-TODO finish before I can vet and ship pt.s 1–3
----------------
-✓ "People ..." introduction
-✓ finish existing 5150 scene scraps
-✓ CCRMC facility note
-✓ footnote about telephone game of "self present"
-✓ interacting with the outpatient program
-✓ Vassar discourse I
-✓ community health check
-✓ Vassar discourse II
-✓ ordering DIY hormones
-✓ asking Anna for promise
-✓ Vassar discourse III
-✓ proposed credit-assignment ritual
-✓ emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence/Cantor/Dreger
-✓ tie-off
-✓ "Roberta" situation
-_ overheating in April, staying at Volterra, Hamilton purchase
-_ BABSCon
-_ "my call with Western Psychiatric's Manager of Patient Relations"
-_ final credit assignment ritual
-
-_ phenotypic capture and memetic identity (insert into pt. 1)
-
-pre-edit phase—
-_ security code drama?? ("Although, speaking of documenting" 2 March)
-_ integrate 5150 scene scraps into a coherent section
-
-near editing tier—
-_ link Crossdreamers (at the same time I say it's not about the clothes, to help make sense of the title)
-_ so embarrassed after the Singularity
-_ "Patient's Rights" or "Patients' Rights"?
-_ mention my "trembling hand" history with secrets, not just that I don't like it
-_ NRx explanation should include the "there's only what won" line
-_ It's not clear anyone he usually respects was making this mistake; it seems likely that the original thread was subtweeting Eric Weinstein, who was not making this mistake
-_ mention flying to Pittsburgh had been brought up
-_ Noether's theorem allusion re "... Boundaries?"
-
-
-people to consult specifically before pt. 1–3:
-_ hostile prereader? (first-choice: April)
-_ professional editor?
-
-Needed for pt. 1—
-- "Thomas" [pt. 1-2]
-_ Tail (AGP discussion) [pt. 1]
-_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation) [pt. 1-3]
-_ Sophia [pt. 1-2]
-_ Anna [blanket]
-
-Needed for pt. 2–3—
-_ Scott [blanket]
-_ Ben/Jessica (Michael) [pt. 2-]
-_ Divia? (ask if she wants to be mentioned?) [blanket]
-_ "Bill" [pt. 3-]
-_ "Roberta"? [pt. 2]
-_ Alicorn: briefly, and for Melkor Glowfic reference link [pt. 2-3]
-_ "Noreen" [pt. 2]
-_ Lex [pt. 2]
-_ "Rebecca" (consent, pseudonym choice) [pt. 2, not before 15 June]
-
-
---------------
-
-from the top editing session— bookmark phrase "The thing about being psychiatrically"
-
-----------------
-
_ "Lenore" psychiatric disaster
- Eliezerfic fight conclusion
_ Michael Vassar and the Theory of Optimal Gossip
_ plan to reach out to Rick
-
- regrets, wasted time, conclusion
-
_ reaction to Ziz
_ State of Steven
_ culture off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver
------
With internet available—
-_ define ersatz
-_ link to my Facebook post for Coming Out Day
-_ "All You Zombies"
-_ links to PA hospitals
-_ link to my Facebook posts on Azkaban, prematuring conceding the bet, and correcting the bet record
-_ what did the comments on my Pittsburg/Azkaban post say?
-_ check that the Feb. Blanchard Tweet is the one with the screenshot-quote
-_ link to Kevin Hsu and James Cantor
_ Is http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/01/be-a-charity-angel.html the best link for after-the-fact prize funding?
_ P(doom)
_ Michael on OB in 'aught-eight on smart kids internalizing rules meant for the norm of reaction of a dumber population
_ double-check EnyeWord in archive.is?
_ Eliezerfic fight: where did the super-AIDS example fit in cronologically?
_ Keltham/Peranza exam answer should link specific tags
-_ Susan Fenimore Cooper
_ IQ 143 cite
_ double-check "the mood I thought dath ilan was missing" link target
_ double-check "the power that could not be removed" quote
_ Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy
far editing tier—
-_ mention "Beatrice" earlier!!
-_ mention "special simulator attention" in cxn with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_reference_and_delusions_of_reference
-_ make sure I mention father asking me to wait before re-starting HRT
-_ "People": say something about the awkward racial/political dynamics of three of my four anecdotes being about black people? Salient because rare? Salient because of my NRx-pilling?
+_ Caliphate / craft and the community
+_ colony ship happiness lie in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AWaJvBMb9HGBwtNqd/qualitative-strategies-of-friendliness
+_ re being fair to abusers: thinking about what behavior pattern you would like to see, generally, by people in your situation, instead of privileging the perspective and feelings of people who've made themselves vulnerable to you by transgressing against you
+_ body odors comment
+_ "Density in Thingspace" comment
_ Christmas with Scott: mention the destruction of "voluntary"?
_ Christmas with Scott: mention the grid of points?
-_ psych ward vs. psych hospital
-_ "A Hill": I claim that I'm not doing much psychologizing because implausible to be simultaenously savvy enough to say this, and naive enough to not be doing so knowingly
_ dath ilan as a whining-based community
_ footnote to explain that when I'm summarizing a long Discord conversation to taste, I might move things around into "logical" time rather than "real time"; e.g. Yudkowsky's "powerfully relevant" and "but Superman" comments were actually one right after the other; and, e.g., I'm filling in more details that didn't make it into the chat, like innate kung fu; and that the fact that I can "enhance" the summaries of my part, but the people I'm talking to don't have the same privilege, should be taken into account—actually, this covers a lot of the memoir; maybe I should mention this earlier (and again in a footnote??)
_ 93's alternate theory of eliezera taste for deception
_ Ruby fight: "forces of blandness want me gone ... stand my ground" remark
_ "Even our pollution is beneficial" [pt. 6]
_ Scott Aaronson on the blockchain of science [pt. 6]
-_ Re: on legitimacy and the entrepreneur; or, continuing the attempt to spread my sociopathic awakening onto Scott [pt. 2 somewhere]
-_ running away to Burlingame; Hamilton tickets
-_ include Wilhelm "Gender Czar" conversation? [pt. 2]
_ "EA" brand ate the "rationalism" brand—even visible in MIRI dialogues
_ Anna's heel–face turn
-_ "counterfactual boyfriend"/It's California in the year 2016
_ not talking about pivotal acts, downstream of not believing in Speech?
_ Alyssa lying about me [pt. 4]
_ Brian Skyrms??
-_ emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence [pt. 2]
-_ HRT (non-)effects, and quitting [pt. 2]
_ mr-hire and pre-emptive steelmanning (before meeting LW mods)
_ meeting with Ray
-_ need to mention Brent's pariah status
-_ be clearer about dates in "Wilhelm" conversations??
-_ "people with fragile identities" dialogue doesn't fit the flow, probably cut or move
_ is the Glowfic author "Lintamande ... they" or "Lintamande ... she"?
_ explain plot of _Planecrash_ better
_ CfAR's AI pivot??
_ example of "steelman before criticize" norm
_ explain mods protect-feelings
_ explain MOPs better
-_ also had back-and-forth with "Noreen" on 8 Feb in Rob's thread!!
_ Motta-Mena and Puts probability-of-gynephilia-by-intersex-condition graph, re trans kids on the margin
-_ "Noreen" discussion needs to cover the part where I'd cause less disruption if I transitioned
-_ "Noreen"'s girlfriend definitely needs to be mentioned
-_ get exact dates and correct Sequencing on late 2016 conversations
-_ mention Michael's influence and South Park recs in late 2016?
_ probably give Amelia as pseudonym?
-_ re Persongen, footnote or sentences about how I knew I was wrong to use naïve-Bayes on facets, but I didn't know what was right
_ squeeze "Darkness and Light" into the Eliezerfic account
_ clarify Sarah dropping out of the coordination group
_ somewhere in dath ilan discussion: putting a wrapper on graphic porn is fine, de-listing Wikipedia articles is not
_ New York NRx conversation, flesh out "mostly guys"; I was acknowleding diversity as unrealistic and hypocritical; he outright doesn't believe in "people" as opposed to men/women
_ fold in observations from "trapped priors—at home"
_ earlier reference the children's books?! "And the Methods of Pre-Rationality"
-_ "Do not ask for additional services" doxxable? revise?
_ Yudkowsky's "Is someone trolling?" comment as counterevidence to narcissim
_ "typographical attack surface" isn't clear
_ voting reputation section is weak, needs revision
_ explain the "if the world were at stake" Sword of Good reference better
_ D. also acknowledged AGP
_ "no one else would have spoken" should have been a call-to-action to read more widely
-_ explain who Kay Brown is
-_ "Great Common Task" is probably capitalized
_ mention Will MacAskill's gimped "longtermism" somehow
_ re-read a DALL-E explanation and decide if I think it's less scary now
_ Scott Aaronson on the blockchain of science https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6821
_ footnote previous race-IQ baiting on "why do I keep bringing this up"
-_ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yaCwW8nPQeJknbCgf/free-speech-and-triskaidekaphobic-calculators-a-reply-to as part of December 2019 blogging streak
+_ Bostrom email scandal, Oli's comment about him staying off of the pause letter
_ "I Wish You Well" as breakup song
-_ the function of privacy norms is to protect you from people who want to selectively reveal information to hurt you, so it makes sense that I'm particularly careful about Yudkowsky's privacy and not Scott's, because I totally am trying to hurt Yudkowsky (this also protects me from the charge that by granting more privacy to Yudkowsky than Scott, I'm implying that Yudkowsky said something more incriminating; the difference in treatment is about _me_ and my expectations, rather than what they may or may not have said when I tried emailing them); I want it to be clear that I'm attacking him but not betraying him
_ acknowledge that
_ pull "agreeing with Stalin" quote earlier in ms. to argue that Yudkowsky apparently doesn't disagree with my "deliberately ambiguous"
_ is the title of pt. 4 OK? (agreeing with Stalin _is_ correct when Stalin is right; the problem is that Stalin isn't right about gender)
_ mention Said rigor check somewhere, nervousness about Michael's gang being a mini-egregore
_ at some point, speculate on causes of brain damage
_ the "reducing negativity" post does obliquely hint at the regression point being general ("Let's say that the true level of negativity"), does that seriously undermine my thesis, or does it only merit a footnote?
-_ elaborate on why I'm not leaking sensitive bits, by explaining what can be inferred by what was and wasn't said in public
-_ footnote on "no one would even consider"
+_ footnote on "no one would even consider"
_ post-Christmas conversation should do a better job of capturing the war, that Jessica thinks Scott is Bad for being a psychiatrist
_ conversation with Scott should include the point where I'm trying to do AI theory
_ consistent-ize reference to Somni getting it in pt. 4, with mention of protest in pt. 3
_ Anna "everyone knows" we don't have free speech 2 Mar 2019, self-centeredness about which global goods matter
-_ footnote to explain why I always include the year with the month even though it could be inferred from context
_ make sure to quote Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy before calling back to it
_ tie off Anna's plot arc?
_ explain earlier that my practice of "throw money at things" also applied to my friendship with Anna
_ mention my robot cult history (I've been here since the late 'aughts)
_ quote one more "Hill of Meaning" Tweet emphasizing fact/policy distinction
-_ conversation with Ben about physical injuries (this is important because it explains where the "cut my dick off rhetoric" came from)
-_ context of his claim to not be taking a stand
+_ explains that the "cut my dick off rhetoric" came from conversation with Ben
_ being friends with Anna desipite being political enemies (~May 2019)
_ rephrase "gamete size" discussion to make it clearer that Yudkowsky's proposal also implicitly requires people to be agree about the clustering thing
_ smoother transition between "deliberately ambiguous" and "was playing dumb"; I'm not being paranoid for attributing political motives to him, because he told us that he's doing it
_ when I'm too close to verbatim-quoting someone's email, actually use a verbatim quote and put it in quotes
_ I'm sure Eliezer Yudkowsky could think of some relevant differences
-_ clarify why Michael thought Scott was "gaslighting" me, include "beeseech bowels of Christ"
-_ address the "maybe it's good to be called names" point from "Hill" thread
-_ explain "court ruling" earlier
_ 2019 Discord discourse with Alicorner
_ edit discussion of "anti-trans" side given that I later emphasize that "sides" shouldn't be a thing
-_ first EY contact was asking for public clarification or "I am being silenced" (so Glomarizing over "unsatisfying response" or no response isn't leaking anything Yudkowksy cares about)
-_ Nov. 2018 continues thread from Oct. 2016 conversation
-_ better explanation of posse formation
_ maybe quote Michael's Nov 2018 texts?
-_ mention Nov. 2018 conversation with Ian somehow; backref on bidding for attention again; subject line from Happy Price 2016
_ Said on Yudkowsky's retreat to Facebook being bad for him
_ erasing agency of Michael's friends, construed as a pawn
-_ mention the fact that Anna had always taken a "What You Can't Say" strategy
-_ late 2016 meeting with Ziz
_ when to use first _vs. last names
-_ explain why I'm not being charitable in 2018 thread analysis, that at the time, I thought it had to be a mistake
-_ better summary of Littman
_ explain Rob
_ edit the child transition section in a way that Kay Brown would be OK with, have a few sentences about Clever Hans before the wrap-up
_ ask Jessica where Scott clarified his position on antipsychotics?
-_ I should respond to Ziz's charges that my criticism of concept-policing was a form of concept-policing
_ why doesn't he apply his anti-optimism to his gender statements?!
_ 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
_ better explanation of Scott's jailbreaking accusation against Vassar
_ archive.is karma history for Jessica's post
_ "tossed in a bucket" is ignoring advice from Sept. 2022 clarification to be clear about the type distinction
-_ explicitly explain "Hill of Validity" title inversion
_ figure out full timeline of which of my Less Wrong posts to mention
_ update "80,000 words" refs with the near-final wordcount
_ the "outright bad faith" clause in "Your Price for Joining"
-_ less afraid of hurting O.
-_ secret posse member pointing out that it worked better because it was Oli
+_ "Riley" pointing out that it worked better because it was Oli
+_ I should respond to Ziz's charges that my criticism of concept-policing was a form of concept-policing
+_ mention "special simulator attention" in cxn with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_reference_and_delusions_of_reference
+_ born five years too early
+_ you didn't do a good job explaining to me why someone would think that being bullied into selective silence doesn't constitute a conflict strategy
+_ "counterfactual boyfriend"/It's California in the year 2016??
+_ mention Michael's influence and South Park recs in late 2016?
+_ footnote to explain why I always include the year with the month even though it could be inferred from context
_ update "karma at press time"
_ better explain "lie inflation" ambiguity
_ Facing Reality
_ backlink Yudkowsky's implicit political concession
_ backlink "again grateful" for doctor's notes
+pt. 1½ posterity tier (probably not getting published)—
+_ "People": say something about the awkward racial/political dynamics of three of my four anecdotes being about black people? Salient because rare? Salient because of my NRx-pilling?
+_ Re: on legitimacy and the entrepreneur; or, continuing the attempt to spread my sociopathic awakening onto Scott [pt. 2 somewhere]
+_ include Wilhelm "Gender Czar" conversation? [pt. 2]
+_ emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence [pt. 2]
+
+
+
terms to explain on first mention—
_ inpatient/outpatient
_ NRx
> The Other's theory of themselves usually does not make them look terrible. And you will not have much luck just yelling at them about how they must *really* be doing terrible_thing instead. That's woke filter bubble thinking. I stopped talking to Michael when he went that way.
https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1435619618052214787
+The fact that I flipped out at Nate's dolphin thing was a misplay on my part, but it generated more Twitter discussion (including Eliezer's "never told anyone to go trans" remarks and Vorobey's comments) makes it a "win" for the cause even if I was out of line? My freaking out was "rational".
But I think Eliezer and I _agree_ on what he's doing; he just doesn't see it's bad
I really appreciated Anatoly Vorobey's comments:
+https://twitter.com/avorobey/status/1404769388969054210
+
> to provide context how it may (justifiably?) seem like over the last 7-8 years the rat. community largely fell *hard* for a particular gender philosophy
> ... fell for it in ways that seemed so spectacularly uncritical, compared to other beliefs carefully examined and dissected, and more so, even justified with a veneer of "rationality" (as in Scott's Categories post) that beautifully coincided with the tumblr dogma of the time...
(There had been a moment during my psych imprisonment the other month, when I had noticeable diffculty dialing a phone. I was still a _person_, even when not all of my usual cognitive abilities were online.)
The fact that I ghosted on music lessons from "Tricky" for being nonbinary, is an example of phenotypic capture ruining everything
+
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1668419201101615105
+
+> As usual, I got there first and solved the relatively easy philosophy problems, so the sensible people have nothing to talk about, and the unsensible ones can't just use my answer sheet.
+
+(I thought about apologizing if some of the content was "weird" or offensive, but I figured if you've been a professional editor for 15 years and list memoirs as a specialty, you've probably seen everything.)
+
+After this, the AI situation is looking worrying enough, that I'm thinking I should try to do some more direct xrisk-reduction work, although I haven't definitely selected any particular job or project. (It probably won't matter, but it will be dignified.) Now that the shape of the threat is on the horizon, I think I'm less afraid of being directly involved. Something about having large language models to study in the 'twenties is—grounding, compared to the superstitious fears of the paperclip boogeyman of my nightmares in the 'teens.
+
+Like all intellectuals, as a teenager I imagined that I would write a book. It was always going to be about gender, but I was vaguely imagining a novel, which never got beyond vague imaginings. That was before the Sequences. I'm 35 years old now. I think my intellectual life has succeeded in ways I didn't know how to imagine, before. I think my past self would be proud of this blog—140,000 words of blog posts stapled together is _morally_ a book—once he got over the shock of heresy.
+
+[TODO conclusion, cont'd—
+ * Do I have regrets about this Whole Dumb Story? A lot, surely—it's been a lot of wasted time. But it's also hard to say what I should have done differently; I could have listened to Ben more and lost faith Yudkowsky earlier, but he had earned a lot of benefit of the doubt?
+ * even young smart AGPs who can appreciate my work have still gotten pinkpilled
+ * Jonah had told me that my planning horizon was too short—like the future past a year wasn't real to me. (This plausibly also explains my impatience with college.) My horizon is starting to broaden as AI timelines shorten
+ * less drama (in my youth, I would have been proud that at least this vice was a feminine trait; now, I prefer to be good even if that means being a good man)
+]
+
+> Would you smile to see him dead? Would you say, "We are rid of this obscenist"? Fools! The corpse would laugh at you from its cold eyelids! The motionless lips would mock, and the solemn hands, the pulseless, folded hands, in their quietness would write the last indictment, which neither Time nor you can efface. Kill him! And you write his glory and your shame! Said Achmiz in his felon stripes stands far above you now, and Said Achmiz _dead_ will live on, immortal in the race he died to free! Kill him!
+>
+> —[Voltairine de Cleyre](https://praxeology.net/VC-SS.htm) (paraphrased)
+
+[TODO—early 2023 moderation drama
+ * In early 2023, I was trying to finish up this memoir, but while procrastinating on that, I ended up writing a few other posts for _Less Wrong_; I thought the story of my war with the "rationalists" was relevantly "over"; I didn't anticipate things getting any "worse"
+ * I happened to see that Duncan Sabien's "Basics of Rationalists Discourse" was published
+ * Backstory: Sabien is a former CfAR employee whose Facebook posts I had used to comment on. He had a history of getting offended over things that I didn't think were important—all the way back to our very first interaction in 2017 (I remember being in Portland using Facebook/Messenger on my phone)
+
+ ...
+
+ * I was reluctant to ping Oli (the way I pung Babcock and Pace) because I still "owed" him for the comment on "Challenges", but ultimately ended up sending a Twitter DM just after the verdict (when I saw that he had very-recent reply Tweets and was thus online); I felt a little bit worse about that one (the "FYI I'm at war"), but I think I de-escalated OK and he didn't seem to take it personally
+
+ ...
+
+ * Said is braver than me along some dimensions; the reason he's in trouble and I'm not, even though we were both fighting with Duncan, is that I was more "dovish"—when Duncan attacked, I focused on defense and withheld my "offensive" thoughts; Said's points about Duncan's blocking psychology were "offensive"
+
+ ...
+
+ * I'm proud of the keeping-my-cool performance when Duncan was mad at me, less proud of my performance fighting for Said so far
+
+ ...
+
+ * In the Ruby slapfight, I was explicit about "You shouldn't be making moderation decisions based on seniority"—this time, I've moved on to just making decisions based on seniority; if we're doing consequentialism based on how to attract people to the website, it's clear that there are no purer standards left to appeal to
+]
+
+insane religious fantatics who "merely" want heretics to know their place (as opposed to wanting to hurt or exile them) are still insane religious fanatics.
+
+A hill of validity in defense of meaning.
+
+playing a Dagny Taggart strategy: https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1606718513267486721
+
+-------
+
+I actually thought, "It's so weird to have the psychological upper hand over Vasar" ... I can see a possible story where we was unnerved that I was holding my own in the email argument, so he switched venues to in-person
+
+I _do_ think about psych warfare sometimes (like with Ray)
+
+A possible counterargument to that would be that (at a minimum for many people in many contexts), emotion can't be effectively faked.
+
+I get better criticism from 93, in that he tells me that my ideas are full of shit without making it personal
+
+> No I think there's a case for this approach. Like you see the argument for why you might want to be laboriously fair to Yud because it's important that no one dismiss your complaints on the grounds of "I dunno, doesn't seem fair enough for me".
+> Whereas doing that for every random person you mention would be a lot of work.
+
+I never got an answer to why it was wrong for me to talk to Scott!! And the contradiction between that, and Ben's emphasis on privacy being unjust!
+
+It would have been a lot simpler if you could _just_ make object-level criticisms: "'yelling' is a tendentious description, from our perspective we were arguing passionately"—rather than first
+
+If someone ran over a pedestrian in their car, at the trial you would actually argue about how culpable they are (if they were drunk, it would be worse than if it could be proven to be a freak accident), and "The victim is so much worse off than you!!" isn't actually an argument relevant to determination of culpability
+
+
+When I mentioned re-reading Moldbug on "ignoble privilege", "Thomas" said that it was a reason not to feel the need to seek the approval of women, who had not been ennobled by living in an astroturfed world where the traditional (_i.e._, evolutionarily stable) strategies of relating had been relabeled as oppression. The chip-on-her-shoulder effect was amplified in androgynous women. (Unfortunately, the sort of women I particularly liked.)
+
+He advised me that if I did find an androgynous woman I was into, I shouldn't treat her as a moral authority. Doing what most sensitive men thought of as equality degenerated into female moral superiority, which wrecks the relationship in a feedback loop of testing and resentment. (Women want to win arguments in the moment, but don't actually want to lead the relationship.) Thus, a strange conclusion: to have an egalitarian heterosexual relationship, the man needs to lead the relationship _into_ equality; a dab of patriarchy works better than none.
+
+https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-we-fear-ai-james-w-phillips-and-eliezer-yudkowsky-in-conversation/
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1680166329209466881
+> I am increasingly worried about what people start to believe in after they stop believing in Me
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1683659276471115776
+> from a contradiction one may derive anything, and this is especially true of contradicting Eliezer Yudkowsky
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1683694475644923904
+> I don't do that sort of ridiculous drama for the same reason that Truman didn't like it. I don't have that kind of need to be at the center of the story, that I'd try to make the disaster be about myself.
+
+
+
+------
+
+I'm thinking that for controversial writing, it's not enough to get your friends to pre-read, and it's not enough to hire a pro editor, you probably also need to hire a designated "hostile prereader"
+
+
+
+--------
+
+[revision comment]
+
+The fifth- through second-to-last paragraphs of the originally published version of this post were bad writing on my part.
+
+I was summarizing things Ben said at the time that felt like an important part of the story, without adequately
+
+I've rewritten that passage. Hopefully this version is clearer.
+
+---------
+
+[reply to Wei]
+
+
+----------
+
+Ben explained: Yudkowsky had set in motion a marketing machine (the "rationalist community") that was continuing to raise funds and demand work from people for below-market rates based on the claim that while nearly everyone else was criminally insane (causing huge amounts of damage due to disconnect from reality, in a way that would be criminal if done knowingly), he, almost uniquely, was not. "Work for me or the world ends badly," basically. If the claim was true, it was important to make, and to actually extract that labor.
+
+But we had just falsified to our satisfaction the claim that Yudkowsky was currently sane in the relevant way (which was a extremely high standard, and not a special flaw of Yudkowsky in the current environment). If, after we had _tried_ to talk to him privately, Yudkowsky couldn't be bothered to either live up to his own stated standards or withdraw his validation from the machine he built, then we had a right to talk about what we thought was going on.
+
+This wasn't about direct benefit _vs._ harm. This was about what, substantively, the machine and its operators were doing. They claimed to be cultivating an epistemically rational community, while in fact building an army of loyalists.
+
+Ben compared the whole set-up to that of Eliza the spambot therapist in my short story ["Blame Me for Trying"](/2018/Jan/blame-me-for-trying/): regardless of the initial intent, scrupulous rationalists were paying rent to something claiming moral authority, which had no concrete specific plan to do anything other than run out the clock, maintaining a facsimile of dialogue in ways well-calibrated to continue to generate revenue. Minds like mine wouldn't survive long-term in this ecosystem. If we wanted minds that do "naïve" inquiry (instead of playing savvy power games) to live, we needed an interior that justified that level of trust.
+
+-----
+
+I mostly kept him blocked on Twitter (except when doing research for this document) to curb the temptation to pick fights, but I unblocked him in July 2023 because it was only fair to let him namesearch my promotional Tweet of pt. 2, which named him. I then ended up replying to a thread with him and Perry Metzinger, but only because I was providing relevant information, similar to how I had left a few "Less Wrong reference desk"-style messages in Eliezerfic in 2023
+
+it got 16 Likes
+https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1682100362357121025
+
+I miss this Yudkowsky—
+
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cgrvvp9QzjiFuYwLi/high-status-and-stupidity-why
+> I try in general to avoid sending my brain signals which tell it that I am high-status, just in case that causes my brain to decide it is no longer necessary. In fact I try to avoid sending my brain signals which tell it that I have achieved acceptance in my tribe. When my brain begins thinking something that generates a sense of high status within the tribe, I stop thinking that thought.
+
+----
+
+I thought I should have avoided the 2022 Valinor party to avoid running into him, but I did end up treating him in a personality-cultish way when I was actually there
+
+"Ideology is not the movement" had specifically listed trans as a shibboleth
+
+https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1684947017502433281
+> Keir Starmer agrees that a woman is an adult human female. Will Ed Davey also rejoin the real world, science & the English language by reversing his view that a woman can "quite clearly" have a penis? Inability to face reality in small things bodes ill for more serious matters.
+
+Analysis of my writing mistake (show this to Jackie!!)
+https://twitter.com/shroomwaview/status/1681742799052341249
+
+------
+
+I got my COVID-19 vaccine (the one-shot Johnson & Johnson) on 3 April 2021, so I was able to visit "Arcadia" again on 17 April, for the first time in fourteen months.
+
+I had previously dropped by in January to deliver two new board books I had made, _Koios Blume Is Preternaturally Photogenic_ and _Amelia Davis Ford and the Great Plague_, but that had been a socially-distanced book delivery, not a "visit".
+
+The copy of _Amelia Davis Ford and the Great Plague_ that I sent to my sister in Cambridge differed slightly from the one I brought to "Arcadia". There was an "Other books by the author" list on the back cover with the titles of my earlier board books. In the Cambridge edition of _Great Plague_, the previous titles were printed in full: _Merlin Blume and the Methods of Pre-Rationality_, _Merlin Blume and the Steerswoman's Oath_, _Merlin Blume and the Sibling Rivalry_. Whereas in _Preternaturally Photogenic_ and the "Arcadia" edition of _Great Plague_, the previous titles were abbreviated: _The Methods of Pre-Rationality_, _The Steerswoman's Oath_, _The Sibling Rivalry_.
+
+The visit on the seventeenth went fine. I hung out, talked, played with the kids. I had made a double-dog promise to be on my best no-politics-and-religion-at-the-dinner-table behavior.
+
+At dinner, there was a moment when Koios bit into a lemon and made a funny face, to which a bunch of the grown-ups said "Awww!" A few moments later, he went for the lemon again. Alicorn speculated that Koios had noticed that the grown-ups found it cute the first time, and the grown-ups were chastened. "Aww, baby, we love you even if you don't bite the lemon."
+
+It was very striking to me how, in the case of the baby biting a lemon, Alicorn _immediately_ formulated the hypothesis that what-the-grownups-thought-was-cute was affecting the baby's behavior, and everyone _immediately just got it_. I was tempted to say something caustic about how no one seemed to think a similar mechanism could have accounted for some of the older child's verbal behavior the previous year, but I kept silent; that was clearly outside the purview of my double-dog promise.
+
+There was another moment when Mike made a remark about how weekends are socially constructed. I had a lot of genuinely on-topic cached witty philosophy banter about [how the social construction of concepts works](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests), that would have been completely innocuous if anyone _else_ had said it, but I kept silent because I wasn't sure if it was within my double-dog margin of error if _I_ said it.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff