days. (That's not _normal_, they said.) I said, truthfully, that I wasn't on drugs, but I think I expected them to not believe me.
- * last message to Ben: "You can use police cars as Ubers????"" (15:19:59)
- * The thing about being institutionalized, is that it wouldn't be such an ordeal if it happened when you were well. Getting kidnapped by strangers, having to spend three days in a bad hotel and do some kindergarten-like activities, would be a mere inconvenience while well. But _while having a psychotic break_ is the _worst time_ to be kidnapped.
+I tried to sleep that night, at my mom's house. It wasn't very effective. I was scared of being attacked by criminals. Sure, I _remembered_ feeling physically secure at almost all times in my life; I _remembered_ Walnut Creek being a safe place. But how trustworthy were memories from life inside an ideological bubble? Maybe people like me got assaulted and brutalized all the time, but our culture had trained us to block out all the evidence and even memories that good smart nice liberals _prefered not to see_.
+
+[TODO— check if KP records corroborate this happening on 17 February?
+Mom taking me to Kaiser, me resisting, saying over and over again, "People are better at taking care of each other than institutions"; having quasi-religious visions of prying seeing AGP as a separate taxon, and negotiating to pry apart the concept
+]
+
+I sent some more messages from my phone in the afternoon. I couldn't sleep because I was scared, I told "Chaya". I had built up a distinction between social reality and physical reality, and I didn't know what to do now that it had been undermined.
+
+I was so sorry, I told Ben. I wanted to be part of the coalition, but I was so confused, and I said "defect" a bunch of times. I was scared that my boss (who, incidentally, was black) was going to come kill me.
+
+Ben said he wouldn't ask a trading partner to not _consider_ defecting; that would be silly. He pointed out that saying the word "defect" is like wearing black robes; it's not the same as the thing it represents. My boss was not personally coming to kill me. ("There's probably some symbolic truth to the worry but it might not resemble the literal content at all and is almost certainly not urgent on the order of hours".)
+
+I got the idea to go to my apartment in Berkeley, and started walking to the Walnut Creek BART station. On my way, I felt a surge of energy, a second wind despite my exhaustion. "I just realized that you're allowed to not be submissive all the time", I told Ben. "I didn't know this before and it feels like an impossible superpower".
+
+I was stopped by cops before entering the Walnut Creek BART station. (I hadn't told my mother I was leaving; when she noticed my absence, she panicked and called 911. I'm impressed that they found me so quickly.) Questioned by the cops, I explained the situation: that I was a software engineer going through a stressful time, that I had stayed at my mother's house here in Walnut Creek last night, but that now I was trying to get a train to go to my apartment in Berkeley. I said that I had been awake for a couple days. (That's not _normal_, they said.) I said, truthfully, that I wasn't on drugs, but I didn't expect them to believe me—and, somehow, felt as if I were optimizing for them not to believe me.
+
+I tried to talk the cops into taking me back to my mom's house, not realizing that that's not how their procedure works. In my last message to Ben before getting locked up, at 3:19 _p.m._, I said, "You can use police cars as Ubers????"
+
+--------
+
+[TODO psych ward—
+ * The thing about being institutionalized, is that it wouldn't be such an ordeal if it happened when you were well. Getting kidnapped by strangers, having to spend three days in a bad hotel and do some kindergarten-like activities, would be a mere inconvenience while well. But _while having a psychotic break_ is the _worst time_ to be kidnapped. I often have a sense of "where I am" geographically (not just my immediate surroundings, but also knowing how my surroundings relate to the world, what city I'm in; what freeways connect to that city; doesn't exist when kidnapped)
+ * Even things that are for your benefit during the check-in process are hard to appreciate as such—I remember them counting my money in front of me, and feeling like it was an Orwellian exericse to undermine my connection to reality; maybe, I didn't trust that _she_ knew how to count?
+ * trying to complain to the staff—got told to speak to patient's rights; I didn't even bother, because I didn't think that was real; a later SSC claims that patient's rights is supposed to be adversarial, but that wasn't clear from the inside; I'm reminded of that AmRen article [article by a public defender](https://archive.is/HUkzY); I empathize with the defendant
+ * First facility—separate rooms with beds for men and women; me tapping at the walls trying to teach; pacing, thinking I was one of the most important people in the world
+ * Taken to a separate facility; _very_ lucky to get my own room
+ * paper claims that I "self presented due to your suicidal thoughts"; this isn't true; getting stopped by the cops while trying to
* "Now memories are blurred, and their faces are obscured"
+ * racist/sexist intuitions: avoid the gaze of males; males physically smaller than me are OK
+ * a moment of solidarity with a black male smaller than me?
+ * beliefs about evolutionary psychology (make friends, avoid enemies) very salient
+ * fragmented memory: Joy intentionally hurt herself while I was trying to help her, football coach-like orderly said he was only trying to help; Joy says, this never happened
+ * black woman named "Tone" asked what we had for breakfast
+ * black man saying something about his mother, I explained that his mother probably did love him, he got angry, and I hid behind my door
+ * doing better than in 2013 precisely because I was modeling the place as a prison
+ * wanted to avoid taking medication, put on a magician-like "show" to nurse to try to trick her, it didn't work
+ * I ended up with a booklet that claims I have the right to refuse medication, but this isn't actually true in practice
+ * asking Anna on the phone whether I was a political prisoner "Really?" "Really really?" followups (if I were a political prisoner; she might not be able to say so)
+ * mother visited, mother was cranky, Michael Vassar visited; Michael said that rape doesn't really happen in this kind of facility, and I believed him; I handed him papers (which I thought was necessary to escape the powers that be)
+ * vision of needing to pull the fire alarm?
+ * other males pacing the way I pace
+ * my reports were not reliable; I thought Vassar pretended to be a doctor; I thought one of the other inmates had a security code
+ * trope-awareness of being a psych patient; distrustful of other psych patient; thought I could subtly leave clues that I was a Jesus-analogue (as a Jewish male with long hair) to discourage people from murdering me (because the Christianity meme says you're not supposed to do that); I told people that my father was coming to pick me up at the end of my 72-hour (== 3 days) evaluation period, but that it wasn't fair that I couldn't rescue everyone. (I'm proud of this one.)
+ * my father actually did pick me up three days later!
]
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-
/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/
[28 February, I email Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff