I see the phrase "bad faith" thrown around more than I think people know what it means. "Bad faith" doesn't mean "with ill intent", and it's more specific than "dishonest": it's [adopting the surface appearance of being moved by one set of motivations, while actually acting from another](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith).
-For example, an [insurance company employee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_adjuster) who goes through the motions of investigating your claim while privately intending to deny it might never consciously tell an explicit "lie", but is definitely acting in bad faith: they're asking you questions, demanding evidence, _&c._ in order to _make it look like_ you'll get paid if you prove the loss occurred—whereas in reality, you're just not going to be paid. Your responses to the claim inspector aren't completely casually _inert_: if you can make an extremely strong case that the loss occurred as you say, then the claim inspector might need to work very hard to come up with some ingenious excuse to deny your claim in ways that exhibit general claim-inspection principles. But at the end of the day, the inspector is going to say what they need to say in order to protect the company's loss ratio, as is personally prudent.
+For example, an [insurance company employee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_adjuster) who goes through the motions of investigating your claim while privately intending to deny it might never consciously tell an explicit "lie", but is definitely acting in bad faith: they're asking you questions, demanding evidence, _&c._ in order to _make it look like_ you'll get paid if you prove the loss occurred—whereas in reality, you're just not going to be paid. Your responses to the claim inspector aren't completely casually _inert_: if you can make an extremely strong case that the loss occurred as you say, then the claim inspector might need to put some effort into coming up with some ingenious excuse to deny your claim in ways that exhibit general claim-inspection principles. But at the end of the day, the inspector is going to say what they need to say in order to protect the company's loss ratio, as is personally prudent.
-With this understanding of bad faith, we can read Yudkowsky's "it is sometimes personally prudent [...]" comment as admitting that his behavior on politically-charged topics is in bad faith—where "bad faith" isn't a meaningless insult, but [literally refers](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/can-crimes-be-discussed-literally/) to the pretending-to-have-one-set-of-motivations-while-acting-according-to-another behavior, such that accusations of bad faith can be actually true or false in the real world. Yudkowsky will never consciously tell an explicit "lie", but he'll go through the motions to _make it look like_ he's honestly engaging with questions where I need the right answers in order to make extremely impactful social and medical decisions—whereas in reality, he's only going to address a selected subset of the relevant evidence and arguments that won't get him in trouble.
+With this understanding of bad faith, we can read Yudkowsky's "it is sometimes personally prudent [...]" comment as admitting that his behavior on politically-charged topics is in bad faith—where "bad faith" isn't a meaningless insult, but [literally refers](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/can-crimes-be-discussed-literally/) to the pretending-to-have-one-set-of-motivations-while-acting-according-to-another behavior, such that accusations of bad faith can be true or false. Yudkowsky will never consciously tell an explicit "lie", but he'll go through the motions to _make it look like_ he's honestly engaging with questions where I need the right answers in order to make extremely impactful social and medical decisions—whereas in reality, he's only going to address a selected subset of the relevant evidence and arguments that won't get him in trouble with progressives.
To his credit, he _will_ admit that he's only willing to address a selected subset of arguments—but while doing so, he claims an absurd "confidence in [his] own ability to independently invent everything important that would be on the other side of the filter and check it [himself] before speaking" while _simultaneously_ mischaracterizing his opponents' beliefs! ("Gendered Pronouns For Everyone and Asking To Leave The System Is Lying" doesn't pass anyone's [ideological Turing test](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html).)
-Counterarguments aren't completely causally _inert_: if you can make an extremely strong case that Biological Sex Is Sometimes More Relevant Than Self-Declared Gender Identity, Yudkowsky needs to work very hard to come up with some ingenious excuse for why he technically never said otherwise, in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles. But at the end of the day, Yudkowsky is going to say what he needs to say in order to protect his reputation, as is personally prudent.
+Counterarguments aren't completely causally _inert_: if you can make an extremely strong case that Biological Sex Is Sometimes More Relevant Than Self-Declared Gender Identity, Yudkowsky will put some effort into coming up with some ingenious excuse for why he _technically_ never said otherwise, in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles. But at the end of the day, Yudkowsky is going to say what he needs to say in order to protect his reputation, as is personally prudent.
+Yudkowsky seems to think this level of bad faith is fine, because allegedly "people do _know_ they're living in a half-Stalinist environment." But the _reason_ censorship is such an effective tool in the hands of dictators like Stalin is because it ensures that many people _don't_ know—and that those who know (or suspect) don't have [game-theoretic common knowledge](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9QxnfMYccz9QRgZ5z/the-costly-coordination-mechanism-of-common-knowledge#Dictators_and_freedom_of_speech) that others do too.
-["Everybody knows" https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/ ]
+Zvi Mowshowitz has [written about how the false assertion that "everybody knows" something](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/) is used justify deception: if "everybody knows" that we can't talk about biological sex (the reasoning goes), then no one is being deceived when our allegedly truthseeking discussion carefully steers clear of any reference to the reality of biological sex when it would otherwise be relevant.
-["People are better off at the end of that"— _who_ is better off? I'm not better off ]
+But if it were _actually_ the case that everybody knew (and everybody knew that everybody knew), then what would be the point of the censorship? It's not coherent to claim that no one is being harmed by censorship because everyone knows about it, because the entire appeal and purpose of censorship is precisely that someone doesn't know and someone with power wants to _keep_ it that way.
-[Agreeing with Stalin that 2+2=4 is fine; the problem is a sustained pattern of _selectively_ bring up pro-Party points while ignoring anti-Party facts that would otherwise be relevant to the topic of interest, including stonewalling commenters who try to point out relevance; ]
+For the savvy people in the know, it would certainly be _convenient_ if everyone secretly knew: then they wouldn't have to face the tough choice between playing along with
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+["People are better off at the end of that"— _who_ is better off? We need a conflict-theoretic analysis]
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+[I was going to save the Whole Dumb Story for a different post, and keep this post narrowly scoped to just critiquing the Feb. 2021 pronouns post, but in order to explain the problem with "Everybody knows" and "People are better off after that", I need to breifly summarize the context of this discussion which explains why _I_ didn't know and _I'm_ not better off—with the understanding that this only a brief summary, and I might tell the long version in a separate post—if it's still necessary, relative to everything else I need to get around to writing]
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+[I _never_ expected to end up arguing about the mintuiae of pronoun conventions; I wanted to talk about the real issues]
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+[It all started back in the 'aughts, when the occasional things about sex differences that cropped up in the Sequences (especially "Changing Emotions" and the Extropians mailing list pre) turned out to be useful for understanding what was going on with my gender thing; I wrote about this in a previous post, ["Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences, in Relation to my Gender Problems"](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/).]
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+[But that was all about me—I assumed "trans" was a different thing. My first clue that I might not be living in that world came from—Eliezer Yudkowsky, with the "at least 20% of the ones with penises are actually women" thing]
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+[So I ended up arguing with people about the two-type taxonomy, and I noticed that those discussions kept getting _derailed_ on some variation of "The word woman doesn't actually mean that". So I took the bait, and starting arguing against that, and then Yudkowsky comes back to the subject with his "Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning"—and I go on a philosophy of language crusade, and Yudkowsky eventually clarifies, and _then_ he comes back _again_ in Feb. 2022 with his "simplest and best protocol"]
+
+[At this point, the nature of the game is very clear. Yudkowsky wants to mood-affiliate with being on the right side of history, subject to the constraint of not saying anything false. I want to actually make sense of what's actually going on in the world, because _I need the correct answer to decided whether or not to cut my dick off_. On "his turn", he comes up with some pompous proclamation that's optimized to make the "pro-trans" faction look smart and good and the "anti-trans" faction look dumb and bad, "in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles." On my turn, I put in an absurd amount of effort explaining in exhaustive, _exhaustive_ detail why Yudkowsky's pompous proclamation was substantively misleading as constrated to what you would say if you were actually trying to make sense of the world.]
+
+[nearest unblocked strategy; I would prefer to have a real discussion under the assumption of good faith, but _I tried that first_. Object-level disucssion with Yudkowsky is a waste of time as long as he's going to play these games; there's nothing left for me to do but jump up a meta level and explain, to anyone who capable of hearing it, why in this case the assumption of good faith has been empirically falsified]
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+[If it were _actually true_ that there was no harm from the bad faith because people know they're living in a half-Stalinist environment, then he wouldn't have tried to get away with the "20% of the ones with penises" thing]
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+[All this despite the fact that all my heretical opinions are _literally_ just his opinions from the 'aughts. Seriously, you think I'm smart enough to come up with stuff indepedently? I'm not! I ripped it all off from Yudkowsky back in the 'aughts when he gave a shit about telling the truth. Does he expect us not to notice? Well, I guess it's been working out for him so far.]
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+[Agreeing with Stalin that 2+2=4 is fine; the problem is a sustained pattern of _selectively_ bring up pro-Party points while ignoring anti-Party facts that would otherwise be relevant to the topic of interest, including stonewalling commenters who try to point out relevance; I think I'm doing better: I can point to places where I argue "the other side", because I know that sides are fake]
+
+[I can win concessions, like "On the Argumentative Form", but I don't want concessions; I want to _actually get the goddamned right answer_]
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