-(I normally eschew the use of boldface in prose, but as a strategic concession to people's lack of reading comprehension, I'll be bolding key sentences that I fear people would otherwise fail to process and misunderstand my position as a result.)
+**(I typically eschew the use of boldface in prose, but will be bolding key sentences in this post as a strategic concession to people's lack of reading comprehension.)**
+
+---
+
+**Almost everything I do is at least one meta level up from any actual decisions.**
----
In the comments, [I wrote](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions/comment/4pttT7gQYLpfqCsNd)—
-> Is it cheating if you deliberately define your personal identity such that the answer is No?
+> Is it cheating if you deliberately define your personal identity such that the answer is _No_?
-To which I now realize the correct answer is: _Yes_, it's cheating! The map is not the territory!
+To which I now realize the correct answer is: Yes, it's fucking cheating! The map is not the territory! You can't change the current _referent_ of "personal identity" with the semantic mind game of declaring that "personal identity" now refers to something else! How dumb do you think we are?! (But more on this later.)
-----
The fact that I can't _talk about the world I see_ in the simple language that comes naturally to me without it inevitably being construed as a reactionary political statement is a _problem_. And it's a _rationality_ problem insofar as the world I see is potentially a more accurate model of the real world, than the world I'm allowed to talk about.
-I can be polite in most circumstances, as the price of keeping the peace in Society. But it is a price, a cost—and it's a _cognitive_ cost, the cost of _destroying information_ that would make people uncomfortable. Systematically correct reasoners needn't _mention_ the cost in most circumstances (that would not be polite), but we should at least be able to refrain from clever not-technically-lying sophistries engineered to _make it look like there's no cost_.
+I can be polite in most circumstances, as the price of keeping the peace in Society. But it is a price, a cost—and it's a _cognitive_ cost, the cost of _destroying information_ that would make people uncomfortable. Systematically correct reasoners needn't _mention_ the cost in most circumstances (that would not be polite), but we should at least be able to refrain from indulging in clever not-technically-lying sophistry that tries to _make it look like there's no cost_.
-----
If we _actually had_ the magical sex change technology described in "Changing Emotions", no one would even be _tempted_ to invent these category-gerrymandering mind games.
-If it cost $200K, I would just take out a bank loan and _do it_.
+If it cost $200K, I would just take out a bank loan and _do it_.
+
+Not because I like my voice, but because
+
+[trans woman one word]
+[maybe it woudl be a good idea ten years ago]
-----
-I definitely don't want to call my friend Irene a man. That would be crazy! Because **her transition _actually worked_.** Because it actually worked _on the merits_. _Not_ because I'm _redefining concepts in order to be nice to her_. When I look at her, whatever algorithm my brain uses to sort people into "woman"/"man"/"not sure" buckets, returns "woman."
+I definitely don't want to call (say) my friend Irene a man. That would be crazy! Because **her transition _actually worked_.** Because it actually worked _on the merits_. _Not_ because I'm _redefining concepts in order to be nice to her_. When I look at her, whatever algorithm my brain _ordinarily_ uses to sort people into "woman"/"man"/"not sure" buckets, returns "woman."
+
+**If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and you can model it as a duck without making any grevious prediction errors, then it makes sense to call it a "duck" in the range of circumstances that your model continues to be useful**, even if a pedant might point out that it's really an [Anatid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatidae)-[oid](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-oid#Suffix) robot, or that that species is technically a goose.
-----
The Popular Author
"People started threatening to use my bad reputation to discredit the communities I was in and the causes I cared about most."
+
+[lightning post assumes invicibility]
+
+----
+
+The "national borders" metaphor is particularly galling if—[unlike the popular author](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/)—you _actually know the math_.
+
+If I have a "blegg" concept for blue egg-shaped objects—uh, this is [our](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4FcxgdvdQP45D6Skg/disguised-queries) [standard](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yFDKvfN6D87Tf5J9f/neural-categories) [example](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA4gF5KrboK2m2Xu7/how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside), just [roll with it](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/blegg-mode/)—what that _means_ is that (at some appropriate level of abstraction) there's a little [Bayesian network](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hzuSDMx7pd2uxFc5w/causal-diagrams-and-causal-models) in my head with "blueness" and "eggness" observation nodes hooked up to a central "blegg" category-membership node, such that if I see a black-and-white photograph of an egg-shaped object,
+
+"Category boundaries" were just a _visual metaphor_ for the math: the set of things I'll classify as a blegg with probability greater than _p_ is conveniently _visualized_ as an area with a boundary in blueness–eggness space.
+
+
+[wireheading and war are the only two reasons to]
+
+-----
+
+[psychological unity of humankind and sex]
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psychological-unity-of-humankind
+
+----
+
+[ppl don't click links—quick case for AGP—80% is not 100, but]
+
+-----
+
+["delusional perverts", no one understands me]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff