Of course, such speech restrictions aren't necessarily "irrational", depending on your goals! If you just don't think "free speech" should go that far—if you _want_ to suppress atheism or gender-critical feminism—speech codes are a perfectly fine way to do it! And _to their credit_, I think most theocrats and trans advocates are intellectually honest about the fact that this is what they're doing: atheists or transphobes are _bad people_, and we want to make it harder for them to spread their lies or their hate.
-In contrast, by claiming to be "not taking a stand for or against any Twitter policies" while insinuating that people who oppose the policy are ontologically confused, Yudkowsky was being either (somewhat implausibly) stupid or (more plausibly) intellectually dishonest: of _course_ the point of speech codes is suppress ideas! Given that the distinction between facts and policies is so obviously _not anyone's crux_—the smarter people in the "anti-trans" coalition already know that, and the dumber people in the coalition wouldn't change their coalitional alignment if they were taught—it's hard to see what the _point_ of harping on the fact/policy distiction would be, _except_ to be seen as implicitly taking a stand for the "pro-trans" coalition, while putting on a show of being politically "neutral."
+In contrast, by claiming to be "not taking a stand for or against any Twitter policies" while insinuating that people who oppose the policy are ontologically confused, Yudkowsky was being either (somewhat implausibly) stupid or (more plausibly) intellectually dishonest: of _course_ the point of speech codes is suppress ideas! Given that the distinction between facts and policies is so obviously _not anyone's crux_—the smarter people in the "anti-trans" coalition already know that, and the dumber people in the coalition wouldn't change their alignment if they were taught—it's hard to see what the _point_ of harping on the fact/policy distiction would be, _except_ to be seen as implicitly taking a stand for the "pro-trans" coalition, while putting on a show of being politically "neutral."
It makes sense that Yudkowsky might perceive political constraints on what he might want to say in public—especially when you look at what happened to the _other_ Harry Potter author. (Despite my misgivings—and the fact that at this point it's more of a genre convention or a running joke, rather than any attempt at all to conceal my identity—this blog _is_ still published under a pseudonym; it would be hypocritical of me to accuse someone of cowardice about what they're willing to attach their real name to.)
Ben thought I was wrong to think of this as non-ostracisizing. The deluge of motivated nitpicking _is_ an implied marginalization threat, he explained: the game people are playing when they do that is to force me to choose between doing arbitarily large amounts of interpretive labor, or being cast as never having answered these construed-as-reasonable objections, and therefore over time losing standing to make the claim, being thought of as unreasonable, not getting invited to events, _&c._
-I saw the dynamic he was pointing at, but as a matter of personality, I was more inclined to respond, "Welp, I guess I need to write faster and more clearly", rather than to say "You're dishonestly demanding arbitrarily large amounts of interpretive labor from me." I thought Ben was far too quick to give up on people who he modeled as trying not to understand, whereas I continued to have faith in the possibility of _making_ them understand if I just never gave up. Even _if_ the other person was being motivatedly dense, giving up wouldn't make me a stronger writer.
+I saw the dynamic he was pointing at, but as a matter of personality, I was more inclined to respond, "Welp, I guess I need to write faster and more clearly", rather than to say "You're dishonestly demanding arbitrarily large amounts of interpretive labor from me." I thought Ben was far too quick to give up on people who he modeled as trying not to understand, whereas I continued to have faith in the possibility of _making_ them understand if I just never gave up. Not to be _so_ much of a scrub as to play chess with a pigeon (which shits on the board and then struts around like it's won), or wrestle with a pig (which gets you both dirty, and the pig likes it), or dispute what the Tortise said to Achilles—but to hold out hope that people in "the community" could only be _boundedly_ motivatedly dense, and anyway that giving up wouldn't make me a stronger writer.
(Picture me playing Hermione Granger in a post-Singularity [holonovel](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Holo-novel_program) adaptation of _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ (Emma Watson having charged me [the standard licensing fee](/2019/Dec/comp/) to use a copy of her body for the occasion): "[We can do anything if we](https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/30) exert arbitrarily large amounts of interpretive labor!")
Another blow to Michael's "community" reputation was dealt on 27 February, when Anna [published a comment badmouthing Michael and suggesting that talking to him was harmful](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u8GMcpEN9Z6aQiCvp/rule-thinkers-in-not-out?commentId=JLpyLwR2afav2xsyD), which I found pretty disappointing—more so as I began to realize the implications.
-I agreed with her point about how "ridicule of obviously-fallacious reasoning plays an important role in discerning which thinkers can (or can't) help fill these functions." That's why I was so heartbroken about about the "categories are arbitrary, therefore trans women are women" thing, which deserved to be _laughed out the room_. Why was she trying to ostracize the guy who was one of the very few to back me up on this incredibly obvious thing!? The reasons to discredit Michael given in the comment seemed incredibly weak. (He ... flatters people? He ... _didn't_ tell people to abandon their careers? What?) And the anti-Michael evidence she offered in private didn't seem much more compelling (_e.g._, at a CfAR event, he had been insistent on continuing to talk to someone who Anna thought was looking sleep-deprived and needed a break).
+I agreed with her point about how "ridicule of obviously-fallacious reasoning plays an important role in discerning which thinkers can (or can't) help fill these functions." That's why I was so heartbroken about about the "categories are arbitrary, therefore trans women are women" thing, which deserved to be _laughed out the room_. Why was she trying to ostracize the guy who was one of the very few to back me up on this incredibly obvious thing!? The reasons to discredit Michael given in the comment seemed incredibly weak. (He ... flatters people? He ... _didn't_ tell people to abandon their careers? What?) And the evidence against Michael she offered in private didn't seem much more compelling (_e.g._, at a CfAR event, he had been insistent on continuing to talk to someone who Anna thought was looking sleep-deprived and needed a break).
It made sense for Anna to not like Michael, because of his personal conduct, or because he didn't like EA. (Expecting all of my friends to be friends with _each other_ would be [Geek Social Fallacy #4](http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html).) If she didn't want to invite him to CfAR stuff, fine; that's her business not to invite him. But what did she gain from _escalating_ to publicly denouncing him as someone whose "lies/manipulations can sometimes disrupt [people's] thinking for long and costly periods of time"?!
I think at some level, I wanted Scott to know how frustrated I was about his use of "mental health for trans people" as an Absolute Denial Macro. But then when Michael started advocating on my behalf, I started to minimize my claims because I had a generalized attitude of not wanting to sell myself as a victim. (Michael seemed to have a theory that people will only change their bad behavior when they see a victim who is being harmed.)
+[TODO:
+> Zack, for you specifically, no making yourself mentally ill to try to respond to the "gerrymandering categories for trans people's mental health" argument. That only works if you have a lot of people doing it in a visibly coordinated way, and you don't.
+> And even if it works, I don't think getting into a dysphoria contest with a bunch of trans people leads anywhere good.
+]
+
I supposed that, in Michael's worldview, aggression is more honest than passive-aggression. That seemed obviously true, but I was psychologically limited in how much aggression I was willing to deploy against my friends. (And particularly Yudkowsky, who I still hero-worshipped.) But clearly, the tension between "I don't want to do too much social aggression" and "losing the Category War within the rationalist community is _absolutely unacceptable_" was causing me to make wildly inconsistent decisions. (Emailing Scott at 4 a.m., and then calling Michael "aggressive" when he came to defend me was just crazy.)
Was the answer just that I needed to accept that there wasn't such a thing in the world as a "rationalist community"? (Sarah had told me as much two years ago, at BABSCon, and I just hadn't made the corresponing mental adjustments.)
[TODO: Jessica joins the coalition; she tell me about her time at MIRI (link to Zoe-piggyback and Occupational Infohazards);
Michael said that me and Jess together have more moral authority]
-[TODO: wrapping up with Scott; Kelsey; high and low Church https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/]
+[TODO section: wrapping up with Scott; Kelsey; high and low Church https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/some-clarifications-on-rationalist-blogging/]
[TODO small section: Ben reiterated that the most important thing was explaining why I've written them off; self-promotion imposes a cost on others; Jessica on creating clarity; Michael on less precise is more violent]
"Univariate fallacy" also a concession
]
-
curation hopes ... 22 Jun: I'm expressing a little bit of bitterness that a mole rats post got curated https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fDKZZtTMTcGqvHnXd/naked-mole-rats-a-case-study-in-biological-weirdness
scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility of No"
[TODO: categories clarification from EY—victory?!]
+
[TODO: I didn't put this together until looking at my email just now, but based on the timing, the Feb. 2021 pronouns post was likely causally downstream of me being temporarily more salient to EY because of my highly-Liked response to his "anyone at this point that anybody who openly hates on this community generally or me personally is probably also a bad person inside" from 17 February; it wasn't gratuitously out of the blue]
[TODO: "simplest and best" pronoun proposal, sometimes personally prudent; support from Oli]
[TODO: the Law violation]
+
+
+
[TODO: the dolphin war, our thoughts about dolphins are literally downstream from Scott's political incentives in 2014; this is a sign that we're a cult]
[TODO: why you should care; no one should like Scott and Eliezer's proposals; knowledge should go forward, not back — what I would have hoped for, what you can do; hating that my religion is bottlenecked on one guy; the Church is _still there_ sucking up adherents; this is unambiguously a betrayal rather than a mistake]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff