(I guess I'm only now, after spending an additional three years exhausting every possible line of argument, taking Ben's advice on this by writing this memoir. Sorry, Ben—and thanks.)
+
[TODO SECTION: RIP Culture War thread, and defense against alt-right categorization
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/
* I wasn't the only one those life was being wracked with political drama: Scott exiled the /r/slatestarcodex Culture War Thread to /r/TheMotte due to private harrassment
* Yudkowsky: "Your annual reminder that Slate Star Codex is not and never was alt-right, every real stat shows as much, and the primary promoters of this lie are sociopaths who get off on torturing incredibly nice targets like Scott A."
* Suppose the one were to reply: "Using language in a way you dislike, openly and explicitly and with public focus on the language and its meaning, is not lying. The proposition you claim false (Scott Alexander's explicit advocacy of a white ethnostate?) is not what the speech is meant to convey—and this is known to everyone involved, it is not a secret. You're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning. Now, maybe as a matter of policy, you want to make a case for language like 'alt-right' being used a certain way. Well, that's a separate debate then. But you're not making a stand for Truth in doing so, and your opponents aren't tricking anyone or trying to."
* "I should have noticed earlier that my emotional dependence on "Michael says X" validation is self-undermining, because Michael says that the thing that makes me valuable is my ability to think independently."
* fairly destructive move
* _Everyone got it wrong_. there was a comment on /r/slatestarcodex the other week that cited Scott, Eliezer, Ozy, Kelsey, and Rob as leaders of rationalist movement. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/anvwr8/experts_in_any_given_field_how_would_you_say_the/eg1ga9a/
+ * "losing his ability to model other people and I'm worried about him", I think Ben-and-Jessica would see as [...] angry about living in simulacrum level 3 and we're worried about everyone else."
"We ... we had a whole Sequence about this. Didn't we? And, and ... [_you_ were there](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AndYouWereThere), and _you_ were there ... It—really happened, right? I didn't just imagine it? The [hyperlinks](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong) [still](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5NyJ2Lf6N22AD9PB/where-to-draw-the-boundary) [work](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLcuygFfMfrfK8KjF/mutual-information-and-density-in-thingspace) ..."
]
* Anna's case against Michael: he was talking to Devi even when Devi needed a break, and he wanted to destroy EA
* I remember at a party in 2015ish, asking Michael what else I should invest my money in, if not New Harvest/GiveWell, and his response was, "You"
* backstory of anti-EA sentiment: Ben's critiques, Sarah's "EA Has a Lying Problem"—Michael had been in the background
+ * Anna had any actual dirt on him, you'd expect her to use it while trashing him in public, but her only example basically amounts to "he gave people career advice I disagree with"
+ http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/why-i-am-no-longer-supporting-reach/
]
Meaninwhile, my email thread with Scott got started back up, although I wasn't expecting anything to come out of it. I expressed some regret that all the times I had emailed him over the past couple years had been when I was upset about something (like psych hospitals, or—something else) and wanted something from him, which was bad, because it was treating him as a means rather than an end—and then, despite that regret, continued prosecuting the argument.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff