From fc347649eab3699f6786984993dcd3b4dfa3e6f1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 22:10:07 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] memoir: Valinor before and after COVID MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit If I'm willing to give adults pseudonyms for political cover, then the final version probably shouldn't use children's names at all—maybe not even for their sake (as I do the moral accounting), but to look less creepy to third-party readers. But we can cover that in a future edit pass after privacy negotiations. --- .../if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md | 18 +++++++++++------- content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md | 16 ++++++++++++++++ notes/memoir-sections.md | 8 ++++++-- 3 files changed, 33 insertions(+), 9 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 9563602..7f0f575 100644 --- a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md +++ b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md @@ -222,7 +222,7 @@ I was _furious_ when "Against Lie Inflation" came out. (Furious at what I percei ----- -While visiting Valinor on 7 August 2019, the older son (age 2¾ years) asked me, "Why are you a boy?" +While visiting Valinor on 7 August 2019, Merlin Blume (age 2¾ years) 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?" I think it was a motivated mishearing: it was only after I answered that I consciously realized that's not what the kid asked. @@ -446,6 +446,16 @@ Secret posse member reassured me that finishing the memoir privately would be cl (It does not, actually, have a happy ending where everyone comes to their senses.) +------ + +While visiting Valinor on 4 February 2020, I remember my nose dripping while I was holding Koios, the baby. Alicorn offered me a tissue. I asked if I shouldn't be holding the baby while my nose was dripping. She said it was fine. On the topic of possible sickness, I said that I hoped the novel coronavirus people were talking about didn't go pandemic. + +It did. The Berkeley rats took social distancing guidelines very seriously, so it would be a while before I could visit again. + +------ + +[TODO: "Autogenderphilia Is Common" https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/] + ------- There's another extremely important part of the story that _would_ fit around here chronologically, but I again find myself constrained by privacy norms: everyone's common sense of decency (this time, even including my own) screams that it's not my story to tell. @@ -486,12 +496,6 @@ Given that I spent so many hours on this little research/writing project in May ----- -[TODO: pandemic starts] - -[TODO: "Autogenderphilia Is Common" https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/] - ------ - On 1 June 2020, I received a Twitter DM from _New York Times_ reporter Cade Metz, who said he was "exploring a story about the intersection of the rationality community and Silicon Valley". I sent him an email saying that I would be happy to talk, but that I'd actually been pretty disappointed with the community lately: I was worried that the social pressures of trying to _be_ a "community" and protect the group's status (_e.g._, from _New York Times_ reporters who might portray us in an unflattering light??) incentivize people to compromise on the ideals of _systematically correct reasoning_ that made the community valuable in the first place. He never got back to me. Three weeks later, all existing _Slate Star Codex_ posts were taken down. diff --git a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md index d2202e1..d51bdb2 100644 --- a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md +++ b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md @@ -174,6 +174,22 @@ But if he's _then_ going to take a shit on c3 of my chessboard (["important thin ----- +I got my COVID-19 vaccine (the one-shot Johnson & Johnson) on 3 April 2021, so I was able to visit Valinor again on 17 April, for the first time in fourteen months. + +I had previously dropped by in January to deliver two new board books I had made, _Koios Blume Is Preternaturally Photogenic_ and _Amelia Davis Ford and the Great Plague_, but that had been a socially-distanced book delivery, not a "visit". + +The copy of _Amelia Davis Ford and the Great Plague_ that I sent to my sister in Cambridge differed slightly from the one I brought to Valinor. There was an "Other books by the author" list on the back cover with the titles of my earlier board books. In the Cambridge edition of _Great Plague_, the previous titles were printed in full: _Merlin Blume and the Methods of Pre-Rationality_, _Merlin Blume and the Steerswoman's Oath_, _Merlin Blume and the Sibling Rivalry_. Whereas in _Preternaturally Photogenic_ and the Valinor edition of _Great Plague_, the previous titles were abbreviated: _The Methods of Pre-Rationality_, _The Steerswoman's Oath_, _The Sibling Rivalry_. + +The visit on the seventeenth went fine. I hung out, talked, played with the kids. I had made a double-dog promise to be on my best no-politics-and-religion-at-the-dinner-table behavior. + +At dinner, there was a moment when Koios bit into a lemon and made a funny face, to which a bunch of the grown-ups said "Awww!" A few moments later, he went for the lemon again. Alicorn speculated that Koios had noticed that the grown-ups found it cute the first time, and the grown-ups were chastened. "Aww, baby, we love you even if you don't bite the lemon." + +It was very striking to me how, in the case of the baby biting a lemon, Alicorn _immediately_ formulated the hypothesis that what-the-grownups-thought-was-cute was affecting the baby's behavior, and everyone _immediately just got it_. I was tempted to say something caustic about how no one seemed to think a similar mechanism could have accounted for some of the older child's verbal behavior the previous year, but I kept silent; that was clearly outside the pervue of my double-dog promise. + +There was another moment when Mike made a remark about how weekends are socially constructed. I had a lot of genuinely on-topic cached witty philosophy banter about [how the social construction of concepts works](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests), that would have been completely innocuous if anyone _else_ had said it, but I kept silent because I wasn't sure if it was within my double-dog margin of error if _I_ said it. + +----- + In June 2021, MIRI Executive Director Nate Soares [wrote a Twitter thread aruging that](https://twitter.com/So8res/status/1401670792409014273) "[t]he definitional gynmastics required to believe that dolphins aren't fish are staggering", which [Yudkowsky retweeted](https://archive.is/Ecsca).[^not-endorsements] [^not-endorsements]: In general, retweets are not necessarily endorsements—sometimes people just want to draw attention to some content without further comment or implied approval—but I was inclined to read this instance as implying approval, partially because this doesn't seem like the kind of thing someone would retweet for attention-without-approval, and partially because of the working relationship between Soares and Yudkowsky. diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md index cd4c0d1..83d91b0 100644 --- a/notes/memoir-sections.md +++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md @@ -1,8 +1,9 @@ marked TODO blocks— ✓ Boston [pt. 6] ✓ Jessica's experience at MIRI and CfAR [pt. 6] -_ last email and not bothering him [pt. 6] +✓ pandemic starts [pt. 4] _ autogenderphilia (in-line section) [pt. 4] +_ last email and not bothering him [pt. 6] _ New York [pt. 6] _ reaction to Ziz [pt. 4] _ "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception" [pt. 4] @@ -21,7 +22,6 @@ _ culture off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver [pt. 4] _ December 2019 winter blogging vacation [pt. 4] _ plan to reach out to Rick [pt. 4] _ complicity and friendship [pt. 4] -_ pandemic starts [pt. 4] _ out of patience email [pt. 4] _ the hill he wants to die on [pt. 6] _ recap of crimes, cont'd [pt. 6] @@ -48,6 +48,7 @@ _ 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— +_ what does "pervue" mean _ archive.is https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/1425334398484983813 _ group yelling operation quotes _ "Vassarite" @@ -88,6 +89,9 @@ _ Anna's claim that Scott was a target specifically because he was good, my coun _ Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy far editing tier— +_ explain Amelia Davis Ford ref +_ fold in observations from "trapped priors—at home" +_ earlier reference the children's books?! "And the Methods of Pre-Rationality" _ "Do not ask for additional services" doxxable? revise? _ Yudkowsky's "Is someone trolling?" comment as counterevidence to narcissim _ "typographical attack surface" isn't clear -- 2.17.1