-with internet available—
-_ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QB9eXzzQWBhq9YuB8/rationalizing-and-sitting-bolt-upright-in-alarm#YQBvyWeKT8eSxPCmz
-_ Ben on "community": http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/on-purpose-alone/
-_ check date of univariate fallacy Tweet and Kelsey Facebook comment
-_ Soares "excited" example
-_ EA Has a Lying Problem
+on deck—
+
+_ quote second out of patience email
+_ giving up on him, don't want to waste any more time, last email
+
+
+With internet available—
+_ me remarking to "Wilhelm" that I think I met Vanessa at Solstice once, commented on Greg Egan
+_ debate with Benquo and Jessicata
+_ more Yudkowsky Facebook comment screenshots
+_ "20% of the ones with penises" someone in the comments saying, "It is a woman's body", and Yudkowsky saying "duly corrected"
+_ that neuroscience paper backing the
+_ Prudentbot § from "Robust Cooperation" paper
+_ JDP on warrant and standing
+_ compile Categories references from the Dolphin War Twitter thread
+_ tussle with Ruby on "Causal vs. Social Reality"
_ when did I ask Leon about getting easier tasks?
-_ Facebook discussion with Kelsey (from starred email)?: https://www.facebook.com/nd/?julia.galef%2Fposts%2F10104430038893342&comment_id=10104430782029092&aref=1557304488202043&medium=email&mid=5885beb3d8c69G26974e56G5885c34d38f3bGb7&bcode=2.1557308093.AbzpoBOc8mafOpo2G9A&n_m=main%40zackmdavis.net
-_ "had previously written a lot about problems with Effective Altruism": link to all of Ben's posts
-_ Sarah Barellies cover links
-_ "watchful waiting"
-_ Atlantic article on "My Son Wears Dresses" https://archive.is/FJNII
-_ in "especially galling" §: from "Changing Emotions"—"somehow it's always about sex when men are involved"—he even correctly pinpointing AGP in ordinary men (as was obvious back then), just without the part that AGP _is_ "trans"
-_ "look at what ended up happening"—look up whether that exact quote from from http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/47 or https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/97
-_ Discord history with Scott (leading up to 2019 Christmas party, and deferring to Tailcalled on SSC survey question wording)
-_ Gallileo "And yet it moves"
-_ Discord logs before Austin retreat
_ examples of snarky comments about "the rationalists"
-_ screenshot Rob's Facebook comment which I link
_ 13th century word meanings
-_ compile Categories references from the Dolphin War Twitter thread
_ weirdly hostile comments on "... Boundaries?"
_ more examples of Yudkowsky's arrogance
-_ "The Correct Contrarian Cluster" and race/IQ
-_ taqiyya
-_ refusing to give a probability (When Not to Use Probabilities? Shut Up and Do the Impossible?)
-_ retrieve comment on pseudo-lies post in which he says its OK for me to comment even though
-
+_ dath ilan conspiracy references
far editing tier—
+_ make sure to quote Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy before calling back to it
_ tie off Anna's plot arc?
_ quote one more "Hill of Meaning" Tweet emphasizing fact/policy distinction
_ conversation with Ben about physical injuries (this is important because it explains where the "cut my dick off rhetoric" came from)
]
-Writing out this criticism now, the situation doesn't feel _confusing_, anymore. Yudkowsky was very obviously being intellectually dishonest in response to very obvious political incentives. That's a thing that public intellectuals do. And, again, I agree that the distinction between facts and policy decisions _is_ a valid one, even if I thought it was being selectively invoked here as an [isolated demand for rigor](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/) because of the political context. Coming from _anyone else in the world_, I would have considered the thread fine—a solidly above-average performance,
+Writing out this criticism now, the situation doesn't feel _confusing_, anymore. Yudkowsky was very obviously being intellectually dishonest in response to very obvious political incentives. That's a thing that public intellectuals do. And, again, I agree that the distinction between facts and policy decisions _is_ a valid one, even if I thought it was being selectively invoked here as an [isolated demand for rigor](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/) because of the political context.
really. I wouldn't have felt confused or betrayed at all. Coming from Eliezer Yudkowsky, it was—confusing.
> I unfortunately have had a policy for over a decade of not putting numbers on a few things, one of which is AGI timelines and one of which is *non-relative* doom probabilities. Among the reasons is that my estimates of those have been extremely unstable.
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nCvvhFBaayaXyuBiD/shut-up-and-do-the-impossible
+> You might even be justified in [refusing to use probabilities](https://www.lesswrong.com/lw/sg/when_not_to_use_probabilities/) at this point. In all honesty, I really _don't_ know how to estimate the probability of solving an impossible problem that I have gone forth with intent to solve; in a case where I've previously solved some impossible problems, but the particular impossible problem is more difficult than anything I've yet solved, but I plan to work on it longer, etcetera.
+>
+> People ask me how likely it is that humankind will survive, or how likely it is that anyone can build a Friendly AI, or how likely it is that I can build one. I really _don't_ know how to answer. I'm not being evasive; I don't know how to put a probability estimate on my, or someone else, successfully shutting up and doing the impossible. Is it probability zero because it's impossible? Obviously not. But how likely is it that this problem, like previous ones, will give up its unyielding blankness when I understand it better? It's not truly impossible, I can see that much. But humanly impossible? Impossible to me in particular? I don't know how to guess. I can't even translate my intuitive feeling into a number, because the only intuitive feeling I have is that the "chance" depends heavily on my choices and unknown unknowns: a wildly unstable probability estimate.
+
+
+
+
I don't, actually, know how to prevent the world from ending. Probably we were never going to survive. (The cis-human era of Earth-originating intelligent life wasn't going to last forever, and it's hard to exert detailed control over what comes next.) But if we're going to die either way, I think it would be _more dignified_ if Eliezer Yudkowsky were to behave as if he wanted his faithful students to be informed. Since it doesn't look like we're going to get that, I think it's _more dignified_ if his faithful students _know_ that he's not behaving like he wants us to be informed. And so one of my goals in telling you this long story about how I spent (wasted?) the last six years of my life, is to communicate the moral that
and that this is a _problem_ for the future of humanity, to the extent that there is a future of humanity.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jAToJHtg39AMTAuJo/evolutions-are-stupid-but-work-anyway?commentId=HvGxrASYAyfbiPwQt#HvGxrASYAyfbiPwQt
> I've noticed that none of my heroes, not even Douglas Hofstadter or Eric Drexler, seem to live up to my standard of perfection. Always sooner or later they fall short. It's annoying, you know, because it means _I_ have to do it.
-But he got it right in 2009; he only started to fall short _later_ for political reasons
\ No newline at end of file
+But he got it right in 2009; he only started to fall short _later_ for political reasons
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1580278376673120256
+> Your annual reminder that academically conventional decision theory, as taught everywhere on Earth except inside the MIRI-adjacent bubble, says to give in to threats in oneshot games. Only a very rare student is bright enough to deserve blame in place of the teacher.
+
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KvefburLia7ptEE3/the-correct-contrarian-cluster
+> Atheism: Yes.
+> Many-worlds: Yes.
+> "P-zombies": No.
+>
+> These aren't necessarily simple or easy for contrarians to work through, but the correctness seems as reliable as it gets.
+>
+> Of course there are also slam-dunks like:
+>
+> Natural selection: Yes.
+> World Trade Center rigged with explosives: No.
+
+I wonder how the history of the site would have been different if this had included "Racial differences in cognitive abilities: Yes." (It's worse if he didn't think about it in the first place, rather than noticing and deciding not to say it—it doesn't even seem to show up in the comments!!)
+
+
+https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/pfbid0tTk5VoLSxZ1hJKPRMdzpPzNaBR4eU5ufKEhvvowMFTjKTHykogFfwAZge9Kk5jFLl
+> Yeah, see, *my* equivalent of making ominous noises about the Second Amendment is to hint vaguely that there are all these geneticists around, and gene sequencing is pretty cheap now, and there's this thing called CRISPR, and they can probably figure out how to make a flu virus that cures Borderer culture by excising whatever genes are correlated with that and adding genes correlated with greater intelligence. Not that I'm saying anyone should try something like that if a certain person became US President. Just saying, you know, somebody might think of it.
+
+
+commenting policy—
+> I will enforce the same standards here as I would on my personal Facebook garden. If it looks like it would be unhedonic to spend time interacting with you, I will ban you from commenting on my posts.
+>
+> Specific guidelines:
+>
+> Argue against ideas rather than people.
+> Don't accuse others of committing the Being Wrong Fallacy ("Wow, I can't believe you're so wrong! And you believe you're right! That's even more wrong!").
+> I consider tone-policing to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and will delete it.
+> If I think your own tone is counterproductive, I will try to remember to politely delete your comment instead of rudely saying so in a public reply.
+> If you have helpful personal advice to someone that could perhaps be taken as lowering their status, say it to them in private rather than in a public comment.
+> The censorship policy of the Reign of Terror is not part of the content of the post itself and may not be debated on the post. If you think Censorship!! is a terrible idea and invalidates discussion, feel free not to read the comments section.
+> The Internet is full of things to read that will not make you angry. If it seems like you choose to spend a lot of time reading things that will give you a chance to be angry and push down others so you can be above them, you're not an interesting plant to have in my garden and you will be weeded. I don't consider it fun to get angry at such people, and I will choose to read something else instead.
+
+I do wonder how much of his verbal report is shaped by pedagogy (& not having high-quality critics). People are very bad at imagining how alien aliens would be! "Don't try to hallucinate value there; just, don't" is simpler than working out exactly how far to push cosmopolitanism
+
+
+couldn't resist commenting even after I blocked Yudkowsky on Twitter (30 August 2021)
+https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/pfbid02AGzw7EzeB6bDAwvXT8hm4jnC4Lh1te7tC3Q3h2u6QqBfJjp4HKvpCM3LqvcLuXSbl?comment_id=10159857276789228&reply_comment_id=10159858211759228
+Yudkowsky replies (10 September 2021)—
+> Zack, if you can see this, I think Twitter is worse for you than Facebook because of the short-reply constraint. I have a lot more ability to include nuance on Facebook and would not expect most of my statements here to set you off the same way, or for it to be impossible for me to reply effectively if something did come up.
+("impossible to me to reply effectively" implies that I have commenting permissions)
+
+
+"Noble Secrets" Discord thread—
+> So, I agree that if you perform the experimental test of asking people, "Do you think truthseeking is virtuous?", then a strong supermajority will say "Yes", and that if you ask them, "And are you looking for memes about how to do actually do it?" they'll also say "Yes."
+>
+> But I also notice that in chat the other day, we saw this (in my opinion very revealing) paragraph—
+>
+> I think of "not in other people" [in "Let the truth destroy what it can—but in you, not in other people"] not as "infantilizing", but as recognizing independent agency. You don't get to do harm to other people without their consent, whether that is physical or pychological.
+>
+> My expectation of a subculture descended from the memetic legacy of Robin Hanson's blog in 2008 in which people were _actually_ looking for memes about how to seek truth, is that the modal, obvious response to a paragraph like this would be something like—
+>
+>> Hi! You must be new here! Regarding your concern about truth doing harm to people, a standard reply is articulated in the post "Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)" (<https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hs3ymqypvhgFMkgLb/doublethink-choosing-to-be-biased>). Regarding your concern about recognizing independent agency, a standard reply is articulated in the post "Your Rationality Is My Business" (<https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/anCubLdggTWjnEvBS/your-rationality-is-my-business>).
+>
+> —or _something like that_. Obviously, it's not important that the reply use those particular Sequences links, or _any_ Sequences links; what's important is that someone responds to this _very obvious_ anti-epistemology (<https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XTWkjCJScy2GFAgDt/dark-side-epistemology>) with ... memes about how to actually do truthseeking.
+>
+> And what we _actually_ saw in response to this "You don't get to do harm to other people" message is ... it got 5 :plus_one: reactions.
+
+Yudkowsky replies—
+> the Doublethink page is specifically about how you yourself choosing not to know is Unwise
+> to the extent you can even do that rather than convincing yourself that you have
+> it specifically doesn't say "tell other people every truth you know"
+> the point is exactly that you couldn't reasonably end up in an epistemic position of knowing yourself that you ought to lie to yourself
+
+
+--------
+
+My last messages in late-November fight with Alicorner Discord was 4:44 a.m./4:47 am. (!) on 28 November; I mention needing more sleep. But—that would have been 6:44 a.m. Austin time? Did I actually not sleep that night? Flipping out and writing Yudkowsky was evening of the same calendar day.
+
+Sam had said professed gender was more predictive.
+
+Bobbi has claimed that "most people who speak the involved dialect of English agree that ‘woman’ refers to ‘an individual who perceives themselves as a woman’"
+
+Kelsey 27 November
+> I think you could read me as making the claim "it's desirable, for any social gender, for there to be non-medical-transition ways of signaling it"
+
+27 November
+> I don't think linta was saying "you should believe ozy doesn't have a uterus"
+that would be really weird
+
+> well, for one thing, "it's okay to not pursue any medical transition options while still not identifying with your asab" isn't directed at you, it's directed at the trans person
+My reply—
+> that's almost worse; you're telling them that it's okay to gaslight _everyone else in their social circle_
+
+1702 27 November
+> Stepping back: the specific statement that prompted me to start this horrible discussion even though I usually try to keep my personal hobbyhorse out of this server because I don't want it to destroy my friendships, was @lintamande's suggestion that "it's okay to not pursue any medical transition options while still not identifying with your asab". I think I have a thought experiment that might clarify why I react so strongly to this sort of thing
+> Suppose Brent Dill showed you this photograph and said, "This is a photograph of a dog. Your eyes may tell you that it's a cat, but you have to say it's a dog, or I'll be very unhappy and it'll be all your fault."
+> In that case, I think you would say, "This is a gaslighting attempt. You are attempting to use my sympathy for you to undermine my perception of reality."
+
+> Flight about to take off so can't explain, but destroying the ability to reason in public about biological sex as a predictive category seems very bad for general sanity, even if freedom and transhumanism is otherwise good
+
+https://discord.com/channels/401181628015050773/458329253595840522/516744646034980904
+26 November 14:38 p.m.
+> I'm not sure what "it's okay to not pursue any medical transition options while still not identifying with your asab" is supposed to mean if it doesn't cash out to "it's okay to enforce social norms preventing other people from admitting out loud that they have correctly noticed your biological sex"
+
+In contrast to Yudkowsky's claim that you need to have invented something from scratch to make any real progress, this is a case where the people who _did_ invent something can't apply it anymore!!
+
+-----
+
+Examples of non-robot-cult authors using rationality skills that they visibly didn't get from being a robot-cult loyalist—
+
+James C. Scott, _Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts_, Ch. 4, "False Consciousness or Laying It on Thick?", 1990
+
+> The thick theory [of false consciousness] claims consent; the thin theory settles for resignation. In its most subtle form, the thin theory is eminently plausible and, some would claim, true by definition. I believe, nevertheless, that it is fundamentally wrong and hope to show why in some detail after putting it in as persuasive a form as possible, so that it is no straw man I am criticizing.
+
+(Steelmanning! One of us!)
+
+Kathryn Paige Harden, _The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality_, Ch. 9, "Using Nature to Understand Nurture", 2021
+
+> [P]olicies that are built on a flawed understanding of which environments are truly causal are wasteful and potentially harmful. In this specific example, even if the state of Texas was successful at delaying teenagers' sexual activity, such a change would not actually improve their mental health—and an emphasis on such programs potentially diverts investment away from educational programs that _would_ be helpful. (Proponents of teenage abstinence might argue that abstinence is a valuable end for its own sake, but that is a different justification for the policy than the empirical claim that abstinentce is a means toward increased adolencent well-being.)
+
+("Fake Optimization Critiera")
+
+John Snygg, _A New Approach to Differential Geometry Using Clifford's Geometric Algebra_ (§4.7.3) recounts the Arabic mathematician al-Biruni (973–1048).
+
+> More is known about al-Briruni than most Islamic mathematicians because he included bits of autobiographical writings in some of his academic publications. In one of these, _Shadows_, he relates an encounter with a hard-line orthodox cleric. The cleric admonished al-Biruni because he had used an astronomical instrument with Byzantine months engraved on it to determine the time of prayers. Al-Briuni replied:
+>> "The Byzantines also eat food. Then do not imitate them in this!"
+
+(Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence)
+
+-----
+
+I shall be happy to look bad for _what I actually am_. (If _telling the truth_ about what I've been obsessively preoccupied with all year makes you dislike me, then you probably _should_ dislike me. If you were to approve of me on the basis of _factually inaccurate beliefs_, then the thing of which you approve, wouldn't be _me_.)
+
+I guess I feel pretty naïve now, but—I _actually believed our own propoganda_. I _actually thought_ we were doing something new and special of historical and possibly even _cosmological_ significance. This does not seem remotely credible to me any more.
+
+_It will never stop hurting until I write it down._ ("I've got a thick tongue / Brimming with the words that go unsung.")
+
+_My_ specific identity doesn't matter; the specific identities of any individuals I mention while telling my story don't matter. What matters is the _structure_: I'm just a sample from the _distribution_ of what happens when an American upper-middle-class high-Openness high-Neuroticism late-1980s-birth-cohort IQ-130 78%-Ashkenazi obligate-autogynephilic boy falls in with this kind of robot cult in this kind of world.
+
+An aside: being famous must _suck_. I haven't experienced this myself, but I'm sure it's true.
+
+Oh, sure, it's nice to see your work get read and appreciated by people—I've experienced that much. (Shout-out to my loyal fans—all four of you!) But when you're _famous_, everybody wants a piece of you. The fact that your work influences _so many_ people, makes you a _target_ for anyone who wants to indirectly wield your power for their own ends. Every new author wants you to review their book; every ideologue wants you on their side ...
+
+And when a crazy person in your robot cult thinks you've made a philosophy mistake that impinges on their interests, they might spend an _unreasonable_ amount of effort obsessively trying to argue with you about it.
+
+----
+
+imagine being a devout Catholic hearing their local priest deliver a sermon that _blatantly_ contradicts something said in the Bible—or at least, will predictably be interpreted by the typical parishioner as contradicting the obvious meaning of the Bible, even if the sermon also admits some contrived interpretation that's _technically_ compatible with the Bible. Suppose it's an ever-so-slightly-alternate-history 2014, and the sermon suggests that Christians who oppose same-sex marriage have no theological ground to stand on.
+
+You _know_ this is wrong. Okay, maybe there's _some_ way that same-sex marriage could be compatible with the Church's teachings. But you would have to _argue_ for that; you _can't_ just say there's no arguments _against_ it and call that the end of the discussion! [1 Corinthians 6:9–10](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+6%3A9-10&version=NKJV): "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators [...] nor homosexuals, nor sodomites [...] will inherit the kingdom of God." It's _right there_. There's [a bunch of passages like that](https://www.livingout.org/the-bible-and-ssa). You _can't possibly_ not see it.
+
+As a man of faith and loyal parishioner, you would _expect_ to be able to resolve the matter by bringing your concern to the priest, who would then see how the sermon had been accidentally misleading, and issue a clarification at next week's sermon, so that the people would not be led astray from the path of God.
+
+The priest doesn't agree; he insists on the contrived technically-not-heresy interpretation. This would be a shock, but it wouldn't, yet, shatter your trust in the Church as an institution. Even the priest is still a flawed mortal man.
+
+Then the Pope misinterets the Bible in the same way in his next encyclical. With the help of some connections, you appeal your case all the way to the Vatican—and the Pope himself comes back with the same _bullshit_ technically-not-heresy.
+
+You realize that you _cannot take the Pope's words literally_.
+
+That would be _pretty upsetting_, right? To lose faith in, not your religion itself—_obviously_ the son of God still died for our sins—but the _institution_ that claims to faithfully implement your religion, but is actually doing something else. You can understand why recovering from that might take a year or so.
+
+Or maybe imagine an idealistic young lawyer working for the prosecution in the [Selective Draft Law Cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Draft_Law_Cases) challenging the World War I draft. Since 1865, the Constitution _says_, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." If the words "involuntary servitude not as a punishment for a crime" _mean anything_, they surely include the draft. So the draft is unconstitutional. Right?
+
+----
+
+I'm delusional to expect so much from "the community", that the original vision _never_ included tackling politically sensitive subjects. (I remember Erin recommending Paul Graham's ["What You Can't Say"](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) back in 'aught-nine, with the suggestion to take Graham's advice to figure out what you can't say, and then _don't say it_.)
+
+It needs to either _rebrand_—or failing that, _disband_—or failing that, _be destroyed_.
+
+people [(especially nonconformist nerds like us)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-kind-can-t-cooperate) tend to impose far too many demands before being willing to contribute their efforts to a collective endeavor. That post [concludes](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8evewZW5SeidLdbA/your-price-for-joining)—
+
+> If the issue isn't worth your personally fixing by however much effort it takes, and it doesn't arise from outright bad faith, it's not worth refusing to contribute your efforts to a cause you deem worthwhile.
+
+I think I've _more than_ met this standard. I _tried_ personally fixing the issue no matter how much effort it took! Also, the issue _does_, in fact, arise from outright bad faith. (We had [an entire Sequence](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb) about this! You lying motherfuckers!)
+
+That ended up being quite a lot of effort!—but at this point I've _exhausted every possible avenue of appeal_. Arguing [publicly on the object level](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) didn't work. Arguing [publicly on the meta level](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) didn't work. Arguing privately didn't work.
+
+This is sort of what I was trying to do when soliciting—begging for—engagement-or-endorsement of "Where to Draw the Boundaries?"
+
+If someone says to me, "You're right, but I can't admit this in public because it would be too politically expensive for me. Sorry," I can't say I'm not _disappointed_, but I can respect that they labor under different constraints from me.
+
+But we can't even have that, because saying "You're right, but I can't admit this in public" requires _trust_.
+
+_socially load-bearing_ philosophy mistake.
+
+I currently write "trans woman", two words, as a strategic concession to the shibboleth-detectors of my target audience:[^two-words] I don't want to to _prematurely_ scare off progressive-socialized readers on account of mere orthography, when what I actually have to say is already disturbing enough.)
+
+[^two-words]: For the unfamiliar: the [doctrine here](https://medium.com/@cassiebrighter/please-write-trans-women-as-two-words-487f153444fb) is that "transwoman" is cissexist, because "trans" is properly an adjective indicating a type of woman.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff