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-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 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! People who wanted to change sex would just _do it_, and everyone would use corresponding language because it straightforwardly _described reality_—not as a political favor, or because of some exceedingly clever philosophy argument.
If it cost $200K, I would just take out a bank loan and _do it_.
Some readers who aren't part of my robot cult—and some who are—might be puzzled at why I was so emotionally disturbed by people being wrong about philosophy. And for almost anyone else in the world, I would just shrug and [set the bozo bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit#Dismissing_a_person_as_not_worth_listening_to).
-Even people who aren't religious still have the same [species-typical psychological mechanisms](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psychological-unity-of-humankind) that make religions work. The systematically-correct-reasoning community had come to fill a [similar niche in my psychology as a religious community](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p5DmraxDmhvMoZx8J/church-vs-taskforce). I knew this, but the _hope_ was that this wouldn't come with the pathologies of a religion, because our pseudo-religion was _about_ the rules of systematically correct reasoning. The system is _supposed_ to be self-correcting: if people are _obviously_, demonstratably wrong, all you have to do is show them the argument that they're wrong, and then they'll understand the obvious argument and change their minds.
+Even people who aren't religious still have the same [species-typical psychological mechanisms](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psychological-unity-of-humankind) that make religions work. The systematically-correct-reasoning community had come to fill a [similar niche in my psychology as a religious community](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p5DmraxDmhvMoZx8J/church-vs-taskforce). I knew this, but the _hope_ was that this wouldn't come with the pathologies of a religion, because our pseudo-religion was _about_ the rules of systematically correct reasoning. The system is _supposed_ to be self-correcting: if people are obviously, _demonstratably_ wrong, all you have to do is show them the argument that they're wrong, and then they'll understand the obvious argument and change their minds.
So to get a sense of the emotional impact here, imagine a devout Catholic hearing a sermon by their local priest deliver a sermon that says "Sin is good"—or will be predictably interpreted as saying that. [...]
But the _reason_ it seemed _at all_ remotely plausible that our little robot cult could be pivotal in creating Utopia forever was _not_ "[Because we're us](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/effective-altruism-is-self-recommending/), the world-saving good guys", but rather _because_ we were going to discover and refine the methods of _systematically correct reasoning_.
-If the people _marketing themselves_ as the good guys who are going to save the world using systematically correct reasoning are _not actually interested in doing systematically correct reasoning_ (because systematically correct reasoning leads to two or three conclusions that are politically "impossible" to state clearly in public, and no one has the guts to [_not_ shut up and thereby do the politically impossible](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nCvvhFBaayaXyuBiD/shut-up-and-do-the-impossible)), that's arguably _worse_ than the situation where
+If the people _marketing themselves_ as the good guys who are going to save the world using systematically correct reasoning are _not actually interested in doing systematically correct reasoning_ (because systematically correct reasoning leads to two or three conclusions that are politically "impossible" to state clearly in public, and no one has the guts to [_not_ shut up and thereby do the politically impossible](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nCvvhFBaayaXyuBiD/shut-up-and-do-the-impossible)), that's arguably _worse_ than the situation where the community doesn't exist at all—
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[^schelling]: _Strategy of Conflict_, Ch. 2, "An Essay on Bargaining"
-This is sort of what I was trying to do when soliciting—begging for—engagement-or-endorsement of "Where to Draw the Boundaries?" I thought that it ought to be politically feasible to _just_ get public consensus from Very Important People on the _general_ philosophy-of-language issue, stripped of the politicized context that inspired my interest in it, and complete with math and examples about dolphins and job titles. That _should_ be completely safe. If some would-be troublemaker says, "Hey, doesn't this contradict what you said about trans people earlier?", stonewall them. Stonewall _them_, and not _me_. Thus, the public record about philosophy is corrected without the VIPs having to suffer a social-justice scandal. Everyone wins, right?
+This is sort of what I was trying to do when soliciting—begging for—engagement-or-endorsement of "Where to Draw the Boundaries?" I thought that it ought to be politically feasible to _just_ get public consensus from Very Important People on the _general_ philosophy-of-language issue, stripped of the politicized context that inspired my interest in it, and complete with math and examples about dolphins and job titles. That _should_ be completely safe. If some would-be troublemaker says, "Hey, doesn't this contradict what you said about trans people earlier?", stonewall them. (Stonewall _them_ and not _me_!) Thus, the public record about philosophy is corrected without the VIPs having to suffer a social-justice scandal. Everyone wins, right?
But I guess that's not how politics works. Somehow, the mob-punishment mechanisms that aren't smart enough to understand the concept of "bad argument for a true conclusion", _are_ smart enough to connect the dots between my broader agenda and my (correct) abstract philosophy argument, such that VIPs don't think they can endorse my _correct_ philosophy argument, without it being _construed as_ an endorsement of me and my detailed heresies, even though (a) that's _retarded_ (it's possible to agree with someone about a particular philosophy argument, while disagreeing with them about how the philosophy argument applies to a particular object-level case), and (b) I would have _hoped_ that explaining the abstract philosophy problem in the context of dolphins would provide enough plausible deniability to defend against _retarded people_ who want to make everything about politics.
-The situation I'm describing is already pretty fucked, but it would be just barely tolerable if the actually-smart people were good enough at coordinating to _privately_ settle philosophy arguments. 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," I can't say I'm not _disappointed_, but I can respect that.
+The situation I'm describing is already pretty fucked, but it would be just barely tolerable if the actually-smart people were good enough at coordinating to _privately_ settle philosophy arguments. 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," I can't say I'm not _disappointed_, but I can respect that they labor under constraints
[people can't trust me to stably keep secrets]
[lightning post assumes invicibility]
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+The Popular Author definitely isn't trying to be cult leader. He just
-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,
+The "national borders" metaphor is particularly galling if—[unlike](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/) [the](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascinations/) Popular Author—you _actually know the math_.
-"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.
+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, I can use the observation of its shape to update my beliefs about its blegg-category-membership, and then use my beliefs about category-membership to update my beliefs about its blueness. This cognitive algorithm is useful if we live in a world where objects that have the appropriate statistical structure—if the joint distribution P(blegg, blueness, eggness) approximately factorizes as P(blegg)·P(blueness|blegg)·P(eggness|blegg).
+"Category boundaries" are 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. If you _don't understand_ the relevant math and philosophy—or are pretending not to understand only and exactly when it's politically convenient—you might think you can redraw the boundary any way you want. But you can't, because the "boundary" visualization is _derived from_ a statistical model which corresponds to _empirically testable predictions about the real world_.
-[wireheading and war are the only two reasons to]
+Fucking with category boundaries corresponds to fucking with the model, which corresponds to fucking with your ability to interpret sensory data. The only two reasons you could _possibly_ want to do this would be to wirehead yourself (corrupt your map to make the territory look nicer than it really is, making yourself _feel_ happier at the cost of sabotaging your ability to navigate the real world) or as information warfare (corrupt shared maps to sabotage other agents' ability to navigate the real world, in a way such that you benefit from their confusion).
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projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff