Title: Hiatus
-Date: 2019-05-01
+Date: 2019-05-01 22:10
Category: other
Tags: meta
>
> —Rudyard Kipling, ["The Gods of the Copybook Headings"](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm) (paraphrased)
+## Prelude: on Charity Norms and Intepretive Labor Balance
+
This post is a reply to [friend of the blog](/tag/ozy/) Ozymandias's [reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to Scott Alexander's ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/). The reply ends up covering a lot of worldview-ground, so ideas in this post may be expanded upon in future posts.
Before anything else, I'd like to thank Ozy for their thoughtful reply. Substantive, longform engagement between contrasting viewpoints is a rare and beautiful thing that deserves to be socially rewarded so that we get more of it, thereby collectively becoming more likely to get things right [systematically rather than by coincidence](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/)!
+saying something
+
+we can't talk about bad faith
+playing chess with a pigeon, what the tortise said to Achilles
+
+"from the merely naive to the dense to the outright vapid" insults violate a symmetry constraint
+
+_people who think they're lizards_
+
+the real strength of "be charitable to those you disagree with" is that it forces you to clarify your ideas in order to defend against every possible absurd misinterpretation
+
-----
After summarizing the discussion so far, Ozy argues that my appeal to the relevance of pyschological sex differences commits me to an absurd conclusion—
-----
-I think my feelings for Jessica represent an interesting interaction of the conflict between sex and "gender": my high regard for her is happening because she passes so well that my brain is tagging her as a woman (and women who understand LessWrong stuff to that level are sacred and precious), but I don't feel creepy about so openly expressing it to her or others, because I'm less afraid of hurting her, because I expect that whatever anti-rape adaptation brainware women have (that result in strange males being labeled "creepy" threats) she ... probably just doesn't have it
\ No newline at end of file
+I think my feelings for Jessica represent an interesting interaction of the conflict between sex and "gender": my high regard for her is happening because she passes so well that my brain is tagging her as a woman (and women who understand LessWrong stuff to that level are sacred and precious), but I don't feel creepy about so openly expressing it to her or others, because I'm less afraid of hurting her, because I expect that whatever anti-rape adaptation brainware women have (that result in strange males being labeled "creepy" threats) she ... probably just doesn't have it
+
+## How dumb do you think we are?
>
> —Sara Barellies, ["Gonna Get Over You"](https://genius.com/Sara-bareilles-gonna-get-over-you-lyrics)
-I haven't been doing so well for the past five months.
+So, I _really_ wasn't doing so well for the five-month period between December and April.
Explaining this requires some context-setting.
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.
-And so when I moved to "Portland" (which is actually Berkeley) in 2016, and encountered evidence that convinced me of the homosexual/autogynephilic two-types theory of MtF transgenderism that I had previously assumed was false (while being privately grateful that [there was a _word_ for my thing](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/)) because everyone _said_ it was false, that seemed like information worth signal-boosting.
+And so when I moved to "Portland" in 2016, and encountered evidence that convinced me of the homosexual/autogynephilic two-types theory of MtF transgenderism that I had previously assumed was false (while being privately grateful that [there was a _word_ for my thing](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/)) because everyone _said_ it was false, that seemed like information worth signal-boosting.
We're all about, like, science and rationality and stuff, right? And so if there's a theory that's been sitting in the psychology literature for twenty years, that looks _correct_ (or at least, ah, less wrong than the mainstream view), that's _directly_ relevant to a _lot_ of people around here, that seems like the sort of thing
-
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KvefburLia7ptEE3/the-correct-contrarian-cluster
-
-
I confess that I _may have [overreacted](/2017/Mar/fresh-princess/) [somewhat](/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/)_ when people weren't converging (or [even engaging](/2017/Jan/im-sick-of-being-lied-to/)) with me on the two-types/autogynephilia thing. Psychology is a genuinely difficult empirical science
I would _never_ write someone off for disagreeing with me about a complicated empirical thing, because complicated empirical things are complicated enough that I have to take the Outside View seriously: no matter how "obvious" I think my view is, I might still be wrong for real in real life. So, while I was pretty upset for my own idiosyncratic personal reasons, it wasn't cause to _give up entirely on the dream of a rationality community_.
+A.T. and R.B.'s Facebook comments
+
+emphasize that the categories-are-relative thing is an important grain of truth, but that I expect _us_ to see deeper into the Bayes-structure
+
+this is _really basic shit_
+
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/beware-the-insi.html
+The way this is supposed to work is that you just make your arguments and trust that good arguments will outcompete bad ones; emailing people begging for a clarification is kind of rude and I want to acknowledge the frame in which I'm the bad guy (or pitably mentally ill)—but I was taught that arguing with people when they're doing something wrong is actually doing them a _favor_—I was taught that it's virtuous to make an extraordinary effort
+
+bad-faith nitpicker—I would be annoyed if someone repeatedly begged me to correct a mistake I made in a blog post from five years ago or a Tweet from November
+
+Losing faith in guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defense-not-even-science
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/
+"I ought to accept ... within the conceptual boundaries" is a betrayal of everything we stand for
+
+(I don't consider "if it'll save someone's life" to be a compelling consideration here, for the same reason that "What if Omega punishes all agents who don't choose the alphabetically first option?" doesn't seem like a compelling argument against timeless decision theory. Specifying punishments for agents that don't follow a particular ritual of cognition doesn't help us understand the laws that make intelligence work.)
+
+when _yet another_ (higher-profile, but more careful, this time only committing the error by Grecian implicature rather than overtly—if you're being careful to disclaim most obvious misinterpretations) people comitting the fallacy, I _flipped out_
+
+The sheer number of hours we invested in this operation is _nuts_: desperate all-out effort, arguing over email with two ppl who were higher-status than me and fighting an entire Discord server three times, $1000, three postcards
+
+what about _my_ mental health?
+
+Men who wish they were women do not particularly resemble actual women? We just—don't? This seems kind of obvious, really?
- we live in a world where reason doesn't work
+my friend thinks I'm naive to have expected such a community—she was recommending "What You Can't Say" in 2009—but in 2009, we did not expect that _whether or not I should cut my dick off_ would _become_ a politicized issue, which is new evidence about the wisdom of the original vision
-not gaslight me about the most important thing in my life?
+but if my expectations (about the community) were wrong, that's a problem with my model; reality doesn't have to care
-I don't think I'm setting [my price for joining](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining) particularly high here?
+it's naive to think you can win against an egregore 1000 times bigger than you
+
+MASSIVE cognitive dissonance, "What? What???"
+
+the Church
+
+won't you be embarrassed to leave if we create utopia
+
+invent a fake epistemology lesson
+
+we live in a world where reason doesn't work
+
+_not_ gaslight me about the most important thing in my life?
+
+I don't think I'm setting my price for joining particularly high here?
if you're doing systematically correct reasoning, you should be able to get the right answer even on things that don't matter
-there has to be a way to _correct_ errors, and possibly even profit from correcting errors
+There could be similarly egregious errors that I'm not as sensitive too
+
+I don't think you can build an aligned superintelligence from a culture this crazy
+
+maybe S. was trying to talk about "legal fiction" categories, but I'm trying to talk about epistemology, and that's a probable reading when you say "categories"
+
+Hansonian mental illness that people should be less accomodating of
+
+there has to be a way to apply a finite amount of effort to _correct_ errors, and possibly even profit from correcting errors
+
+the frame in which I'm
outside view hobby-horse
free-speech norms
I'll be alright. Just not tonight.
+
+(probably tell the story with no external links, only this-blog links)
_(Attention conservation notice: petulant Diarly-like navel-gazing is boring. [Please subscribe](/feeds/all.atom.xml) for actual content later, I double-dog promise!)_
-I haven't been doing so well for most of the past three-and-change months.
+So much for the rationalists (previous posts)
At least, that was the vision _I_ internalized in the late 'aughts. Others who were present may remember things slightly differently.
karaoke: "Reflection" as trans anthem, I said "It permits many interpretations"
+telling the woman in our karaoke group that she should sing the female part, but I wouldn't have if there had been a trans woman present
+
ReductRS tweet, I probably looked annoyed rather than mirthful
it's not actually engaging with the
From the standpoint of a cultural minority, it feels like the dominant culture is constantly microaggressing against your interests, and sometimes you want to push back in self-defense, with the justification that they started it. But from the dominant culture's perspective, it was just being itself, and the "pushback" is the aggression, and the minority started it.
Tail didn't even want to Tweet me?!?
+
+the oragnaizer of the Quillette meetup wanted to talk about black dysfunction, and I felt the discomfort of "Why are you interested in this topic?"
+
+the pain of being values-aligned but not ideology-aligned
https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154971932190199 (order of the transparent agent)
https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154975747360199 (rationalist community power play)
https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154976644315199 (can't find my backpack)
+
+
+https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10155049296600199
> Losing love I guess I've lost
> Well, if that's love
> It comes at much too high a cost!
+
+(Kolmogorov's Iron Triangle)
+> Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
+> Upon a thankless arrant:
+> Fear not to touch the best;
+> The truth shall be thy warrant:
+> Go, since I needs must die,
+> And give the world the lie.
+>
+> Say to the court, it glows
+> And shines like rotten wood;
+> Say to the church, it shows
+> What’s good, and doth no good:
+> If church and court reply,
+> Then give them both the lie.
+>
+> —["The Lie"](https://www.bartleby.com/40/48.html) by Sir Walter Raleigh
https://twitter.com/theorygurl/status/1062451652836446208
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/bhulic/i_cant_do_this_any_more_i_need_to_divorce_my/
+
+thanks for the marketing advice! I should _definitely_ take that into account if I ever decide to put more effort into "persuading people", which sounds like something that an aspiring instrumental rationalist would care about. Perhaps unfortunately, however, I'm an aspiring epistemic rationalist: all I can do is try to communicate what I actually think and feel using clear language (and standard rhetorical techniques like sarcasm, satire, &c. that people know how to interpret even if they wouldn't be clear if someone naïvely took the words literally). If other people aren't persuaded by this ... maybe they _shouldn't_ be! Maybe I can live with that!
+
+You _can't_ optimize your group's culture for not-talking-about-atheism without also optimizing against understanding Occam's razor; you _can't_ optimize for not questioning gender self-identity without also optimizing against understanding "A Human's Guide to Words."
+
+I guess I can't argue with that, but I wish I knew what happened to my wallet
+Fanime
"I Tell Myself to Let the Story End"
Social Strategy Notes
-
+on the argumentative form, "super-proton things come in varieties"—I think the moral here is wrong; you might ask why I'm criticizing it even though it supports my position, but I care about REASONING, which means REJECTING BAD ARGUMENTS even if they're on "your side"
"Lies to Cis People", a.k.a., "Lies"
The Social Construction of Reality and the Sheer Goddamned
-How Dumb Do You Think We Are?
+I Mean, Yes, I Agree That Man Should Allocate Some More Categories, But
Virtue Signaling Is Costly and Honest
-
-LW Question: How to unwind one's "rationalist" social identity?
+commentary on "Blegg Mode" (in response to Kosoy's objection)
+Orc-ham's Razor
+LW Question: How to unwind one's "rationalist" social identity? (as prereading, give "Keep Your Identity Small", "Craft Is Not the Community", Vassar's comment on Zvi's reply)
+Terminology Gap: "Biological vs. Natal"
+Servants of the Egregore (write-up of egregore theory as told by "Wilhelm")
+Kolmogorov's Iron Triangle; Or, the Not-Being-a-Worthless-Coward Option (epigraph quote: Raleigh's "The Lie")—(include analogy: the fear that atheism would lead to immortality given that ppl don't have to fear Hell, wouldn't have seemed obviously absurd at the time)
Research Question: Complicity
The Motte-and-Bailey Doctrine as Compression Artifact
Trying to Be Explicit
Phenotypic Identity and Memetic Capture
+Where to Segment a Conversation When There's Stuff You Won't Touch, Without Violating the Virtue of Evenness
+In Praise of Cartesianism (you need to _really_ understand "A Human's Guide to Words" before you can do high-grade good-faith social constructionism)
-Terminology Gap: "Biological vs. Natal"
-
Sex Differences and Commonsense Priors (I have parsimony intuitions that make "AGP is caused by pollution" or "AGP is normal in cis women" or "hormone receptors distributions are the same" seem not worth considering)
In the Presence of Mimickry, Extension and Intension Simplicity Trade-Off
Q I Want to See You Be Brave
Passing Is Legitimacy, Legitimacy Is Passing
All Men Benefit From Patriarchy
-Servants of the Egregore; Or, the Joy of Static Analysis
(the story about my name)
Review of Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic
on the poor literary quality of TG captions
Men are trash! (With respect to the definition of "trash" as "of or relating to the sex that typically produces sperm.")
+"Bayesian reasoning" is a TERF dogwhistle
+
link to Tail: https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1089172233300443136
no one remembers pronouns: https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1060563648027021314
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff