memoir net fetch chores

diff --git a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
index de0d17a..3bf1753 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
+++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
@@ -289,7 +289,7 @@ On 5 January, I met with Michael and his associate Aurora Quinn-Elmore in San Fr
 
 Ziz recounted [her](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) story [of Anna's discrimination](https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative), how she engaged in [conceptual warfare](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) to falsely portray Ziz as a predatory male. I was unimpressed: in my worldview, I didn't think Ziz had the right to say "I'm not a man," and expect people to just believe that. (I remember at one point, Ziz answered a question with, "Because I don't run off masochistic self-doubt like you." I replied, "That's fair.") But I did respect how Ziz actually believed in an intersex brain theory: in Ziz and Gwen's worldview, people's genders were a _fact_ of the matter, not just a manipulation of consensus categories to make people happy.
 
 
 Ziz recounted [her](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) story [of Anna's discrimination](https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative), how she engaged in [conceptual warfare](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) to falsely portray Ziz as a predatory male. I was unimpressed: in my worldview, I didn't think Ziz had the right to say "I'm not a man," and expect people to just believe that. (I remember at one point, Ziz answered a question with, "Because I don't run off masochistic self-doubt like you." I replied, "That's fair.") But I did respect how Ziz actually believed in an intersex brain theory: in Ziz and Gwen's worldview, people's genders were a _fact_ of the matter, not just a manipulation of consensus categories to make people happy.
 

-Probably the most ultimately significant part of this meeting for future events was Michael verbally confirming to Ziz that MIRI had settled with a disgruntled former employee, Louie Helm, who had put up a website slandering them. I don't actually know the details of the alleged settlement. (I'm working off of [Ziz's notes](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) rather than particularly remembering that part of the conversation clearly myself; I don't know what Michael knew.) What was significant was that if MIRI _had_ paid Helm as part of an agreement to get the slanderous website taken down, then, whatever the nonprofit best-practice books might have said about whether this was a wise thing to do when facing a dispute from a former employee, that would decision-theoretically amount to a blackmail payout, which seemed to contradict MIRI's advocacy of timeless decision theories (according to which you [shouldn't be the kind of agent that yields to extortion](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/)).
+Probably the most ultimately significant part of this meeting for future events was Michael verbally confirming to Ziz that MIRI had settled with a disgruntled former employee, Louie Helm, who had put up [a website slandering them](https://archive.ph/Kvfus). I don't actually know the details of the alleged settlement. (I'm working off of [Ziz's notes](https://sinceriously.fyi/intersex-brains-and-conceptual-warfare/) rather than particularly remembering that part of the conversation clearly myself; I don't know what Michael knew.) What was significant was that if MIRI _had_ paid Helm as part of an agreement to get the slanderous website taken down, then, whatever the nonprofit best-practice books might have said about whether this was a wise thing to do when facing a dispute from a former employee, that would decision-theoretically amount to a blackmail payout, which seemed to contradict MIRI's advocacy of timeless decision theories (according to which you [shouldn't be the kind of agent that yields to extortion](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/)).

 
 ----
 
 
 ----
 


@@ -694,7 +694,7 @@ Fundamentally, I was skeptical that you _could_ do consisently high-grade reason
 
 Despite Math and Wellness Month and my "intent" to take a break from the religious civil war, I kept reading _Less Wrong_ during May 2019, and ended up scoring a couple of victories in the civil war (at some cost to Wellness).
 
 
 Despite Math and Wellness Month and my "intent" to take a break from the religious civil war, I kept reading _Less Wrong_ during May 2019, and ended up scoring a couple of victories in the civil war (at some cost to Wellness).
 

-MIRI researcher Scott Garrabrant wrote a post about how ["Yes Requires the Possibility of No"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G5TwJ9BGxcgh5DsmQ/yes-requires-the-possibility-of-no). Information-theoretically, a signal sent with probability one transmits no information: you can only learn something from hearing a "Yes" if there was some chance that the answer could have been "No". I saw an analogy to my philosophy-of-language thesis, and commented about it: if you want to believe that _x_ belongs to category _C_, you might try redefining _C_ in order to make the question "Is _x_ a _C_?" come out "Yes", but you can only do so at the expense of making _C_ less useful.
+MIRI researcher Scott Garrabrant wrote a post about how ["Yes Requires the Possibility of No"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G5TwJ9BGxcgh5DsmQ/yes-requires-the-possibility-of-no). Information-theoretically, a signal sent with probability one transmits no information: you can only learn something from hearing a "Yes" if there was some chance that the answer could have been "No". I saw an analogy to my philosophy-of-language thesis, and commented about it: if you want to believe that _x_ belongs to category _C_, you might try redefining _C_ in order to make the question "Is _x_ a _C_?" come out "Yes", but you can only do so at the expense of making _C_ less useful. Meaningful category-membership (Yes) requires the possibility of non-membership (No).

 
 [TODO: explain scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility"—
 
 
 [TODO: explain scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility"—
 


@@ -744,15 +744,15 @@ Math and Wellness Month ended up being mostly a failure: the only math I ended u
 
 > I'm also not sure if I'm sufficiently clued in to what Ben and Jessica are modeling as Blight, a coherent problem, as opposed to two or six individual incidents that seem really egregious in a vaguely similar way that seems like it would have been less likely in 2009??
 
 
 > I'm also not sure if I'm sufficiently clued in to what Ben and Jessica are modeling as Blight, a coherent problem, as opposed to two or six individual incidents that seem really egregious in a vaguely similar way that seems like it would have been less likely in 2009??
 

- * _Atlas Shrugged_ Bill Brent vs. Dave Mitchum scene

  * Vassar: "Literally nothing Ben is doing is as aggressive as the basic 101 pitch for EA."
  * Ben: we should be creating clarity about "position X is not a strawman within the group", rather than trying to scapegoat individuals
  * Vassar: "Literally nothing Ben is doing is as aggressive as the basic 101 pitch for EA."
  * Ben: we should be creating clarity about "position X is not a strawman within the group", rather than trying to scapegoat individuals

- * my scuffle with Ruby on "Causal vs. Social Reality"
+ * my scuffle with Ruby on "Causal vs. Social Reality" (my previous interaction with Ruby had been on the LW FAQ; maybe he couldn't let me "win" again so quickly?)

  * it gets worse: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xqAnKW46FqzPLnGmH/causal-reality-vs-social-reality#NbrPdyBFPi4hj5zQW
  * Ben's comment: "Wow, he's really overtly arguing that people should lie to him to protect his feelings."
  * Jessica: "tone arguments are always about privileged people protecting their feelings, and are thus in bad faith.  Therefore, engaging with a tone argument as if it's in good faith is a fool's game, like playing chess with a pigeon. Either don't engage, or seek to embarrass them intentionally."
  * there's no point at being mad at MOPs
  * me (1 Jul): I'm a _little bit_ mad, because I specialize in cognitive and discourse strategies that are _extremely susceptible_ to being trolled like this
  * it gets worse: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xqAnKW46FqzPLnGmH/causal-reality-vs-social-reality#NbrPdyBFPi4hj5zQW
  * Ben's comment: "Wow, he's really overtly arguing that people should lie to him to protect his feelings."
  * Jessica: "tone arguments are always about privileged people protecting their feelings, and are thus in bad faith.  Therefore, engaging with a tone argument as if it's in good faith is a fool's game, like playing chess with a pigeon. Either don't engage, or seek to embarrass them intentionally."
  * there's no point at being mad at MOPs
  * me (1 Jul): I'm a _little bit_ mad, because I specialize in cognitive and discourse strategies that are _extremely susceptible_ to being trolled like this

+ * me to "Wilhelm" 1 Jul: "I'd rather not get into fights on LW, but at least I'm 2-0-1"

  * "collaborative truth seeking" but (as Michael pointed out) politeness looks nothing like Aumann agreement
  * 2 Jul: Jessica is surprised by how well "Self-consciousness wants to make everything about itself" worked; theory about people not wanting to be held to standards that others aren't being held to
  * Michael: Jessica's example made it clear she was on the side of social justice
  * "collaborative truth seeking" but (as Michael pointed out) politeness looks nothing like Aumann agreement
  * 2 Jul: Jessica is surprised by how well "Self-consciousness wants to make everything about itself" worked; theory about people not wanting to be held to standards that others aren't being held to
  * Michael: Jessica's example made it clear she was on the side of social justice


@@ -815,7 +815,7 @@ The paragraph from "Kolmogorov Complicity" that I was thinking of was (bolding m
 
 I perceived a pattern where people who are in trouble with the orthodoxy feel an incentive to buy their own safety by denouncing _other_ heretics: not just _disagreeing_ with the other heretics _because those other heresies are in fact mistaken_, which would be right and proper Discourse, but denouncing them ("actively hostile to") as a way of paying Danegeld.
 
 
 I perceived a pattern where people who are in trouble with the orthodoxy feel an incentive to buy their own safety by denouncing _other_ heretics: not just _disagreeing_ with the other heretics _because those other heresies are in fact mistaken_, which would be right and proper Discourse, but denouncing them ("actively hostile to") as a way of paying Danegeld.
 

-Suppose there are five true heresies, but anyone who's on the record believing more than one gets burned as a witch. Then it's impossible to have a unified rationalist community, because people who want to talk about one heresy can't let themselves be seen in the company of people who believe another. That's why Scott Alexander couldn't get the philosophy-of-categorization right in full generality (even though he'd [written](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world) [exhaustively](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) about the correct way, and he and I have a common enemy in the social-justice egregore): _he couldn't afford to_. He'd already spent his Overton budget on anti-feminism.
+Suppose there are five true heresies, but anyone who's on the record believing more than one gets burned as a witch. Then it's impossible to have a unified rationalist community, because people who want to talk about one heresy can't let themselves be seen in the company of people who believe another. That's why Scott Alexander couldn't get the philosophy-of-categorization right in full generality (even though he'd [written](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world) [exhaustively](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) about the correct way, and he and I have a common enemy in the social-justice egregore): _he couldn't afford to_. He'd already [spent his Overton budget on anti-feminism](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/).

 
 Scott (and Yudkowsky and Anna and the rest of the Caliphate) seemed to accept this as an inevitable background fact of existence, like the weather. But I saw a Schelling point off in the distance where us witches stick together for Free Speech, and it was _awfully_ tempting to try to jump there. (Of course, it would be _better_ if there was a way to organize just the good witches, and exclude all the Actually Bad witches, but the [Sorites problem](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/) on witch Badness made that hard to organize without falling back to the falling back to the one-heresy-per-thinker equilibrium.)
 
 
 Scott (and Yudkowsky and Anna and the rest of the Caliphate) seemed to accept this as an inevitable background fact of existence, like the weather. But I saw a Schelling point off in the distance where us witches stick together for Free Speech, and it was _awfully_ tempting to try to jump there. (Of course, it would be _better_ if there was a way to organize just the good witches, and exclude all the Actually Bad witches, but the [Sorites problem](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/) on witch Badness made that hard to organize without falling back to the falling back to the one-heresy-per-thinker equilibrium.)
 


@@ -843,7 +843,7 @@ It was instructive to compare this new disavowal of neoreaction with one from 20
 >
 > Also to be clear: I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand due to fear of public unpopularity. However I found Scott Alexander's takedown of neoreaction convincing and thus I shrugged and didn't bother to investigate further.
 
 >
 > Also to be clear: I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand due to fear of public unpopularity. However I found Scott Alexander's takedown of neoreaction convincing and thus I shrugged and didn't bother to investigate further.
 

-My "negotiating with terrorists" criticism did _not_ apply to the 2013 statement. "More Right" _was_ brand encroachment on Anissimov's part that Yudkowsky had a legitimate interest in policing, _and_ the "I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand" disclaimer importantly avoided legitimizing the McCarthyist persecution.
+My "negotiating with terrorists" criticism did _not_ apply to the 2013 statement. "More Right" _was_ brand encroachment on Anissimov's part that Yudkowsky had a legitimate interest in policing, _and_ the "I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand" disclaimer importantly avoided legitimizing [the McCarthyist persecution](https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2013/09/technology-communism-and-brown-scare/).

 
 The question was, what had specifically happened in the last six years to shift Eliezer's opinion on neoreaction from (paraphrased) "Scott says it's wrong, so I stopped reading" to (verbatim) "actively hostile"? Note especially the inversion from (both paraphrased) "I don't support neoreaction" (fine, of course) to "I don't even want _them_ supporting _me_" [(_?!?!_)](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1164329446314135552).[^them-supporting-me]
 
 
 The question was, what had specifically happened in the last six years to shift Eliezer's opinion on neoreaction from (paraphrased) "Scott says it's wrong, so I stopped reading" to (verbatim) "actively hostile"? Note especially the inversion from (both paraphrased) "I don't support neoreaction" (fine, of course) to "I don't even want _them_ supporting _me_" [(_?!?!_)](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1164329446314135552).[^them-supporting-me]
 


@@ -901,7 +901,7 @@ mention to Anna that I was postponing in order to make it non-salesy
 
 ------
 
 
 ------
 

-On 20 December 2019, Scott Alexander messaged me on Discord—that I shouldn't answer if it would be unpleasant, but that he was thinking about asking about autogynephilia on next _Slate Star Codex_ survey, and wanted to know if I had any suggestions about question design, or a suggestion of who to consult on "the other side" of the issue. After reassuring him that he shouldn't worry about answering being painful for me ("I am actively at war with the socio-psychological forces that make people erroneously think that talking is painful!"), I referred him to my friend [Tailcalled](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/), who I thought was more qualified. (Tailcalled had a lot of experience running surveys, and had a better grasp than me of the science of sexology and transgenderism, in constrast to my preoccupation with the philosophical and political aspects of the problem.)
+On 20 December 2019, Scott Alexander messaged me on Discord—that I shouldn't answer if it would be unpleasant, but that he was thinking about asking about autogynephilia on next _Slate Star Codex_ survey, and wanted to know if I had any suggestions about question design, or a suggestion of any "intelligent and friendly opponents" to consult on the other side of the question. After reassuring him that he shouldn't worry about answering being painful for me ("I am actively at war with the socio-psychological forces that make people erroneously think that talking is painful!"), I referred him to my friend [Tailcalled](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/), who I thought was more qualified on both counts. (Tailcalled had a lot of experience running surveys, and ran a "Hobbyist Sexologists" Discord server, which seemed likely to have some friendly opponents.)

 
 The next day (I assume while I happened to be on his mind), Scott also [commented on](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=LJp2PYh3XvmoCgS6E) "Maybe Lying Doesn't Exist", my post from back in October replying to his "Against Lie Inflation."
 
 
 The next day (I assume while I happened to be on his mind), Scott also [commented on](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=LJp2PYh3XvmoCgS6E) "Maybe Lying Doesn't Exist", my post from back in October replying to his "Against Lie Inflation."
 


@@ -922,11 +922,11 @@ And then, as an afterthought—
 > oh, I guess we're Jewish  
 > that attenuates the "is a hugely inappropriately socially-aggressive blog comment going to ruin someone's Christmas" fear somewhat  
 
 > oh, I guess we're Jewish  
 > that attenuates the "is a hugely inappropriately socially-aggressive blog comment going to ruin someone's Christmas" fear somewhat  
 

-Scott messaged back the next morning, Christmas Day. He explained that the thought process behind his comment was that he still wasn't sure where we disagreed, and didn't know how to proceed except to dump his understanding of the philosophy (which would include things I already knew) and hope that I could point to the step I didn't like. He didn't know how to convincingly-to-me demonstrate his sincerity, and rebut my accusations of him motivatedly playing dumb (which he was inclined to attribute to the malign influence of Michael Vassar's gang).
+Scott messaged back at 11:08 _a.m._ the next morning, Christmas Day. He explained that the thought process behind his comment was that he still wasn't sure where we disagreed, and didn't know how to proceed except to dump his understanding of the philosophy (which would include things I already knew) and hope that I could point to the step I didn't like. He didn't know how to convincingly-to-me demonstrate his sincerity, and rebut my accusations of him motivatedly playing dumb (which he was inclined to attribute to the malign influence of Michael Vassar's gang).

 
 I explained that the reason I accused him of being motivatedly dumb was that I _knew_ he knew about strategic equivocation, because he taught everyone else about it (as in his famous posts about [the motte-and-bailey doctrine](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/), or [the noncentral fallacy](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world)). And so when he acted like he didn't get it when I pointed out that this also applied to "trans women are women", that just seemed _implausible_.
 
 
 I explained that the reason I accused him of being motivatedly dumb was that I _knew_ he knew about strategic equivocation, because he taught everyone else about it (as in his famous posts about [the motte-and-bailey doctrine](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/), or [the noncentral fallacy](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world)). And so when he acted like he didn't get it when I pointed out that this also applied to "trans women are women", that just seemed _implausible_.
 

-He asked for a specific example. ("Trans women are women, therefore trans women have uteruses," being a bad example, because no one was claiming that.) I quoted [an article from the nationally prominent progressive magazine _The Nation_](https://www.thenation.com/article/trans-runner-daily-caller-terry-miller-andraya-yearwood-martina-navratilova/): "There is another argument against allowing trans athletes to compete with cis-gender athletes that suggests that their presence hurts cis-women and cis-girls. But this line of thought doesn't acknowledge that trans women are in fact women." Scott agreed that this was stupid and wrong and a natural consequence of letting people use language the way he was suggesting (!).
+He asked for a specific example. ("Trans women are women, therefore trans women have uteruses," being a bad example, because no one was claiming that.) I quoted [an article from the prominent progressive magazine _The Nation_](https://web.archive.org/web/20191223235051/https://www.thenation.com/article/trans-runner-daily-caller-terry-miller-andraya-yearwood-martina-navratilova/): "There is another argument against allowing trans athletes to compete with cis-gender athletes that suggests that their presence hurts cis-women and cis-girls. But this line of thought doesn't acknowledge that trans women _are in fact women_." Scott agreed that this was stupid and wrong and a natural consequence of letting people use language the way he was suggesting (!).

 
 I didn't think it was fair to ordinary people to expect them to go as deep into the philosophy-of-language weeds as _I_ could before being allowed to object to these kinds of Shenanigans. I thought "pragmatic" reasons to not just use the natural clustering that you would get by impartially running the clustering algorithm on the subspace of configuration space relevant to your goals, basically amounted to "wireheading" (optimizing someone's map for looking good rather than reflecting the territory) and "war" (optimizing someone's map to not reflect the territory, in order to gain an advantage over them). If I were to transition today and didn't pass as well as Jessica, and everyone felt obligated to call me a woman, they would be wireheading me: making me think my transition was successful, even though it actually wasn't. That's ... not actually a nice thing to do to a rationalist.
 
 
 I didn't think it was fair to ordinary people to expect them to go as deep into the philosophy-of-language weeds as _I_ could before being allowed to object to these kinds of Shenanigans. I thought "pragmatic" reasons to not just use the natural clustering that you would get by impartially running the clustering algorithm on the subspace of configuration space relevant to your goals, basically amounted to "wireheading" (optimizing someone's map for looking good rather than reflecting the territory) and "war" (optimizing someone's map to not reflect the territory, in order to gain an advantage over them). If I were to transition today and didn't pass as well as Jessica, and everyone felt obligated to call me a woman, they would be wireheading me: making me think my transition was successful, even though it actually wasn't. That's ... not actually a nice thing to do to a rationalist.
 


@@ -942,9 +942,9 @@ I had technical reasons to be very skeptical of the claim that no one was "reall
 
 I linked to Zvi Mowshowitz's post about how [the claim that "everybody knows" something](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/) gets used an excuse to silence people trying to point out the thing (because they don't see people behaving as if it were common knowledge): "'Everybody knows' our kind of trans women are sampled from the male multivariate distribution rather than the female multivariate distribution, why are you being a jerk and pointing this out?" But I didn't think that everyone knew. I thought the people who sort-of knew were being intimidated into doublethinking around it. I thought this was bad for clarity.
 
 
 I linked to Zvi Mowshowitz's post about how [the claim that "everybody knows" something](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/) gets used an excuse to silence people trying to point out the thing (because they don't see people behaving as if it were common knowledge): "'Everybody knows' our kind of trans women are sampled from the male multivariate distribution rather than the female multivariate distribution, why are you being a jerk and pointing this out?" But I didn't think that everyone knew. I thought the people who sort-of knew were being intimidated into doublethinking around it. I thought this was bad for clarity.
 

-At this point, Scott mentioned that he wanted to go to the Event Horizon Christmas party, and asked if I wanted to come and continue the discussion there. I assented, and thanked him for his time; it would be really exciting if we could avoid a rationalist civil war. (I thought my "you need accurate models before you can do utilitarianism" philosophy was also near the root of Ben's objections to the EA movement.)
+At this point it was almost 2 _p.m._ (the paragraphs above summarize a larger volume of typing), and Scott mentioned that he wanted to go to the Event Horizon Christmas party, and asked if I wanted to come and continue the discussion there. I assented, and thanked him for his time; it would be really exciting if we could avoid a rationalist civil war. (I thought my "you need accurate models before you can do utilitarianism" philosophy was also near the root of Ben's objections to the EA movement.)

 
 

-When I arrived at the party, people were doing a reading of the "Hero Licensing" dialogue from _Inadequate Equilibria_. Yudkowsky himself was, playing the part of the Mysterious Stranger in the dialogue. At some point, Scott and I retreated upstairs to continue our discussion. By the end of it, I was at least feeling more assured of Scott's sincerity (rather than him being coerced into not saying anything incriminating over email). Scott said he would edit in a disclaimer note at the end of "... Not Man for the Categories".
+When I arrived at the party, people were doing a reading of [the "Hero Licensing" dialogue epilogue](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dhj9dhiwhq3DX6W8z/hero-licensing) to _Inadequate Equilibria_. Yudkowsky himself was, playing the part of the Mysterious Stranger in the dialogue. At some point, Scott and I retreated upstairs to continue our discussion. By the end of it, I was at least feeling more assured of Scott's sincerity (rather than him being coerced into not saying anything incriminating over email). Scott said he would edit in a disclaimer note at the end of "... Not Man for the Categories".

 
 If I also got the chance to talk to Yudkowsky for a few minutes, I don't think I would be allowed to recount any details of that here due to the privacy rules I'm following in this document.
 
 
 If I also got the chance to talk to Yudkowsky for a few minutes, I don't think I would be allowed to recount any details of that here due to the privacy rules I'm following in this document.
 

diff --git a/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md b/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md
index 786f2c2..aac38ad 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md
+++ b/content/drafts/comments-on-the-conspiracies-of-dath-ilan.md
@@ -6,20 +6,17 @@ Status: draft
 
 If we believe that IQ research validates the "Jews are clever" stereotype, I wonder if there's a distinct (albeit probably correlated) "enjoying deception" trait that validates the "Jews are sneaky" stereotype?
 
 
 If we believe that IQ research validates the "Jews are clever" stereotype, I wonder if there's a distinct (albeit probably correlated) "enjoying deception" trait that validates the "Jews are sneaky" stereotype?
 

-[TODO: link "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence"]
+"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence"
+https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

 
 (I was tempted to tag that as "epistemic status: low-confidence speculation", but that's _frequentist_ thinking—as if "Jews and gentiles are equally sneaky" were a "null hypothesis" that could only be rejected by data that would be sufficiently unlikely assuming that the null was true. Ha ha, that would be _crazy!_ Obviously, I should have a _prior_ on the effect size difference between the Jew and gentile sneakiness distributions, that can be updated as sneakiness data comes in. I think the mean of my prior distribution is at, like, _d_ ≈ 0.1? So it's not "low confidence"; it's "low confidence of the effect size being large enough to be of much practical significance".)
 
 Anyway, if dath ilan is very high in the sneakiness trait (relative to Earth), that would help explain all the conspiracies!
 
 
 (I was tempted to tag that as "epistemic status: low-confidence speculation", but that's _frequentist_ thinking—as if "Jews and gentiles are equally sneaky" were a "null hypothesis" that could only be rejected by data that would be sufficiently unlikely assuming that the null was true. Ha ha, that would be _crazy!_ Obviously, I should have a _prior_ on the effect size difference between the Jew and gentile sneakiness distributions, that can be updated as sneakiness data comes in. I think the mean of my prior distribution is at, like, _d_ ≈ 0.1? So it's not "low confidence"; it's "low confidence of the effect size being large enough to be of much practical significance".)
 
 Anyway, if dath ilan is very high in the sneakiness trait (relative to Earth), that would help explain all the conspiracies!
 

-Not-actually-plausible conspiracies that everyone is in on (like "Spatahski are real") are a superstimulus like zero-calorie sweetener: engineered to let everyone enjoy the thrill of lying, without doing any real damage to shared maps.
-
-[TODO: sp alien alien name?]
+Not-actually-plausible conspiracies that everyone is in on (like "Sparashki are real") are a superstimulus like zero-calorie sweetener: engineered to let everyone enjoy the thrill of lying, without doing any real damage to shared maps.

 
 For context on why I have no sense of humor about this, on Earth (which _actually exists_, unlike dath ilan), when someone says "it's not lying, because no one _expected_ me to tell the truth in that situation", what's usually going on (as Zvi Mowshowitz explains: <https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/>) is that is that conspirators benefit from deceiving outsiders, and the claim that "everyone knows" is them lying to _themselves_ about the fact that they're lying.
 
 
 For context on why I have no sense of humor about this, on Earth (which _actually exists_, unlike dath ilan), when someone says "it's not lying, because no one _expected_ me to tell the truth in that situation", what's usually going on (as Zvi Mowshowitz explains: <https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/everybody-knows/>) is that is that conspirators benefit from deceiving outsiders, and the claim that "everyone knows" is them lying to _themselves_ about the fact that they're lying.
 

-[TODO: exact language ]
-

 (If _you_ got hurt by not knowing, well, it's not like anyone got hurt, because if you didn't know, then you weren't anyone.)
 
 It's very striking to me that one of the corrupt executives in _Moral Mazes_ uses very similar language to the narrator of the Merrin thread: "We lie all the time, but if everyone knows that we're lying, is a lie really a lie?"
 (If _you_ got hurt by not knowing, well, it's not like anyone got hurt, because if you didn't know, then you weren't anyone.)
 
 It's very striking to me that one of the corrupt executives in _Moral Mazes_ uses very similar language to the narrator of the Merrin thread: "We lie all the time, but if everyone knows that we're lying, is a lie really a lie?"


@@ -28,8 +25,6 @@ Okay, but if it were _actually true_ that everyone knew, what would be _function
 
 That's why, when I _notice_ myself misrepresenting my actual beliefs or motivations because I think it's funny or rhetorically powerful (and it takes a special act of noticing; humans aren't built to be honest by default), I often take care to disclaim it immediately (as was observed in the message this is one a reply to), precisely because I _don't_ think that "everybody knows"; I'm not going to give up on humor or powerful rhetoric, but I'm also not going to delude myself into thinking it's "zero-calorie" (people who don't "get the joke" _are_ going to be misled, and I don't think it's unambigously "their fault" for not being able to read my "intent" to arbitrary precision)
 
 
 That's why, when I _notice_ myself misrepresenting my actual beliefs or motivations because I think it's funny or rhetorically powerful (and it takes a special act of noticing; humans aren't built to be honest by default), I often take care to disclaim it immediately (as was observed in the message this is one a reply to), precisely because I _don't_ think that "everybody knows"; I'm not going to give up on humor or powerful rhetoric, but I'm also not going to delude myself into thinking it's "zero-calorie" (people who don't "get the joke" _are_ going to be misled, and I don't think it's unambigously "their fault" for not being able to read my "intent" to arbitrary precision)
 

-[TODO: link to "teeth" earlier in the thread commenting on it'd be funnier if I didn't]
-

 But maybe dath ilan is sufficiently good at achieving common knowledge in large groups that they _can_ pull off a zero-calorie "everyone knows" conspiracy without damaging shared maps??
 
 I'm still skeptical, especially given that we see them narratizing it as "not lying" (in the same words that corrupt executives on Earth use!), rather than _explicitly_ laying out the evopysch logic of sneakiness superstimuli, and the case that they know how to pull it off in a zero-calorie (trivial damage to shared maps) way.
 But maybe dath ilan is sufficiently good at achieving common knowledge in large groups that they _can_ pull off a zero-calorie "everyone knows" conspiracy without damaging shared maps??
 
 I'm still skeptical, especially given that we see them narratizing it as "not lying" (in the same words that corrupt executives on Earth use!), rather than _explicitly_ laying out the evopysch logic of sneakiness superstimuli, and the case that they know how to pull it off in a zero-calorie (trivial damage to shared maps) way.


@@ -42,11 +37,13 @@ I had some insightful discussion with someone in 2017, in which I was saying tha
 
 In 2021, _the same person_ says she feels "disgusted and complicit" for having talked to me.
 
 
 In 2021, _the same person_ says she feels "disgusted and complicit" for having talked to me.
 

-[TODO: find Devi commment and quote exactly without linking]
+> At some point during this time I started treating this as a hidden truth that I was proud of myself for being able to see, which I in retrospect I feel disgusted and complicit to have accepted
+
+> above exchanges did in retrospect cause me emotional pain, stress, and contributed to internalizing sexism and transphobia.

 
 I think it's very significant that she _didn't_ say that she encountered _new evidence_ that made her _change her mind_, and decided that she was _actually wrong_ in 2017. The claim is just that the things we said in 2017 are "harmful."
 
 
 I think it's very significant that she _didn't_ say that she encountered _new evidence_ that made her _change her mind_, and decided that she was _actually wrong_ in 2017. The claim is just that the things we said in 2017 are "harmful."
 

-[TODO: wrap-up dath ilan is fictional
+wrap-up dath ilan is fictional

 
 the reason I'm paranoid and humorless about
 
 
 the reason I'm paranoid and humorless about
 


@@ -58,7 +55,6 @@ I certainly don't think Yudkowsky is consciously "lying"
 
 (natural language is very flexible, you can _come up with_ some interpretation)
 
 
 (natural language is very flexible, you can _come up with_ some interpretation)
 

-]

 
 You can cosplay an elf _at a designated fandom convention_, where people have temporarily _opted in_ to that false social reality. But I don't think you can cosplay an elf _at work_ (in "real life") and have everyone play along for extended periods of time, without dealing damage to real-life shared maps.
 
 
 You can cosplay an elf _at a designated fandom convention_, where people have temporarily _opted in_ to that false social reality. But I don't think you can cosplay an elf _at work_ (in "real life") and have everyone play along for extended periods of time, without dealing damage to real-life shared maps.
 


@@ -80,3 +76,8 @@ But if we could drive
 
 
 Keltham contradicts himself _in the same tag_
 
 
 Keltham contradicts himself _in the same tag_

+https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1865236#reply-1865236
+
+> The sneakiest thing dath ilan did was covertly shape him to never notice he was a sadist
+> [...]
+> Obviously past-Keltham was shaped in all sorts of ways as a kid, but those shaping-targets are matters of public documentation on the Network.  They're not _covert_ intended effects of the alien technology.

diff --git a/notes/a-hill-email-review.md b/notes/a-hill-email-review.md
index 7826f1f..ba72f54 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/a-hill-email-review.md
+++ b/notes/a-hill-email-review.md
@@ -1427,7 +1427,7 @@ Insofar as I'm skeptical of Jessica's narrative, I suspect she's not putting nea
 I agree that this is a real concern. (I was so enamored with Yudkowsky's philosophy-of-science writing that there was no chance of me bouncing on account of the sexism that I perceived, but I wasn't the marginal case.) There are definitely good reasons to tread carefully when trying to add sensitive-in-our-culture content to the shared map. But I don't think treading carefully should take precedence over getting the goddamned right answer.
 
 For an example of what I think treading-carefully-but-getting-the-goddamned-right-answer looks like, I'm really proud of my review of Charles Murray's 2020 Human Diversity: http://unremediatedgender.space/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/
 I agree that this is a real concern. (I was so enamored with Yudkowsky's philosophy-of-science writing that there was no chance of me bouncing on account of the sexism that I perceived, but I wasn't the marginal case.) There are definitely good reasons to tread carefully when trying to add sensitive-in-our-culture content to the shared map. But I don't think treading carefully should take precedence over getting the goddamned right answer.
 
 For an example of what I think treading-carefully-but-getting-the-goddamned-right-answer looks like, I'm really proud of my review of Charles Murray's 2020 Human Diversity: http://unremediatedgender.space/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/

-I'm definitely not saying, Emil Kirkegaard-style, "the black/white IQ gap is genetic, anyone who denies this is a mind-killed idiot, deal with it." Rather, first I review the Science in the book, and then I talk about the politics surrounding Murray's reputation and the technical reasons for believing that the gap is real and partly genetic, and then I go meta on the problem and explain why it makes sense that political forces make this hard to talk about. I think this is how you go about mapping the territory without being a moral monster with respect to your pre-Dark Enlightenment morality. (And Emil was satisfied, too: https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/1425334398484983813)
+I'm definitely not saying, Emil Kirkegaard-style, "the black/white IQ gap is genetic, anyone who denies this is a mind-killed idiot, deal with it." Rather, first I review the Science in the book, and then I talk about the politics surrounding Murray's reputation and the technical reasons for believing that the gap is real and partly genetic, and then I go meta on the problem and explain why it makes sense that political forces make this hard to talk about. I think this is how you go about mapping the territory without being a moral monster with respect to your pre-Dark Enlightenment morality. (And Emil was satisfied, too: https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/1425334398484983813) ["Probably the best book review ever of an HBD book" https://archive.ph/2cSZh]

 
 I think this should just be normal, and I'm willing to fight for a world in which this is normal. When something is hard to talk about, you carefully flag the reasons that it's hard to talk about, and then you say the thing. If you don't get to the part where you say the thing, then your shared map doesn't reflect the territory!!
 
 
 I think this should just be normal, and I'm willing to fight for a world in which this is normal. When something is hard to talk about, you carefully flag the reasons that it's hard to talk about, and then you say the thing. If you don't get to the part where you say the thing, then your shared map doesn't reflect the territory!!
 


@@ -1789,3 +1789,5 @@ zackmdavis — 12/25/2019
 cool, thanks so much; I really want to avoid a civil war
 ScottAlexander — 12/25/2019
 I also want to debate the meta-question of whether we should have a civil war about this, which I think is much easier to answer and resolve than the object-level one.
 cool, thanks so much; I really want to avoid a civil war
 ScottAlexander — 12/25/2019
 I also want to debate the meta-question of whether we should have a civil war about this, which I think is much easier to answer and resolve than the object-level one.

+
+------

diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
index 3407fbd..22bf367 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
+++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
@@ -1,54 +1,35 @@
 blocky sections corresponding to an "event"—
 blocky sections corresponding to an "event"—

-_ Christmas party 2019

 _ wireheading his fiction subreddit
 _ wireheading his fiction subreddit

+_ September 2020 Category War victory
+_ Sasha disaster 
+_ the dolphin war

 
 

-_ Sasha disaster (dedicate a day?)
-_ the dolphin war (dedicate a day?)
+
+With phone—
+_ Signal history with Anna and Michael

 
 
 With internet available—
 
 
 With internet available—

-_ Newtonmas
-_ link "Untitled" for Scott's anti-feminism
-_ my mother on "dolphins are intelligent"
-_ link to MIRIcult archive
-_ italics in _The Nation_ article quote?
-_ link "Hero Licensing" chapter of Inadequate Equilibria
+_ "20% of the ones with penises" someone in the comments saying, "It is a woman's body", and Yudkowsky saying "duly corrected"

 _ "not taking into account considerations" → rephrase to quote "God's dictionary"
 _ "not taking into account considerations" → rephrase to quote "God's dictionary"

-_ what time of day was my Christmas conversation with Scott?
-_ check links and date on the fiction subreddit wireheading
-_ when I ref'd Scott to Tailcalled, did I also suggest an opponent?—didn't copy-paste that part
-_ "Steve Sailer retweeted me today" (20 November 19)—which Tweet was it?
-_ "McCarthyist" should link to Moldbug on the "Brown Scare"
-_ check on wording of Yudkowsky's anti-Moldbug comment on LW
-_ my public objection to Yudkowsky's denunciation of NRx https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1164259164819845120

 _ except when it's net bad to have concluded Y: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BgEG9RZBtQMLGuqm7/[Error%20communicating%20with%20LW2%20server]/comment/LgLx6AD94c2odFxs4
 _ my history of sniping in Yudkowsky's mentions
 _ comments on "Self-Consciousness wants to make"
 _ Scott vs. Ben on Drowning Children
 _ Ray and D. Xu's comments on "The Incentives"
 _ except when it's net bad to have concluded Y: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BgEG9RZBtQMLGuqm7/[Error%20communicating%20with%20LW2%20server]/comment/LgLx6AD94c2odFxs4
 _ my history of sniping in Yudkowsky's mentions
 _ comments on "Self-Consciousness wants to make"
 _ Scott vs. Ben on Drowning Children
 _ Ray and D. Xu's comments on "The Incentives"

-_ "Causal vs. Social Reality"
-_ elaborate on why I'm not leaking sensitive bits, by explaining what can be inferred by what was and wasn't said in public
-_ what is the dictionary definition of _gestalt_ (maybe link it?)
-_ better examples from "Yes Requires the Possibility of No"

 _ my comment about having changed my mind about "A Fable of Science and Politics"
 _ my comment about having changed my mind about "A Fable of Science and Politics"

-_ me remarking to "Wilhelm" that I think I met Vanessa at Solstice once, commented on Greg Egan
-_ debate with Benquo and Jessicata

 _ more Yudkowsky Facebook comment screenshots
 _ more Yudkowsky Facebook comment screenshots

-_ "20% of the ones with penises" someone in the comments saying, "It is a woman's body", and Yudkowsky saying "duly corrected"
-_ that neuroscience paper backing the 
-_ Prudentbot § from "Robust Cooperation" paper
-_ JDP on warrant and standing
+_ that neuroscience paper backing the two-types

 _ compile Categories references from the Dolphin War Twitter thread
 _ tussle with Ruby on "Causal vs. Social Reality"
 _ compile Categories references from the Dolphin War Twitter thread
 _ tussle with Ruby on "Causal vs. Social Reality"

-_ when did I ask Leon about getting easier tasks?

 _ examples of snarky comments about "the rationalists" 
 _ 13th century word meanings
 _ weirdly hostile comments on "... Boundaries?"
 _ more examples of Yudkowsky's arrogance
 _ examples of snarky comments about "the rationalists" 
 _ 13th century word meanings
 _ weirdly hostile comments on "... Boundaries?"
 _ more examples of Yudkowsky's arrogance

-_ dath ilan conspiracy references

 
 
 far editing tier—
 
 
 far editing tier—

+_ 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" 
 _ 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
 _ 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


@@ -1543,3 +1524,98 @@ Scott said it sounded like I wasn't a 100% category absolutist, and that I would
 
 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1362514650089156608
 > Hypothesis:  People to whom self-awareness and introspection come naturally, put way too much moral exculpatory weight on "But what if they don't know they're lying?"  They don't know a lot of their internals!  And don't want to know!  That's just how they roll.
 
 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1362514650089156608
 > Hypothesis:  People to whom self-awareness and introspection come naturally, put way too much moral exculpatory weight on "But what if they don't know they're lying?"  They don't know a lot of their internals!  And don't want to know!  That's just how they roll.

+
+Steve Sailer retweeted me today criticizing Lee Jussim https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1160662220511932416
+
+I'm a natural true believer in Yudkowskian ideology https://balioc.tumblr.com/post/187004568356/your-ideology-if-it-gets-off-the-ground-at-all
+
+Yudkowsky's assessment of Moldbug: "Politics mindkilled him; he cannot separate the normative and the descriptive." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6qPextf9KyWLFJ53j/why-is-mencius-moldbug-so-popular-on-less-wrong-answer-he-s?commentId=TcLhiMk8BTp4vN3Zs#TcLhiMk8BTp4vN3Zs
+
+> Eliezer, those who smear you as a right-wing Bad Guy do so in order to extract these kinds of statements of political alignment as concessions! Timeless decision theory (don't negotiate with terrorists, &c.) recommends ignoring them rather than paying this (trivial) Danegeld! 1/3
+https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1164259164819845120
+
+-----
+
+I just got off the phone with my mother. I told her that I wouldn't be able to visit her this weekend because I had a terrible week and I'm going to need to do dayjob work on Sunday to catch up with how behind I am.
+
+She told me that she believes in angels, that she prays to God for me at night, that the angels are like God's helpers, like how Santa has elves
+
+(My family is ethnically Jewish—you know, like everyone else—but my mother's personal brand of spirituality is very vague; these particular sentences felt unusually Christian-themed given that she identifies as a Jewish Buddhist, but not out of character.)
+
+I told her not to bother with the prayers, unless it helps her sleep.
+
+As I was wrapping up the call, I mentioned that the reason it was a bad week was because I got into a fight about dolphins.
+
+"Dolphins?" she asked, incredulously.
+
+"They're not fish, right?" I asked.
+
+"No, of course not," she said. "They're mammals. Dolphins take care of their young. Dolphins can communicate with each other; they're intelligent."
+
+Thanks, Mom. I'm so lucky to have a mother that's _less retarded than the leadership of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute_.
+
+------
+
+On 1 June 2020, I received a Twitter DM from _New York Times_ reporter Cade Metz, who said he was "exploring a story about the intersection of the rationality community and Silicon Valley". I sent him an email saying that I would be happy to talk, but that I'd actually been pretty disappointed with the community lately: I was worried that the social pressures of trying to _be_ a "community" and protect the group's status (_e.g._, from New York Times reporters who might portray us in an unflattering light??) incentivize people to compromise on the ideals of _systematically correct reasoning_ that made the community valuable in the first place.
+
+He never got back to me.
+
+[TODO: three weeks later, Slate Star Codex went down]
+
+
+------
+
+[TODO: Yudkowsky wireheading his fiction subreddit
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/dvkv41/meta_reducing_negativity_on_rrational/
+https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/dvkv41/meta_reducing_negativity_on_rrational/f7fs88l/
+13 November 2019
+
+The recent thing that was most helpful in making my memoir seem like just a challenging writing project, rather than treason/heresy, was actually Eliezer doing more destroying-language-for-the-sake-of-politeness but in a non-Culture-War context:
+
+comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/dvkv41/meta_reducing_negativity_on_rrational/f7fs88l/
+> On discussion threads for a work's particular chapter, people may debate the well-executedness of some particular feature of that work's particular chapter. Comments saying that nobody should enjoy this whole work are still verboten. Replies here should still follow the etiquette of saying "Mileage varied: I thought character X seemed stupid to me" rather than saying "No, character X was actually quite stupid."
+
+[the comment claims that "Being able to consider and optimize literary qualities" is one of the major considerations to be balanced, but this is lip service; Ruby also paid lip service]
+
+But "I thought X seemed Y to me" and "X is Y" _do not mean the same thing_. [The map is not the territory](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KJ9MFBPwXGwNpadf2/skill-the-map-is-not-the-territory). [The quotation is not the referent](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/np3tP49caG4uFLRbS/the-quotation-is-not-the-referent). [The planning algorithm that maximizes the probability of doing a thing is different from an algorithm that maximizes the probability of having "tried" to do the thing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WLJwTJ7uGPA5Qphbp/trying-to-try).
+
+It's a little thing (requiring "I" statements is commonplace in therapy groups and non-violent communication), but this little thing _coming from Eliezer Yudwkowsky setting guidelines for an explicitly "rationalist" space_ makes a pattern click.
+
+If everyone is forced to only make narcissistic claims about their map ("_I_ think", "_I_ feel"), and not make claims about the territory (which could be construed to call other people's maps into question and thereby "threaten" them, because [disagreement is disrespect](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/disagreement-is.html)), that's great for reducing social conflict, but it's not great for the kind of collective information processing that actually accomplishes cognitive work like good literary criticism.
+
+"Broadcast criticism is adversely selected for critic errors"
+
+"Credibly helpful unsolicited criticism should be delivered in private" (I agree that the purpose of public criticism is not solely to help the authors)
+
+]
+
+----
+
+2019 comments to "Wilhelm"—
+
+these people are at the center of the rationalist egregore and could steer it if only they were a little bit braver
+
+the prevailing narrative is something like "the rationalist community is doing just fine; poor Zack is just freaking out because he's in denial about being a trans woman, and mean ol' Michael and Ben are preying on his vulnerability"
+
+I'm never gonna get over this
+you can tell your IQ 110 hairdresser, "Men who fantasize about being women don't particularly resemble actual women", and she'll just be like, "yeah"
+and you tell IQ 135 "rationalists" the same thing, and it just becomes this multi-year, 30,000-word ... whatever
+
+people use the word "gaslighting" to refer to the cognitive dissonance between what you're seeing and what the local egregore expects you to see
+
+ being trapped between two egregores is so painful / and even when it's not painful, it's confusing
+
+recently-transitioned MtF Facebook acquaintance had generally positive feedback about my blog, but also says stuff like, "objective autobiography is impossible, ultimately we just tell the stories about ourselves that help us survive and thrive" / "she" went to Caltech / where are all the serious people??
+
+in the new Twilight Zone episode featuring a crew of 5 astronauts, both the commander and the rebellious one are black women (who I have trouble telling apart)
+You sent
+there's a legitimate (really!) social-justice angle to this (the fact that I can't tell them apart proves that my perceptual system is RACIST)
+You sent
+(but the general phenomenon has to do with anchoring on unusual characteristics; at old dayjob, someone once confused me with the other white-guy-with-a-ponytail—we don't really look alike, but long hair on males is unusual)
+
+17 March 19: "I think 'Vanessa Kosoy' is a guy I met at Summer Solstice 2016"
+
+----
+
+messages with Leon about PDF templating as an easier task were on 22-23 May