[^medianworlds]: You might think that the thought experiment of imagining what someone's medianworld is like would only be interesting for people who are "weird" in our own world, thinking that our world is a medianworld for people who are normal in our world. But [in high-dimensional spaces, _most_ of the probability-mass is concentrated in a "shell" some distance around the mode](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#typical-point), because even though the per-unit-hypervolume probability _density_ is greatest at the mode, there's vastly _more_ hypervolume in the hyperspace around it. The upshot is that typical people are atypical along _some_ dimensions, so normies can play the medianworld game, too.
-(I asked Anna how Yudkowsky could stand the Glowfic people. She said she thought Eliezer could barely stand anyone. That makes sense, I said.)
-
Everyone in dath ilan receives rationality training from childhood,[^category-vindication] but knowledge and training deemed psychologically hazardous to the general population is safeguarded by an order of [Keepers of Highly Unpleasant Things it is Sometimes Necessary to Know](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1612937#reply-1612937). AGI research takes place in a secret underground city; some unspecified form of social engineering steers the _hoi polloi_ away from thinking about the possibility of AI.
[^category-vindication]: On the topic of dath ilan's rationality training, I did appreciate [this passage about the cognitive function of categorization](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1779051#reply-1779051):
[TODO: someone said "the word in their language doesn't match the word in yours"; and got a +1 emoji; I resisted the temptation to say "So ... I can define a word any way I want"; I call a killthread.]
[TODO: I made a few more comments about kitchen knife deception (and let my friends talk me down from making more). I'm not worried about what he thinks about me anymore.]
-
-------
-
-Anyway, that—briefly (I mean it)—is the Whole Dumb Story about how I wasted the last seven years of my life. It's probably not that interesting? Life goes on—for now. My dayjob contract expired at the end of 2022. In 2023, I've been finishing up this memoir, and posting some other ideas to _Less Wrong_. (I got into another slapfight about me being un-collaborative, which is not interesting enough to summarize.)
-
-After this, the AI situation is looking worrying enough, that I'm thinking I should try to do some more direct xrisk-reduction work, although I haven't definitely selected any particular job or project. (It probably won't matter, but it will be dignified.) Now that the shape of the threat is on the horizon, I think I'm less afraid of being directly involved. Something about having large language models to study in the 'twenties is—grounding, compared to the superstitious fears of the paperclip boogeyman of my nightmares in the 'teens.
-
-Like all intellectuals, as a teenager I imagined that I would write a book. It was always going to be about gender, but I was vaguely imagining a novel, which never got beyond vague imaginings. That was before the Sequences. I'm 35 years old now. I think my intellectual life has succeeded in ways I didn't know how to imagine, before. I think my past self would be proud of this blog—140,000 words of blog posts stapled together is _morally_ a book—once he got over the shock of heresy.
-
-[TODO conclusion, cont'd—
- * Do I have regrets about this Whole Dumb Story? A lot, surely—it's been a lot of wasted time. But it's also hard to say what I should have done differently; I could have listened to Ben more and lost faith Yudkowsky earlier, but he had earned a lot of benefit of the doubt?
- * even young smart AGPs who can appreciate my work have still gotten pinkpilled
- * Jonah had told me that my planning horizon was too short—like the future past a year wasn't real to me. (This plausibly also explains my impatience with college.) My horizon is starting to broaden as AI timelines shorten
- * less drama (in my youth, I would have been proud that at least this vice was a feminine trait; now, I prefer to be good even if that means being a good man)
-]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff