* I haven't been doing so well, and I need to tell the story for my own sanity
* I spent my entire adult life in "rationality", and I actually believed
* In 2016, it was a huge shock to realize that I could be trans, too (I thought AGP was a different thing), and making this less confusing for other people seemed in line with the rationality mission
+* slowly waking up from sex-differences denialim through LessWrong
* It was pretty traumatizing when it turned out not to be!
* But I notice people kept brining up this "Categories are arbitrary, therefore it's not wrong to insist that TWAW", and that's _definitely_ wrong; that, I knew I could win
* But then Eliezer did it, too, and I _flipped the fuck out_, and set out on a mission to try to get this shit settled in public
-* Theory of jurisprudence, standing, rudeness
+* Theory of jurisprudence, standing, rudeness; Outside View of bad-faith nitpickers
* When email didn't work (details redacted), I thought, "Oh, it's probably because of the politics", so I wrote up the completely general version with examples about dolphins and job titles and Mullerian mimickry in snakes
* And this is _still_ being perceived as too political, even though everyone else shot first?!?!
* And I can't object without looking
* What I think is going on. People want to say on the good size of the Blue Egregore, and that means they can't even defend the _basics_ if there's _any_ political context, or even the context of a _person_ with political cooties
* I don't know what the optimal play is ("pretend that political constraints don't exist" might not actually work in the real world), but this is pretty bad for our collective sanity, and my mental health, and I wish we could at least try to deal with it on the meta level
* I'm politically constrained, too: I don't talk about race differences even though I believe them (link to apophasis/hypocritical humor)
+* conscious, deliberate dishonesty/cageiness is better than the egregore piloting your moves without you knowing
* social incentive gradients towards truth, forged by status
* not sure what the path forward is, my quest for Truth continues onwards (but I'm going to try to unwind the cult-speak)
+* concern that people will be drawn to the beacon of the sequences, and end up in a shitty Bay Area cult
+* mandatory obfuscation (Anne Vitale syndrome)
+* 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
-I mostly haven't been doing so well for the past eight months or so. I've been reluctant to write about it in too much detail for poorly-understood psychological reasons. Maybe it feels too much like attacking my friends? Maybe I'm not sure how much I can say without leaking too much information from private conversations? But I need to write _something_—not to attack anyone or spill anyone's secrets, but just to _tell the truth_ about why I've been wasting stretches of days in _constant emotional pain_ all year. For my own healing, for my own sanity.
-So, I've spent basically my entire adult life in this insular little intellectual subculture that was founded in the late 'aughts on an ideal of _absolute truthseeking_. Sure, anyone will _say_ that their beliefs are true, but you can tell most people aren't being very serious about it. _We_ were going to be serious: starting with the shared canon of knowledge of cognitive biases, reflectivity, and Bayesian probability theory bequeathed to us by our founder, _we_ were going to make serious [collective](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XqmjdBKa4ZaXJtNmf/raising-the-sanity-waterline) [intellectual progress](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Nu3wa6npK4Ry66vFp/a-sense-that-more-is-possible) in a way that had [never been done before](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-the-skulls/), 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.
+So, I've spent basically my entire adult life in this insular little intellectual subculture that was founded in the late 'aughts on an ideal of _absolute truthseeking_.
+
+
+
+[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.
(Oh, and there was also this part about how the uniquely best thing for non-math-geniuses to do with their lives was to earn lots of money and donate it to our founder's nonprofit dedicated to building a recursively self-improving artificial superintelligence to take over the world in order to save our entire future light cone from the coming robot apocalypse. That part's complicated.)
rebrand—or, failing that, disband—or, failing that, be destroyed.
+(As usual, no one cares about trans men.)
+
We're all about, like, science and rationality and stuff, right? And so if there's a theory that's been sitting in the psychology literature for twenty years, that looks _correct_ (or at least, ah, [less wrong](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TitleDrop) than the mainstream view), that's _directly_ relevant to a _lot_ of people around here, that seems like the sort of thing
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KvefburLia7ptEE3/the-correct-contrarian-cluster
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.
+
+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)
-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong
+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
-["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)
+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._)
-["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)
+I _have_ to keep escalating, because I don't have a choice
-["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)
+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"
-[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)
+It shouldn't be a political demand; people should actually process my arguments because they're good arguments
-[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)
+"Actually, we're Ashkenazi supremacists"
-["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)
+James Watson 'aught-seven
-["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)
+Arguing is not a punishment https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/argue-politics-with-your-best-friends/
-[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)
+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.)
+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."
-"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.
+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).
-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.
+http://www.sl4.org/archive/0602/13903.html
-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)
+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
-[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)
+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
-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
-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._)
+"audience capture" https://forward.com/opinion/431400/youtuber-pewdiepies-adl-boycott-shows-how-anti-semitism-goes-mainstream/
-I _have_ to keep escalating, because I don't have a choice
-keep the rheotrical emphasis on "tale of personal heartbreak, plus careful analysis of the sociopolitical causes thereof" rather than "attacking my friends and heros"
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/15/my-id-on-defensiveness/
+
+_out of cards_
+
+"I" statements
+
+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 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
+
+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
+
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff