From 9e65e54625c5cce94adff5eca72aa4bf3456c6dc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2023 08:15:14 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] check in --- .../if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md | 4 +-- content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md | 8 ++--- notes/memoir-sections.md | 32 +++++++++++++------ notes/memoir_wordcounts.csv | 4 ++- notes/notes.txt | 3 ++ 5 files changed, 34 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md index cd7cfa2..8a244da 100644 --- a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md +++ b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md @@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ I may have subconsciously pulled off an interesting political thing. In my final And as it happened, on 4 May 2019, Yudkowsky [re-Tweeted Colin Wright on the "univariate fallacy"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1124751630937681922)—the point that group differences aren't a matter of any single variable—which was _sort of_ like the clarification I had been asking for. (Empirically, it made me feel a lot less personally aggrieved.) Was I wrong to interpet this as another "concession" to me? (Again, notwithstanding that the whole mindset of extracting "concessions" was corrupt and not what our posse was trying to do.) -Separately, I visited some friends' house on 30 April 2019 saying, essentially (and sincerely), "[Oh man oh jeez](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NivwAQ8sUYQ), Ben and Michael want me to join in a rationalist civil war against the corrupt mainstream-rationality establishment, and I'd really rather not, and I don't like how they keep using scary hyperbolic words like 'cult' and 'war' and 'criminal', but on the other hand, they're _the only ones backing me up_ on this _incredibly basic philosophy thing_ and I don't feel like I have anywhere else to _go_." The ensuing group conversation made some progress, but was mostly pretty horrifying. +Separately, I visited some friends' house on 30 April 2019 saying, essentially (and sincerely), "Oh man oh jeez, Ben and Michael want me to join in a rationalist civil war against the corrupt mainstream-rationality establishment, and I'd really rather not, and I don't like how they keep using scary hyperbolic words like 'cult' and 'war' and 'criminal', but on the other hand, they're _the only ones backing me up_ on this _incredibly basic philosophy thing_ and I don't feel like I have anywhere else to _go_." The ensuing group conversation made some progress, but was mostly pretty horrifying. In an adorable twist, my friends' two-year-old son was reportedly saying the next day that Kelsey doesn't like his daddy, which was confusing until it was figured out he had heard Kelsey talking about why she doesn't like Michael _Vassar_. @@ -318,7 +318,7 @@ _Good_ criticism is hard. _Accurately_ inferring authorial ["intent"](https://ww ----- -While visiting Valinor one evening in September 2019, Merlin Blume (almost age 3) asked me, "Why are you a boy?" +While visiting Valinor one evening in August 2019, Merlin Blume (age 2 years, 10 months) asked me, "Why are you a boy?" After a long pause, I said, "Yes," as if I had misheard the question as "Are you a boy?" diff --git a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md index ffd86fe..2da316c 100644 --- a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md +++ b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md @@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ As usual, the Yudkowsky of 2009 has me covered. In his short story ["The Sword o That is, there's _no story_ under which misleading people about trans issues is on Yudkowsky's critical path for shaping the intelligence explosion. _I'd_ prefer him to have free speech, but if _he_ thinks he can't afford to be honest about things he [_already_ got right in 2009](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions), he could just—not issue pronouncements on topics where he intends to _ignore counterarguments on political grounds!_ -In [a Twitter discussion about why not to trust organizations that refuse to explain their reasoning, Yudkowsky wrote](https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1374161729073020937): +In [a March 2021 Twitter discussion about why not to trust organizations that refuse to explain their reasoning, Yudkowsky wrote](https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1374161729073020937): > 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. @@ -170,8 +170,6 @@ After a little more thought, I decided the thread _was_ overtly objectionable, a * But he does, in fact, seem to actively encourage this conflation (contrast to how the Sequences had a [Litany Against Gurus](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t6Fe2PsEwb3HhcBEr/the-litany-against-gurus) these days, with the way he sneers as Earthlings and post-rats) - * "I may as well do it on Earth" - * a specific example that made me very angry in September 2021— https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1434906470248636419 @@ -377,7 +375,7 @@ In October 2021, Jessica Taylor [published a post about her experiences at MIRI] Scott Alexander posted a comment claiming to add important context, essentially blaming Jessica's problems on her association with Michael Vassar, to the point of describing her psychotic episode as a "Vassar-related phenomenon" (!). Alexander accused Vassar of trying "jailbreak" people from normal social reality, which "involve[d] making them paranoid about MIRI/​CFAR and convincing them to take lots of drugs". Yudkowsky posted [a comment that uncritically validated Scott's reliability as a narrator](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe?commentId=x5ajGhggHky9Moyr8). -To me, this looked like raw factional conflict: Jessica had some negative-valence things to say about the Caliphate, so Caliphate leaders moved in to discredit her by association. Quite effectively, as it turned out: the karma score on Jessica's post dropped by more than half, while Alexander's comment got voted up to more than 380 karma. (The fact that Scott said "it's fair for the community to try to defend itself" in ensuing back-and-forth suggests that he also saw the conversation as an adversarial one, even if he thought Jessica shot first.) +To me, this looked like raw factional conflict: Jessica had some negative-valence things to say about the Caliphate, so Caliphate leaders moved in to discredit her by association. Quite effectively, as it turned out: the karma score on Jessica's post dropped by more than half, while Alexander's comment got voted up to more than 380 karma. (The fact that Scott said ["it's fair for the community to try to defend itself"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe?commentId=qsEMmdo6DKscvBvDr) in ensuing back-and-forth suggests that he also saw the conversation as an adversarial one, even if he thought Jessica shot first.) I explained [why I thought Scott was being unfair](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe?commentId=GzqsWxEp8uLcZinTy) (and [offered textual evidence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe?commentId=yKo2uuCcwJxbwwyBw) against the silly claim that Michael was _trying_ to drive Jessica crazy). @@ -496,7 +494,7 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nCvvhFBaayaXyuBiD/shut-up-and-do-the-impossible /2017/Jan/from-what-ive-tasted-of-desire/ ] -Meanwhile, Yudkowsky started writing fiction again, largely in the form of Glowfic (a genre of collaborative storytelling pioneered by Alicorn) featuring the world of dath ilan (capitalization _sic_). Dath ilan had originally been introduced in a [2014 April Fool's Day post](https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/81447230971/my-april-fools-day-confession), in which Yudkowsky "confessed" that the explanation for his seemingly implausible genius is that he's "actually" an ordinary person from a smarter, saner alternate version of Earth in which the ideas Yudkowsky presented to this world as his own, were commonplace. +Meanwhile, Yudkowsky started writing fiction again, largely in the form of Glowfic (a genre of collaborative storytelling pioneered by Alicorn) featuring the world of dath ilan (capitalization _sic_). Dath ilan had originally been introduced in a [2014 April Fool's Day post](https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/81447230971/my-april-fools-day-confession), in which Yudkowsky "confessed" that the explanation for his seemingly implausible genius is that he's "actually" an ordinary person from a smarter, saner alternate version of Earth where the ideas he presented to this world as his own were common knowledge. The bulk of the dath ilan Glowfic canon was an epic titled [_Planecrash_](https://www.glowfic.com/boards/215)[^planecrash-title] coauthored with Lintamande, in which Keltham, an unusually selfish teenage boy from dath ilan, apparently dies in a freak aviation accident, and [wakes up in the world of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isekai) Golarion, setting of the _Dungeons-&-Dragons_–alike _Pathfinder_ role-playing game. A [couple](https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508) of [other](https://glowfic.com/posts/6263) Glowfic stories with different coauthors further flesh out the setting of dath ilan, which inspired a new worldbuilding trope, the [_medianworld_](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1619639#reply-1619639), a setting where the average person is like the author along important dimensions.[^medianworlds] diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md index 40e6fee..d6b7fd0 100644 --- a/notes/memoir-sections.md +++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md @@ -1,5 +1,4 @@ marked TODO blocks— -✓ "Why are you a boy?" [pt. 4] - social justice and defying threats [pt. 6] - Boston [pt. 6] - Jessica's experience at MIRI and CfAR [pt. 6] @@ -37,6 +36,7 @@ _ Re: on legitimacy and the entrepreneur; or, continuing the attempt to spread m _ running away to Burlingame; Hamilton tickets _ include Wilhelm "Gender Czar" conversation? [pt. 2] _ "EA" brand ate the "rationalism" brand—even visible in MIRI dialogues +_ Anna's about-face bigger blocks— _ dath ilan and Eliezerfic fight @@ -49,21 +49,24 @@ _ the story of my Feb./Apr. 2017 recent madness [pt. 2] it was actually "wander onto the AGI mailing list wanting to build a really big semantic net" (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9HGR5qatMGoz4GhKj/above-average-ai-scientists) With internet available— -_ link Scott's comment on the community defending itself -_ corroborate "Why are you a boy?" date (September 2019, I think) -_ Nevada bona fides +✓ fairness bargaining algorithm cite (and corresponding Planecrash tag) +✓ citation for "extortion depends on the zero point" (Stuart Armstrong) +✓ "war criminal" Tweet? +✓ link Scott's comment on the community defending itself +✓ what kind of trans girl Discord remark +✓ Month Year on Pronouncements quote +✓ corroborate "Why are you a boy?" date (it was August 2019) +✓ fun-theoretic comment about Aslan in Narnia (also applies to Keepers!) +✓ not-lying Sparashki tag _ hate-warp tag +_ replace "Oh man oh jeez" Rick & Morty link +_ Nevada bona fides _ Parfit's Hitchhiker _ Heinlein on "Get the facts!" -_ not-lying Sparashki tag -_ fun-theoretic comment about Aslan in Narnia (also applies to Keepers!) _ double-check correctness of Keltham-on-paternalism link -_ what kind of trans girl Discord remark _ Arbital TDT explanation -_ Month Year on Pronouncements quote _ find Sequences cite "if you don't know how your AI works, that's bad" _ cover reply to my initial conspiracy complaint about dath ilan? -_ can text-davinci-003 rewrite sentences like "Dath ilan had ... were commonplace" to be less clunky? _ "not hard to find": link to more /r/itsafetish-like anecdotes _ compile ancillary KP doctor's notes page and linky _ go back and read all the masochism tags: https://www.glowfic.com/replies/search?board_id=&author_id=366&template_id=&character_id=&subj_content=masochism&sort=created_old&condensed=on&commit=Search @@ -2130,3 +2133,14 @@ I like this sentence (from "The Matrix Is a System")— An analogy between my grievance against Yudkowsky and Duncan's grievance against me: I think Yudkowsky is obligated to search for and present "anti-trans" arguments in conjunction with searching for and presenting "pro-trans" arguments. Duncan (I'm wildly guessing??) thinks I'm obligated to search for and present "pro-Duncan" and addition to "anti-Duncan" arguments?? A key disanalogy: Yudkowsky is _afraid_ to post "anti-trans" content; I'm not afraid to post pro-Duncan content; I just think agreements are less interesting than disagreements. To prove the disanalogy, maybe I should write a "Things I Liked About 'Basics of Rationalist Discourse'" post as a peace offering?? "He's sad and confusing" Commentary reference?? + +https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1206718983115698176 +> 1940s war criminal defense: "I was only following orders!" +> 2020s war criminal defense: "I was only participating in a bad Nash equilibrium that no single actor can defy unilaterally!" + +https://equilibriabook.com/molochs-toolbox/ + +https://glowfic.com/replies/1857346#reply-1857346 +> All of her fellow employees are vigorously maintaining to anybody outside the hospital itself, should the question arise, that Merrin has always cosplayed as a Sparashki while on duty, in fact nobody's ever seen her out of costume; sure it's a little odd, but lots of people are a little odd. +> +> (This is not considered a lie, in that it would be universally understood and expected that no one in this social circumstance would tell the truth.) diff --git a/notes/memoir_wordcounts.csv b/notes/memoir_wordcounts.csv index ae6ddc8..4ad6000 100644 --- a/notes/memoir_wordcounts.csv +++ b/notes/memoir_wordcounts.csv @@ -295,4 +295,6 @@ 02/08/2023,84876 02/09/2023,85615 02/10/2023,86129 -02/11/2023, \ No newline at end of file +02/11/2023,86440 +02/12/2023,86444 +02/13/2023, \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt index 5d850a4..11c1ce7 100644 --- a/notes/notes.txt +++ b/notes/notes.txt @@ -3258,3 +3258,6 @@ https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/265651/my-name-and-the-pronoun-meltdowns James Baldwin's theory that Black policemen beat up on other blacks to secure their position in the white power structure seems to evoke the CovfefeAnon catchphrase :( https://archive.is/izSUn + +The ‘holy f***’ moment I knew something was wrong at the Tavistock: How Dr Anna Hutchinson, one of the whistleblowers, realised something was very wrong +https://archive.ph/AKz2i -- 2.17.1