From 6657cd3ed0651d18247631be0fe629d62a1f6a69 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 08:33:31 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] check in before a confrontation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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. --- .../drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md | 8 ++++---- ...erous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md | 2 ++ notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md | 6 ++++++ 3 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md index 1f23add..f489c4e 100644 --- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md +++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md @@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ This is wrong because categories exist in our model of the world _in order to_ c > > ["One may even consider the act of defining a word as a promise to \[the\] effect [...] \[that the definition\] will somehow help you make inferences / shorten your messages."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLcuygFfMfrfK8KjF/mutual-information-and-density-in-thingspace) -In the case of Alexander's bogus argument about gender categories, the relevant principle ([#30](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5NyJ2Lf6N22AD9PB/where-to-draw-the-boundary) on [the list of 37](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong)) is that if group things together in your map that aren't actually similar in the territory, you're going to be misled into making bad prediction. +In the case of Alexander's bogus argument about gender categories, the relevant principle ([#30](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5NyJ2Lf6N22AD9PB/where-to-draw-the-boundary) on [the list of 37](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong)) is that if group things together in your map that aren't actually similar in the territory, you're going to be misled into making bad predictions. Importantly, this is a very general point about how language itself works _that has nothing to do with gender_. No matter what you believe about politically controversial empirical questions, intellectually honest people should be able to agree that "I ought to accept an unexpected [X] or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered [Y] if [positive consequence]" is not the correct philosophy of language, _independently of the particular values of X and Y_. @@ -62,9 +62,9 @@ So there I was, browsing Twitter in the bedroom at the rental house for the dayj > > In saying this, I am not taking a stand for or against any Twitter policies. I am making a stand on a hill of meaning in defense of validity, about the distinction between what is and isn't a stand on a hill of facts in defense of truth. > -> I will never stand against those who stand against lies. But changing your name, asking people to address you by a different pronoun, and getting sex reassignment surgery, Is. Not. Lying. You are *ontologically* confused if you think those acts are false assertions. +> I will never stand against those who stand against lies. But changing your name, asking people to address you by a different pronoun, and getting sex reassignment surgery, Is. Not. Lying. You are _ontologically_ confused if you think those acts are false assertions. -Some of the replies tried explain them problem—and Yudkowsky stonewalled them: +Some of the replies tried explain them problem—and Yudkowsky kept doubling down: > You're mistaken about what the word means to you, I demonstrate thus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ But trusting Eliezer Yudkowsky—whose writings, more than any other single infl So if the rationalists were going to get our own philosophy of language wrong over this _and Eliezer Yudkowsky was in on it_ (!!!), that was intolerable—and would be unforgivable if it weren't so _inexplicable_. -Okay, technically, Yudkowsky's new Tweets specifically talked about pronouns and policy decisions, which (one could argue) is a distinct issue from my dispute with Alexander about category boundaries. And I agree that questions about who should use which bathroom are policy decisions and not matters of fact. But the question of what categories epistemically "carve reality at the joints", is _not unrelated_ to the question of which categories to use in policy decisions! Connotatively, and in the context of elite intellectual American culture in which "trans women are women" is dogma, it's hard to read the Tweets Yudkowsky published as anything other than an attempt to intimidate and delegitimize people who want to use language to reason about sex rather than gender identity. [For example](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067490362225156096), in one of the Tweets, Yudkowsky wrote: +Okay, technically, Yudkowsky's new Tweets specifically talked about pronouns and policy decisions, which (one could argue) is a distinct issue from my dispute with Alexander about category boundaries. And I agree that questions about who should use which bathroom are policy decisions and not matters of fact. But the question of what categories epistemically "carve reality at the joints", is _not unrelated_ to the question of which categories to use in policy decisions! Connotatively, and in the context of elite intellectual American culture in which "trans women are women" is dogma, it's hard to read the Tweets Yudkowsky published as anything other than an attempt to intimidate and delegitimize people who want to use language to reason about sex rather than gender identity. [For example](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067490362225156096), deeper in the thread, Yudkowsky wrote: > The more technology advances, the further we can move people towards where they say they want to be in sexspace. Having said this we've said all the facts. Who competes in sports segregated around an Aristotelian binary is a policy question (that I personally find very humorous). diff --git a/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md b/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md index d0b902e..26e0b4c 100644 --- a/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md +++ b/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md @@ -381,3 +381,5 @@ I met Jessica in March [TODO: ... continue harvesting email to see what happened in April] [TODO: credit assignment ritual ($18200 credit-assignment ritual): $5K to Michael, $1200 each to trans widow friend, 3 care team members (Alicorn Sarah Anna), Ziz, Olivia, and Sophia, $400 each to Steve, A.M., Watson, "Wilhelm", Jonah, James, Ben, Kevin, Alexei (declined), Andrew, Divia, Lex, Devi] + +[On my last day at SwiftStack, I said that I was taking a sabbatical from my software engineering career to become a leading intellectual figure of the alternative right. That was a joke, but not one that I would have made after Charlottesville.] diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md index 12becc2..a2ec682 100644 --- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md +++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md @@ -1010,3 +1010,9 @@ But he is willing to go to bat for killing babies, but not for "Biological Sex i https://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.3Q97/4361.html > Half the time I regard myself as "an AI wannabee trapped in a male human body" + +Nate's "missing the hard part" post is all strawmen—I'm not looking down on it because it's a blog post and not an "official" arXiv paper; I'm looking down because it's visibly low-effort + +"What do you say to the Republican?" !!! + +subject: "nothing left to lose; or, the end of my rope" -- 2.17.1