> Can you please _acknowledge that I didn't just make this up?_ Happy to pay you $200 for a reply to this email within the next 72 hours
-Anna said she didn't want to receive [cheerful price](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price) offers from me anymore; previously, she had regarded my custom of recklessly throwing money at people to get what I wanted as good-faith libertarianism between consenting adults, but now she was afraid that if she accepted, it would be portrayed in some future Ben Hoffman essay as an instance of her _using_ me. She agreed that someone could have gotten the ideals I had gotten out of those posts, but there was also evidence from that time pointing the other way (_e.g._, ["Politics Is the Mind-Killer"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer)), that it shouldn't be surprising if people steered clear of controversy.
+Anna said she didn't want to receive [cheerful price](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price) offers from me anymore; previously, she had regarded my occasional custom of recklessly throwing money at friends to get what I wanted as good-faith libertarianism between consenting adults, but now she was afraid that if she accepted, it would be portrayed in some future Ben Hoffman essay as an instance of her _using_ me. She agreed that someone could have gotten the ideals I had gotten out of those posts, but there was also evidence from that time pointing the other way (_e.g._, ["Politics Is the Mind-Killer"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer)), that it shouldn't be surprising if people steered clear of controversy.
I replied: but when forming the original let's-be-apolitical vision in 2008, we did not anticipate that whether or not I should cut my dick off would _become_ a political issue. That was new evidence about whether the original vision was wise! I wasn't particularly trying to do politics with my idiosyncratic special interest; I was trying to think seriously about the most important thing in my life and only do the minimum amount of politics necessary to protect my ability to think. If 2019-era "rationalists" were going to commit a trivial epistemology mistake that interfered with my ability to think seriously about the most important thing in my life, but couldn't correct the mistake even after it was pointed out, then the "rationalists" were _worse than useless_ to me. This probably didn't matter causally (I wasn't an AI researcher, therefore I didn't matter), but it might matter timelessly (if I was part of [a reference class that included AI researchers](/2017/Jan/from-what-ive-tasted-of-desire/)).
I was tempted to email links to the blog posts to the Santa Rosa _Press-Democrat_ reporter covering the incident (as part of my information-sharing-is-good virtue ethics), but decided to refrain because I predicted that Anna would prefer I didn't.
-The main relevance of this incident to my Whole Dumb Story is that Ziz's memoir–manifesto posts included [a 5500 word section about me](https://archive.ph/jChxP#selection-1325.0-1325.4). Ziz portrays me as a slave to social reality, throwing trans women under the bus to appease the forces of cissexism. (I mostly don't think that's what's going on with me, but I can see why the theory was appealing.) I was flattered that someone had so much to say about me, even if I was being portrayed negatively.
+The main relevance of this incident to my Whole Dumb Story is that Ziz's memoir–manifesto posts included [a 5500 word section about me](https://archive.ph/jChxP#selection-1325.0-1325.4). Ziz portrays me as a slave to social reality, throwing trans women under the bus to appease the forces of cissexism. (I don't think that's what's going on with me, but I can see why the theory was appealing.) I was flattered that someone had so much to say about me, even if I was being portrayed negatively.
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During a phone call around early December 2019, Michael had pointed out that since [MIRI's 2019 fundraiser](https://intelligence.org/2019/12/02/miris-2019-fundraiser/) was going on, and we had information about how present-day MIRI differed from its marketing story, there was a time-sensitive opportunity to reach out to a perennial major donor, whom I'll call "Ethan", and fill him in on what we thought we knew about the Blight.
-On 14 December 2019, I wrote to Jessica and Jack Gallagher, another disaffected ex-MIRI researcher, asking how we should organize this. (Jessica and Jack had relevant testimony about working at MIRI, which would be of more central interest to "Ethan" than my story about how the "rationalists" had lost their way.) Michael also mentioned "Tabitha", a lawyer who had been in the MIRI orbit for a long time, as another person to talk to.
+On 14 December 2019, I wrote to Jessica and Jack Gallagher, asking how we should organize this. (Jessica and Jack had relevant testimony about working at MIRI, which would be of more central interest to "Ethan" than my story about how the "rationalists" had lost their way.) Michael also mentioned "Tabitha", a lawyer who had been in the MIRI orbit for a long time, as another person to talk to.
About a week later, I apologized, saying that I wanted to postpone setting up the meeting, partially because I was on a roll with my productive blogging spree, and partially for a psychological reason: I was feeling subjective pressure to appease Michael by doing the thing that he explicitly suggested because of my loyalty to him, but that would be wrong, because Michael's ideology said that people should follow their sense of opportunity rather than obeying orders. I might feel motivated to reach out to "Ethan" and "Tabitha" in January.
There's a dramatic episode that would fit here chronologically if this were an autobiography (which existed to tell my life story), but since this is a topic-focused memoir (which exists because my life happens to contain this Whole Dumb Story which bears on matters of broader interest, even if my life would not otherwise be interesting), I don't want to spend more wordcount than is needed to briefly describe the essentials.
-I was charged by members of the "Vassarite" clique with the duty of taking care of a mentally-ill person at my house on 18 December 2020. (We did not trust the ordinary psychiatric system to act in patients' interests.) I apparently did a poor job, and ended up saying something callous on the care team group chat after a stressful night, which led to a chaotic day on the nineteenth, and an ugly falling-out between me and the group. In the interests of brevity and the privacy of the person we were trying to help, I think it's better that I don't give you a play-by-play. The details aren't particularly of public interest.
+I was charged by members of the extended "Vassarite" clique with the duty of taking care of a mentally-ill person at my house on 18 December 2020. (We did not trust the ordinary psychiatric system to act in patients' interests.) I apparently did a poor job, and ended up saying something callous on the care team group chat after a stressful night, which led to a chaotic day on the nineteenth, and an ugly falling-out between me and the group. In the interests of brevity and the privacy of the person we were trying to help, I think it's better that I don't give you a play-by-play. The details aren't particularly of public interest.
My poor performance during this incident [weighs on my conscience](/2020/Dec/liability/) particularly because I had previously been in the position of being crazy and benefiting from the help of my friends (including many of the same people involved in this incident) rather than getting sent back to psychiatric prison ("hospital", they call it a "hospital"). Of all people, I had a special debt to "pay it forward", and one might have hoped that I would also have special skills, that remembering being on the receiving end of a psychiatric tripsitting operation would help me know what to do on the giving end. Neither of those panned out.
-Some might appeal to the proverb, "All's well that ends well", noting that the person in trouble ended up recovering, and that, while the stress contributed to me having a somewhat serious relapse of some of my own psychological problems on the night of the nineteenth and in the following weeks, I ended up recovering, too. I am instead inclined to dwell on [another proverb](https://www.alessonislearned.com/), "A lesson is learned but the damage is irreversible."
+Some might appeal to the proverb, "All's well that ends well", noting that the person in trouble ended up recovering, and that, while the stress of the incident contributed to me having a somewhat serious relapse of some of my own psychological problems on the night of the nineteenth and in the following weeks, I ended up recovering, too. But recovering normal functionality after a traumatic episode doesn't imply a lack of other lasting consequences (to the psyche, to trusting relationships, _&c._). I am therefore instead inclined to dwell on [another proverb](https://www.alessonislearned.com/), "A lesson is learned but the damage is irreversible."
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✓ quote Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy
✓ hint at "Yes Requires" objector being trans
✓ quote Jack on timelines anxiety
+✓ clarify "A Lesson is Learned"
- nuance and FTX epilogue
-_ clarify "A Lesson is Learned"
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_ being friends with dogs (it's good, but do I have the wordcount budget?)
_ briefly speculate on causes of brain damage
_ quote specific exchange where I mentioned 10,000 words of philosophy that Scott was wrong—obviously the wrong play
_ Meghan Murphy got it down to four words
_ Dolphin War needs more Twitter links: "as Soares pointed out" needs link, "threw an eleven-Tweet tantrum" (probably screenshot), tussling
+_ replace anti-black joke with misogynist joke?
_ end of voting conversation needs links
_ can I rewrite to not bury the lede on "intent doesn't matter"?
_ also reference "No such thing as a tree" in Dolphin War section
The man rewrote had rewritten my personality over the internet. Everything I do, I learned from him. He couldn't be so dense as to not even see the thing we'd been trying to point at. Like, even if he were ultimately to endorse his current strategy, he should do it on purpose rather than on accident!
(Scott mostly saw it, and had [filed his honorable-discharge paperwork](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/). Anna definitely saw it, and she was doing it on purpose.)
+
+-----
+
+https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kuqgJDPF6nfscSZsZ/thread-for-discussing-bostrom-s-email-and-apology?commentId=Z7kyiPAfmtztueFFJ
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff