[^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):
Lintamande said they agreed with these claims. Yudkowsky replied with a "+1" emoji.
+
+[TODO: Linta saying "intersex condition" was just semantics was emblematic of a disagreement-minimizing culture?]
+
[TODO: "like, if you just went and found Eliezer!2004 and were like 'hey, weird sci fi hypothetical'
_speaking of the year 2004_; the thing I'm at war with is that I don't think he would _dare_ publish the same essay today
+ ...
]
-[TODO: April saying that the essay wasn't making claims relevant to trans people; but _I_ thought it was relevant in 2008]
-[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 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.]
+The 2004 mailing list post was almost _mocking_ the guy, for being so naïve, for not seeing the type mismatch between the deep structure of reality, and mentalistic fantasies vaguely gestured at with English words.
-------
+And the 2016–2021 posts _couldn't even acknolwedge that Biological Sex Actually Exists_. Did Yudkowsky expect us not to _notice_?? Coming from anyone else in the world, I wouldn't have minded. But the _conjunction_ of these political games and the eliezera racial supremacy rhetoric was just _insulting_.
-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.)
+April said she didn't think the "Changing Emotions" argument was making claims relevant to trans people. The only claim you really needed was that it was reasonable for cis men and trans men, and cis women and trans women, to be in the same category for the purposes of general social interaction; whether you would need post-Singularity tech to make a biological male indistinguishable from a cis woman had little bearing on what we should make of trans women.
-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.
+That was interesting. April's profile said she was 19 years old and transfeminine.
-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)
-]
+[TODO: April saying that the essay wasn't making claims relevant to trans people; but _I_ thought it was relevant in 2008]
+
+
+[TODO: bridge ...]
+
+[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.]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff