Well, you're still _somewhat_ better off listening to them than the whistling of the wind, because the wind in various possible worlds is presumably uncorrelated with most of the things you want to know about, whereas [clever arguers](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kJiPnaQPiy4p9Eqki/what-evidence-filtered-evidence) who [don't tell explicit lies](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/) are constrained in how much they can mislead you. But it seems plausible that you might as well listen to any other arbitrary smart person with a bluecheck and 20K followers. I know you're very busy; I know your work's important—but it might be a useful exercise, for Yudkowsky to think of what he would _actually say_ if someone with social power _actually did this to him_ when he was trying to use language to reason about Something he had to Protect?
-(Note, my claim here is _not_ that "Pronouns aren't lies" and "Scott Alexander is not a racist" are similarly misinformative. I'm saying that whether "You're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning" makes sense _as a response to_ "X isn't a Y" shouldn't depend on the specific values of X and Y. Yudkowsky's behavior the other month made it look like he thought that "You're not standing in defense of truth if ..." _was_ a valid response when, say, X = "Caitlyn Jenner" and Y = "woman." I was saying that, whether or not it's a valid response, we should, as a matter of local validity, apply the _same_ standard when X = "Scott Alexander" and Y = "racist.")
+(Note, my claim here is _not_ that "Pronouns aren't lies" and "Scott Alexander is not a racist" are similarly misinformative. Rather, I'm saying that, as a matter of [local validity](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WQFioaudEH8R7fyhm/local-validity-as-a-key-to-sanity-and-civilization), whether "You're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning" makes sense _as a response to_ "X isn't a Y" shouldn't depend on the specific values of X and Y. Yudkowsky's behavior the other month made it look like he thought that "You're not standing in defense of truth if ..." _was_ a valid response when, say, X = "Caitlyn Jenner" and Y = "woman." I was saying that, whether or not it's a valid response, we should, as a matter of local validity, apply the _same_ standard when X = "Scott Alexander" and Y = "racist.")
Anyway, without disclosing any _specific content_ from private conversations with Yudkowsky that may or may not have happened, I think I _am_ allowed to say that our posse did not get the kind of engagement from Yudkowsky that we were hoping for. (That is, I'm Glomarizing over whether Yudkowsky just didn't reply, or whether he did reply and our posse was not satisfied with the response.)
_Even if_ you're opposed to abortion, or have negative views about the historical legacy of Dr. King, this isn't the right way to argue. If you call Janie a _murderer_, that causes me to form a whole bunch of implicit probabilistic expectations—about Janie's moral character, about the suffering of victim whose hopes and dreams were cut short, about Janie's relationship with the law, _&c._—most of which get violated when you subsequently reveal that the murder victim was a four-week-old fetus.
-Thus, we see that Alexander's own "The Worst Argument in the World" is really complaining about the _same_ category-gerrymandering move that his "... Not Man for the Categories" comes out in favor of. We would not let someone get away with declaring, "I ought to accept an unexpected abortion or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally not be considered murder if it'll save someone's life." Maybe abortion _is_ wrong, but you need to make that case _on the merits_, not by linguistic fiat.
+Thus, we see that Alexander's own "The Worst Argument in the World" is really complaining about the _same_ category-gerrymandering move that his "... Not Man for the Categories" comes out in favor of. We would not let someone get away with declaring, "I ought to accept an unexpected abortion or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally not be considered murder if it'll save someone's life." Maybe abortion _is_ wrong and relevantly similar to the central sense of "murder", but you need to make that case _on the merits_, not by linguistic fiat.
... Scott still didn't get it. He said that he didn't see why he shouldn't accept one unit of categorizational awkwardness in exchange for sufficiently large utilitarian benefits. I started drafting a long reply—but then I remembered that in recent discussion with my posse about what we might have done wrong in our attempted outreach to Yudkowsky, the idea had come up that in-person meetings are better for updateful disagreement-resolution. Would Scott be up for meeting in person some weekend? Non-urgent. Ben would be willing to moderate, unless Scott wanted to suggest someone else, or no moderator.
But I was just in so much (psychological) pain. Or at least—as I noted in one of a series of emails to my posse that night—I felt motivated to type the sentence, "I'm in so much (psychological) pain." I'm never sure how to intepret my own self-reports, because even when I'm really emotionally trashed (crying, shaking, randomly yelling, _&c_.), I think I'm still noticeably _incentivizable_: if someone were to present a credible threat (like slapping me and telling me to snap out of it), then I would be able to calm down: there's some sort of game-theory algorithm in the brain that subjectively feels genuine distress (like crying or sending people too many hysterical emails) but only when it can predict that it will be either rewarded with sympathy or at least tolerated. (Kevin Simler: [tears are a discount on friendship](https://meltingasphalt.com/tears/).)
-I [tweeted a Sequences quote](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1107874587822297089) to summarize how I felt (the mention of @ESYudkowsky being to attribute credit; I figured Yudkowsky had enough followers that he probably wouldn't see a notification):
+I [tweeted a Sequences quote](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1107874587822297089) to summarize how I felt (the mention of @ESYudkowsky being to attribute credit, I told myself; I figured Yudkowsky had enough followers that he probably wouldn't see a notification):
> "—and if you still have something to protect, so that you MUST keep going, and CANNOT resign and wisely acknowledge the limitations of rationality— [1/3]
>
Lying down didn't work. So at 5:26 _a.m._, I sent an email to Scott cc my posse plus Anna about why I was so mad (both senses). I had a better draft sitting on my desktop at home, but since I was here and couldn't sleep, I might as well type this version (Subject: "five impulsive points, hastily written because I just can't even (was: Re: predictably bad ideas)"). Scott had been continuing to insist that it's OK to gerrymander category boundaries for trans people's mental health, but there were a few things I didn't understand. If creatively reinterpreting the meanings of words because the natural interpretation would make people sad is OK ... why doesn't that just generalize to an argument in favor of _outright lying_ when the truth would make people sad? The mind games seemed much crueler to me than a simple lie. Also, if "mental health benefits for trans people" matter so much, then, why didn't _my_ mental health matter? Wasn't I trans, sort of? Getting shut down by appeal-to-utilitarianism (!?!?) when I was trying to use reason to make sense of the world was observably really bad for my sanity! Did that matter at all? Also, Scott had asked me if it wouldn't be embarrassing, if the community solved Friendly AI and went down in history as the people who created Utopia forever, and I had rejected it because of gender stuff? But the _original reason_ it had ever seemed _remotely_ plausible that we would create Utopia forever wasn't "because we're us, the self-designated world-saving good guys", but because we were going to perfect an art of _systematically correct reasoning_. If we're not going to do systematically correct reasoning because that would make people sad, then that undermines the _reason_ that it was plausible that we would create Utopia forever; you can't just forfeit the mandate of Heaven like that and still expect to still rule China. Also, Scott had proposed a super-Outside View of the culture war as an evolutionary process that produces memes optimized to trigger PTSD syndromes in people, and suggested that I think of _that_ was what was happening to me. But, depending on how much credence Scott put in social proof, mightn't the fact that I managed to round up this whole posse to help me repeatedly argue with (or harrass) Yudkowsky shift his estimate over whether my concerns had some objective merit that other people could see, too? It could simultaneously be the case that I had the culture-war PTSD that he propsed, _and_ that my concerns have merit.
-[TODO: Michael jumps in to help, I rebuff him, Michael says WTF and calls me, I take a train home, Alicorn visits with her son—I mean, her son at the time]
+[TODO: Michael jumps in to help, I rebuff him, Michael says WTF and calls me, I take a train home, Alicorn visits with her son—I mean, her son at the time
+
+One of the other friends I had cc'd on some of the emails came to visit me with her young son—I mean, her son at the time.
+
+]
(Incidentally, the code that I wrote intermittently between 11 _p.m._ and 4 _a.m._ was a horrible bug-prone mess, and the company has been paying for it ever since, every time someone needs to modify that function and finds it harder to make sense of than it would be if I had been less emotionally overwhelmed in March 2019 and written something sane instead.)
Was the answer just that I needed to accept that there wasn't such a thing in the world as a "rationalist community"? (Sarah had told me as much two years ago, at BABSCon, and I just hadn't made the corresponing mental adjustments.)
-On the other hand, a possible reason to be attached to the "rationalist" brand name and social identity that wasn't just me being stupid was that _the way I talk_ had been trained really hard on this subculture for _ten years_. Most of my emails during this whole campaign had contained multiple Sequences or _Slate Star Codex_ links that I could just expect people to have read. I could spontaneously use the phrase "Absolute Denial Macro" in conversation and expect to be understood. That's a massive "home field advantage." If I just gave up on "rationalists" being a thing, and go out in the world to make intellectual friends elsewhere (by making friends with _Quillette_ readers or arbitrary University of Chicago graduates), then I would lose all that accumulated capital.
+On the other hand, a possible reason to be attached to the "rationalist" brand name and social identity that wasn't just me being stupid was that _the way I talk_ had been trained really hard on this subculture for _ten years_. Most of my emails during this whole campaign had contained multiple Sequences or _Slate Star Codex_ links that I could just expect people to have read. I could spontaneously use [the phrase "Absolute Denial Macro"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t2NN6JwMFaqANuLqH/the-strangest-thing-an-ai-could-tell-you) in conversation and expect to be understood. That's a massive "home field advantage." If I just gave up on "rationalists" being a thing, and go out in the world to make intellectual friends elsewhere (by making friends with _Quillette_ readers or arbitrary University of Chicago graduates), then I would lose all that accumulated capital.
The language I spoke was _mostly_ educated American English, but I relied on subculture dialect for a lot. My sister has a chemistry doctorate from MIT (and so speaks the language of STEM intellectuals generally), and when I showed her ["... To Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/), she reported finding it somewhat hard to read, likely because I casually use phrases like "thus, an excellent [motte](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/)", and expect to be understood without the reader taking 10 minutes to read the link. That essay, which was me writing from the heart in the words that came most naturally to me, could not be published in _Quillette_. The links and phraseology were just too context-bound.
* We need to figure out how to win against bad faith arguments
]
-[TODO: Jessica joins the coalition; she tell me about her time at MIRI (link to Zoe-piggyback and Occupational Infohazards); Michael said that me and Jess together have more moral authority]
+[TODO: Jessica joins the coalition; she tell me about her time at MIRI (link to Zoe-piggyback and Occupational Infohazards);
+Michael said that me and Jess together have more moral authority]
[TODO: wrapping up with Scott; Kelsey; high and low Church https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/]
-[TODO: Ben reiterated that the most important thing was explaining why I've written them off; self-promotion imposes a cost on others; Jessica on creating clarity; Michael on less precise is more violent]
+[TODO small section: Ben reiterated that the most important thing was explaining why I've written them off; self-promotion imposes a cost on others; Jessica on creating clarity; Michael on less precise is more violent]
+
+[TODO small section: with Ben and Anna about monastaries]
+
+[TODO small section: concern about bad faith nitpicking]
+
+[TODO: Jessica's acquaintance said I should have known that wouldn't work]
+
+[TODO: Ben on Eliza the bot therapist analogy
[TODO: after some bouncing off the posse, what was originally an email draft became a public _Less Wrong_ post, "Where to Draw the Boundaries?" (note, plural)
* Wasn't the math overkill?
* no politics! just philosophy!
* Ben on Michael on whether we are doing politics; "friendship, supplication, and economics"
* I could see that I'm including subtext and expecting people to only engage with the text, but if we're not going to get into full-on gender-politics on Less Wrong, but gender politics is motivating an epistemology error, I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do! I'm pretty constrained here!
+ *
* I had already poisoned the well with "Blegg Mode" the other month, bad decision
* We lost?! How could we lose??!!?!?
]
-------
+[TODO: my reluctance to write a memoir, displacement behavior
+Ben thought it was imporant on 30 Apr, 12 Aug , I confess to being stuck on 9 Nov
+I write more about the philosophy of language instead
+"Univariate fallacy" also a concession
+]
+
+curation hopes ... 22 Jun: I'm expressing a little bit of bitterness that a mole rats post got curated https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fDKZZtTMTcGqvHnXd/naked-mole-rats-a-case-study-in-biological-weirdness
-[TODO: I was floored; math and wellness month
- Anna doesn't want money from me
- scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility of No"
- LessWrong FAQ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MqrzczdGhQCRePgqN/feedback-requested-draft-of-a-new-about-welcome-page-for#iqEEme6M2JmZEXYAk ]
+scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility of No"
+LessWrong FAQ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MqrzczdGhQCRePgqN/feedback-requested-draft-of-a-new-about-welcome-page-for#iqEEme6M2JmZEXYAk ]
-[TODO: more blogging (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5aqumaym7Jd2qhDcy/containment-thread-on-the-motivation-and-political-context), 2019 Christmas party, disclaimer on "Categories Were Made"]
-["Univariate fallacy" also a concession]
+
+[TODO section on factional conflict:
+Michael on Anna as an enemy
+24 Aug: I had told Anna about Michael's "enemy combatants" metaphor, and how I originally misunderstood
+me being regarded as Michael's pawn
+assortment of agendas
+mutualist pattern where Michael by himself isn't very useful for scholarship (he just says a lot of crazy-sounding things and refuses to explain them), but people like Sarah and me can write intelligible things that secretly benefited from much less legible conversations with Michael.
+]
+
+[TODO: Yudkowsky throwing NRx under the bus; tragedy of recursive silencing
+15 Sep Glen Weyl apology
+]
+
+[TODO: Ziz incident; more upset about gender validation than the felony charges, which were equally ridiculous and more obviously linked to physical violence
+complicity with injustice "Ziz isn't going to be a problem for you anymore"
+]
+
+[TODO: a culture that has gone off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver]
+
+[TODO: plan to reach out to Rick]
+
+[TODO: Christmas party
+people reading funny GPT-2 quotes
+Tsvi said it would be sad if I had to leave the Bay Area
+motivation deflates after Christmas victory
+5 Jan memoir as nuke
+]
(There's another very important part of the story that would fit around here chronologically, but unfortunately, it's not my story to tell.)
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff