memoir: tie off pt. 4 intro recap

I got tired of the "subsequent–subsequent post" convention, especially
because I want someone who's only going to read one post, to read this
one, which concentrates the bulk of the political attack.

diff --git a/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md b/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md
index b08a996..be5d31d 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md
+++ b/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md
@@ -9,20 +9,11 @@ Status: draft
 >
 > —_Atlas Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand
 
-Quickly recapping my Whole Dumb Story so far: [ever since puberty, I've had this obsessive sexual fantasy about being magically transformed into a woman, which got contextualized by these life-changing Sequences of blog posts by Eliezer Yudkowsky which taught me (amongst many, many other things) how fundamentally disconnected from reality my fantasy was.](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) [So it came as a huge surprise when, around 2016, the community that had formed around the Sequences (including Eliezer Yudkowsky) seemingly unanimously decided that guys like me might actually be women in some unspecified metaphysical sense.](/2023/Jul/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/) A couple years later, after having put some effort into arguing against the popular misconception that the matter could be resolved by simply redefining the word _woman_, Yudkowsky prevaricated
-
-
-
-prompting me to join up with allies to 
-
-
-
-(/2023/Jul/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning/)
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-
-Really, that should have been the end of the story. 
+Quickly recapping my Whole Dumb Story so far: [ever since puberty, I've had this obsessive sexual fantasy about being magically transformed into a woman, which got contextualized by these life-changing Sequences of blog posts by Eliezer Yudkowsky which taught me (amongst many, many other things) how fundamentally disconnected from reality my fantasy was.](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) [So it came as a huge surprise when, around 2016, the "rationalist" community that had formed around the Sequences seemingly unanimously decided that guys like me might actually be women in some unspecified metaphysical sense.](/2023/Jul/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/) [A couple years later, after having put some effort into arguing against the popular misconception that the matter could be resolved by simply redefining the word _woman_ (on the grounds that you can define the word any way you like), I flipped out when Yudkowsky prevaricated about the fact that his own philosophy of language says that you can't define a word any way you like, prompting me to join up with a handful of allies to attempt to persuade him to clarify.](/2023/Jul/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning/) When that failed, my attempts to cope with the "rationalists" being corrupt led to a series of small misadventures culminating in Yudkowsky eventually clarifying the philosophy of lanugage issue after I ran out of patience and yelled at him over email.
 
+Really, that should have been the end of the story—and it would have had a relatively happy ending, too: that it's possible to correct straightforward philosophical errors, at the cost of almost two years of desperate effort by someone with [Something to Protect](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SGR4GxFK7KmW7ckCB/something-to-protect).
 
+That wasn't the end of the story, which does not have such a relatively happy ending.
 
 On 13 February 2021, ["Silicon Valley's Safe Space"](https://archive.ph/zW6oX), the _New York Times_ piece on _Slate Star Codex_ came out. It was ... pretty lame? (_Just_ lame, not a masterfully vicious hit piece.) Cade Metz did a mediocre job of explaining what our robot cult is about, while [pushing hard on the subtext](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5310) to make us look racist and sexist, occasionally resorting to odd constructions that were surprising to read from someone who had been a professional writer for decades. ("It was nominally a blog", Metz wrote of _Slate Star Codex_. ["Nominally"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nominally)?) The article's claim that Alexander "wrote in a wordy, often roundabout way that left many wondering what he really believed" seemed to me more like a critique of the "many"'s reading comprehension, rather than Alexander's writing.
 

diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md
index fc1d3fc..2488c78 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/memoir-sections.md
+++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 slotted TODO blocks—
 ✓ psychiatric disaster
-_ "Agreeing With Stalin" intro recap
+✓ "Agreeing With Stalin" intro recap
 _ recap of crimes, cont'd
 _ Dolphin War finish
 _ lead-in to Sept. 2021 Twitter altercation