* if part of the resistacne to an honest cost/benefit analysis is
+* reasonable vs. unreasonable misunderstandings
+
+
* what did I expect, taking on an egregore so much bigger than me?
* if I agree that people should be allowed to transition, why am I freaking out? Because I _actually care about getting the theory correct_
-
+* culture matters: if you're surrounded by crazy people
+* it's not particular to social justice; I'd punch right in a Christian theocracy
* what I mean by "gaslighting"
person paper on purity
+"The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud."
+
Sara Bareilles song
+[briefly tell the story of my AGP and sex-differences denialism, seems causually realted; didn't expect to blog about it]
+
+[briefly tell the story of my AGP and sex-differences denialism, seems causually realted; didn't expect to blog about it; provide the necessary backstory while being reasonably brief]
+
+[my Facebook tantrum kept getting derailed]
+
, to forge and refine a new mental martial art of _systematically correct reasoning_ that we were going to use to optimize ourselves and the world.
analogy to school
-(["_Perhaps_, replied the cold logic. _If the world were at stake_. Perhaps, echoed the other part of himself, _but that is not what was actually happening_."](http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good))
+(["_Perhaps_, replied the cold logic. _If the world were at stake_. _Perhaps_, echoed the other part of himself, _but that is not what was actually happening_."](http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good))
+"One may even consider the act of defining a word as a promise to this effect. Telling someone, "I define the word 'wiggin' to mean a person with green eyes and black hair", by Gricean implication, asserts that the word "wiggin" will somehow help you make inferences / shorten your messages.
-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong
+If green-eyes and black hair have no greater than default probability to be found together, nor does any other property occur at greater than default probability along with them, then the word "wiggin" is a lie: The word claims that certain people are worth distinguishing as a group, but they're not.
+In this case the word "wiggin" does not help describe reality more compactly—it is not defined by someone sending the shortest message—it has no role in the simplest explanation. Equivalently, the word "wiggin" will be of no help to you in doing any Bayesian inference. Even if you do not call the word a lie, it is surely an error." (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLcuygFfMfrfK8KjF/mutual-information-and-density-in-thingspace)
-["It is a common misconception that you can define a word any way you like."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3nxs2WYDGzJbzcLMp/words-as-hidden-inferences)
-["So that's another reason you can't 'define a word any way you like': You can't directly program concepts into someone else's brain."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HsznWM9A7NiuGsp28/extensions-and-intensions)
-["When you take into account the way the human mind actually, pragmatically works, the notion 'I can define a word any way I like' soon becomes 'I can believe anything I want about a fixed set of objects' or 'I can move any object I want in or out of a fixed membership test'."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HsznWM9A7NiuGsp28/extensions-and-intensions)
+selection effect whereby citizens of the Caliphate only petition the rightful caliph when they have a problem, which can be discouraging when you're the caliph and you don't see the people's appreciation for the ways in which the kingdom is great
-[There's an idea, which you may have noticed I hate, that "you can define a word any way you like".](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i2dfY65JciebF3CAo/empty-labels)
+From my perspective, Professor, I'm just doing what you taught me (carve reality at the joints; speak the truth, even if your voice trembles; make an extraordinary effort when you've got Something to Protect; _&c._)
-[And of course you cannot solve a scientific challenge by appealing to dictionaries, nor master a complex skill of inquiry by saying "I can define a word any way I like".](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y5MxoeacRKKM3KQth/fallacies-of-compression)
+I _have_ to keep escalating, because I don't have a choice
-["Categories are not static things in the context of a human brain; as soon as you actually think of them, they exert force on your mind. One more reason not to believe you can define a word any way you like."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/veN86cBhoe7mBxXLk/categorizing-has-consequences)
+I'm trying to keep the rheotrical emphasis on "tale of personal heartbreak, plus careful analysis of the sociopolitical causes of said heartbreak" rather than "attacking my friends and heros"
-["And people are lazy. They'd rather argue 'by definition', especially since they think 'you can define a word any way you like'."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yuKaWPRTxZoov4z8K/sneaking-in-connotations)
+It shouldn't be a political demand; people should actually process my arguments because they're good arguments
-[I say all this, because the idea that "You can X any way you like" is a huge obstacle to learning how to X wisely. "It's a free country; I have a right to my own opinion" obstructs the art of finding truth. "I can define a word any way I like" obstructs the art of carving reality at its joints. And even the sensible-sounding "The labels we attach to words are arbitrary" obstructs awareness of compactness.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/soQX8yXLbKy7cFvy8/entropy-and-short-codes)
+"Actually, we're Ashkenazi supremacists"
+James Watson 'aught-seven
-"One may even consider the act of defining a word as a promise to this effect. Telling someone, "I define the word 'wiggin' to mean a person with green eyes and black hair", by Gricean implication, asserts that the word "wiggin" will somehow help you make inferences / shorten your messages.
+Arguing is not a punishment https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/argue-politics-with-your-best-friends/
-If green-eyes and black hair have no greater than default probability to be found together, nor does any other property occur at greater than default probability along with them, then the word "wiggin" is a lie: The word claims that certain people are worth distinguishing as a group, but they're not.
+Brief group conversational silences are ostracism threats, but like, threats are great because you have the option of complying with them if you don't want a war.)
-In this case the word "wiggin" does not help describe reality more compactly—it is not defined by someone sending the shortest message—it has no role in the simplest explanation. Equivalently, the word "wiggin" will be of no help to you in doing any Bayesian inference. Even if you do not call the word a lie, it is surely an error." (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLcuygFfMfrfK8KjF/mutual-information-and-density-in-thingspace)
+I do, however, think there's a subtler failure mode than "heretics get shouted down", namely, "heretics have to put up with spurious isolated demands for rigor, logical rudeness, conversation-halters, &c., such that the community doesn't update or updates slower than it could have."
-[And this suggests another—yes, yet another—reason to be suspicious of the claim that "you can define a word any way you like". When you consider the superexponential size of Conceptspace, it becomes clear that singling out one particular concept for consideration is an act of no small audacity—not just for us, but for any mind of bounded computing power.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/82eMd5KLiJ5Z6rTrr/superexponential-conceptspace-and-simple-words)
+This is, of course, a much harder problem to solve, because "Speaker gets shouted down" is easy for third parties to detect as a discourse-norm violation, whereas "Speaker's (polite!) interlocutors are engaging in motivated continuation" is a subtle judgment call that a lot of third-parties are going to get wrong. But if and to the extent that such a thing does happen in our community—and you shouldn't take my word for it—I think it's causally downstream of silencing going on elsewhere in the trash fire that is Society (which we're not isolated from).
-selection effect whereby citizens of the Caliphate only petition the rightful caliph when they have a problem, which can be discouraging when you're the caliph and you don't see the people's appreciation for the ways in which the kingdom is great
+http://www.sl4.org/archive/0602/13903.html
-From my perspective, Professor, I'm just doing what you taught me (carve reality at the joints; speak the truth, even if your voice trembles; make an extraordinary effort when you've got Something to Protect; _&c._)
+probably the strongest is "These people have ignored their own carefully gathered experimental evidence for decades in favor of stuff that sounds more intuitive." : https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KvefburLia7ptEE3/the-correct-contrarian-cluster
-I _have_ to keep escalating, because I don't have a choice
+power is weird: I feel a bit icky when I notice Sophia or Rachel or Tetra changing their description in a way that seemed influenced by me
-I'm trying to keep the rheotrical emphasis on "tale of personal heartbreak, plus careful analysis of the sociopolitical causes of said heartbreak" rather than "attacking my friends and heros"
-It shouldn't be a political demand; people should actually process my arguments because they're good arguments
+"audience capture" https://forward.com/opinion/431400/youtuber-pewdiepies-adl-boycott-shows-how-anti-semitism-goes-mainstream/
-"Actually, we're Ashkenazi supremacists"
-James Watson 'aught-seven
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/15/my-id-on-defensiveness/
+_out of cards_
-Arguing is not a punishment https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/argue-politics-with-your-best-friends/
+"I" statements
-Brief group conversational silences are ostracism threats, but like, threats are great because you have the option of complying with them if you don't want a war.)
+chapter and verse
+I will try to be less silly about "my thing is actually important for the world" claims, when what I really mean is that I'm just not a consequentialist about speech
+"Outside the Laboratory" dumbness could be selection rather than causal
-I do, however, think there's a subtler failure mode than "heretics get shouted down", namely, "heretics have to put up with spurious isolated demands for rigor, logical rudeness, conversation-halters, &c., such that the community doesn't update or updates slower than it could have."
+I don't expect anyone to take a stand for a taboo topic that they don't care about
+I would have expected Scott and/or Eliezer to help clarify the philosophy-of-language mistake, because that's core sequences material
+but I was wrong
-This is, of course, a much harder problem to solve, because "Speaker gets shouted down" is easy for third parties to detect as a discourse-norm violation, whereas "Speaker's (polite!) interlocutors are engaging in motivated continuation" is a subtle judgment call that a lot of third-parties are going to get wrong. But if and to the extent that such a thing does happen in our community—and you shouldn't take my word for it—I think it's causally downstream of silencing going on elsewhere in the trash fire that is Society (which we're not isolated from).
+I was imagining that it should be safe to endorse my "... Boundaries?" post, because the post is about philosophy, and surely it should be possible to endorse a specific article without that being taken as an endorsement of the author
+but ... I guess that's not how politics works
+
+They can't _trust_ me not to leverage consensus on the categories-aren't-arbitrary for my object-level thing, in a way that would go on RationalWiki and SneerClub
+
+The counterargument that Dark Side Epistemology isn't that recursive
+
+-----
+
+I would _never_ write someone off for disagreeing with me about a complicated empirical question in psychology. Psychology is _really complicated_—and psychology questions that impinge on hot-button culture war issues are subject to additional biasing pressures. In this domain, no matter how "obvious" I think something is, I have to [take the Outside View seriously](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/beware-the-insi.html) and
+
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/15/my-id-on-defensiveness/
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ Popular Author is very tired
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/
+
+Savvy people have an incentive to stonewall me until I give up and go away, and on any other subject where I didn't have Something to Protect, it would have _worked_
+
+Lying or gerrymandering an individual object-level category boundary is forgivable; constructing a clever philosophical argument that lying is OK, is not
+
+Another kind of asymmetric weapon: whether this narrative "looks worse" for me or my subjects depends on the audience (you can read it as a tale of betrayal of sacred principles, or a tale of personal mental illness)
+
+https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Lurkers_Support_Me_in_Email
+
+still cited: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/d178n2/the_categories_were_made_for_man_not_man_for_the/
+
+transitioning has _costs_; maybe you think some of those costs are illigitimate and should be game-theoretically resisted (Society's transphobia is a terrorirst who you shouldn't negotiate), but first of all, "People are good at noticing each other's sex" isn't transphobia, and second, even if you're doing game-theoretic defiance, you should make that explicit
+
+double-perceception of bad faith: I don't believe "categories are arbitrary" is intellectually honest (and I'm right); my interlocutors don't believe that I'm really this upset about the philosophy of language (and they're _kind of_ right)
+
+I have 3,405 users/7,172 sessions this year, S.'s prediction lists have been 50/50 on "At least one SSC post > 100,000 hits: 50%"
+
+rhetorical superweapon: https://archive.is/6WGbk
+
+"If I'm aching at the thought of them, what for? That's not me anymore."
+
+"And I'm not the girl that I intend to be."
+
+AGP blogging: "Somebody has to and noone else will."
+
+notice the symmetry where _both_ E and I want to partition the discussion with "That's a policy question" ... I just think it's unfair to partition after "words don't have intrinsic defn's" rather than 37 ways
+
+contract-drafting em, SSC blogroll is most of my traffic
+
+people who are constrained by their Overton ratio have an incentive to make this sacred-but-unimportant issue their https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumpStat but that's cruel to me
+
+Second, consider [cause prioritization](https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/concepts/prioritization-research/). If some Issues are particularly important from a utilitarian perspective, and some Issues are particularly important to Green partisans
+
+[Something to Protect](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SGR4GxFK7KmW7ckCB/something-to-protect)
+
+[make an extraordinary effort](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GuEsfTpSDSbXFiseH/make-an-extraordinary-effort)
+
+But _that_ would have to be someone else's story on someone else's blog.
+
+[No, it's not the incentives—it's you](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5nH5Qtax9ae8CQjZ9/no-it-s-not-the-incentives-it-s-you)
+
+[The Correct Contrarian Cluster](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KvefburLia7ptEE3/the-correct-contrarian-cluster)
+
+getting a reversal was improbable, but: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/st7DiQP23YQSxumCt/on-doing-the-improbable
+
+TWAW is a positive-valence instance of the worst-argument-in-the-world, but it's still the SAME THING; if you can't see that, you're dumb
+
+
+[I have seen the destiny of my neurotype, and am putting forth a convulsive effort to wrench it off its path. My weapon is clear writing.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i8q4vXestDkGTFwsc/human-evil-and-muddled-thinking)
+
+I just don't _know how_ to tell the true tale of personal heartbreak without expressing some degree of disappointment in some people's characters. It is written that ["almost no one is evil; almost everything is broken."](https://blog.jaibot.com/). And [the _first_ step](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uHYYA32CKgKT3FagE/hold-off-on-proposing-solutions) towards fixing that which is broken, is _describing the problem_.)
+
+The "I can define the word 'woman' any way I want" argument is bullshit. All the actually-smart people know that it's bullshit at _some_ level, perhaps semi-consciously buried under a lot of cognitive dissonance. But it's _socially load-bearing_ bullshit that _not only_ does almost no one have an incentive to correct—
+
+But no one has the incentive to correct the mistake in public.
+
+"Some people don't have penises" ... can you be a little more specific?!
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff