Just that month, I had started a Twitter account in my own name, inspired in an odd way by the suffocating [wokeness of the open-source software scene](/2018/Oct/sticker-prices/) where I [occasionally contributed diagnostics patches to the compiler](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/commits?author=zackmdavis). My secret plan/fantasy was to get more famous/established in the that world (one of compiler team membership, or conference talk accepted, preferably both), get some corresponding Twitter followers, and _then_ bust out the Blanchard retweets and links to this blog. In the median case, absolutely nothing would happen (probably because I failed at being famous), but I saw an interesting tail of scenarios in which I'd get to be a test case in the Code of Conduct wars.
-So, now having a Twitter account, I was browsing Twitter in the bedroom at the rental house for the dayjob retreat, when I happened to come across [this thread by \@ESYudkowsky](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067183500216811521):
+So, now having a Twitter account, I was browsing Twitter in the bedroom at the rental house for the dayjob retreat, when I happened to come across [this thread by @ESYudkowsky](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067183500216811521):
> Some people I usually respect for their willingness to publicly die on a hill of facts, now seem to be talking as if pronouns are facts, or as if who uses what bathroom is necessarily a factual statement about chromosomes. Come on, you know the distinction better than that!
>
>
> 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 the problem—and Yudkowsky kept refusing to understand—
+Some of the replies tried explain the problem—and [Yudkowsky kept refusing to understand](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067291243728650243)—
> 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 (chromosomes?) is not what the speech is meant to convey—and this is known to everyone involved, it is not a secret.
-—repeatedly:
+—[repeatedly](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067198993485058048):
> You're mistaken about what the word means to you, I demonstrate thus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
>
Satire is a very weak form of argument: the one who wishes to doubt will always be able to find some aspect in which the obviously-absurd satirical situation differs from the real-world situation being satirized, and claim that that difference destroys the relevence of the joke. But on the off-chance that it might help _illustrate_ my concern, imagine you lived in a so-called "rationalist" subculture where conversations like this happened—
<div class="dialogue">
-<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: "Look at this [adorable cat picture](https://twitter.com/mydogiscutest/status/1079125652282822656)!"</p>
+<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: "Look at this <a href="https://twitter.com/mydogiscutest/status/1079125652282822656">adorable cat picture</a>!"</p>
<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Alice</span>: "Um, that looks like a dog to me, actually."</p>
-<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: "[You're not standing](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067198993485058048) 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](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067294823000887297), you want to make a case for language being used a certain way. Well, that's a separate debate then."</p>
+<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: "<a href="https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067198993485058048">You're not standing</a> in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning. <a href="https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067294823000887297">Now, maybe as a matter of policy</a>, you want to make a case for language being used a certain way. Well, that's a separate debate then."</p>
</div>
If you were Alice, and a _solid supermajority_ of your incredibly smart, incredibly philosophically sophisticated friend group _including Eliezer Yudkowsky_ (!!!) seemed to behave like Bob (and reaped microhedonic social rewards for it in the form of, _e.g._, hundreds of Twitter likes), that would be a _pretty worrying_ sign about your friends' ability to accomplish intellectually hard things (_e.g._, AI alignment), right? Even if there isn't any pressing practical need to discriminate between dogs and cats, the _problem_ is that Bob is [_selectively_](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/) using his sophisticated philosophy-of-language insight to try to _undermine Alice's ability to use language to make sense of the world_, even though Bob _obviously knows goddamned well what Alice was trying to say_; it's _incredibly_ obfuscatory in a way that people would not tolerate in almost _any_ other context.
Anna didn't reply, but I apparently did interest Michael, who chimed in on the email thread to Yudkowsky. We had a long phone conversation the next day lamenting how the "rationalists" were dead as an intellectual community.
-[TODO: actually quote Michael's "non-narcisstic heroism" text]
-
As for the attempt to intervene on Yudkowsky—well, [again](/2022/TODO/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#cheerful-price-privacy-constraint), I don't think I should say whether he replied to Michael's and my emails, or whether he accepted the money, because any conversation that may or may not have occured would have been private. But what I _can_ say, because it was public, is we saw [this addition to the Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1068071036732694529):
-> I was sent this (by a third party) as a possible example of the sort of argument I was looking to read: http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/. Without yet judging its empirical content, I agree that it is not ontologically confused. It's not going "But this is a MAN so using 'she' is LYING."
+> I was sent this (by a third party) as a possible example of the sort of argument I was looking to read: [http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/). Without yet judging its empirical content, I agree that it is not ontologically confused. It's not going "But this is a MAN so using 'she' is LYING."
Look at that! The great _Eliezer Yudkowsky_ said that my position is not ontologically confused. That's _probably_ high praise coming from him! You might think that should be the end of the matter. Yudkowsky denounced a particular philosophical confusion; I already had a related objection written up; and he acknowledged my objection as not being the confusion he was trying to police. I _should_ be satisfied, right?
... Scott didn't get it.
-But I _did_ end up in more conversation with Michael Vassar, Ben Hoffman, and Sarah Constantin, who were game to help me with reaching out to Yudkowsky again. If we had this entire posse, I felt bad and guilty and ashamed about focusing too much on my special interest except insofar as it was geniunely a proxy for "Has Eliezer and/or everyone else lost the plot, and if so, how do we get it back?" But the group seemed to agree that my philosophy-of-language grievance was a useful test case for prosecuting deeper maladies affecting our subculture.
+But I _did_ end up in more conversation with Michael Vassar, Ben Hoffman, and Sarah Constantin, who were game to help me with reaching out to Yudkowsky again to explain the problem in more detail. If we had this entire posse, I felt bad and guilty and ashamed about focusing too much on my special interest except insofar as it was geniunely a proxy for "Has Eliezer and/or everyone else lost the plot, and if so, how do we get it back?" But the group seemed to agree that my philosophy-of-language grievance was a useful test case for prosecuting deeper maladies affecting our subculture.
-There were times during these weeks where it felt like my mind shut down with the only thought, "What am I _doing_? This is _absurd_. Why am I running around picking fights about the philosophy of language—and worse, with me arguing for the _Bad_ Guys' position? Maybe I'm wrong and should stop making a fool out of myself. After all, using Aumann-like reasoning, in a dispute of 'Zack M. Davis and Michael Vassar vs. _everyone fucking else_', wouldn't I want to bet on 'everyone else'? Obviously."
+There were times during these weeks where it felt like my mind shut down with the only thought, "What am I _doing_? This is _absurd_. Why am I running around picking fights about the philosophy of language—and worse, with me arguing for the _Bad_ Guys' position? Maybe I'm wrong and should stop making a fool out of myself. After all, using Aumann-like reasoning, in a dispute of 'me and Michael Vassar vs. _everyone fucking else_', wouldn't I want to bet on 'everyone else'? Obviously."
Except ... I had been raised back in the 'aughts to believe that you're you're supposed to concede arguments on the basis of encountering a superior counterargument that makes you change your mind, and I couldn't actually point to one. "Maybe I'm making a fool out of myself by picking fights with all these high-status people" is _not a counterargument_.
(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
+ * 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."
+ * What direct falsehood is being asserted by Scott's detractors? I don't think anyone is claiming that, say, Scott identifies as alt-right (not even privately), any more than anyone is claiming that trans women have two X chromosomes. Sneer Club has been pretty explicit in their criticism
+ * examples:
+ * https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/atgejh/rssc_holds_a_funeral_for_the_defunct_culture_war/eh0xlgx/
+ * https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/atgejh/rssc_holds_a_funeral_for_the_defunct_culture_war/eh3jrth/
+ * that the Culture War thread harbors racists (&c.) and possibly that Scott himself is a secret racist, with respect to a definition of racism that includes the belief that there are genetically-mediated population differences in the distribution of socially-relevant traits and that this probably has decision-relevant consequences should be discussable somewhere.
+
+And this is just correct: e.g., "The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project" favorably cites Cochran et al.'s genetic theory of Ashkenazi achievement as "really compelling." Scott is almost certainly "guilty" of the category-membership that the speech against him is meant to convey—it's just that Sneer Club got to choose the category. The correct response to the existence of a machine-learning classifer that returns positive on both Scott Alexander and Richard Spencer is not that the classifier is "lying" (what would that even mean?), but that the classifier is not very useful for understanding Scott Alexander's effects on the world.
+
+Of course, Scott is great and we should defend him from the bastards trying to ruin his reputation, and it's plausible that the most politically convenient way to do that is to pound the table and call them lying sociopaths rather than engaging with the substance of their claims, much as how someone being tried under an unjust law might dishonestly plead "Not guilty" to save their own skin rather than tell the whole truth and hope for jury nullification.
+
+But political convenience comes at a dire cost to our common interest! There's a proverb you once failed to Google, which runs something like, "Once someone is known to be a liar, you might as well listen to the whistling of the wind."
+
+Similarly, once someone is known to vary the epistemic standards of their public statements for political convenience (even if their private, unshared thoughts continue to be consistently wise)—if they say categorizations can be lies when that happens to help their friends, but seemingly deny the possibility of categorizations being lies when that happens to make them look good ...
+
+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 who don't tell explicit lies are very 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 blue check and 20K followers. I remain,
+ * (The claim is not that "Pronouns aren't lies" and "Scott Alexander is not a racist" are similarly misinformative; it's about the _response_)
+ * "the degree to which category boundaries are being made a conscious and deliberate focus of discussion": it's a problem when category boundaries are being made a conscious and deliberate focus of discussion as an isolated-demand-for-rigor because people can't get the conclusion they want on the merits; I only started focusing on the hidden-Bayesian-structure-of-cognition part after the autogynephilia discussions kept getting derailed
+ * I know you're very busy; I know your work's important—but it might be a useful exercise? Just for a minute, to think of what you would actually say if someone with social power _actually did this to you_ when you were trying to use language to reason about Something you had to Protect?
+]
-[TODO: RIP Culture War thread, defense against alt-right categorization
-I wasn't the only one going through some behind-the-scenes political drama during early 2019.
+[TODO SECTION: minor psych episode in March 2019
+ * 5 Mar Scott gets back to me after my impulsive cry of pain, 12 short stories about language, I poke Scott a few more times in coming days
+ * 17 Mar I propose an in-person meeting, Scott declines
+ * I consider replying with a bribe
+ [... this probably doesn't need more pre-outlining because it's a sequence of events and I should just start filling based on the email review]
+]
-On 22 February, Scott Alexander revealed that
- * ....
+[TODO: proton concession
*
- * "the degree to which category boundaries are being made a conscious and deliberate focus of discussion": it's a problem when category boundaries are being made a conscious and deliberate focus of discussion as an isolated-demand-for-rigor because people can't get the conclusion they want on the merits; I only started focusing on the hidden-Bayesian-structure-of-cognition part after the autogynephilia discussions kept getting derailed
+
]
-[TODO: relying on Michael too much; I'm not crazy
+[TODO SECTION: relying on Michael too much; I'm not crazy
* This may have been less effective than it was in my head; I _remembered_ Michael as being high-status
* "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/
-]
-
-[TODO: on private universes
+"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) ..."
]
-[TODO: ... continue translating email analysis into prose]
-
-[TODO: minor psych episode in March 2019]
-[TODO: proton concession]
+[TODO SECTION: Anna–Michael feud
+ *
+]
[TODO: "Blegg Mode", "Where to Draw the Boundaries?", and failure /2019/May/hiatus/ ]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff