But this "I can define the word _woman_ any way I want" mind game? _That_ part was _absolutely_ clear-cut. That part of the argument, I knew I could win.
-
-
[TODO: contrast "... Not Man for the Categories" to "Against Lie Inflation";
When the topic at hand is how to define "lying", Alexander
Scott has written exhaustively about the dangers of strategic equivocation ("Worst Argument", "Brick in the Motte"); insofar as I can get a _coherent_ posiiton out of the conjunction of "... for the Categories" and Scott's other work, it's that he must think strategic equivocation is OK if it's for being nice to people
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/16/against-lie-inflation/
]
-So, because I trusted people in my robot cult to be dealing in good faith rather than fucking with me because of their political incentives, I took the bait. I ended up spending three years of my life re-explaining the relevant philosophy-of-language issues in exhaustive, _exhaustive_ detail.
+I ended up spending three years of my life re-explaining the relevant philosophy-of-language issues in exhaustive, _exhaustive_ detail.
At first I did this in the object-level context of gender on this blog, in ["The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/), and the ["Reply on Adult Human Females"](/2018/Apr/reply-to-the-unit-of-caring-on-adult-human-females/). And that would have been the end of the philosophy-of-language track specifically ...
----------
-In [one of Yudkowsky's roleplaying fiction threads](https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508), Thellim, a woman hailing from [a saner alternate version of Earth](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/dath-ilan) [expresses horror and disgust at how shallow and superficial the characters in _Pride and Prejudice_ are, in contrast to what a human being _should_ be](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1592898#reply-1592898):
+In [one of Yudkowsky's roleplaying fiction threads](https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508), Thellim, a woman hailing from [a saner alternate version of Earth called dath ilan](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/dath-ilan), [expresses horror and disgust at how shallow and superficial the characters in _Pride and Prejudice_ are, in contrast to what a human being _should_ be](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1592898#reply-1592898):
-> [...] the author has made zero attempt to even try to depict Earthlings as having reflection, self-observation, a fire of inner life; most characters in _Pride and Prejudice_ bear the same relationship to human minds as a stick figure bears to a photograph. People, among other things, have the property of trying to be people; the characters in Pride and Prejudice have no visible such aspiration. Real people have concepts of their own minds, and contemplate their prior ideas of themselves in relation to a continually observed flow of their actual thoughts, and try to improve both their self-models and their selves.
+> [...] the author has made zero attempt to even try to depict Earthlings as having reflection, self-observation, a fire of inner life; most characters in _Pride and Prejudice_ bear the same relationship to human minds as a stick figure bears to a photograph. People, among other things, have the property of trying to be people; the characters in Pride and Prejudice have no visible such aspiration. Real people have concepts of their own minds, and contemplate their prior ideas of themselves in relation to a continually observed flow of their actual thoughts, and try to improve both their self-models and their selves. [TODO: continue the quote to the part about Verrez self-awareness]
When someone else doesn't see the problem with Jane Austen's characters, Thellim [redoubles her determination to explain the problem](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1592987#reply-1592987): "_She is not giving up that easily. Not on an entire planet full of people._"
It _is_ genuinely sad that the author of those Tweets didn't get perceived the way she would prefer! But the thing I want her to understand, a thing I think any sane adult should understand—
-_It was a compliment!_ That poor receptionist was almost certainly thinking of [David Bowie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie) or [Eddie Izzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard), rather than being hateful and trying to hurt.
+_It was a compliment!_ That poor receptionist was almost certainly thinking of [David Bowie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie) or [Eddie Izzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard), rather than being hateful and trying to hurt. [TODO: echo the Verrez self-awareness phrasing]
I want a shared cultural understanding that the _correct_ way to ameliorate the genuine sadness of people not being perceived the way they prefer is through things like _better and cheaper facial feminization surgery_, not _[emotionally blackmailing](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/) people out of their ability to report what they see_. I don't _want_ to reliniqush [my ability to notice what women's faces look like](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf), even if that means noticing that mine isn't; if I'm sad that it isn't, I can endure the sadness if the alternative is _forcing everyone in my life to doublethink around their perceptions of me_.
----------
-[Moldbug argues that this is how America treats non-Asian minorities; and that it actually has bad effects on the people themselves—]
-
-[I can see the argument abstractly, but I couldn't put my weight down on it being bad for the people themselves, until I see it happening to my people ...]
-
-It wasn't my place. I'm not a woman or a racial minority; I don't have their lived experience; I _don't know what it's like_ to face the challenges they face. So while I could permissibly _read blog posts_ skeptical of the progressive story about redressing wrongs done to designated sympathetic victim groups, but I clearly didn't have license to _talk_ about any reasons to be skeptical ...
-
-[Scott Alexander wrote about how there are different dimensions of power—
-http://web.archive.org/web/20130424233301/http://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html]
-
-—until, suddenly, in 2016, it was now seeming that the designated sympathetic victim group of our age was ... _straight boys who wish they were girls_. And suddenly, [_I had standing_](/2017/Feb/a-beacon-through-the-darkness-or-getting-it-right-the-first-time/). When a political narrative is being pushed for _your_ alleged benefit, it's much easier to make the call that it's obviously full of lies.
-
-----------
-
[TODO: David Xu's postrat]
And the thing where David Xu interprets criticism of Eliezer as me going "full post-rat"?! https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1435106339550740482
In particular, in ["Changing Emotions"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions) (and its precursor in a [2004 Extropians mailing list post](https://archive.is/En6qW)), Yudkowsky explains that "changing sex" is vastly easier said than done—
+
+
[[[ TODO summarize the Whole Dumb Story (does there need to be a separate post? I'm still not sure)
[TODO: But that was all about me—I assumed "trans" was a different thing. My first clue that I might not be living in that world came from—Eliezer Yudkowsky, with the "at least 20% of the ones with penises are actually women" thing]
playing on a different chessboard—I would be fine with it if he didn't shit on my chessboard. But my shitting on his chessboard
+I could forgive him for taking a shit on d4 of my chessboard ("at least 20% of the ones with penises are actually women"). I could even forgive him for subsequently taking a shit on e4 of my chessboard ("") as long as he wiped the shit off afterwards ([TODO linky-quotey clarification]), even though, really, I would have expected someone so smart to take a hint after the incident on d4.
+
Ben on Discursive Warfare and Faction Formation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dou43_aX_h1lP7-wqU_5jJq62PuhotQaybe5H2HUmWc/edit
> What's not wrong on purpose is persuasive but does not become a factional identity. What becomes a factional identity is wrong on purpose.
I joined the "Eliezerfic" server in spite of my enmity, and JoshTriplett is in there (contrary to my gut instinct that Rust peeps hate my rationalist peeps)
-Tweet about "unvirtuous to just believe me"—well, YES
-
The cowardice is remarkable, coming from someone who otherwise
jbeshir
You gave me hot chocolate last night, right? I was worried that you were subconsciously poisoning me; not on purpose, but because there are just a lot of contaminants in cities; things that taste sweet to children but are actually poisonous; but, Anna said that most events are normal; I don't remember that note"
+winning Hamilton tickets at $2200
+
meeting Katie—
Sun Jan 15 2017 08:35:40
all those transwomen are going to be so embarrassed when the FAI gives us telepathy after the Singularity
and it turns out that what actual women feel as _absolutely nothing to do_ with what AGP fantasy feels like
-Holy shit, this is *exactly* what happened with me
-Katie's comment on https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/advice-for-wivesgirlfriends-of-autogynephiles/
Tue Feb 14 2017 11:26:20 (this conversation was actually during the tantrum)—
----
Habryka's PalmCone memo mentions there being people whose top priority is to influence you—that's totally what I was doing to Scott and Eliezer
+
+https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-16/melbourne-teenage-mathlete-wins-gold-for-the-second-time-/5602226?nw=0&r=Image
+https://postchimpblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/05/alexs-guide-to-transitioning/
+
+The LW community is a bubble/machine that made me who I am (it doesn't infringe on my independence more than school, but it's still shaping force in the way that going to University or Google shapes people)
+
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy
+> If those people went around lying to others and paternalistically deceiving them—well, mostly, I don't think they'll have really been the types to live inside reality themselves. But even imagining the contrary, good luck suddenly unwinding all those deceptions and getting other people to live inside reality with you, to coordinate on whatever suddenly needs to be done when hope appears, after you drove them outside reality before that point. Why should they believe anything you say?
+
+the Extropians post _explicitly_ says "may be a common sexual fantasy"
+> So spending a week as a member of the opposite sex may be a common sexual fantasy, but I wouldn't count on being able to do this six seconds after the Singularity. I would not be surprised to find that it took three subjective centuries before anyone had grown far enough to attempt a gender switch.
+
+------
+
+Dath ilan has a concept of "the Light"—the vector in policyspace perpendicular outwards from the Pareto curve, in which everyone's interests coincide.
+
+
+In dath ilan they talk about the Light—the policy vector that everyone can agree on
+
+
+------
+
+It's as if the guy has just completely given up on the idea that public speech is useful, or that anyone besides he and his flunkies are capable of thought.
+
+> "too many people think it's unvirtuous to shut up and listen to me" I wish I had never written about LDT and just told people to vote for reasons they understand when they're older
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1509944888376188929
+
+
+
+What a _profoundly_ anti-intellectual statement! This is just not something you would say if you cared about having a rationality community that could process arguments and correct errors,
+
+rather than a robot cult
+
+
+To be clear, there _is_ such a thing as legitimately trusting an authority who knows better than you.
+
+That trust is a _finite resource_.
+
+------
+
+
+
+
+
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff