From 04b22a7ae1b695336feb1c05036bc2900d5940b2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2022 23:12:10 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] memoir: email review up to September 2020 --- ...-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md | 3 +- notes/a-hill-email-review.md | 46 +++++++++++++++---- notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md | 3 ++ 3 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) 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 d9185a5..2084ab0 100644 --- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md +++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md @@ -258,9 +258,10 @@ But _Michael thought I was in the right_—not just intellectually on the philos [TODO SECTION: Anna Michael feud - * This may have been less effective than it was in my head; I _remembered_ Michael as being high-status + * This may have been less effective than it was in my head; _I remembered_ Michael as being high-status * Anna's 2 Mar comment badmouthing Michael * my immediate response: I strongly agree with your point about "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'm so heartbroken about the "categories are arbitrary, therefore trans women are women" thing, which deserves to be laughed out of the room. + * "sacrificed all hope of success in favor of maintaining his own sanity by CC'ing you guys" * Anna's case against Michael: he was talking to Devi even when Devi needed a break, and he wanted to destroy EA * I remember at a party in 2015ish, asking Michael what else I should invest my money in, if not New Harvest/GiveWell, and his response was, "You" * backstory of anti-EA sentiment: Ben's critiques, Sarah's "EA Has a Lying Problem"—Michael had been in the background diff --git a/notes/a-hill-email-review.md b/notes/a-hill-email-review.md index 511cf13..81e226e 100644 --- a/notes/a-hill-email-review.md +++ b/notes/a-hill-email-review.md @@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ Michael: Once people think they know what the political sides are, the political 16 Apr: I feel sad and gaslighted 16 Apr: Jessica sparks engagement by appealing to anti-lying Ben— I think a commitment to lying is always wrong just straightforwardly leads to deciding that anything power demands you say is true. -16 Apr: If it were just a matter of my own pain, I wouldn't bother making a fuss about this. But there's a principle here that's way bigger than any of us: that's why Michael and Ben and Sarah and Zvi and Jessica are here with me. +16 Apr: If it were just a matter of my own pain, I wouldn't bother making a fuss about this. But there's a principle here that's way bigger than any of us: that's why Michael and Ben and Sarah and [...] and Jessica are here with me. we're in favor of Jessica's existence 17 Apr: plantiff/pawn/puppydog 17 Apr: Jessica— This person had an emotional reaction described as a sense that "Zack should have known that wouldn't work" (because of the politics involved, not because Zack wasn't right). Those who are savvy in high-corruption equilibria maintain the delusion that high corruption is common knowledge, to justify expropriating those who naively don't play along, by narratizing them as already knowing and therefore intentionally attacking people, rather than being lied to and confused. @@ -343,11 +343,33 @@ my reply: I've ceded the internal of my own mind to Eliezer Yudkowsky in particu 16 Jan: do you think you could explain this in a way Said would find satisfying? 18 Jan: Yudkowsky on Caplan: https://www.econlib.org/scott-alexander-on-mental-illness-a-belated-reply/#comment-237783 21 Jan: still have this "Vassar Group vs. Corrupt Mainstream MIRI/CfAR/LW/EA rationalist civil war" framing in my head that I need to unwind, because it's the wrong frame, and it's ironically the wrong frame by our ("our") own standards. I already made the mistake of expecting a community once, but by now I should know that no Lord hath the champion, and no safe defense. There is no group; there is no community; there are just grown-ups who think for themselves (or ought to) and sometimes coordinate with their friends on those specific plans that actually require coordination. - - - - - +I indicate I might enter the Caplan-Alexander debate (I don't actually) +25 Jan: Said thinks Jessica's political thinking is vague and under-researched +27 Jan: Anna has to ("has to") let both me and Ziz down because big-tent coalitions require incoherence (e.g., progressives prefer not to admit out loud that trans people and Muslims have conflicting interests). +27 Jan: Vassar's trans reversal—lame +1 Feb: sleep disruption due to M.M.B. situation +1 Feb: I reply to Scott on "AGP is common", and M.M.B. situation +4 Feb: you exist in the physical sense. To whatever extent your behavior is controlled by the balance of "not wanting to fight pro-trans people" and "not wanting to fight Zack", then you don't exist decision-theoretically. +6 Feb: me to Anna on fog of war and MMB +(the conversation with Somni is relevant) +12 Feb: "I'm a girl and I'm a vegetarian" +23 Feb: connection with Iceman +23 Feb: discussion on meaning of "zero-sum" +25 Feb: I'm still talking about finishing writing a memoir +28 Feb: "belief check" conversation with Jessica on origin of trans ideology +3 Mar: Scott's new COVID-19 post is great on the "shared maps" issue! https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-links-speculation-open-thread/ in contrast to how last month he was acting like he didn't understand the problem https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/30/book-review-human-compatible/#comment-847143 https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/yaCwW8nPQeJknbCgf/free-speech-and-triskaidekaphobic-calculators-a-reply-to/comment/mHrHTvzg8MGNH2CwB +4 Mar: niche skill of being able to translate between high-church Yudkowskyism and Vassarian moonspeak +9-10 Mar: talk to Mom/Nicole about COVID prep +22 Mar: ping Jack for social call ("You seem a lot more vicious than the sixteen-or-whatever-year-old I remember meeting at a Less Wrong meetup back in '13-or-whatever, but it looks adaptive") +31 Mar: I'm skeptical of Eli as a mediator between me and Anna +"Human Diversity" review published +I've discovered that you can just stop being scared of things and then nothing bad happens. All swans are white! There are no other swans! +24 May: Jessica on high-precision claims +24 May: Anna seems to be regaining power of speech (Facebook post on U.S. decline) +2 Jun: I send an email to Cade Metz, who DMed me on Twitter +25 Jul: rubber-duck philosophy for "Unnatural Categories"!! +[bookmark] +4 Sep: misguided by the hideousness of our weapons?! or, theory of universal algorithmic bad faith @@ -766,12 +788,12 @@ I still feel sad and upset and gaslighted and I haven't done any dayjob work so -Eliezer, I've spent my entire adult life in the subculture you created. You created me. Everything I'm doing now, I learned from you. I've put in a lot of effort—along with Ben and Michael and Sarah and Zvi and now Jessica—trying to explain that there's a collective sanity problem that we could really use your help with. (You should see the strategy email threads we've been having behind your back!) I don't understand how repeating that people live in different mental universes is a relevant response to our thousands of words of careful arguments? +Eliezer, I've spent my entire adult life in the subculture you created. You created me. Everything I'm doing now, I learned from you. I've put in a lot of effort—along with Ben and Michael and Sarah and [...] and now Jessica—trying to explain that there's a collective sanity problem that we could really use your help with. (You should see the strategy email threads we've been having behind your back!) I don't understand how repeating that people live in different mental universes is a relevant response to our thousands of words of careful arguments? I'm pretty sure everyone here is strongly in favor of Jessica's existence. But maybe, if someone thinks really carefully about it, there could be some way to protect Jessica's interests without destroying the faculty of language?! (Especially given that Jessica herself may have interests in being able to talk.) Michael— -> My guess is that at this point Zack and Ben should both sign off actually, and maybe Sarah as well, and that this should become a conversation between Eliezer and Jessica, Zvi, myself, and other people who have or have historically had strong MIRI affiliations and have paid serious attention to logical decision theories. Maybe we should bring in Wei Dai, since along with Eliezer, he created logical decision theory, so in so far as there's a natural heir to the Caliphate other than Eliezer it's him. At this point, I think that if this doesn't resolve with Eliezer backing down I am pretty much obligated to involve everyone who I believe has historically taken seriously Eliezer's claims of strong principles against lying. Among other things, I think that it's clear that without standing on such a moral bedrock, Eliezer is no longer claiming to be the spiritual leader of the Caliphate (intuitively, that title passes to me?), and that the secular leader of the AI Risk Caliphate has been Demis for many years now. +> My guess is that at this point Zack and Ben should both sign off actually, and maybe Sarah as well, and that this should become a conversation between Eliezer and Jessica, [...] myself, and other people who have or have historically had strong MIRI affiliations and have paid serious attention to logical decision theories. Maybe we should bring in Wei Dai, since along with Eliezer, he created logical decision theory, so in so far as there's a natural heir to the Caliphate other than Eliezer it's him. At this point, I think that if this doesn't resolve with Eliezer backing down I am pretty much obligated to involve everyone who I believe has historically taken seriously Eliezer's claims of strong principles against lying. Among other things, I think that it's clear that without standing on such a moral bedrock, Eliezer is no longer claiming to be the spiritual leader of the Caliphate (intuitively, that title passes to me?), and that the secular leader of the AI Risk Caliphate has been Demis for many years now. > Sarah, don't worry, this definitely doesn't imply involving shit-heads who want to carpet-bomb us. It might involve explicitly discussing the pros and cons of involving leftist shit-heads as part of motivating Eliezer (and/or Scott) and I think that we should try to become psychologically immune to their carpet-bombing in any event, but there may be good reasons for Sarah to remain economically coupled to their good-will, since of all of us she's the only one who may stand to receive resources from the Corporate Center-Left Coalition or to direct their resources. It does seem to me that technically, in so far as their attacks are harmless to those not seeking privilege, leftist shit-heads are Guided by the Goodness of their Weapons, and working out whether this is in fact true may be related to the logical decision theory that will enable us to integrate political threats with compassionate rational engagement and bring Eliezer and Scott back from the team of deception and privilege. @@ -801,7 +823,7 @@ Ben on our epistemic state— Michael— > I don't think that we should be permanently giving up on people, but I do think that we should be regarding them as temporarily without the appeal to rights in relationship to ourselves. Varelse in Orson Scott Card speak. -> I think that it was extremely worth our time to engage at this level of detail, and at an even greater level of detail in order to achieve common knowledge, as I don't think that we have achieved common knowledge*yet* if Zvi still thinks that we shouldn't confidently act on the assumption that Eliezer is not doing useful things unobserved. +> I think that it was extremely worth our time to engage at this level of detail, and at an even greater level of detail in order to achieve common knowledge, as I don't think that we have achieved common knowledge*yet* if [...] still thinks that we shouldn't confidently act on the assumption that Eliezer is not doing useful things unobserved. > I would defend engagement with Eliezer for as long as we did in the past and in several future cases if we had several future relationships that seemed comparably valuable to the one we were hoping for, e.g. with a reformed Eliezer Yudkowsky, but I think that it's important that we be clear in our own minds that as of now there should be no presumptive loyalty to Eliezer over, for instance, Demis who is the Schelling Point for leader for an AI Risk coalition not Guided by the Goodness of it's Weapons. @@ -1031,4 +1053,8 @@ Let's add the "lawyer" structure back in. I'm sitting at a restaurant and someon (zero-sum actors, e.g. neo nazis, are going to be pushing in various ways that make it easier to push along in their direction than it would if it were just you). -I think this is how the political factions end up being "protect minorities and be incoherent" and "harm minorities and be locally coherent". Different respectability/violence tradeoffs (to get a mix of zero sum and non zero sum energy). And these define the Overton window, whereas many other Overton windows could be drawn instead. +> I think this is how the political factions end up being "protect minorities and be incoherent" and "harm minorities and be locally coherent". Different respectability/violence tradeoffs (to get a mix of zero sum and non zero sum energy). And these define the Overton window, whereas many other Overton windows could be drawn instead. + +In the possible world where the parameters of male sexual psychology are such that autogynephilia doesn't exist "but everything else is the same", then I don't think you get the kind and scope of trans-activism movement that Saotome-Westlake's and Adams-Miller's writing is a reaction to. In this world, you still get Judith Butler (AFAB, Gender Trouble published 1990) and Anne Fausto-Sterling (AFAB, Sexing the Body published 2000), but I think you don't get pronoun stickers at conferences in 2018 and you don't get a "three-year-old [...] is a girl now; she verbally confirmed it!" social-reality enforcement campaign in 2020. + +To your second question, it might actually depend on how you operationalize "influence"! Notably, the campaign to trans MMB (whose parents met on lesswrong.com) is being run predominantly by AFAB people; they're just combatants in the service of an ideology that I don't think would have been so memetically fit if it weren't such a convenient accommodation for AGP. (At least, that's my theory under the doctrine of "algorithmic intent"; the people involved don't think of themselves as combatants in the service of anything.) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md index fc2666c..55f6258 100644 --- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md +++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md @@ -1112,3 +1112,6 @@ It really is an apples-to-oranges comparison, rather than "two populations of ap For example, the _function_ of sex-segrated bathrooms is to _protect females from males_, where "females" and "males" are natural clusters in configuration space that it makes sense to want words to refer to. all I actually want out of a post-Singularity utopia is the year 2007 except that I personally have shapeshifting powers + +The McGongall turning into a cat parody may actually be worth fitting in—McCongall turning into a cat broke Harry's entire worldview. Similarly, the "pretend to turn into a cat, and everyone just buys it" maneuver broke my religion + -- 2.17.1