In particular, if you're the kind of agent that gives in to extortion—if you respond to threats of the form "Do what I want, or I'll hurt you" by doing what the threatener wants—that gives other agents an incentive to spend resources trying to extort you. On the other hand, if any would-be extortionist knows you'll never give in, they have no reason to bother trying. This is where the standard ["Don't negotiate with terrorists"](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/) advice comes from.
-So, naïvely, doesn't Yudkowsky's "personally prudent to post your agreement with Stalin"[^gambit] gambit constitute giving in to an extortion threat of the form, "Support the progressive position, or we'll hurt you", which Yudkowsky's own decision theory says not to do?
+So, naïvely, doesn't Yudkowsky's "personally prudent to post your agreement with Stalin"[^gambit] gambit constitute giving in to an extortion threat of the form, "support the progressive position, or we'll hurt you", which Yudkowsky's own decision theory says not to do?
[^gambit]: In _ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles_, natch.
I don't know—and if I don't know, I can't say that the relevant subjunctive dependence obviously pertains in the real-life science intellectual _vs._ social justice mob match-up. If the mob has been trained from past experience to predict that their targets will give in, should you defy them now in order to somehow make your current predicament "less real"? Depending on the correct theory of logical counterfactuals, the correct stance might be "We don't negotiate with terrorists, but [we do appease bears](/2019/Dec/political-science-epigrams/) and avoid avalanches" (because neither the bear's nor the avalanche's behavior is calculated based on our response), and the forces of political orthodoxy might be relevantly bear- or avalanche-like.
-On the other hand, the relevant subjunctive dependence doesn't obviously _not_ pertain, either! Yudkowsky does seem to endorse commonsense pattern-matching to "extortion" in contexts like nuclear diplomacy. Or I remember back in 'aught-nine, Tyler Emerson was caught embezzling funds from the Singularity Institute, and SingInst made it a point of pride to prosecute on decision-theoretic grounds, when a lot of other nonprofits would have quietly and causal-decision-theoretically covered it up to spare themselves the embarrassment. Parsing social justice as an agentic "threat" rather than a non-agentic obstacle like an avalanche, does seem to line up with the fact that people punish heretics (who dissent from an ideological group) more than infidels (who were never part of the group to begin with), _because_ heretics are more extortable—more vulnerable to social punishment from the original group.
+On the other hand, the relevant subjunctive dependence doesn't obviously _not_ pertain, either! Yudkowsky does seem to endorse commonsense pattern-matching to "extortion" in contexts [like nuclear diplomacy](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1580278376673120256). Or I remember back in 'aught-nine, Tyler Emerson was caught embezzling funds from the Singularity Institute, and SingInst made it a point of pride to prosecute on decision-theoretic grounds, when a lot of other nonprofits would have quietly and causal-decision-theoretically covered it up to spare themselves the embarrassment. Parsing social justice as an agentic "threat" rather than a non-agentic obstacle like an avalanche, does seem to line up with the fact that people punish heretics (who dissent from an ideological group) more than infidels (who were never part of the group to begin with), _because_ heretics are more extortable—more vulnerable to social punishment from the original group.
Which brings me to the second reason the naïve anti-extortion argument might fail: [what counts as "extortion" depends on the relevant "property rights", what the "default" action is](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qjaaux3XnLBwomuNK/countess-and-baron-attempt-to-define-blackmail-fail). If having free speech is the default, being excluded from the dominant coalition for defying the orthodoxy could be construed as extortion. But if _being excluded from the coalition_ is the default, maybe toeing the line of orthodoxy is the price you need to pay in order to be included.
(The language of the latter being [a reference to Yudkowsky's _Inadequate Equilibria_](https://equilibriabook.com/molochs-toolbox/).)
-Yudkowsky quote-Tweet dunked on me:
+Yudkowsky [quote-Tweet dunked on me](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1216788984367419392):
-> [TODO: well, YES]
+> Well, YES. Paying taxes to the organization that runs ICE, or voting for whichever politician runs against Trump, or trading with a doctor benefiting from an occupational licensing regime; these acts would all be great evils if you weren't trapped.
-I pointed out the voting case as one where he seemed to be disagreeing with his past self, linking to 2008's "Stop Voting for Nincompoops". What changed his mind?
+I pointed out the voting case as one where he seemed to be disagreeing with his past self, linking to 2008's ["Stop Voting for Nincompoops"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k5qPoHFgjyxtvYsm7/stop-voting-for-nincompoops). What changed his mind?
"Improved model of the social climate where revolutions are much less startable or controllable by good actors," he said. "Having spent more time chewing on Nash equilibria, and realizing that the trap is _real_ and can't be defied away even if it's very unpleasant."
-In response to Sarah Constantin mentioning that there was no personal cost to voting third-party, Yudkowsky pointed out that the problem was the third-party spoiler effect, not personal cost: "People who refused to vote for Hillary didn't pay the price, kids in cages did, but that still makes the action nonbest."
+In response to Sarah Constantin mentioning that there was no personal cost to voting third-party, Yudkowsky [pointed out that](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1216809977144168448) the problem was the [third-party spoiler effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_splitting), not personal cost: "People who refused to vote for Hillary didn't pay the price, kids in cages did, but that still makes the action nonbest."
-[TODO: look up the extent to which "kids in cages" were also a thing during the Obama and Biden administrations]
+(The "cages" in question—technically, chain-link fence enclosures—were [actually](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/26/fact-check-obama-administration-built-migrant-cages-meme-true/3413683001/) [built](https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-democratic-national-convention-ap-fact-check-immigration-politics-2663c84832a13cdd7a8233becfc7a5f3) during the Obama administration, but that doesn't seem important.)
I asked what was wrong with the disjunction from "Stop Voting for Nincompoops", where the earlier Yudkowsky had written that it's hard to see who should accept the argument to vote for the lesser of two evils, but refuse to accept the argument against voting because it won't make a difference. Unilaterally voting for Clinton doesn't save the kids!
"How do I compute whether I'm in a large enough decision-theoretic cohort?" I asked. Did we know that, or was that still on the open problems list?
-Yudkowsky said that he traded his vote for a Clinton swing state vote, partially hoping that that would scale [...]
+Yudkowsky said that he [traded his vote for a Clinton swing state vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_pairing_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election), partially hoping that that would scale, "but maybe to a larger degree because [he] anticipated being asked in the future if [he'd] acted against Trump".
+The reputational argument seems in line with Yudkowsky's [pathological obsession with not-technically-lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly). People asking if you acted against Trump are looking for a signal of coalitional loyalty. By telling them he traded his vote, Yudkowsky can pass their test without lying.
+I guess that explains everything. He doesn't think he's part of a decision-theoretic logical cohort large enough to change things. He's not anticipating being asked in the future if he's acted against gender ideology. He's not worried about his reputation with people like me.
- * So maybe he doesn't think he's part of a decision-theoretic logical cohort large enough to resist the egregore, and he's also not worried about his reputation for resisting the egregore
- * If his reptuation in the eyes of people like me just isn't that valuable, I guess I can't argue with that
+Curtis Yarvin [likes to compare](/2020/Aug/yarvin-on-less-wrong/) Yudkowsky to [Sabbatai Zevi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatai_Zevi#Conversion_to_Islam), the 17th-century Jewish religious leader who purported to be the Messiah, who later converted to Islam under coercion from the Ottomans. "I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that in the same position, Eliezer Yudkowsky would also convert to Islam," said Yarvin.
-Curtis Yarvin [likes to compare](/2020/Aug/yarvin-on-less-wrong/) Yudkowsky to [Sabbatai Zevi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatai_Zevi#Conversion_to_Islam), the Jewish religious leader who was purported to be the Messiah, who converted to Islam under coercion from the Ottomans. "I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that in the same position, Eliezer Yudkowsky would also convert to Islam," said Yarvin.
+I don't think this is as much of a burn as Yarvin does. Zevi was facing some very harsh coercion: a choice to convert to Islam, "prove" his divinity via deadly trial by ordeal, or just be impaled outright. Extortion-resistant decision theories aside, it's hard not to be sympathetic to someone facing this trilemma who chose to convert.
- * But this isn't necessarily crazy. Zevi was facing some very harsh coercion: convert or be impaled.
- * My real question is, in the same position, would Sabbatai Zevi declare that 30% of the ones with penises are actually women?
+So to me, the more damning question is this—
-]
+If in the same position as Yudkowsky, would Sabbatai Zevi declare that 30% of the ones with penises are actually women?
-----
In September 2021, I took a trip to the east coast to see my sister and new baby niece in Cambridge and some friends in New York, and otherwise to work on blog posts from my hotel room. (You've seen one American city, you've seen them all, I reasoned, _modulo_ a different ratio of Dunkin' Donuts to Starbucks.)
-The thought occured to me that while I was on vacation anyway, it might be nice to see an escort (which I had only done once before, in March 2016). I browsed around the "Boston" section on _eros.com_. Under the "ebony" subsection[^ebony], I found a profile that I liked on the basis of photographs and a professional-seeming website. I'll call her "Crystal" (which was not the name she used, and the name she used was also surely not her real name). The "consideration" page on her website listed three hours at $1500, and four hours for $2000. I filled out the booking form requesting a three-hour engagement.
+The thought occured to me that while I was on vacation anyway, it might be nice to see an escort (which I had only done once before, in March 2016). I browsed around the "Boston" section on _eros.com_. Under the "ebony" subsection[^ebony], I found a profile that I liked on the basis of photographs and a professional-seeming website. I'll call her "Crystal" (which was not the name she used, and the name she used was also surely not her real name). The "consideration" page on the website listed three hours at $1500, and four hours for $2000. ("All rates are for my time and companionship only.") I filled out the booking form requesting a three-hour engagement.
[^ebony]: I don't know why they say "ebony" instead of "black". Porn sites do this, too. Seems problematic to have an ethnic term that only gets used in sexualized contexts?
[^upsold]: But I had mentioned the $2000 bank withdrawal in my email, so it made sense that that figure was more salient to her than the fact that my form submission from weeks earlier had said three hours.
-[TODO paid date cont'd—
+I didn't get any writing done the day of our date, although I had at least [gotten in a couple hundred words the previous day](/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff;h=470bbc84ba) on my draft review of Charles Murray's _Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America_. I texted my sister and my mother (who was also in town to see my sister) that I had other plans that night, requested housekeeping service for my hotel room (which had been suspended by default due to COVID), and mostly just walked around Cambridge for the late morning and afternoon. I bought a shirt with a collar at Target.
-All rates are for my time and companionship only.
+My mother called to inquire more about my plans, which I preferred to be at least somewhat vague about. I said that the safety concerns about meeting someone from the internet were mostly for women. She asked that I at least tell my sister where I was going, to which I agreed. I texted my sister: "Mom thinks there's a safety rationale for telling someone my plans, which I think is retarded, but specifically, it's a casual dinner date at"—I gave the name and address of the restaurant—"with a woman I met online (no reply expected; there's nothing useful for you to do with this information and this message is just to appease Mom)".
-I didn't get any writing done the day of our date.
+"Crystal" was late (date was originally scheduled for 4 _p.m._, then she texted in the early afternoon to move it to 4:30, then finally texted "I'm here"/"Just valeting my car" at 5:04), and then it turned out that she was expecting to meet me at the hotel while I was waiting at the restaurant, but we met in the middle and walked back to the restaurant.
-my review of Charles Murray's _Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America_
+It was nice—an opportunity to talk to someone who I otherwise wouldn't get to meet. Messaging someone like her on OKCupid would have felt "fake"; it felt more honest to just pay for her time.
-I requested housekeeping service for my hotel room (which had been suspended by default)
+What do I mean by "someone like her"? Definitely not race _per se_. Rather ... non-nerds?—normies. I know how to talk to _the kinds of women I meet in "rationalist"/EA circles_, and even (very rarely) ask them on a date.[^romantic-poem] That doesn't feel fake, because they're just peers who happen to be female. (I may have renounced [the ideological psychological sex difference denialism of my youth](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism), but I'm not _sexist_.)
-texted mom and sis that I had other plans
+What I don't know how to do without the moral indulgence of money changing hands is to ask out a beautiful woman _because she's a beautiful woman_. I won't say it's morally wrong, exactly; it's just not how I was raised. (I mean, I wasn't raised to hire escorts, either, but somehow the transactionality of it puts it outside some of the ethical constraints of ordinary courtship.)
-mom later insisted that I tell sister about my plans; I said that the safety concern was only for women
+[^romantic-poem]: Though the meter is occasionally a little bit bizarre, I'm very proud of [the poem I wrote in 2016 depicting a woman I was interested in eradicating malaria by wiping out all the mosquitos using CRISPR gene drive](/ancillary/megan-and-the-anopheles-gambiae/), although our one date didn't amount to anything. She later married Scott Alexander.
-"Mom thinks there's a safety rationale for telling someone my plans, which I think is retarded, but specifically, it's a casual dinner date at [restaurant name] ([address]) with a woman I met online (no reply expected; there's nothing useful for you to do with this information and this message is just to appease Mom)"
+Dinner was nice. We talked. She had a dayjob in real estate. There were some conversational topics I wanted to steer away from until after dinner. When we got to my hotel room, I felt freer to speak. I explained autogynephilia to her, and (briefly) the Category War with my robot cult.
-She was very late (scheduled for 4; then moved to 4:30; then "I'm here / Just valeting my car" at 5:04)
+I didn't tell her about the book review I was writing.
-we went to an Indian restaurant and then to my hotel
+We got undressed. I put on a condom, but I didn't let (have?) her touch my penis. That would have seemed unethical to me. I just wanted to admire her naked body, to touch, to cuddle. My own pleasure I could—handle myself. I kept telling her how beautiful she was—and that I was jealous. That I wanted to know what it would be like, if [by some miracle of technology or magic](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#secret-fantasy-frame-stories), I could look like her, be shaped like her. To have breasts like that (my gynecomastia from that HRT experiment four years before simply didn't compare), and a waist-to-hip ratio like that. (She said I could have her breasts; they were heavy.)
-It was nice.
+I'm not actually ultra-confident that what I call "ethics" didn't make things weirder for her. She had said that she had been treating her night job was an alternative to conventional dating, that she wasn't seeing anyone nonprofessionally. It's possible that to a woman in that position, a normal man who wants to use a woman in the normal way is actually preferable to the kind of creep I am?—in contrast to my hopes that the kind of creep I am would be gratifyingly easy job for the money.
- * an opportunity to talk to someone who I wouldn't ordinarily otherwise (messaging someone like her on match.com would have felt fake, paying for her time felt more "honest")
- * I explained AGP to her
- * I didn't let her/have her touch my penis (that seemed "unethical" according to my own sense of ethics, though I'm not super-confident that my "ethics" didn't make things weirder for her); I just wanted to touch
- * I think it would have been _more_ creepy, if I tried to convince her that I was "actually" a woman in some unspecified metaphysical sense
- * I wasn't coming; she said that for $2K, I definitely deserved to get off
- * she said I could have her breasts, they were heavy
- * my comment about how I wished I could have a photograph, but that it would be rude to ask; she said "No", and I wanted to clarify that I didn't ask, I said I wished I _could_ ask—but, you see, her culture didn't support that level of indirection; the claim that I wasn't asking, would seem dishonest
+(At any rate, I think it would have been _more_ creepy if I tried to convince her that I was "actually" a woman in some unspecified metaphysical sense.)
-> 6. Do not ask for additional pictures, selfies or services they have not already agreed upon.
+I wasn't coming. She said that for $2000, I definitely deserved to get off. That didn't matter to me. I ended up finishing that after she left.
- * I didn't tell her about the Charles Murray book review I was writing
-]
+Before she left, as she was using the bathroom and washing up, I tried to say something about how I wished I could have a photo to remember her by, but I knew that it would be impolite to ask. (I had done my reading. "Do not ask for additional pictures, selfies or services they have not already agreed upon.") No photos, she said.
+
+I wanted to clarify that I wasn't _asking_, I was making a meta-comment about how I _wasn't_ asking—and then I realized that normie culture must not support that level of indirection. To her, there was no semantic difference between apophasis and actually saying the thing, even if my rationalist friends would have understood what I meant. Considering how Yudkowsky's not-technically-lying games relied on a similar abuse of indirection, I wondered if the normie way wasn't superior.
+
+-----
[ TODO— New York
+ * I made $60 babysitting Zvi Mowshowitz's kids.
* met my NRx Twitter mutual, wore my Quillette shirt
* he had been banned from Slate Star Codex "for no reason"
* he offered to buy me a drink, I said I didn't drink, but he insisted that being drunk was the ritual for how men establish trust, so I had a glass and a half of wine
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff