memoir pokes: critical communism, vaccine polarization

[Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git] / content / drafts / agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md

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@@ -657,9 +657,14 @@ https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1435106339550740482
 https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1435856644076830721
 > The error in "Not Man for the Categories" is not subtle! After the issue had been brought to your attention, I think you should have been able to condemn it: "Scott's wrong; you can't redefine concepts in order to make people happy; that's retarded." It really is that simple! 4/6
 
-I once wrote [a post humorously suggesting that trans women owe cis women royalties](/2019/Dec/comp/) for copying the female form (as "intellectual property"). In response to a reader who got offended, I [ended up adding](/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff;h=03468d274f5) an "epistemic status" line to clarify that it was a joke, not a serious proposal.
+I once wrote [a post whimsically suggesting that trans women should owe cis women royalties](/2019/Dec/comp/) for copying the female form (as "intellectual property"). In response to a reader who got offended, I [ended up adding](/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff;h=03468d274f5) an "epistemic status" line to clarify that it was not a serious proposal.
+
+But if knowing it was a joke partially mollifies the offended reader who thought I might have been serious, I don't think they should be _completely_ mollified, because the joke (while a joke) reflects something about my thinking when I'm being serious: I don't think sex-based collective rights are inherently a crazy idea; I think _something of value has been lost_ when women who want female-only spaces can't have them, and the joke reflects the conceptual link between the idea that something of value has been lost, and the idea that people who have lost something of value are entitled to compensation.
+
+At Valinor's 2022 Smallpox Eradication Day party, I remember overhearing[^overhearing] Yudkowsky saying that OpenAI should have used GPT-3 to mass-promote the Moderna COVID vaccine to Republicans and the Pfizer vaccine to Democrats (or vice versa). I assume this was not a serious proposal.
+
+[^overhearing]: Conversations at a party with lots of people are not protected by privacy norms.
 
-But if knowing it was a joke partially mollifies the offended reader who thought I might have been serious, I don't think they should be _completely_ mollified, because the joke (while a joke) reflects something about my thinking when I'm being serious: I don't think sex-based collective rights are inherently a crazy idea; I think _something has been lost_ when women who want them can't have female-only spaces that are actually female-only.
 
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