-waypoints—
-✓ Jessica help with "Unnatural Categories"
-✓ wireheading his fiction subreddit
-✓ discrediting to the community
-✓ people-I-usually-respect footnote
-- Yudkowsky is trying to be a religious leader
-- let's recap
-
-sections—
-- existential risk interlude; social justice game theory; I could forgive him
-- September 2020 Category War victory
-- prelude to pronouns post
-
-dedicated day each?—
-_ the dolphin war
+battle stations—
+✓ outline NYT defense/prelude to pronouns
+✓ flesh out prelude to pronouns I
+- flush out prelude to pronouns II
+_ outlining existential stakes and social justice FDT
+- outlining Dolphin War II
+_ flesh out existential stakes and social justice FDT
+_ flesh out Dolphin War II
+
+
+dedicated day?—
_ Michael Vassar and the Theory of Optimal Gossip
_ Sasha disaster
With internet available—
-_ footnote previous race-IQ baiting on "why do I keep bringing this up"
+_ dath ilan endorsers are paid strictly for their time
+_ replies to Laura Vaughn's comment about Brent?
+_ evil bullies reply
+_ link FTX fiasco on "stealing their customers' money"
+_ stealing customer deposits
+_ does "Contra Grant" side-step the innateness issue?
+_ what does "vis á vis" actually mean?
+_ check original wording of Brennan denunciation
+_ link "Anti-Reactionary FAQ"
+_ RationalWiki link (is that still a thing?)
+_ logical induction link
+_ dolphin thread also referenced Georgia on trees, which also cited "Not Man for the Categories"
+_ commit patch URL for my slate_starchive script
+_ Wentworth specifically doesn't want people's John-models to overwrite their own models
_ footnote Charles Murray's caveats
_ record of Yudkowsky citing TDT as part of decision to prosecute Emerson?
_ university library sells borrowing privileges
far editing tier—
+_ footnote previous race-IQ baiting on "why do I keep bringing this up"
+_ mention my "trembling hand" history with secrets, not just that I don't like it
_ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yaCwW8nPQeJknbCgf/free-speech-and-triskaidekaphobic-calculators-a-reply-to as part of December 2019 blogging streak
_ 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
_ "I Wish You Well" as breakup song
_ 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
+_ "Common Interest of Many Causes" and "Kolmogorov Complicity" offer directly contradictory strategies
+_ Vassar's about-face on gender
+_ risk of people bouncing off progressivism
+_ an AGP teen boy could at least consent to transition, and make plans based on knowing what the thing is (you'd actually want to go through a little bit of male puberty)
terms to explain on first mention—
----
-Because of the particular historical moment in which we live, we end up facing pressure from progressives, because—whatever our _object-level_ beliefs about (say) [sex, race, and class differences](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/)—and however much many of us would prefer not to talk about them—on the _meta_ level, our creed requires us to admit _it's an empirical question_, not a moral one—and that [empirical questions have no privileged reason to admit convenient answers](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god).
-
-I view this conflict as entirely incidental, something that [would happen in some form in any place and time](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cKrgy7hLdszkse2pq/archimedes-s-chronophone), rather than having to do with American politics or "the left" in particular. In a Christian theocracy, our analogues would get in trouble for beliefs about evolution; in the old Soviet Union, our analogues would get in trouble for [thinking about market economics](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/) (as a [positive technical discipline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics#Proof_of_the_first_fundamental_theorem) adjacent to game theory, not yoked to a particular normative agenda).
-
-Incidental or not, the conflict is real, and everyone smart knows it—even if it's not easy to _prove_ that everyone smart knows it, because everyone smart is very careful what they say in public. (I am not smart.)
-
(which Alexander aptly renamed [Kolmorogov complicity](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/):
-
-
Becuase of the conflict, and because all the prominent high-status people are running a Kolmogorov Option strategy, and because we happen to have to a _wildly_ disproportionate number of _people like me_ around, I think being "pro-trans" ended up being part of the community's "shield" against external political pressure, of the sort that perked up after [the February 2021 _New York Times_ hit piece about Alexander's blog](https://archive.is/0Ghdl). (The _magnitude_ of heat brought on by the recent _Times_ piece and its aftermath was new, but the underlying dynamics had been present for years.)
-Jacob Falkovich notes, ["The two demographics most over-represented in the SlateStarCodex readership according to the surveys are transgender people and Ph.D. holders."](https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1275524303430262790) [Aaronson notes (in commentary on the _Times_ article)](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310) "the rationalist community's legendary openness to alternative gender identities and sexualities" as something that would have "complicated the picture" of our portrayal as anti-feminist.
-
-Even the _haters_ grudgingly give Alexander credit for "... Not Man for the Categories": ["I strongly disagree that one good article about accepting transness means you get to walk away from writing that is somewhat white supremacist and quite fascist without at least awknowledging you were wrong."](https://archive.is/SlJo1)
Given these political realities, you'd think that I _should_ be sympathetic to the Kolmogorov Option argument, which makes a lot of sense. _Of course_ all the high-status people with a public-facing mission (like building a movement to prevent the coming robot apocalypse) are going to be motivatedly dumb about trans stuff in public: look at all the damage [the _other_ Harry Potter author did to her legacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_J._K._Rowling#Transgender_people).
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defense-not-even-science
> I'm not sure that human beings realistically _can_ trust and think at the same time.
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t6Fe2PsEwb3HhcBEr/the-litany-against-gurus
If you listen to the sorts of things the guy says lately, it looks like he's just completely given up on the idea that public speech could possibly be useful, or that anyone besides he and his flunkies is capable of thought. For example:
-----
-FYI, I think this turned out significantly harsher on you than my January 2022 emails made it sound, thus occasioning this one additional email (because I want to be very sure I'm only attacking you and not betraying you; a true friend stabs you in the front).
+FYI, I think this turned out significantly harsher on you than my January 2022 emails made it sound, thus occasioning this additional email.
I'm planning on publishing the drafts linked below on [dates].
* "Agreeing with Stalin in Ways That Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles" (19K words)
* **"Why I Don't Trust Eliezer Yudkowsky's Intellectual Honesty"** (1.5K word summary of the parts of the Whole Dumb Story that are specifically an attack on your reputation)
-I'm available if you want to contest anything you think is unfair or challenge my interpretation of the "can't directly refer to private conversations" privacy norm, but I doubt it's a high-value use of your time. End transmission.
+**If you want to contest any purported factual inaccuracies or my interpretation of the "no direct references to private conversations" privacy norm, get back to me before [date].** If you have anything else to say for yourself, you can say it in the public comments section. End transmission.
+
+[13 November: #drama discussion today (https://discord.com/channels/401181628015050773/458419017602826260/1041586188961714259) makes me feel like I don't want to put a "Why I Don't Trust ..." post, like it would be too cruel]
+
+[no awareness that people like me or Michael or Jessica would consider this a betrayal coming from the author of the Sequences (even if it wouldn't be a betrayal coming from a generic public intellectual)]
----
> No, because it makes you look clueless rather than them look clueless.
------
\ No newline at end of file
+-----
+
+compare EY and SBF
+
+Scott Aaronson on the Times's hit piece of Scott Alexander—
+https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5310
+> The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly _insinuates_ nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it _does_ present.
+
+https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-journalist-rationalist-showdown
+
+https://twitter.com/jstn/status/1591088015941963776
+> 2023 is going to be the most 2005 it's been in years
+
+-------
+
+re the FTX debacle, Yudkowsky retweets Katja:
+
+https://twitter.com/KatjaGrace/status/1590974800318861313
+> So I'd advocate for instead taking really seriously when someone seems to be saying that they think it's worth setting aside integrity etc for some greater good
+
+I'm tempted to leave a message in #drama asking if people are ready to generalize this to Kolmogorov complicity (people _very explicitly_ setting aside integrity &c. for the greater good of not being unpopular with progressives). It's so appropriate!! But it doesn't seem like a good use of my diplomacy budget relative to finishing the memoir—the intelligent social web is predictably going to round it off to "Zack redirecting everything into being about his hobbyhorse again, ignore". For the same reason, I was right to hold back my snarky comment about Yudkowsky's appeal to integrity in "Death With Dignity": the universal response would have been, "read the room." Commenting here would be bad along the same dimension, albeit not as extreme.
+
+------
+
+effects on my social life—calculating what I'm allowed to say; making sure I contribute non-hobbyhorse value to offset my hobbyhorse interruptions
+
+----
+
+https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FKJ8yiF3KjFhAuivt/impco-don-t-injure-yourself-by-returning-ftxff-money-for
+when that happens, in EA, I often do suspect that nobody else will dare to speak the contrary viewpoint, if not me.
+
+Michael, June 2019
+> If clarity seems like death to them and like life to us, and we don't know this, IMHO that's an unpromising basis for friendship
+
+------
+
+Piper and Yudkowsky on privacy norms—
+
+https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1591996891734376449
+> if such promises were made, they should be kept, but in practice in the present day, they often aren't made, and if you haven't explicitly promised a source confidentiality and then learn of something deeply unethical from them you should absolutely whistleblow.
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1592002777429180416
+> I don't think I'd go for "haven't explicitly promised" here but rather "if you're pretty sure there was no such informal understanding on which basis you were granted that access and information".
+
+------
+
+The problem isn't just the smugness and condescension; it's the smugness and condescension when he's in the wrong and knows it; I don't want to be lumped in with
+
+My obsession must look as pathetic from the outside as Scott Aaronson's—why doesn't he laugh it off, who cares what SneerClub thinks?—but in my case, the difference is that I was betrayed
+
+-----
+
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff