memoir: "nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever"

diff --git a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md
index c0c5a16..1fed923 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md
+++ b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md
@@ -846,11 +846,32 @@ It was possible that the attitude I was evincing here was just a difference betw
 
 There were definitely communities on Earth where I wasn't allowed in because of my tendency to shout things from street corners, and I respected those people's right to have a safe space for themselves.
 
-But those communities ... didn't call themselves _rationalists_, weren't _pretending_ be to be inheritors of the great tradition of E. T. Jaynes and Robin Dawes and Richard Feynmann. And if they _did_, I think I would have a false advertising complaint against them.
+But those communities ... didn't call themselves _rationalists_, weren't _pretending_ be to be inheritors of the great tradition of E. T. Jaynes and Robin Dawes and Richard Feynman. And if they _did_, I think I would have a false advertising complaint against them.
 
-"The eleventh virtue is scholarship. Study many sciences and absorb their power as your own ... unless a prediction market says that would make you less happy," just didn't have the same ring to it. Neither did "The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. But higher than both of those, is trusting your Society's institutions to tell you which kinds of knowledge will make you happy"—even if you stipulated by authorial fiat that your Society's institutions are super-competent, such that they're probably right about the happiness thing.
+"[The eleventh virtue is scholarship. Study many sciences and absorb their power as your own](https://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues) ... unless a prediction market says that would make you less happy," just didn't have the same ring to it. Neither did "The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. But higher than both of those, is trusting your Society's institutions to tell you which kinds of knowledge will make you happy"—even if you stipulated by authorial fiat that your Society's institutions are super-competent, such that they're probably right about the happiness thing.
 
-[TODO: Atlas Shrugged quote and children's morals]
+Attempting to illustrate the mood I thought dath ilan was missing, I quoted the scene from _Atlas Shrugged_ where Dagny expresses a wish to be kept ignorant for the sake of her own happiness and get shut down by Galt—and Dagny _thanks_ him. (I put Discord's click-to-reveal spoiler blocks around plot-relevant sentences—that'll be important in a few moments.)
+
+> "[...] Oh, if only I didn't have to hear about it! If only I could stay here and never know what they're doing to the railroad, and never learn when it goes!"
+>
+> "You'll have to hear about it," said Galt; it was that ruthless tone, peculiarly his, which sounded implacable by being simple, devoid of any emotional value, save the quality of respect for facts. "You'll hear the whole course of the last agony of Taggart Transcontinental. You'll hear about every wreck. You'll hear about every discontinued train. You'll hear about every abandoned line. You'll hear about the collapse of the Taggart Bridge. Nobody stays in this valley except by a full, conscious choice based on a full, conscious knowledge of every fact involved in his decision. Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever."
+>
+> She looked at him, her head lifted, knowing what chance he was rejecting. She thought that no man of the outer world would have said this to her at this moment—she thought of the world's code that worshipped white lies as an act of mercy—she felt a stab of revulsion against that code, suddenly seeing its full ugliness for the first time [...] she answered quietly, "Thank you. You're right."
+
+This (probably predictably) failed to resonate with other server participants, who were baffled why I seemed to be appealing to Ayn Rand's authority. But I was actually going for a _reverse_ appeal-to-authority: if _Ayn Rand_ understood that facing reality is virtuous, why didn't the 2020's "rationalists"? I didn't think the disdain for "Earth people" (again, as if there were any other kind) was justified, when Earth's philosophy of rationality was doing better than dath ilan's on this critical dimension.
+
+But if people's souls had been damaged such that they didn't have the "facing reality is virtuous" gear, it wasn't easy to install the gear by talking at them.
+
+Why was I so sure _my_ gear was correct?
+
+I wondered if the issue had to do with what Yudkowsky had identified as [the problem of non-absolute rules](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases#5__Counterargument__The_problem_of_non_absolute_rules_).
+
+Technically, as a matter of decision theory, "sacred values" are crazy.
+
+[TODO: finish § Atlas Shrugged quote and children's morals
+ * why sacred values fail
+ * examples of ways I think reality is complicated that makes the BDSM coverup bad
+]
 
 [TODO: Yudkowsky tests me]