Tags: epistemology
Status: draft
+> I said, "The truth is whatever you can get away with."
+>
+> "No, that's journalism. The truth is whatever you can't escape."
+>
+> —_Distress_ by Greg Egan
+
TODO
OUTLINE OF POINTS TO HIT—
- *
\ No newline at end of file
+POINTS FROM MY EMAIL TO BBL—
+
+ * the current situation re MtF is crazy
+ * activists who want to change society are both incentivized and selected for self-delusion—
+ * incentivized because: ... ? (Exercise: what was I thinking when I said
+ this?)
+ * selected-for because: ... ? (Exercise)
+ * some kind of Goodheart's-law/Berkson's-paradox-like phenomenon??
+ * Whichever activists happen to win get to write the history books, and so
+ most people end up with this Whig history view of the world where people in
+ the past were bad, bad men, but we're so much more progressive and
+ enlightened now. But evolutionarily speaking, there's no fact of the matter
+ as to what's better; there's only what won.
+ * A lot of intellectuals try to avoid politics: if your only choices are the "maximize the number of trans people" coalition vs. a "minimize the number of trans people" coalition, then it makes sense to sit it out
+ * But maybe there's a role for a more narrowly-targeted form of political
+ behavior (making friends and allies, trading favors, alienating people,
+ &c.), with the goal of just getting the correct theory (sexual dimorphism is
+ real, societies have gender roles, there are these two distinct classes of
+ motivation for why transitioning might seem like a good idea to someone) in
+ the standard sex-ed textbooks, but not trying to dictate what the social
+ norms of who should transition should be, who should pay for it,
+ &c. "Infovism" rather than activism.
+
+
+NRx-inspired (sigh ... yes, unfortunately) points—
+
+(most of this should probably be split into a separate post even if I'm happening to do some outlining in this file; evil speculation shouldn't contaminate the solid "Infovism" idea/slogan)—
+
+ * democracy is government by whichever memes happen to be the most virulent
+ * outcomes of the long run of a one-dimensional conflict can be classified, roughly something like: Left total victory, right total victory, mutually assured destruction, and program equilibrium
+ * program equilibrium isn't easy/possible for humans
+ * the key point here is that "grant this demand, deny all others" isn't a
+ defensible Schelling point; if you yield here, the _same algorithm_ is
+ going to be running the next time
+ * "Berkeley 2009 morality was just right, but this Berkeley 2017 bullshit has
+ gone _too far_!"
+ * If I were dictator, (Berkeley, 2009) could be made to work, but everyone has her own (city, year) pair
+ * for some reason I thought this was analogous to something from the
+ Coherent Extrapolated Volition document: Dennis thinks he should own
+ the world, but fairness requires that Dennis's name be erased from any
+ such request, and "some X should own the world" is underspecified"
+ * remember my conversation with a certain female bio-/psychologist studying at
+ Harvard who told me that "Trans women are men with a mental illness" made
+ more sense, but that she was afraid to even think that within the privacy of
+ her own head
+ * fucking _Harvard_
+ * Moldbug, "The True Meaning of Diversity": "Certainly not every party member
+ is an [X]. Most of them, in fact, are not. Nor is it absolutely guaranteed
+ that every single [X] will be a party member. But most of them, in fact,
+ are"—thus, requiring representaiton of Xes benefits the party
+ * practice of deferring to designated-victim trans women _makes the trans
+ women worse people_: if you know that you can win a dispute by playing the
+ transphobia card, that incentive shapes your life (Moldbug: discussion of
+ "ignoble privilege" in "Gentle Introduction" pt. 3)
+ * kind of like how _the right to be sued_ is an important part of legal
+ personhood: the possibility of recourse is necessary for trust
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