So on the night of Friday 25 November, I threw my [2250s-era Starfleet uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(late_2230s-2250s)) in my backpack, put my breastforms and wig and mask in a box, and got on the train to San Francisco. (My ticket to the con was Saturday only, but it's nice to get a hotel room for the night before, and get dressed up in the morning within walking distance of the event, rather than taking the train in costume the day of.) Carrying the box around was slightly awkward, and the thought briefly occured to me that I could summon an internet taxi rather than take the train, but it was already decadent enough that I was getting a hotel room for a local event, and I had recently learned that my part-time contract with my dayjob (which had started in April as a Pareto improvement over me just quitting outright) isn't getting renewed at the end of the year, so I need to learn to be careful with money instead of being a YOLO spendthrift, at least until dayjob IPOs and my shares become liquid.
-Arguably, just the _time_ was more of a waste than the money. Focusing on [writing my memoir of religious betrayal](/2022/Jun/an-egoist-faith/) has been a stuggle. Not an entirely unsuccessful struggle—the combined draft [mss.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ms.) are sitting at 74,000 words across four posts, which I've been thinking of as parts 2 through 5. (["Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences"](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) being part 1.) But having 74,000 words isn't the same thing as being _done already_ and back to the business of being alive, instead of enjoying a reasonably comfortable afterlife—and even a single Saturday at Fan Expo instead of being holed up writing (or pretending to) puts an upper bound on my committment to life.
+<a id="memoir-of-religious-betrayal"></a>Arguably, just the _time_ was more of a waste than the money. Focusing on [writing my memoir of religious betrayal](/2022/Jun/an-egoist-faith/) has been a stuggle. Not an entirely unsuccessful struggle—the combined draft [mss.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ms.) are sitting at 74,000 words across four posts, which I've been thinking of as parts 2 through 5. (["Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences"](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) being part 1.) But having 74,000 words isn't the same thing as being _done already_ and back to the business of being alive, instead of enjoying a reasonably comfortable afterlife—and even a single Saturday at Fan Expo instead of being holed up writing (or pretending to) puts an upper bound on my committment to life.
Worse, in the twelve-day _week_ between Fan Expo and me getting this boring Diary-like post up about it, OpenAI released _two_ new GPT variants ([text-davinci-003](https://twitter.com/janleike/status/1597355354433916928) and [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/)). It's not a _timeline_ update (and most days, I count myself with those [sober skeptics who think the world is ending in 2040](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/AfH2oPHCApdKicM4m/two-year-update-on-my-personal-ai-timelines), not those _loonies_ who think the world is ending in 2027), but it is a suggestion that it would be [_more dignified_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy) for me to finish the memoir _now_ and go on to sieze the possibilities of another definitely-more-than-five-you-lunatics years of life, rather than continuing to mope around as a vengeful ghost, stuck in the past to the very end.
As it happened, the next day, Wednesday, we saw these Tweets from @ESYudkowsky, linking to a _Quillette_ article interviewing Lisa Littman on her work on rapid onset gender dysphoria:
-> [Everything more complicated than](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1108277090577600512) protons tends to come in varieties. Hydrogen, for example, has isotopes. Gender dysphoria involves more than one proton and will probably have varieties. https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/an-interview-with-lisa-littman-who-coined-the-term-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria/
+> [Everything more complicated than](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1108277090577600512) protons tends to come in varieties. Hydrogen, for example, has isotopes. Gender dysphoria involves more than one proton and will probably have varieties. [https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/an-interview-with-lisa-littman-who-coined-the-term-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria/](https://web.archive.org/web/20190320012155/https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/an-interview-with-lisa-littman-who-coined-the-term-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria/)
>
> [To be clear, I don't](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1108280619014905857) know much about gender dysphoria. There's an allegation that people are reluctant to speciate more than one kind of gender dysphoria. To the extent that's not a strawman, I would say only in a generic way that GD seems liable to have more than one species.
(Bolding mine.)
-Or consider Anne Vitale's ["The Gender Variant Phenomenon—A Developmental Review"](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm), which makes the _same_ observations as Blanchard and friends, and arrives at the _same_ two-type taxonomy, but dresses it up in socially-desirable language—
+Or consider Anne Vitale's ["The Gender Variant Phenomenon—A Developmental Review"](https://www.avitale.com/essays-details/?name=the-gender-variant-phenomenon--a-developmental-review-5), which makes the _same_ observations as Blanchard and friends, and arrives at the _same_ two-type taxonomy, but dresses it up in socially-desirable language—
> As sexual maturity advances, Group Three, cloistered gender dysphoric boys, often combine excessive masturbation (one individual reported masturbating up to 5 and even 6 times a day) with an increase in secret cross-dressing activity to release anxiety.
> Happy Coming Out Day! I'm a male with mild gender dysphoria which is almost certainly causally related to my autogynephilic sexual/romantic orientation, which I am genuinely proud of! This has no particular implications for how other people should interact with me!
>
-> I believe that late-onset gender dysphoria in males is almost certainly not an intersex condition. (Here "late-onset" is a term of art meant to distinguish people like me from those with early-onset gender dysphoria, which is characterized by lifelong feminine behavior and a predominantly androphilic sexual orientation. Anne Vitale writes about these as "Group Three" and "Group One" in "The Gender Variant Phenomenon": [http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm) ) I think it's important to not let the political struggle to secure people's rights to self-modification interfere with the pursuit of scientific knowledge, because having a realistic understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying one's feelings is often useful in helping individuals make better decisions about their own lives in accordance with the actual costs and benefits of available interventions (rather than on the basis of some hypothesized innate identity). Even if the mechanisms turn out to not be what one thought they were—ultimately, people can stand what is true.
+> I believe that late-onset gender dysphoria in males is almost certainly not an intersex condition. (Here "late-onset" is a term of art meant to distinguish people like me from those with early-onset gender dysphoria, which is characterized by lifelong feminine behavior and a predominantly androphilic sexual orientation. Anne Vitale writes about these as "Group Three" and "Group One" in "The Gender Variant Phenomenon": [http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm](https://web.archive.org/web/20210216080024/http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm) ) I think it's important to not let the political struggle to secure people's rights to self-modification interfere with the pursuit of scientific knowledge, because having a realistic understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying one's feelings is often useful in helping individuals make better decisions about their own lives in accordance with the actual costs and benefits of available interventions (rather than on the basis of some hypothesized innate identity). Even if the mechanisms turn out to not be what one thought they were—ultimately, people can stand what is true.
>
> Because we are already enduring it.
> The truthful and mean version: _The Man Who Would Be Queen_, Ch. 9
> The truthful and nice version: "Becoming What We Love" [http://annelawrence.com/becoming_what_we_love.pdf](http://annelawrence.com/becoming_what_we_love.pdf)
-> The technically-not-lying version: [http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm](http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm)
+> The technically-not-lying version: [http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm](https://web.archive.org/web/20210216080024/http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm)
> The long version: [https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/)
I got some nice emails from Michael Vassar. "I think that you are doing VERY good work right now!!!" he wrote. "The sort that shifts history! Only the personal is political" (Subject: "Talk like a normal person").
- "A Hill" edit sweep (bookmark phrase: "The language I spoke was")
near editing tier—
+_ explain Michael's gaslighting charge, using the "bowels of Christ" language
_ explain the title
_ so embarrassed after the Singularity
_ 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
_ explain that "A Human's Guide to Words" / 37 Ways are the same text
_ Noether's theorem allusion re "... Boundaries?"
_ smooth out "still had his email" callback
_ Caliphate / craft and the community
_ explain back in the _Overcoming Bias_ era
-_ pt.1 end needs to mention BABSCon (back referenced)
+_ pt. 1 end should summarize missing part a little more
+_ pt. 1 end needs to mention BABSCon (back referenced)
+_ happy price subject line in pt. 1
people to consult specifically before pt. 1–3:
-_ hostile prereader? (first-choice: April)
+_ hostile prereader? (first-choice: April, )
- professional editor
Needed for pt. 1-2—
- "Thomas"
- Ben/Jessica (Michael) [pt. 2-]
-_ Tail (AGP discussion) [pt. 1]
+- Tail (AGP discussion) [pt. 1]
+- "Rebecca" (consent, pseudonym choice) [pt. 2, not before 15 June]
+
+to send—
+_ "Bill" [pt. 2-]
+_ Scott [blanket]
_ Sarah (name mention, whether to name conversation) [pt. 1-2]
_ Sophia [pt. 1]
_ Anna [blanket]
-_ Scott [blanket]
-_ "Bill" [pt. 2-]
_ Alicorn: briefly, and for Melkor Glowfic reference link [pt. 2]
_ "Noreen" [pt. 2]
-_ "Rebecca" (consent, pseudonym choice) [pt. 2, not before 15 June]
+
----------------
May—
UUT—
+_ Book Endorsement: Autoheterosexual
_ I'm Dropping the Pseudonym From This Blog
memoir pt. 1–3—
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff