Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git
2 years agograb some quotes using internet access
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:45:19 +0000 (23:45 -0700)]
grab some quotes using internet access

I was sad and lazy today. I think I can turn it around tomorrow.

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Thu, 25 Aug 2022 18:57:43 +0000 (11:57 -0700)]
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2 years agomemoir: aborting Michael's intervention, proton concession
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 22 Aug 2022 01:12:14 +0000 (18:12 -0700)]
memoir: aborting Michael's intervention, proton concession

2 years agomemoir: March–early April 2017 email review
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 21 Aug 2022 20:04:29 +0000 (13:04 -0700)]
memoir: March–early April 2017 email review

The email review notefile has been helpful for pt. 3 (working title "A
Hill ..."); let's do it for pt. 2 (working title "Blanchard's
Dangerous Idea ...") as well. Most of these emails are boring until we
get to the psych ward incident, which I don't feel like reading in
full detail ...

2 years agomemoir: some reading/editing in late 2018 region ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 21 Aug 2022 19:00:19 +0000 (12:00 -0700)]
memoir: some reading/editing in late 2018 region ...

Reading existing prose and making a few tweaks isn't the most
productive possible motion (it definitely needs to be done at the end,
but it doesn't obviously need to be done now, with so many gaps in the
ms.), but it is motion. Fire and motion!

2 years agomemoir: fold in Emperor Norton example
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 21 Aug 2022 02:07:21 +0000 (19:07 -0700)]
memoir: fold in Emperor Norton example

I've regretted not thinking to include the Rutherford B. Hayes quip in
the original "... To Make Predictions" and had considered back-editing
it in. But it fits here.

2 years agomemoir: more shoveling
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 21 Aug 2022 00:05:30 +0000 (17:05 -0700)]
memoir: more shoveling

I think I have enough of an idea of where these blocks of text should
live, that I can drop them into the ms. proper and continue to sculpt
and rearrange them there, rather than them being strewn through the
unreadable mess of the scrapfile.

The ms. proper having a larger wordcount than the "sections" scrapfile
seems like a significant milestone? But still so much further to go.

2 years agomemoir: shovel pronouns coda into ms.
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 23:29:26 +0000 (16:29 -0700)]
memoir: shovel pronouns coda into ms.

2 years agoa few copy edits to "Friendship Practices"
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 23:13:28 +0000 (16:13 -0700)]
a few copy edits to "Friendship Practices"

2 years agomemoir: treachery, faith, and the great river §
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 23:12:14 +0000 (16:12 -0700)]
memoir: treachery, faith, and the great river §

2 years agomemoir: tapping at sections ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 20:12:10 +0000 (13:12 -0700)]
memoir: tapping at sections ...

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 05:21:35 +0000 (22:21 -0700)]
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2 years agocomplete draft of "Friendship Practices"
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 04:44:40 +0000 (21:44 -0700)]
complete draft of "Friendship Practices"

People really don't do things! I literally had this idea at least six
years ago, and I'm only now finishing the draft, which is ... less
than 1000 words. It shouldn't take more than two days to write 1000
words. How many day-equivalents did I spend doing less valuable things
for those six years?

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 20 Aug 2022 03:48:51 +0000 (20:48 -0700)]
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2 years agomemoir: poke at outline and prose ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 19 Aug 2022 19:25:33 +0000 (12:25 -0700)]
memoir: poke at outline and prose ...

I probably have enough outlining? What I actually need to do with
large blocks of time is to honestly pick a TODO section (it could be
small, it could be out of order, but it has to be a specific section
with a specific subgoal) and start filling it in with actual
sentences. That's the only way to move forward; everything else is
lying.

2 years agomemoir: next pipeline step—revise roughy outline notes from email notes
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:53:09 +0000 (11:53 -0700)]
memoir: next pipeline step—revise roughy outline notes from email notes

2 years agocheck in ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:27:18 +0000 (11:27 -0700)]
check in ...

2 years agomemoir: finish email review
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:21:39 +0000 (17:21 -0700)]
memoir: finish email review

Review of Sept. 2020 to present went faster because not much happened.

Having gone through the whole email history is useful, because it
gives me the complete temporal skeleton of what happened when to build
the ms. on—and because, now I don't have "I can do more email review
now" as an excuse to procrastinate the hard work of actually writing
prose.

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Thu, 18 Aug 2022 21:07:14 +0000 (14:07 -0700)]
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2 years agomemoir: on defending against "alt-right" categorization
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 14 Aug 2022 22:40:12 +0000 (15:40 -0700)]
memoir: on defending against "alt-right" categorization

2 years agomemoir: Anna–Michael feud
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 14 Aug 2022 21:05:26 +0000 (14:05 -0700)]
memoir: Anna–Michael feud

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 14 Aug 2022 17:55:24 +0000 (10:55 -0700)]
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2 years agomemoir: email review up to September 2020
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 14 Aug 2022 06:12:10 +0000 (23:12 -0700)]
memoir: email review up to September 2020

2 years agomemoir: support from Michael
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 14 Aug 2022 00:28:48 +0000 (17:28 -0700)]
memoir: support from Michael

2 years agomemoir: tap at growing ms.
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 13 Aug 2022 20:24:00 +0000 (13:24 -0700)]
memoir: tap at growing ms.

2 years agomemoir: email review to 21 January 2020
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 13 Aug 2022 20:22:07 +0000 (13:22 -0700)]
memoir: email review to 21 January 2020

2 years agomemoir: email review through 2019
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 13 Aug 2022 00:13:02 +0000 (17:13 -0700)]
memoir: email review through 2019

Pushing the email review that far was good (compared to the baseline
of doing nothing because people don't, in general, do things), but
it's important that I grow the ms. itself!!

2 years agocheck in before targeted confrontations
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:09:14 +0000 (12:09 -0700)]
check in before targeted confrontations

Ripping out the network cable as on previous weekends turned out to be
a disappointing intervention: there's always some way to waste time
(with FreeCell or paper books or just pacing) if that's what you want
to do.

I'll keep the network off (via software) during focus blocks, but the
intervention that really matters is the focus blocks: to actually
start the timer, and honestly engage with the ms. while the timer is
running. Yesterday I just hung out (book delivery to Valinor, made
another book for Amelia), and I've hung out in the morning today
(after doing a quick dayjob thing), but it's only—it's only a little
bit after noon. There's still time for this to be an honest full
writing day. I've got my scratchers (as a reward when finishing a
block); I've got my mellocreme pumpkins (as a reward when starting a
block). All I have to do is—start the timer. And be brave enough to
accept what that implies.

2 years agomemoir: for the uniform; outlining
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 8 Aug 2022 01:58:17 +0000 (18:58 -0700)]
memoir: for the uniform; outlining

2 years agomemoir: impulsive points
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 7 Aug 2022 23:26:43 +0000 (16:26 -0700)]
memoir: impulsive points

2 years agomemoir: five impulsive points ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 7 Aug 2022 20:36:41 +0000 (13:36 -0700)]
memoir: five impulsive points ...

I probably want to be more aggressive about distilling here, rather
than pasting in the majority of the email; the specific five points
here aren't that important to the story.

2 years agomemoir: overheating incident ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 7 Aug 2022 06:16:25 +0000 (23:16 -0700)]
memoir: overheating incident ...

(OK, further writing progress today got distracted by the Stable
Diffusion beta.)

2 years agomemoir: prelude to March 2019 overheating incident
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 6 Aug 2022 22:52:00 +0000 (15:52 -0700)]
memoir: prelude to March 2019 overheating incident

2 years agobe real
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 6 Aug 2022 19:59:23 +0000 (12:59 -0700)]
be real

Given the default that people don't do things (I still have a couple
paragraphs to go before finishing "Friendship Practices", a tiny short
story whose draftfile has been sitting in the repo since the very
beginning), it's entirely possible for me to not finish this memoir
before the world ends! (In addition to being short, "Friendship
Practices" doesn't even feature anything particularly painful or
difficult to confront; it just takes a modest amount of writing-effort
to be done correctly, and it's easy to just—never fit in the effort,
over five years.) If I want to avoid the fate of dying incomplete, I
need to do better than my last two and half days—a lot better.

If we can get ten blocks in by 2000, then I'll feel OK about myself
(and plug in my network cable and try out the Stable Diffusion beta).

2 years agomemoir: elaborate on theocrats and speech codes
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 6 Aug 2022 17:26:26 +0000 (10:26 -0700)]
memoir: elaborate on theocrats and speech codes

2 years agofeud poke
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 6 Aug 2022 06:10:46 +0000 (23:10 -0700)]
feud poke

2 years agopoke
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 6 Aug 2022 04:09:09 +0000 (21:09 -0700)]
poke

Having a bad Friday, too!? What was the point of bargaining for a
three-day dayjobweek if I'm just going to spend an extra two days per
week procrastinating? Tomorrow needs to be different.

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 6 Aug 2022 00:05:10 +0000 (17:05 -0700)]
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2 years agomemoir: more email review (April and July 2019)
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 5 Aug 2022 20:24:30 +0000 (13:24 -0700)]
memoir: more email review (April and July 2019)

I've mostly been going through my "Sent" folder, so I missed the
"sadism and tactics" thread the first time.

I notice that I feel a bit of resistance to reading the "Michael
Vassar and the theory of optimal gossip" thread, even after having
broken through my resistance to doing any memoir-work at all. I guess
I can interpret the "easy" work (email review) suddenly getting a bit
harder as a prompt to switch over to the real work (actually growing
the ms.).

I do like this multi-filter process: first review my emails and
compile an outline of that to understand what I was thinking when,
then distill that into an outline of what I want to say in the ms.,
then convert that outline to actual prose. Not sure whether the second
or third step is harder.

2 years agomemoir: email review up to "AI Timelines Scam" (11 July 2019)
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 5 Aug 2022 06:25:01 +0000 (23:25 -0700)]
memoir: email review up to "AI Timelines Scam" (11 July 2019)

I haven't been proactive about getting my writing half-weeks off to a
solid start on recent Thursdays—and I wasn't proactive for most of
today, but in the evening, I got a lot of email review done, and I was
actually in the flow—actually feeling OK about looking at the
history. If I can get into flow about writing the history tomorrow,
then I'll be on track to be alive for the end of the world.

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Thu, 4 Aug 2022 06:30:48 +0000 (23:30 -0700)]
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2 years agomemoir: email review up to 30 March 2019
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 1 Aug 2022 01:11:49 +0000 (18:11 -0700)]
memoir: email review up to 30 March 2019

A lot of content to still turn into prose. Going over this, I'm struck
by—the amount of time we spent on this is absurd. I think confronting
the paper trail is helping me see this project as "telling a story
that actually happened" rather than being in the vengeful mode of
thinking that the purpose of this post is to have receipts for
denouncing Yudkowsky as Bad and Dishonest. I think it's
higher-integrity and better writing if it's just a story rather than
an instrument of revenge, although the story can talk about
instrument-of-revenge temptations.

2 years agomemoir: fill text through initial posse formation
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 31 Jul 2022 23:03:44 +0000 (16:03 -0700)]
memoir: fill text through initial posse formation

2 years agomemoir: continue to review overheating incident email log
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 31 Jul 2022 22:08:12 +0000 (15:08 -0700)]
memoir: continue to review overheating incident email log

2 years agomemoir: more email review up to March '19 overnight overheating incident
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 31 Jul 2022 20:09:16 +0000 (13:09 -0700)]
memoir: more email review up to March '19 overnight overheating incident

2 years agomemoir: dutiful section-filling (subtler problem than ostracism)
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:24:31 +0000 (12:24 -0700)]
memoir: dutiful section-filling (subtler problem than ostracism)

2 years agomemoir tap
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 31 Jul 2022 03:50:33 +0000 (20:50 -0700)]
memoir tap

2 years agomemoir: more email review and point extraction
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:03:59 +0000 (17:03 -0700)]
memoir: more email review and point extraction

My motivation got derailed, again, in the first part of the day, but
maybe I'm salvaging the afternoon/evening?! Reading emails is
important and builds momentum, but I have enough extracted points now
that I should be spending a few blocks trying to sculpt them into
ms.-quality paragraphs before going back to the email log.

2 years agomemoir: extract points to hit
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 30 Jul 2022 23:08:29 +0000 (16:08 -0700)]
memoir: extract points to hit

2 years agomemoir: Tweet reply edits, elaborating Dec. 2018 Alexander outreach
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 30 Jul 2022 18:13:22 +0000 (11:13 -0700)]
memoir: Tweet reply edits, elaborating Dec. 2018 Alexander outreach

2 years agometablog copyedits: where→whether, "year" is metonymy
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 30 Jul 2022 05:01:28 +0000 (22:01 -0700)]
metablog copyedits: where→whether, "year" is metonymy

2 years agomemoir: retreating into email review (to 21 February 2019)
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 30 Jul 2022 04:54:58 +0000 (21:54 -0700)]
memoir: retreating into email review (to 21 February 2019)

It's getting late—today was significantly less productive than planned
(7 blocks plus anything else I do before bed), but significantly more
productive than last Friday (3 blocks!). Hopefully this email review
has set me up for a critical success tomorrow? (There were a lot of
insights about silencing, &c. from Ben and the gang that I just need
to weave into the ms., context-setting into the history as necessary,
but focusing on the ideas rather than named individuals sending emails
on dates.)

And when I do more email-review tomorrow, I'm all queued up (they say
to leave your work on a thread to sieze the next day) to charge
forward from my blunder on 22 February: it hurts to read, but I'm
pre-paid the pain by looking at it now, so it shouldn't stop me
tomorrow.

2 years agomemoir: "peace be unto him" analogy, edit sports discussion
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 29 Jul 2022 22:22:46 +0000 (15:22 -0700)]
memoir: "peace be unto him" analogy, edit sports discussion

2 years agodrafting "Friendship Practices of the ... Plain Speech Valley Squirrels"
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 29 Jul 2022 20:31:50 +0000 (13:31 -0700)]
drafting "Friendship Practices of the ... Plain Speech Valley Squirrels"

2 years agoit will never stop hurting until you do the true confrontation
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 29 Jul 2022 19:24:34 +0000 (12:24 -0700)]
it will never stop hurting until you do the true confrontation

Did I, perhaps, get a little distracted by FreeCell (in which I have
just yet to break 3 minutes, which is less impressive after you
consider how the aggressive the AisleRiot implementation's endgame
autoplay engine is), and shaving my chest, and (somehow, despite
yesterday) masturbating again?

Perhaps. But it should be clear to me, now, that that behavior is
choosing death. And equally clear that I do, in fact, want to live.

So prove it.

2 years agocheck in before true confrontation
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 29 Jul 2022 15:05:23 +0000 (08:05 -0700)]
check in before true confrontation

Mon–Wed was dayjob; yesterday was my lazy day. (I did get back to Tail
on Discord, but mostly just hung out; I played with using GPT-3 to
generate erotica (hope those queries are private!!) and masturbated a
lot.) Today and tomorrow are zero internet. (Network is already out,
phone is already off; I won't—I won't—cheat with the laptop and its
treacherous WiFi.) Sunday I have to turn on my phone because I said I
would call Mom, but it's still primarily a writing day. The
twenty-minute focus blocks with scratcher reinforcement are a good
practice, but the tiny twenty-minute commits might be silly.

Tail is better than Kay, so he gets top place on the blogroll. And
there's a new Substack newsletter by a detrans AGP.

2 years agopost-confrontation poke at memoir
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 25 Jul 2022 01:44:43 +0000 (18:44 -0700)]
post-confrontation poke at memoir

The "long confrontation" writing session was supposed to continue
today, but because I turned my phone on to celebrate after yesterday's
success, Anna was able to reach me to hang out this morning ... and I
never got back into the zone before it's time to go visit Mom
now. Saturday, at least, taught me the formula can work! If I can do
it four times next week—

2 years agolong confrontation 15: should I be satisfied?
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 24 Jul 2022 02:46:46 +0000 (19:46 -0700)]
long confrontation 15: should I be satisfied?

The scratcher ends with "COIN". (No prize.)

This has been a pretty productive day! If I can just keep doing this
on all of my non-dayjob days, I can finish this, and be at peace. And
maybe let go of my anger at Yudkowsky, once I'm done processing it? As
I mention in my marketing notes, I do (in my wiser moments) think this
document actually hits better if it's not an angry attack. It's a
memoir that explains why I want to attack.

But ultimately, attacks are boring: to the extent that my main message
is "Yudkowsky Dishonest and Bad", no one will or should want to read
this. But if I manage to present the socio-psychological insights of
our Vassarite coordination group, that's actually interesting.

2 years agolong confrontation 14: not ontologically confused
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 24 Jul 2022 02:19:33 +0000 (19:19 -0700)]
long confrontation 14: not ontologically confused

2 years agolong confrontation 13: our story continues in Austin
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 24 Jul 2022 01:35:52 +0000 (18:35 -0700)]
long confrontation 13: our story continues in Austin

"RNBOW"

2 years agolong confrontation 12: back to Austin, vent marketing anxiety
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 24 Jul 2022 00:55:01 +0000 (17:55 -0700)]
long confrontation 12: back to Austin, vent marketing anxiety

"DIMND"

2 years agolong confrontation 11: Twitter reply back in main ms.
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 23:57:20 +0000 (16:57 -0700)]
long confrontation 11: Twitter reply back in main ms.

"PTGOLD"

2 years agolong confrontation 10
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:43:25 +0000 (15:43 -0700)]
long confrontation 10

HRSHOE

2 years agolong confrontation 9: consolidate thread reply scraps
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 21:27:13 +0000 (14:27 -0700)]
long confrontation 9: consolidate thread reply scraps

I have all the prewritten material in the separate buffer; once I
finish editing it into connected prose, I can paste it back into the
main ms. and continue working on the main ms.

The next scratcher box was a "CROWN".

2 years agolong confrontation 8: pulling in the cosplay photo example
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 20:46:55 +0000 (13:46 -0700)]
long confrontation 8: pulling in the cosplay photo example

Editing (taking text previously written elsewhere, and incorporating
it into the present ms.) is easier than writing but editing is still
progress.

(And we got another "8" on the scratcher!)

2 years agolong confrontation 7
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 19:55:53 +0000 (12:55 -0700)]
long confrontation 7

The next scratcher box is "PGBANK" (piggy bank).

2 years agolong confrontation 6: editing the sports digression
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 19:28:00 +0000 (12:28 -0700)]
long confrontation 6: editing the sports digression

The next scratcher box is "MOON."

2 years agolong confrontation 5
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 18:37:01 +0000 (11:37 -0700)]
long confrontation 5

The last box on the bottom row of the scratcher is "KEY".

2 years agomemoir marketing strategy notes
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 17:31:11 +0000 (10:31 -0700)]
memoir marketing strategy notes

2 years agolong confrontation 4: drafting object-level reply in separate buffer
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 16:49:06 +0000 (09:49 -0700)]
long confrontation 4: drafting object-level reply in separate buffer

This file was erroneously neglected to be checked in, in a previous
commit.

The next scratcher box is "HEART".

2 years agoSaturday morning check in; we can recover this!
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 16:15:31 +0000 (09:15 -0700)]
Saturday morning check in; we can recover this!

The long confrontation is pretty far behind schedule; I succumbed to
despair and cheating on the netblock with the laptop yesterday
evening. I think not getting into any gear at all until 1330 set a
really bad tone for the day, but that getting a block done before 1000
(and not just stopping there as my "good deed for the day") will set a
good tone for the day and I will deserve a reward in the evening, when
I have 7 (at least) blocks done.

I've continued to be preoccupied by how I want to market this (and
what Yudkowsky will think) distracting me from writing, but now I
think I see a marketing solution that balances my needs: the Less
Wrong linkpost of pt. 3 can have a "Why I Don't Trust Eliezer
Yudkowsky's Intellectual Honesty" summary comment, and my Twitter
thread promoting the post can link to that comment (and tag
@ESYudkowsky, explaining that I had previously had him blocked for
efficiency reasons, but it seems good to tag him for this because "a
true friend stabs you in the front.")

But in order to stab, I must craft a blade.

2 years agolong confrontation: pull Tweet reply into new buffer
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 01:20:19 +0000 (18:20 -0700)]
long confrontation: pull Tweet reply into new buffer

Okay, here's a "solid" writing—really, editing—task that I can do:
integrate the 4 January 2019 email (which was really good and
polished) with the crappy text I already had in the draft, into one
coherent section explaining to my readers why the eponymous Twitter
thread was so Terrible. I think the "any way I want" refrain should go
here rather than in the "Categories Were Made" summary: I'm throwing
Yudkowsky's 2008 words back in his face.

2 years agolong confrontation 3: email review up to early January 2019
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 23 Jul 2022 00:31:47 +0000 (17:31 -0700)]
long confrontation 3: email review up to early January 2019

I've been pressing ahead taking excerpts from the email archive, but
one of these blocks, I'm going to have to buckle down more on
converting the excerpts to straight prose.

The third scratcher box is an "8"! (Two more of those, and I win a
prize, three more and it's cash.)

2 years agolong confrontation 2: still in December 2018 emails
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 22 Jul 2022 22:04:59 +0000 (15:04 -0700)]
long confrontation 2: still in December 2018 emails

The next box on the scratcher is a "BELL" bell symbol.

2 years agolong confrontation 1: begging Alexander December 2018
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 22 Jul 2022 20:31:05 +0000 (13:31 -0700)]
long confrontation 1: begging Alexander December 2018

It's okay to leave TODOs on a first pass, as long as we're ploughing
forward in the ms.

The lower-left box on my "Electric 8's" scratcher revealed a "ROLL"
roll-of-bills symbol.

2 years agocheck in from blob day ... and a half
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 22 Jul 2022 15:37:40 +0000 (08:37 -0700)]
check in from blob day ... and a half

Okay, yesterday I picked up my car from the shop and bought groceries,
and then just hung out all day. (It took a bit longer to turn off the
phone and laptop, even if I pulled the desktop network cable in the
morning.) But today, and tomorrow, and Sunday is time to do a lot of
memoiring! I got an "Electric 8's" lotto scratcher with 15 boxes on
the play area. 15 writing blocks between today and tomorrow? (Scratch
a box after a work block, to tell your brain you're on the right track
to riches.) My behavior from Sunday the 17th suggests that should be
an eminently achievable goal.

... and then today, I still, just, didn't want to get started. I
played Solitaire and turned on my phone to play Super Auto Pets. But
now the phone is off! Those 15 boxes are still in sight (7 today, 8
tomorrow, and then I will bask in feeling like a person, feeling like
an agent, deserving dessert).

2 years agocheck in before a long confrontation
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Thu, 21 Jul 2022 15:47:40 +0000 (08:47 -0700)]
check in before a long confrontation

I actually got some traction on the memoir megapost on Sunday. If I
could replicate that performance for several days straight, I would
actually be on track to return to life. Pull the network cable.

2 years agoimportant word: "necessarily"
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Thu, 21 Jul 2022 05:50:19 +0000 (22:50 -0700)]
important word: "necessarily"

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation 6: happy price II
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:13:29 +0000 (19:13 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation 6: happy price II

Okay. This hasn't been super-great, but I'm back on track to being
alive. I deserve my network/phone/food for the day.

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation 5: drib about Nov. 2018 email
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 18 Jul 2022 01:23:37 +0000 (18:23 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation 5: drib about Nov. 2018 email

Even after reviewing the emails and having a skeleton, this is so hard
to write! It's late enough in the day that I think I can turn my
phone/network back on after I squeeze out one more block. It hasn't
been a great day, but I think I deserve a food reward.

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation: review emails through 19 December 2018
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 17 Jul 2022 23:37:52 +0000 (16:37 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation: review emails through 19 December 2018

There's a lot of good content in these emails! For the email-dense
parts of the story, I'm thinking that an easy and high-quality way to
write this memoir is to just—summarize the emails!

I guess I had been thinking that this wasn't an option, because I'm
not allowed to talk about Yudkowsky's responses to us because of
privacy constraints? But our coordination group also had a lot of
interesting "What is wrong with our thoughts" discussion; it's more
interesting to be in the mode of telling the Whole Dumb Story as a
story, rather being hyperfocused on brining a fraud case against
Yudkowsky. (It's a story _about_ bringing a fraud case, but a story
first and foremost.)

Paraphrasing emails also solves a couple other writing problems. I
wasn't sure how to balance between "narrating what happened" and
"talking about ideas". (Theorizing about the state of "the community"
needs to be part of the memoir, but it's not bound to a particular
time as something that happened.) But if all the important ideas were
talked about in emails, that naturally binds them to an event in the
narrative. Or commentary on the Emperor Norton example—where would
that fit, exactly, if it's a little too chunky for my initial
discussion of the categories issue? It fits where I told Scott about
it.

I also don't like my current characterization of the "Hill of Meaning"
thread: partially because my anger at Yudkowsky's dishonesty is
leaking through in an anachronistic way, and partially because I'm so
sick of explaining this over and over again that I can't even muster
up the energy for precise criticism. I think if I rewrite that whole
section based on my January 2019 re-salvo email, it'll be much better.

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation 4: pass through thread characterization
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 17 Jul 2022 21:31:29 +0000 (14:31 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation 4: pass through thread characterization

That section is going to need a lot of editing—maybe a full second
draft—in addition to filling in the empirical details about
sports. But for my confrontation Sunday, it's more important that I
press onward now to the part documented by emails.

(I haven't even re-read the emails yet, as if I'm scared, as if I'm
hurt—it might be worth crediting an entire 20-minute block, not to
write, but just to read the emails following from 28 November.)

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation 3: not the crux
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 17 Jul 2022 18:52:48 +0000 (11:52 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation 3: not the crux

(Are these tiny 20-minute commits silly? Doesn't matter—we're not
going to run out of commits; if my Git repository slows down,
I'll—I'll buy a new computer! That's how much it's worth keeping the
momentum today.)

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation 2: tweet tweet
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 17 Jul 2022 18:11:31 +0000 (11:11 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation 2: tweet tweet

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation 1: pass over existing text
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 17 Jul 2022 16:35:47 +0000 (09:35 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation 1: pass over existing text

2 years agocheck in before a confrontation
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 17 Jul 2022 15:33:31 +0000 (08:33 -0700)]
check in before a confrontation

Another long weekend of laziness. I could excuse Thursday and maybe
even Friday, but the fact that I couldn't get started yesterday is
beyond the pale. Beyond the pail, the bucket which I kick at the
moment of death. Yesterday, I finally got so fed up with myself that I
cleaned the kitchen—just to escape the trap, just to remember that
doing things feels better than not doing things.

I went to bed early, and slept a lot, and masturbated about being
transformed into a doppelgänger of Melissa McCarthy and ejaculated
into an N95 facemask. Now it's Sunday morning, I'm at my desktop,
conditional optimal, and it should be clear to everyone that if I
can't make progress on this memoir now (the memoir in the worktree,
not these procrastinatory pseudo-Diary commit messages), then I'll
never, ever finish.

Just—look at the document—even spend an entire block just looking at
the emails, which I've been afraid to look at, even though this is all
years in the past and I was somehow brave enough to write them at the
time—and think, honestly. Document why, after all these years, I still
have a right to be angry. (My life for ire!)

Say I can reward myself with a croissant (if I do well in the next
hour) or beef fried rice (if I do good all day). I told Mom I'd call
her in the evening.

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 16 Jul 2022 05:43:04 +0000 (22:43 -0700)]
check in

2 years agoSunday memoir confrontation
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:29:58 +0000 (17:29 -0700)]
Sunday memoir confrontation

This isn't much in terms of wordcount, but at least I'm engaging with
the document: if I just keep doing this (but better) every non-dayjob
day, I can finish this on the timescale of months.

2 years agocheck in
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 9 Jul 2022 23:22:38 +0000 (16:22 -0700)]
check in

2 years agopoke at "Friendship Practices"
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 9 Jul 2022 23:11:30 +0000 (16:11 -0700)]
poke at "Friendship Practices"

2 years agoedit pass and publish "Useful Approximation"
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sat, 9 Jul 2022 01:03:07 +0000 (18:03 -0700)]
edit pass and publish "Useful Approximation"

2 years agotie off "Useful Approximation" draft
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 4 Jul 2022 18:25:07 +0000 (11:25 -0700)]
tie off "Useful Approximation" draft

I'm not sure how I want to do the quantitative modeling part. Maybe it
doesn't need to be in this post? I'll email Tail with the draft, and
my amusing observation about prior and likelihood canceling, and let
him judge me.

2 years agodrafting "Useful Approximation" up to numerical envelope
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 4 Jul 2022 05:43:08 +0000 (22:43 -0700)]
drafting "Useful Approximation" up to numerical envelope

I just think I need one mathy graf and one conclusion graf, and then
I'm ready to get this eviscerated by Tailcalled.

2 years agoSunday spiritual strength 3: triple tap
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 3 Jul 2022 23:31:22 +0000 (16:31 -0700)]
Sunday spiritual strength 3: triple tap

Even if this is still not the memoir, it's better than nothing, better
than wallowing in pleasure and full avoidance, even if this be a
lesser form of avoidance

2 years agoSunday spiritual strength 2: double tap
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 3 Jul 2022 22:54:37 +0000 (15:54 -0700)]
Sunday spiritual strength 2: double tap

2 years agoSunday spiritual strength 1: tap at two-types draft
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 3 Jul 2022 22:28:04 +0000 (15:28 -0700)]
Sunday spiritual strength 1: tap at two-types draft

Even if it's not the memoir, it's vital that I keep moving—keep moving
at any cost for a few hours, so that I remember what it's like to be
alive

2 years agostill spiritually blocked ...
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Sun, 3 Jul 2022 21:24:04 +0000 (14:24 -0700)]
still spiritually blocked ...

Some part of me just really doesn't want to look. Yesterday was
trash. Today, I managed to look at the ms. for a full twenty-minute
block after showering ... and then, my brain interpreted at as my good
deed for the day. I played some Warmux and AisleRiot Solitaire
variants (games already on my machine, whose network cable is out).

How can I remember that I'll feel better after I write something? Just
a few hours, and I can order food as a reward. Don't even think about
publishing, yet—for now, I'm just getting the Whole Dumb Story
straight in my head—it's okay to be sloppy, it's okay to have TODO
gaps, as long as something, anything is getting put into a growing
ms. The only thing that's not okay is not-writing.

2 years agocheck in—first of July
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Fri, 1 Jul 2022 16:35:11 +0000 (09:35 -0700)]
check in—first of July

I actually have a five-day weekend—my usual cushy four, plus
Independence Day. I spent yesterday being netsick, and in the morning
I saw on Twitter Google has a new finetuned language model that broke
50% on a math-problem benchmark, which superforecasters had expected
to happen in 2025. So much can happen three years ahead of
schedule—and it's also equally possible to waste three years; there's
no fundamental reason I couldn't have written my Whole Dumb Story in
2019 and moved on. Instead—you know, the other day at my dayjob, I got
stuck in a Yudkowsky-hate loop again.

Independence Day will be the aniversary of the time I talked to him at
the Independence Day party last year, and had my heart
broken. It—hasn't really been a very productive year? I still have
lots of stuff to do and to write—it just hasn't been appealing on a
moment-to-moment level, compared to Super Auto Pets?

How do I escape this trap? I pulled my network cable out yesterday,
but today I've just been lazy on my phone. If I could get three and a
half solid days of writing in with the network cable out—just forget
that there is a Twitter with scary ML announcements and shrink my
world—

Then today I re-watched half an original series episode, skim-re-read
John Scalzi's _Redshirts_, and now my phone is off. I can turn my
phone on again Sunday night to order food, if I get enough
memoir-writing done tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday—just the memoir; I
can't afford to dilute my attention with AI stuff or correspondence
that I "should" be writing for dignity points ... I told you, I told
the blog, that I have to Believe that my Story matters.

2 years agoBailey's new AGP-in-women study is out
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Thu, 30 Jun 2022 16:54:27 +0000 (09:54 -0700)]
Bailey's new AGP-in-women study is out

There's a tempURL share link, but no truly ungated version. This makes
me think that I should write my response to Scott as a separate post
after all—the impulse to shove it into the megapost was born of
"wanting to be done"—but we've established that that's not the right
way to think of it.

2 years ago"A Hill" tap, shovel
M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake [Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:17:02 +0000 (17:17 -0700)]
"A Hill" tap, shovel