It works surprisingly well. I fear my love of Truth is not so great that if I didn't have Something to Protect, I would have happily participated in the cover-up.
-As it happens, in our world, the defensive cover-up consists of _throwing me under the bus_. Facing censure from the progressive egregore for being insufficiently progressive, we can't defend ourselves ideologically. (_We_ think we're egalitarians, but progressives won't buy that because we like markets too much.) We can't point to our racial diversity. (Mostly white if not Jewish, with a generous handful of Asians, exactly as you'd expect from chapters 13 and 14 of _The Bell Curve_.) [Subjectively](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic), I felt like the sex balance got a little better after we hybridized with Tumblr and Effective Alruism (as [contrasted with the old days](/2017/Dec/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009/)), but it turns out that survey data doesn't back this up. (From 89% male in the [2011 _Less Wrong_ survey](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HAEPbGaMygJq8L59k/2011-survey-results), to a virtually unchanged 88.7% male on the [2020 _Slate Star Codex_ survey](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/).)
+As it happens, in our world, the defensive cover-up consists of _throwing me under the bus_. Facing censure from the progressive egregore for being insufficiently progressive, we can't defend ourselves ideologically. (_We_ think we're egalitarians, but progressives won't buy that because we like markets too much.) We can't point to our racial diversity. (Mostly white if not Jewish, with a generous handful of Asians, exactly as you'd expect from chapters 13 and 14 of _The Bell Curve_.) [Subjectively](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic), I felt like the sex balance got a little better after we hybridized with Tumblr and Effective Alruism (as [contrasted with the old days](/2017/Dec/a-common-misunderstanding-or-the-spirit-of-the-staircase-24-january-2009/)), but it turns out that survey data doesn't back this up. (From 89.2% male in the [2011 _Less Wrong_ survey](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HAEPbGaMygJq8L59k/2011-survey-results), to a virtually unchanged 88.7% male on the [2020 _Slate Star Codex_ survey](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/).)
-But _trans!_ We have plenty of trans people to trot out as a shield to definitively prove that we're not counter-revolutionary right-wing Bad Guys! (Alexander once joked that ["We are solving the gender ratio issue one transition at a time"](https://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/post/142995164286/i-was-at-a-slate-star-codex-meetup).) Thus, [Jacob Falkovich noted](https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1275524303430262790) (on 23 June 2020, just after _Slate Star Codex_ went down), "The two demographics most over-represented in the SlateStarCodex readership according to the surveys are transgender people and Ph.D. holders", and Scott Aaronson [noted (in commentary on the February 2021 _Times_ article) that](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.
+But _trans!_ We have plenty of trans people to trot out as a shield to definitively prove that we're not counter-revolutionary right-wing Bad Guys! (Alexander joked in April 2016 that ["We are solving the gender ratio issue one transition at a time"](https://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/post/142995164286/i-was-at-a-slate-star-codex-meetup).) Thus, [Jacob Falkovich noted](https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1275524303430262790) (on 23 June 2020, just after _Slate Star Codex_ went down), "The two demographics most over-represented in the SlateStarCodex readership according to the surveys are transgender people and Ph.D. holders", and Scott Aaronson [noted (in commentary on the February 2021 _Times_ article) that](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), wrote one.
* Back in the 'aughts, it looked like we had time. We had abstract high-level arguments to worry about AI, and it seemed like it was going to happen this century, but it felt like the _second_ half of the 21st century.
- * Now it looks like we have—less time? (The 21st century is one-fifth over!) Yudkowsky flipped out about AlphaGo and AlphaZero, and at the time, a lot of people probably weren't worried (board games are a shallow domain), but now that it's happening for "language" (GPT) and "vision" (DALL-E), a lot of people including me are feeling much more spooked
+ * Now it looks like we have—less time? (The 21st century is one-fifth over!) Yudkowsky flipped out about AlphaGo and AlphaZero, and at the time, a lot of people probably weren't worried (board games are a shallow domain), but now that it's happening for "language" (GPT) and "vision" (DALL-E), a lot of people including me are feeling much more spooked (https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1536364192441040896)
* [Include the joke about DALL-E being the most significant news event of that week in January 2021]
* I can totally cooperate with censorship that doesn't actively intefere with my battle! I agree that there are plenty of times in life where you need to say "No comment." But if that's the play you want to make, you have to actually _not comment_. "20% of the ones with penises" is no "No comment"! "You're not standing in defense of truth" is not "No comment"! "The simplest and best proposal" is not "No comment"!
+https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1374161729073020937
+> Also: Having some things you say "no comment" to, is not at *all* the same phenomenon as being an organization that issues Pronouncements. There are a *lot* of good reasons to have "no comments" about things. Anybody who tells you otherwise has no life experience, or is lying.
+
* I don't pick fights with Paul Christiano, because Paul Christiano doesn't take a shit on my Something to Protect, because Paul Christiano isn't trying to be a religious leader. If he has opinions about transgenderism, we don't know about them.
* The cowardice is particularly puzzling in light of his timeless decision theory, which says to defy extortion.
https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1435106339550740482
]
-David Xu writes (with Yudkowsky ["endors[ing] everything [Xu] just said"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1436025983522381827)):
+https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1435856644076830721
+> The error in "Not Man for the Categories" is not subtle! After the issue had been brought to your attention, I think you should have been able to condemn it: "Scott's wrong; you can't redefine concepts in order to make people happy; that's retarded." It really is that simple! 4/6
+
+
+
+[David Xu writes](https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1436007025545125896) (with Yudkowsky ["endors[ing] everything [Xu] just said"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1436025983522381827)):
> I'm curious what might count for you as a crux about this; candidate cruxes I could imagine include: whether some categories facilitate inferences that _do_, on the whole, cause more harm than benefit, and if so, whether it is "rational" to rule that such inferences should be avoided when possible, and if so, whether the best way to disallow a large set of potential inferences is [to] proscribe the use of the categories that facilitate them—and if _not_, whether proscribing the use of a category in _public communication_ constitutes "proscribing" it more generally, in a way that interferes with one's ability to perform "rational" thinking in the privacy of one's own mind.
>
✓ Ray and D. Xu's comments on "The Incentives"
✓ comments on "Self-Consciousness wants to make"
✓ tussle with Ruby on "Causal vs. Social Reality"
+✓ The End (of Sequences)
_ No such thing as a tree
-_ Tweet about it being wise to say "no comment"
-_ my Tweet about not buying the vibe shift for AlphaGo, but buying it for GPT
_ Yudkowsky on AlphaGo
-_ quote about "it's possible that someone is finishing up their project right now"
-_ quote about "humanity's attachment to Truth" in "Your Rationality Is My Business"
-_ The End (of Sequences)
_ quote other Eliezer Yudkowsky facts
-_ Charles Krauthammer, "Be Afraid", weeklystandard.com/be-afraid/article/9802
-_ David Xu correct link
_ footnote about Scott writing six times faster than me
-_ include "Actually, I Was Just Crazy" in archive.is spree
_ include Eric Weinstein in archive.is spree
-_ did my archive.is spree include https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1435618825198731270 and https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1356812143849394176?
_ link to Kay Brown's summary of the "Social Desirability Response Set" paper, and footnote paper link and my brief methodology explanation
-_ "Alexander once joked"—include the year
-_ one more significant figure in reporting 2011 Less Wrong male %, to match 2020
_ something to support Metz being a pro for decades
_ "not taking into account considerations" → rephrase to quote "God's dictionary"
_ Aaron Terrell and Corina Cohn
all he does these days is sneer about Earth people, but he _is_ from Earth—carrying on the memetic legacy of Richard Feynmann and Douglas Hofstadter and Greg Egan
-"Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma" https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5577
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+"Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma" https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5577
+
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/anCubLdggTWjnEvBS/your-rationality-is-my-business
+> One of those interests is the human pursuit of truth, which has strengthened slowly over the generations (for there was not always Science). I wish to strengthen that pursuit further, in _this_ generation. That is a wish of mine, for the Future. For we are all of us players upon that vast gameboard, whether we accept the responsibility or not.
+
+https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/be-afraid-9802
+
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TQSb4wd6v5C3p6HX2/the-pascal-s-wager-fallacy-fallacy#pART2rjzcmqATAZio
+> egoists, but not altruists, should immediately commit suicide in case someone is finishing their AI project in a basement, right now.
+(I remembered this as suggesting some plausibility in sudden Singularity even then, but in context it's more clearly in thought-experimental mode)
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