From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2023 22:21:05 +0000 (-0800) Subject: check in after waking up on the wrong side of the bed X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=f2711eb4827d28c001f744d9a1808f40c7f845af;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git check in after waking up on the wrong side of the bed Having trouble getting started (thinking about how I'll slot in minor posts before the memoir, including a "straight" version of the Murray 2021 review without the planned extended coda, doesn't count); in despair, put the cable back in for a little bit, as if to "start over", to say that my communications blackout hadn't "really" started yet, because it's going to be an awesome-productivity time, and I haven't been feeling awesome this morning and early afternoon. --- diff --git a/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md b/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md index f95690d..2cecd40 100644 --- a/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md +++ b/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md @@ -81,210 +81,3 @@ Murray wraps up with a chapter on "If We Don't Face Reality." The facts of IQ an As a child of the previous ideological regime, I'm strongly in favor of this! Unfortunately, I am not feeling optimistic about the American creed's prospects. Murray notes that the ideal of individualism is unnatural—we evolved to be loyal to our ingroup and distrust outsiders. A dominant group serving its own interests at the expense of others is the natural form of government; the American experiment—to the extent it was ever real—was the exception that required careful cultivation. But part of what made equality before the law such an effective marketing promise was the unstated premise that it would lead to, you know, _actual_ equality. If that's empirically not true—if people don't _believe_ that it's true—what happens to our Society? I don't know. - ----- - -... and that's the book review that I would _prefer_ to write. A social-science review of a social-science book, for social-science nerds, in a world that wasn't _about to end_. Let me explain. - -When scholars like Murray write about "intelligence", they're talking about a summary of the differences _between_ humans: we can measure how well different humans perform at various verbal or spatial or mathematical thinking-tasks, and it turns out that, on average, people who are good at one thinking-task also tend to be good at others. Graph all the test scores on an appropriately high-dimensional plot, and [the longest axis of the hyperellipsoid](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/#the-length-of-a-hyperellipsoid) represents "general intelligence"—the dimension of human variation that we recognize as "smart" _vs._ "dumb." - -But this particular dick-measuring contest takes place in the context of a human civilization; it doesn't tell us very much about "intelligence" as a natural phenomenon—the capacity of an agent to achieve goals across a variety of environments. Maybe some humans read better than others, but from the standpoint of eternity, reading itself is a _recent_ cultural practice [(invented only 3500 years ago)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy#Prehistoric_and_ancient_literacy) that piggybacks off of natural language capabilities that _all_ developmentally normal humans share. Cats and crows and octopuses _do_ have "intelligence"—various cognitive abilities that let them integrate sensory information into a model of their environment, allocate attention, execute motor plans to seek prey or avoid predators, _&c._, but you can't give them a [Stanford–Binet IQ test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford%E2%80%93Binet_Intelligence_Scales), which was designed around the _specific_ set of abilties that humans have in common. But, in principle, humans aren't special. - -And yet—it seems like humans _are_ special, in some ways. Of all the creatures on [the tree of life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(biology)), our lineage "took over the world" in the sense that if humans want a resource that cats or crows or octopuses are using, the nonhuman side of the ensuing conflict is predictably going to lose. (To the extent that we don't usually think of ourselves as engaging in a "conflict". Animals aren't _enemies_; they're just in the way.) This is not because humans are stronger or have sharper teeth than other creatures, but because of something about our "intelligence" in the natural-phenomenon sense, not the IQ test variation sense. It's not even necessarily about _individual_ human intelligence being a particularly formidable force: given no tools and no friends, and confronted by a hungry lion at ten paces, it doesn't seem easy to survive by thinking of some incredibly clever plan. If you had a gun, you could shoot the lion, but [no one individual knows how to make a gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil) all by themselves, starting from nothing. - -Rather, the power of humanity over the rest of the biosphere has to do with our species having evolved a suite of cognitive capabilities adequate to support the accumulation of culture and technology. If you already had a spear, you might be able to think of of some incredibly clever plan to get a slightly sharper spear—which everyone in your tribe could imitate. And so on up the tech tree. - -[TODO: ↓ clunky prose probably needs a rewrite after better outlining] - -You can think of events on Earth before the rise of human civilization as mostly being shaped by evolution by natural selection: new complex ordered phenomena arose as the product of genetic mutations that allowed their bearers to survive and reproduce, thereby increasing the frequency of the mutation. Natural selection is a form of _optimization_: the accumulation of beneficial mutations creates functionality that looks "designed" for the purposes of reproduction, because they were selected for existence on that basis. - -But _after_ the rise of civilization, biological evolution stopped being the dominant force shaping planetary events, just because cultural evolution runs on a faster timescale. If some other species were on the evolutionary path towards developing the capabilities that would eventually result in them developing their own civilization, it basically "wouldn't matter". - -To the extent that our civilization is better for us to live in than the state of nature, it's because civilization is the product of the cumulative optimization of humans trying to acheive their goals: vast, complex infrastructure and economies look "designed" to cater to human needs—supermarkets to feed us, hospitals to heal us, cars and airplanes to take us where we want to go—because we selected them for existence on that basis. - - -[What I actually care about: the intelligence explosion; the alignment problem might be solvable by von Neumann clones; a civilization at our tech level with a more functional state religion that wasn't afraid of genetics would be able to produce them faster than we will; this is really bad guys] - -[shut down tribalist thinking: it's not like white people (or even Jews) are the pinnicle of creation; imagine the space of possible minds and consider psychic unity and know how puny we all are] - -[amplifying ancestry differences -https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/09/27/super-gaels/] - - -group diff studies -https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2019/01/what-you-cant-say-genetic-group-difference-edition/ - -[the nutritional mismatch hypothesis] - -[Cognitive Creationism, Dodging Darwin, &c.] - -[the Georgetown law professor thing: "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks."—this is actually a very straightforward consequence of affirmative action (even if you don't believe in a genetic gap); it should be possible to reason about -https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/12/georgetown-terminates-law-professor-reprehensible-comments-about-black-students - - - -"rotation" of the class axis, as people sort by cognitive ability directly rather than race?? - -Paul Christiano abstract story about what kind of agents steer the future -https://rationalaltruist.com/2013/02/27/why-will-they-be-happy/ - -https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-america-is-flunking-math-education - -https://www.unz.com/isteve/nature-tackling-systemic-racism-requires-the-system-of-science-to-change/ - -https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-not-so-great-reset-rolls-on/ - -I read everything I could about the James Watson affair in 2007 - -The debate never advances; Arthur Jensen on the Phil Donahue show -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtoqK1gsmHI - -"Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good?" (No!) -https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-brown.pdf - -https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2017/3/13/21111588/it-s-official-new-york-s-prospective-teachers-will-no-longer-have-to-pass-controversial-literacy-exa - -For the Singularity https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/05/the-artificial-life-taboo-in-biology.html - -eugenicists treated blindness as hereditary!!!! -https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,4082.0.html - -From my notebook circa November 2007— -I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm male all the way down, no matter what I say or do or even feel. This is hard to deal with because my <> I'm special or the Difference is trivial. <> (But I've _always_ been <>) - -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder - -https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-just-civil-rights - -"No causal associations between childhood family income and subsequent psychiatric disorders, substance misuse and violent crime arrests" -https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyab099/6288123 - -https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-doctors-cant-speak - -https://slate.com/technology/2021/05/sperm-counts-decline-fertility-science-white-nationalism.html - -https://dynomight.net/are-tests-irrelevant/ - -https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-psychopathic-problem-of-the-white - -It's going to be the future soon; things aren't always going to be like this - -https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1229060502984306689 -> For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it. - -> While a limited form of selection in humans is acceptable—for example, preventing a couple who are carriers of a recessive genetic defect or disease from producing an offspring with that condition—the kind of wholesale and directed selective breeding of humans suggested by the word "eugenics" is immoral, and I don't favor it at all. -https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/discovery-institute-makes-hay-of-dawkins-tweet-and-a-geneticist-mistakenly-says-that-artificial-selection-wont-work-in-humans/ - -> I hold eugenics to be completely immoral and we should not attempt to implement it. -https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1229890352275955713 - -https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838/ -https://biohackinfo.com/news-china-gene-editing-criminal-law-article-336-march-2021/ -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair - -https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/even-during-a-reckoning-mind-reading - -https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/left-targets-testing-gifted-programs/619315/ - -> I don't want to hear about black thugs raping white women, but I'm going to hear it soon if you don't stop talking about white cops killing black kids -Glenn Loury on Tucker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuPdPKHG18k - -https://www.cold-takes.com/why-ai-alignment-could-be-hard-with-modern-deep-learning/ - -https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/why-charles-murrays-new-book-is-his - -Coleman Hughes: it's possible to push back against Kendism without -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE5QcD_12fQ - -printing IQ in the NYT in 1969!!! -https://www.unz.com/isteve/news-that-used-to-be-fit-to-print/ - -https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X9Rk4rXSMnKfYLq5r/a-brief-review-of-current-and-near-future-methods-of-genetic - -http://web.archive.org/web/20201101001637/https://www.unz.com/isteve/fbi-murder-offender-ratio-for-blacks-nonblacks-ratio-for-males-females/ - -https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-capture-the-full-extent-of-the-systemic-bias-in-policing/ - -https://quillette.com/2021/07/29/charles-murrays-facing-reality-a-review/ - -"Reading Race: AI Recognises Patient's Racial Identity In Medical Images" -https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10356 -https://lukeoakdenrayner.wordpress.com/2021/08/02/ai-has-the-worst-superpower-medical-racism/ -https://www.wired.com/story/these-algorithms-look-x-rays-detect-your-race/ - -https://www.unz.com/isteve/military-discovers-that-stripping-photos-from-promotion-evaluations-hurts-blacks/ - -"Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification" -> mean heritable propensity for violence thus shifted 0.08 SD leftward with each passing generation -> the most violent 1 to 2% should form a right-hand “tail” that begins 2.33–2.05 -SD to the right of the mean propensity for homicide. If we eliminate this right-hand tail and leave only the other 98-99% to survive and reproduce, we have a selection differential of 0.027 to 0.049 SD per generation. - -https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rhg27MqkxJsnZwoYg/the-codex-skeptic-faq - -https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/is-the-conventional-wisdom-on-educational - -https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/tetlock-and-the-taliban - -Mob Justice Is Trampling Democratic Discourse -https://archive.is/aVTpr - -https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/observations-on-smarter-african-americans/ - -https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354010004_Genetic_Ancestry_and_General_Cognitive_Ability_in_a_Sample_of_American_Youths - -only 14% approval for IQ enhancement https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/12/10/biotechnology-research-viewed-with-caution-globally-but-most-support-gene-editing-for-babies-to-treat-disease/ - -"Human capital mediates natural selection in contemporary humans" -https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/ueaeco/UEA-ECO-21-02_Updated.pdf - -[TODO: Scott Alexander on "involuntary": "This sounds super Orwellian, but it really is done with the patient's best interest at heart." https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/22/navigating-and-or-avoiding-the-inpatient-mental-health-system/ ] - -[TODO: https://archive.is/HUkzY public defender - -The racist magazine _American Renaissance_ once published [an article by a public defender](https://archive.is/HUkzY) complaining about the behavior of his black clients. - -The lawyer - -> If you tell a black man that the evidence is very harmful to his case, he will blame _you_. "You ain't workin' fo' me." "It like you workin' with da State." Every public defender hears this. The more you try to explain the evidence to a black man, the angrier he gets. - -I feel a lot of sympathy for the defendant - -] - -[TODO: compare Great Oxidization Event and its timescale to the Industrial Revolution??] - -"Genetic and environmental contributions to IQ in adoptive and biological families with 30-year-old offspring" -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289621000635 - -Modernity selects against those capable of maintaining it -https://twitter.com/CovfefeAnon/status/1441997339309314049 - -https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/nyregion/gifted-talented-nyc-schools.html - -https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/10/09/the-art-institute-of-chicago-fires-all-122-of-its-unpaid-and-volunteer-docents-because-they-arent-sufficiently-diverse/ - -NCAA Task Force Recommends Students No Longer Submit SAT, ACT Scores To Promote 'Racial Equity' -https://archive.ph/QerlW - -> The American Medical Association has just released "Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts," a strange document that calls for doctors to insert progressive politics into even plain statements of fact. -https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1454468272011743239 -https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf - -https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-18/uc-slams-door-on-sat-and-all-standardized-admissions-tests - -https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/11/overstepping-auntie-relationship-parenting-advice.html - -> AMY WAX: I'm not sure that Murray and Taylor are that far apart in what they percieve to be the outcomes from the American creed. So why is Murray condemning him? -https://youtu.be/h1vQFMxPk54?t=4138 - -small town police department very blatantly makes shit up in order to collect fines; on the one hand, a clue about police stats reliability; on the other hand, imagine how much worse this could get with AI -https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-in-this-tiny-alabama-town-suck-drivers-into-legal-black-hole.html - -Prof under investigation after making comments about race and IQ in class -https://archive.ph/d5Hks - -https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/inconvenient-truths/?utm_source=pocket_mylist - -https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/10292/predicting-polygenic-selection-for-iq/ - -https://www.unz.com/isteve/justice-sotomayor-intelligent-well-informed-reasonable-minded-people-must-be-banned-from-capital-case-juries/ diff --git a/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md b/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md index 32dfa4f..5ede8e9 100644 --- a/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md +++ b/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Sherkaner Underhill (mad scientist extraordinaire), Gen. Victory Smith (military rapidly-industrializing civilization is entering its Information Age— -Every improvement is a necessarily a change, but not every change is an improvement. +Every improvement is a necessarily a change, but _not every change is an improvement_. > Unnerby started to make some weak excuse, stopped. He just couldn't pretend anymore. Besides, Sherkaner was so much easier to face than the General. "You know why I didn't come before, Sherk. In fact, I wouldn't be here now if General Smith hadn't given me explicit orders. I'd follow her through Hell, you know that. But she wants more. She wants acceptance of your perversions. I—You two have such beautiful children, Sherk. How could you do such a thing to them?" diff --git a/content/drafts/janet-mock-on-late-transitioners.md b/content/drafts/janet-mock-on-late-transitioners.md index 66c65d8..b655196 100644 --- a/content/drafts/janet-mock-on-late-transitioners.md +++ b/content/drafts/janet-mock-on-late-transitioners.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Status: draft _(a stray observation [from December 2016](/2016/Dec/joined/#reading-the-janet-mock-autobiography))_ -Janet Mock's autobiography _Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, & So Much More_ is an interesting example of an HSTS telling her story while adhering very strictly to the 2014 mainstream-trans-identity-politics party line about how all this works ("gender identity", sex "assigned at birth", _&c_.). I found myself wondering: does she ... not know [the secret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology)?? +Janet Mock's autobiography _Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, & So Much More_ is an poignant example of an HSTS telling her story while adhering very strictly to the 2014 mainstream-trans-identity-politics party line about how all this works ("gender identity", sex "assigned at birth", _&c_.). I found myself wondering: does she ... not know [the secret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology)?? (Or, you know, the story that [makes _so much more sense_ than "gender identity" as a first approximation, even if the underlying reality is going to be more complicated than that](/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/).) diff --git a/content/drafts/multi-product-review-various-agp-erotic-aids-and-implications-for-society.md b/content/drafts/multi-product-review-various-agp-erotic-aids-and-implications-for-society.md index 1c95b34..a38a427 100644 --- a/content/drafts/multi-product-review-various-agp-erotic-aids-and-implications-for-society.md +++ b/content/drafts/multi-product-review-various-agp-erotic-aids-and-implications-for-society.md @@ -1,86 +1,11 @@ -Title: Multi-Product Review: Various AGP Erotic Aids; and, Implications for Society +Title: Multi-Product Review: AI for AGP Date: 2022-11-26 Category: commentary Tags: autogynephilia, review (product), America Ferrera Status: draft -This is a chemistry fanblog now! I've decided that my favorite chemical element is [silicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon). Atomic number 14, like the fourth [Catalan number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_number). Forms _four_ covalent bonds at once. Did you know some scientists believe that there may be [silicon-based life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_biochemistry) somewhere in the universe? - -And used in making so many beautiful things ...! The [microchips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit) on which our electronic Society is built, obviously, but [silicone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone) polymers also have a wide range of applications in industrial and consumer products. - -Today, I'd like to review some ... _consumer_ products. - -Except—this isn't actually a chemistry fanblog. If you'd rather avoid being spiritually contaminated by discussion of certain _consumer products_—specifically, pornography-equivalents for men who love women and want to become what they love—you might want to stop reading and close the tab now. - -Come back next month! We're not always like this; this is usually a blog about the _science and philosophy_ of autogynephilia, not the _practice_ of it. It's just—I need to host this page of product reviews somewhere, and because science and philosophy unfortunately require some amount of empirical data, this is the place. - -

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- -... if you're still here (why?!), the reviews follow. - -### [Gold Seal NAKED Silicone Bodysuit](https://thebreastformstore.com/gold-seal-naked-silicone-bodysuit/) - - - -One of the disappointing things about breastforms is that they're [noticeably—not actually part of your body.](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/#first-breastforms) There is an _edge_ between the form and your actual chest. - -(One could _argue_ that I sort of have breasts in real life now, if you were gullible and generous to count the male gynecomastia from my five-month [HRT experiment](/tag/hrt-diary/) in 2017, which is nice, but hasn't sated the curiosity as to what it would be like to have _big_ breasts, _unarguable_ breasts—and if we can't make biological functionality out of silicone, we can at least make _size_.) - -In contrast, this bodysuit featuring fake breasts _and_ a fake vulva, all in one piece, seemed like an appealing thing to try out. ("The most jiggle and bounce imaginable", promises the website.) Compared to breastforms, the bodysuit promised to offer both a "bottom" experience, and, not a more _seamless_ transformation on "top", but rather, to put the seams in a potentially less conspicuous location (at the neck/arms/legs, rather than on the chest where they interfere with the illusion of actually having breasts). - -The suit only comes in one size, but according to the sizing chart, I ought to fit given my 37½″ underbust measurement. - -When the package arrived and I greedily opened it—the fake purple rose petals in the box were a nice touch—it became clear that it would be a tight fit, and the instructions said to apply talcum powder to my skin and the inside of the suit first. So I booked a last-minute motel room, and set out to buy talcum powder. (The CVS didn't have it, but the Berkeley Bowl had all-nautral baby powder that seemed likely to be equivalent? It said "talc-free", but I doubted the instruction authors were set on talc _specifically_.) And then to the motel to try on my new purchase in privacy away from my flatmate. - -... I did not fit. It took a huge struggle just to get the suit on at all, and I did substantial damage to it in the process, ripping a huge tear in the back (from the center to the left hip), _and_ derailing the zipper, _and_, somehow, detaching the sides of the zipper from the suit (!?). - -In retrospect, I should have taken care to heed the direction to apply the powder first before stuggling so much (I was excited, and was for some reason having trouble opening the cylinder of baby powder), and on that count, I'll easily accept the rip in the back as "my fault", but the way the zipper derailed and detached so easily seems like more of an indicator of a low-quality product? - -After the struggle and the damage, the experience of having the suit on was—underwhelming. The cleavage is visually nice (no seam when looking own at one's chest!), but the breasts hung significantly too low, which could very well be due to the way it was awkwardly draped over my shoulders with no zipper to support it in the back—but we have already spoken of what became of the zipper. The "bottom" illusion is visually pretty nice—standing some distance from the mirror and squinting. The uniformly beige skin is somehow slightly sticky (?) and looks more like silicone (which it is) than flesh. I would describe the overall effect as "cartoony." - -The suit features a condom catheter for urination. (And a vaginal cavity, though I'm not sure what that's for.) The catheter was _also_ a tight fit—that's part of the product review, not boasting—and when using the urination feature, I swear a bit of urine leaked out of the seams around my legs (!?). I'm still not sure how the hydraulics worked there. - -The seller, TheBreastFormStore.com, also offers a breast plate and "v-panties" as separate items, rather than as the one suit, and while admiring the cleavage, I suddenly realized a practical reason to prefer "top" and "bottom" as separate items. (Can't masturbate with the bottom on!) - -The product page had already warned that all sales of this item were final (would _you_ want to buy one of these used?), but the customer service rep for TheBreastFormStore.com was very nice and helpful when I wrote to them about my experience. She offered to send me glue to reattach the zipper when it was in stock, and said she could talk to her supervisor about a offering a discount on the breastplate and v-panty combination. (The emails were signed with a female name, but I assume they don't get actual women to fill these jobs?) - -I ended up trying cutting the suit in half myself to try wear the pieces separately if that would be a better fit, but the cut was a little bit too below the waist. - -I like the _idea_ of this product. It was a good effort! But I do not recommend it. - -**Cost:** $600 -**Rating:** ★ - -### [Crea FX Taylor Silicone Mask](https://www.creafx.com/en/special-make-up-effects/taylor-silicone-mask/) - -
- - -
- -This product is _amazing_. It really looks like a woman's face! Just—a detached woman's face, wrapped in tissue paper, sitting in a box! [I _said_ buying this product was probably a smart move](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#movie-grade-mask), and it turns out that buying this product was a _smart move!_ - -The skin color and texture is much more realistic than the cartoon beige of the Gold Seal bodysuit reviewed above. (I wonder how much it helps that Crea FX are visual-effects artists by trade—makers of male masks and monster masks for movies and plays—rather than being in the MtF business specifically, like the Breast Form Store. They know—I assume they _must_ know—that a lot of their female masks are purchased by guys like me with motives like mine, but we're not the _target_ demographic, the reason they mastered their skills.) - -[TODO: "they must know" link to blog post about their appaearance at the German Fetish Fair] - -Getting the mask on and off was no problem at all. (By this point, I had opened the can of baby powder.) It somehow manages to look worse in photographs than it does in the mirror? Is it possible my big Jewish nose streches out the mask's nose a bit? Whatever. Standing a distance from the mirror in a dark hotel room, I swear _I actually bought it_, and if the moment of passing to myself in the mirror was an anticlimax, it was an anticlimax I've been waiting my entire life (since puberty) for. - -The worst nonrealism is the eyeholes. Nothing is worse for making a mask look like a mask than visible eyehole seams around the eyes. But suppose I wore sunglasses. Women wear sunglasses sometimes! Could I pass to _someone else_? (Not for very long or bearing any real scrutiny, but [to someone who wasn't expecting it](/2020/Dec/crossing-the-line/).) - -I haven't cosplayed [in a couple years](/2019/Aug/a-love-that-is-out-of-anyones-control/), but it abruptly became clear I needed to test this at the next available convention! - -**Cost:** €672 -**Rating:** ★★★★½ - -### Gold Seal Padded Panties - -[hasn't arrived yet, ordered in a rush on 18 November for next week's convention; I got Large at first, couldn't find my measuring tape because my room is such a mess, saw that I had told the representative that I was a 38" around the belly button, called them up to ask to change the order to Extra large, the voice on the line sounded actually-female! how does a woman end up taking that job!!] - ### [GPT-3](https://beta.openai.com/playground) -We now turn to some products that make use of silicon in a very different way. - OpenAI's GPT-3 language model has been wowing critics with [its ability to write generic webslush text](/2022/Apr/autogynephilia-should-be-recognized-openly/). What is less known is that this versatile ability also makes it pretty good at writing generic webslush erotica! For example, this prompt: @@ -173,5 +98,3 @@ https://laion-aesthetic.datasette.io/laion-aesthetic-6pls/images?_search=Nana+Vi ### Takeaways Why write about this? Why write about icky erotic stuff on a blog that also has Science and Philosophy stuff that's _unambiguously_ safe for work? Well, in the current year I think there's actually a public interest in being clear that—if I'm the kind of person who becomes a trans women in Berkeley, which no one seems to dispute—this is the kind of thing people like me spend a lot of time on. And—it just, doesn't really seem like something actual-females would relate to - - * I didn't masturbate from Sat. until Wed. in anticipation of trying on the mask in a hotel room; I was delighted that I came a little bit (entirely flaccid) while shitting—that's a sign that I had succeeded in building up, and yet somehow I didn't feel very horny or get as much pleasure when the time came? Maybe I'm getting old? diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md index 25a5147..44c1046 100644 --- a/notes/memoir-sections.md +++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md @@ -1,12 +1,4 @@ marked TODO blocks— -✓ Slate Star Codex went down [pt. 4] -✓ revise pseudonymity graf [pt. 2] -✓ Transgender Map mis-doxxed me [pt. 2] -✓ last day at SwiftStack, alt-right quip [pt. 2] -✓ "If Clarity" recap intro [pt. 4] -✓ Steven's gravity objection [pt. 4] -✓ "Some Clarifications on Rationalist Blogging" [pt. 4] -✓ more philosophy of language blogging [pt. 4] _ "Agreeing with Stalin" recap intro [pt. 5] _ confronting Olivia [pt. 2] _ scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility" [pt. 4] @@ -58,21 +50,6 @@ New (bad) time estimate: With internet available— -✓ HEXACO model -✓ archive.is misdoxxing -✓ negative utilitarian Planecrash tag -✓ my Tweet about upgrading to a block -✓ archive.is Nov. 2016 Scott Tumblr pushback (already done) -✓ tag giving full name of Keepers -✓ 2014 April Fool's Day confession -✓ Smallpox Eradication Day -✓ privacy ask -✓ a poem I wrote in the _Less Wrong_ comments in 2011 -✓ May 2019 thread vs. Vanessa -✓ Sword of Good -✓ Yudkowsky on AlphaGo -✓ tags on Ordinary Merrin -✓ check summary of Nov. 2016 link _ "not hard to find": link to more /r/itsafetish-like anecdotes _ Keltham's masochism insight _ stats of SIAI vs. SingInst hits (for ^siai footnote) @@ -2059,3 +2036,8 @@ https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1764946#reply-1764946 > This is Keltham desperately pretending not to be at all starstruck, because he was not previously way into the Merrin fandom but even he has heard of the Ordinary Merrin Conspiracy, wherein Merrin has some weird psychological hangup about believing she is a totally normal and ordinary person or even something of a struggling low achiever, and everybody in Civilization is coordinating to pretend around her that ordinary normal people totally get their weird Exception Handling training scenarios televised to a million watchers on a weekly basis. > It makes her - simultaneously an ultra-high-achieving role model who's much more famous than you are, and also, somebody who's committing this very large cognitive error where you know better than her about it. Which is not usually something you can say about a major public figure, you would not usually expect to be in a position where you would ever know about a cognitive error a public figure was committing, because they'd already have advisors much much smarter than you. But if you screw Merrin, you're not, like, just some strictly vastly inferior being that she's allowed into her cuddleroom. There is at least one topic you could totally win an argument with her about, as judged by impartial judges: namely, is she in fact a fairly ordinary person really. But you must never ever mention it in front of her. + +https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fStCX6RXmgxkTBe73/towards-a-weaker-longtermism?commentId=Kga3KGx6WAhkNM3qY +> I am broadly fine with people devoting 50%, 25% or 75% of themselves to longtermism, in that case, as opposed to tearing themselves apart with guilt and ending up doing nothing much, which seems to be the main alternative. + +for normal people, when your favorite author gets worse, you just shrug and accept it and enjoy the classics, but when your favorite author is also the Pope of your religion and also in several Discord servers with you, you end up wasting a lot of time scrutinizing their emoji-reacts diff --git a/notes/nevada_annotations.md b/notes/nevada_annotations.md index df3605f..530a6d1 100644 --- a/notes/nevada_annotations.md +++ b/notes/nevada_annotations.md @@ -235,3 +235,11 @@ brutal not anymore, thanks to the likes of you I guess the Archives of Sexual Behaviors is still kind of a big deal + +[James has stolen Maria's drugs and ditched her.] + +... that's it?? + +That's the whole book?! + +WTF diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt index 3a87865..4bbc788 100644 --- a/notes/post_ideas.txt +++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt @@ -1,8 +1,6 @@ pre-memoir— -_ Book Review: Nevada _ I'm Dropping the Pseudonym From This Blog _ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia -_ Hrunkner Unnerby and the Shallowness of Progress memoir— _ (pt. 2) Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer @@ -10,28 +8,28 @@ _ (pt. 3) A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning _ (pt. 4) If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them _ (pt. 5) Agreeing With Stalin in Ways that Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles - -Big posts— -_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data -_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America - Minor camera-ready— _ Interlude XXII _ Janet Mock on Late Transitioners Minor— -_ Beyond the Binary _ Book Review: Johnny the Walrus +_ Beyond the Binary _ Happy Meal +_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality (short version) +_ Book Review: Nevada _ Elision _vs_. Choice -_ Multi-Product Review: Various AGP Erotic Aids -_ Beckett Mariner Is Trans https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/in3g92/was_mariner_a_teenager_on_the_enterprised/ +_ Hrunkner Unnerby and the Shallowness of Progress +_ Multi-Product Review: AI for AGP _ Link: "On Transitions, Freedom of Form, [...]" -_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality (short version?) +_ Beckett Mariner Is Trans https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/in3g92/was_mariner_a_teenager_on_the_enterprised/ ------- +Big posts— +_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data +_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America _ Biological Sex Actually Exists _ Racial Pseudoscience on the Faculty https://archive.ph/ZxVYk _ Never Going to Find You Faking