The _problem_ is that manipulating people into doing what you want subject to the genre constraint of not telling any explicit lies, isn't the same thing as informing people so that they can make sensible decisions. In reality, both mRNA vaccines are very similar! It would be surprising if the one associated with my political faction happened to be good, whereas the one associated with the other faction happened to be bad. Someone who tried to convince me that Pfizer was good and Moderna was bad would be misinforming me—trying to trap me in a false reality, a world that doesn't quite make sense—with [unforseeable consequences](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-truths-contagious-lies) for the rest of my decisionmaking. As someone with an interest in living in a world that makes sense, I have reason to regard this as _hostile action_, even if the false reality and the true reality both recommend the isolated point decision of getting vaccinated.
+(The authors of the HEXACO personality model may have gotten something importantly right in grouping "honesty" and "humility" as a single factor.)
+
I'm not, overall, satisfied with the political impact of my writing on this blog. One could imagine someone who shared Yudkowsky's apparent disbelief in public reason advising me that my practice of carefully explaining at length what I believe and why, has been an ineffective strategy—that I should instead clarify to myself what policy goal I'm trying to acheive, and try to figure out some clever gambit to play trans activists and gender-critical feminists against each other in a way that advances my agenda.
From my perspective, such advice would be missing the point. [I'm not trying to force though some particular policy.](/2021/Sep/i-dont-do-policy/) Rather, I think I _know some things_ about the world, things I wish I had someone had told me earlier. So I'm trying to tell others, to help them live in _a world that makes sense_.
As the tension continued to mount through mid-2016 between what I was seeing and hearing, and the socially-acceptable public narrative, [my](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/concerns/) [frustration](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/identity/) [started](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/apostasy/) [to](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/wicked-transcendence/) [subtly](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/) [or](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/falself/) [not-so-much](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/prescription/) [leak](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-world-by-gaslight/) [out](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-roark-quirrell-effect/) [in](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/book-recommendations-i/) [my](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/wicked-transcendence-ii/) [blog](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/concerns-ii/), but I wanted to write more directly about what I thought was going on.
-At first I was imagining a post on my existing blog, but a couple of my very smart and cowardly friends recommended a pseudonym, which I reluctantly agreed was probably a good idea. So I made up a pen name and [started this blog](/2016/Sep/apophenia/) (with [loving attention to technology choices, rather than just using WordPress](/2020/Apr/dont-read-the-comments/)).
+At first I was imagining a post on my existing blog, but a couple of my very smart and cowardly friends recommended a pseudonym, which I reluctantly agreed was probably a good idea. So I made up a pen name and [started this blog](/2016/Sep/apophenia/) (with [loving attention to technology choices, rather than just using WordPress](/2020/Apr/dont-read-the-comments/)). I'm not entirely without misgivings about the exact naming choices I made, although I don't actively regret it, the way I regret [my attempted nickname switch in the late 'aughts](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#literary-initials).[^naming-choices]
-[TODO: ↓ revise given that I'm not keeping the pseudonym]
+... the pseudonymity
-... the pseudonymity is kind of a joke at this point. It turned out that my need for openness and a unified identity was far stronger than my grasp of what my very smart and cowardly friends think is prudence, such that I ended up frequently linking to and claiming ownership of the blog from my real name, _and_ otherwise [leaking](/2019/Apr/link-where-to-draw-the-boundaries/) [entropy](/2021/Jan/link-unnatural-categories-are-optimized-for-deception/) [through](/2021/Sep/link-blood-is-thicker-than-water/) a sieve on this side. Given the world of the current year (such that this blog was even _necessary_), it's _probably_ a smarter play if the _first_ page of my real-name Google search results isn't my gender [and worse](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/) heterodoxy blog?—so I _guess_ I'll keep the Saotome-Westlake byline on this site, even though it's definitely a mere differential-visibility market-segmentation pen name, like how everyone knows that Robert Galbraith is actually J. K. Rowling, and not an Actually Secret pen name. Plus, after having made the mistake (?) of listening to my very smart and cowardly friends at the start, I'd face a backwards-compatibility problem if I wanted to unwind the pseudonym: there are _already_ a lot of references to this blog being written by Saotome-Westlake, and I don't want to throw away or rewrite that history—this is also one of several reasons I'm not transitioning.
+It turned out that my need for openness and a unified identity was far stronger than my grasp of what my very smart and cowardly friends think is prudence, such that I ended up frequently linking to and claiming ownership of the blog from my real name, _and_ otherwise [leaking](/2019/Apr/link-where-to-draw-the-boundaries/) [entropy](/2021/Jan/link-unnatural-categories-are-optimized-for-deception/) [through](/2021/Sep/link-blood-is-thicker-than-water/) a sieve on this side. Given the world of the current year (such that this blog was even _necessary_), it's _probably_ a smarter play if the _first_ page of my real-name Google search results isn't my gender [and worse](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/) heterodoxy blog?
+
+—so I _guess_ I'll keep the Saotome-Westlake byline on this site, even though it's definitely a mere differential-visibility market-segmentation pen name, like how everyone knows that Robert Galbraith is actually J. K. Rowling, and not an Actually Secret pen name. Plus, after having made the mistake (?) of listening to my very smart and cowardly friends at the start, I'd face a backwards-compatibility problem if I wanted to unwind the pseudonym: there are _already_ a lot of references to this blog being written by Saotome-Westlake, and I don't want to throw away or rewrite that history—this is also one of several reasons I'm not transitioning.
[TODO: the Transgender Map website mis-identified my pseudonym, so I guess it worked?! https://www.transgendermap.com/community/michael-mcclure/ ]
-(Separately, I'm not entirely without misgivings about the exact naming choices I made, although I don't actively regret it, the way I regret [my attempted nickname switch in the late 'aughts](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#literary-initials). For the pen name: a hyphenated last name (a feminist tradition), abbreviated-first-initial + gender-neutral middle name (as if suggesting a male ineffectually trying to avoid having an identifiably male byline), "Saotome" from [a thematically-relevant Japanese graphic novel series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD), "West" (+ an extra syllable) after a character in a serial novel whose catchphrase is ["Somebody has to and no one else will"](https://unsongbook.com/chapter-6-till-we-have-built-jerusalem/). For the blog name: I had already imagined that if I ever did stoop to the depravity of starting one of my own one of those [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/), I would call it _The Titillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_, and in fact had already claimed
[email protected]_ in 2014, to participate in [a captioning contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html), but since this was to be a serious autogynephilia _science_ blog, rather than tawdry _object-level_ autogynephilia blogging, I picked "Scintillating" as a more wholesome adjective. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to choose a URL different from the blog's title—people seem to remember the URL more than the title, and as far as the URL goes, to be led by the dot before the TLD to interpret "space" as a separate word, rather than my intent of "genderspace" being analogous to "configuration space"—but it doesn't bother me that much.)
+
+
+
+[^naming-choices]: For the pen name: a hyphenated last name (a feminist tradition), abbreviated-first-initial + gender-neutral middle name (as if suggesting a male ineffectually trying to avoid having an identifiably male byline), "Saotome" from [a thematically-relevant Japanese graphic novel series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD), "West" (+ an extra syllable) after a character in a serial novel whose catchphrase is ["Somebody has to and no one else will"](https://unsongbook.com/chapter-6-till-we-have-built-jerusalem/). For the blog name: I had already imagined that if I ever did stoop to the depravity of starting one of my own one of those [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/), I would call it _The Titillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought_, and in fact had already claimed
[email protected]_ in 2014, to participate in [a captioning contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html), but since this was to be a serious autogynephilia _science_ blog, rather than tawdry _object-level_ autogynephilia blogging, I picked "Scintillating" as a more wholesome adjective. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to choose a URL different from the blog's title—people seem to remember the URL more than the title, and as far as the URL goes, to be led by the dot before the TLD to interpret "space" as a separate word, rather than my intent of "genderspace" being analogous to "configuration space"—but it doesn't bother me that much.)
Besides writing to tell everyone else about it, another obvious consequence of my Blanchardian enlightenment was that I decided to try hormone replacement therapy. Not to actually socially _transition_, which seemed as impossible (to actually pull off) and dishonest (to try) as ever, but just [to try as a gender-themed drug experiment](/2017/Sep/interlude-ix/). Everyone else was doing it—why should I have to miss out just for being more self-aware?
Even after years of devouring heresies on the internet—I remember fascinatedly reading everything I could about race and IQ in the wake of [the James Watson affair back in 'aught-seven](https://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php)—I had never really questioned my coalitional alignment.
-With some prompting from a right-wing friend (a self-aware autogynephile who I had gone crossdressing in public once with back in the early 'tens, who had gone trad and started lifting weights in the intervening few years and felt good about his AGP starting to abate), I was starting to question it now.
-
-[TODO: ref-back/merge with description of "Wilhelm" earlier]
+With some prompting from "Wilhelm", I was starting to question it now.
Among many works which I had previously skimmed in the process of skimming lots of things on the internet was Mencius Moldbug's anti-democratic (!) political theory blog [_Unqualified Reservations_](https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/), which caught my renewed interest in light of my recent troubles.
I met Jessica in March
+[On my last day at SwiftStack, I said that I was taking a sabbatical from my software engineering career to become a leading intellectual figure of the alternative right. That was a joke, but not one that I would have made after Charlottesville. August 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
+http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/guilt-shame-and-depravity/
+]
+
/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/
[TODO: ... continue harvesting email to see what happened in April]
[TODO: credit assignment ritual ($18200 credit-assignment ritual): $5K to Michael, $1200 each to trans widow friend, 3 care team members (Alicorn Sarah Anna), Ziz, Olivia, and Sophia, $400 each to Steve, A.M., Watson, "Wilhelm", Jonah, James, Ben, Kevin, Alexei (declined), Andrew, Divia, Lex, Devi]
-[On my last day at SwiftStack, I said that I was taking a sabbatical from my software engineering career to become a leading intellectual figure of the alternative right. That was a joke, but not one that I would have made after Charlottesville. August 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally ]
(This seemed correlated with the recurring stalemated disagreement within our coordination group, where Michael/Ben/Jessica would say, "Fraud, if that word _ever_ meant anything", and while I agreed that they were pointing to an important way in which things were messed up, I was still sympathetic to the Caliphate-defender's reply that the Vassarite usage of "fraud" was motte-and-baileying between vastly different senses of _fraud_; I wanted to do _more work_ to formulate a _more precise theory_ of the psychology of deception to describe exactly how things are messed up a way that wouldn't be susceptible to the motte-and-bailey charge.)
-[TODO: Ziz's protest; Somni? ("peek behind the fog of war" 6 Feb)]
+[TODO: Ziz's protest;
+
+[TODO: Somni? ("peek behind the fog of war" 6 Feb)]
[TODO: rude maps]
[TODO: complicity and friendship]
-[TODO: affordance widths]
-
[TODO: I had a productive winter blogging vacation in December 2019
pull the trigger on "On the Argumentative Form"; I was worried about leaking info from private conversations, but I'm in the clear "That's your hobbyhorse" is an observation anyone could make from content alone]
[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.
+He never got back to me. Three weeks later, all existing _Slate Star Codex_ posts were taken down.
-[TODO: three weeks later, Slate Star Codex went down
- my slate_starchive.py script
-]
+A [lone post on the main page](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/) explained that the _New York Times_ piece was going to reveal Alexander's real last name, and that he was taking his posts down as a defensive measure. (No blog, no story?) I [wrote a script](/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=commitdiff;h=21731ba6f1191) (`slate_starchive.py`) to replace the _Slate Star Codex_ links on this blog with links to the most recent Internet Archive copy.
------
_ex cathedra_ statement that gender categories are not an exception to the rule, only 1 year and 8 months after asking for it
]
+And really, that _should_ have been the end of the story. At the trifling cost of two years of my life, we finally got a clarification from Yudkowsky that you can't define the word _woman_ any way you like. I didn't think I was entitled to anything more than that. I was satsified. I still published "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception" in January 2021, but if I hadn't been further provoked, I wouldn't have occasion to continue waging the robot-cult religious civil war.
+
+[TODO: psychiatric disaster, breakup with Vassar group, this was really bad for me]
+
[TODO: "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception"
Abram was right
somehow accuracy seems more fundamental than power or resources ... could that be formalized?
]
-
-And really, that _should_ have been the end of the story. At the trifling cost of two years of my life, we finally got a clarification from Yudkowsky that you can't define the word _woman_ any way you like. I didn't think I was entitled to anything more than that. I was satsified. I still published "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception" in January 2021, but if I hadn't been further provoked, I wouldn't have occasion to continue waging the robot-cult religious civil war.
-
-[TODO: psychiatric disaster, breakup with Vassar group, this was really bad for me]
-smaller TODO blocks—
-✓ previous AI milestones [pt. 4]
-✓ short timelines and politics [pt. 4]
-✓ vaccine joke [pt. 4]
-✓ Scott linked to Kay Brown [pt. 2]
-✓ /ancillary/what-i-said-to-r-gendercritical/ [pt. 2]
-_ the Death With Dignity era [pt. 4]
-_ social justice and defying threats [pt. 4]
+marked TODO blocks—
+✓ Slate Star Codex went down [pt. 4]
+- revise pseudonymity graf [pt. 2]
+- Transgender Map mis-doxxed me [pt. 2]
+_ "If Clarity" recap intro [pt. 4]
+_ "Agreeing with Stalin" recap intro [pt. 5]
+_ confronting Olivia [pt. 2]
+_ last day at SwiftStack, alt-right quip [pt. 2]
+_ scuffle on "Yes Requires the Possibility" [pt. 4]
+_ Steven's gravity objection [pt. 4]
+_ "Lesswrong.com is dead to me" [pt. 4]
+_ "Some Clarifications on Rationalist Blogging" [pt. 4]
+_ AI timelines scam [pt. 4]
+_ secret thread with Ruby [pt. 4]
+_ progress towards discussing the real thing [pt. 4]
+_ epistemic defense meeting [pt. 4]
+_ State of Steven [pt. 4]
+_ more philosophy of language blogging [pt. 4]
+_ Somni [pt. 4]
+_ rude maps [pt. 4]
+_ 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]
-_ "If Clarity" recap intro [pt. 3]
-_ "Agreeing with Stalin" recap intro [pt. 4]
+_ pandemic starts [pt. 4]
+_ autogenderphilia is common [pt. 4]
+_ out of patience email [pt. 4]
+_ "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception" [pt. 4]
+_ recap of crimes, cont'd [pt. 5]
+_ AlphaGo seemed deeper [pt. 5]
+_ social justice and defying threats [pt. 5]
+_ lead-in to Sept. 2021 Twitter altercation [pt. 5]
+_ Jessica's experience at MIRI and CfAR [pt. 5]
+_ the Death With Dignity era [pt. 5]
+_ regrets, wasted time, conclusion [pt. 5]
+_ include Wilhelm "Gender Czar" conversation? [pt. 2]
bigger blocks—
_ dath ilan and Eliezerfic fight
-_ reaction to Ziz
_ Dolphin War finish
_ Michael Vassar and the Theory of Optimal Gossip
_ psychiatric disaster
+_ the story of my Feb. 2017 Facebook crusade [pt. 2]
+_ the story of my Feb./Apr. 2017 recent madness [pt. 2]
+_ reaction to Ziz
+
+
+
+New (bad) time estimate:
+35 smaller TODO blocks × 3/day = 12 days
+7 bigger blocks × day/2.5 = 17.5 days
+= 29.5 workdays × 7 sidereal days / 6 workdays = 34.4 sidereal days
+= gaplass draft on 17 February??
+
With internet available—
+_ negative utilitarian Planecrash tag
+_ my Tweet about upgrading to a block
+_ more tags on Ordinary Merrin
_ tag giving full name of Keepers
_ 2014 April Fool's Day confession
_ Keltham's masochism insight
Anna thinks trust and integrity is an important resource
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mmHctwkKjpvaQdC3c/what-should-you-change-in-response-to-an-emergency-and-ai
-The HEXACO personality model considers "honesty" and "humility" a single factor
-
(You might group things together _on the grounds_ of their similarly positive consequences—that's what words like _good_ do—but that's distinct from choosing _the categorization itself_ because of its consequences.)
—and would be unforgivable if it weren't so _inexplicable_.
> We passed word to the Fake Conspiracy section of Exception Handling, and they've spent the last few hours quickly planting evidence consistent with how Civilization should look if the Sparashki are real. The notion being that their apparent fictional status and licensing is just a cover, so Sparashki can walk around if they have to and just get compliments on their incredible cosplay. Since this event is medium-secret, the CEO of Yattel's Less Expensive Tunneling Machines has been photographed by surprise through a window, looking like a Sparashki, to explain why conspiracy-theoretic research is suddenly focusing there and turning up the evidence we've planted."
https://glowfic.com/replies/1860952#reply-1860952
-
the generic experience is that the future is more capable but less aligned, and we basically expect this to continue
people from the past would envy our refrigeration, vaccines, infinite food, &c., but that doesn't mean they would regard our value-drifted-with-respect-to-them culture as superior
paperclipping is just that turned up to 11 (well, 10¹¹)
-Bostrom's apology for an old email—who is this written for?? Why get ahead, when you could just not comment?
\ No newline at end of file
+Bostrom's apology for an old email—who is this written for?? Why get ahead, when you could just not comment?
+
+[TODO:
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404697716689489921
+> I have never in my own life tried to persuade anyone to go trans (or not go trans)—I don't imagine myself to understand others that much.
+
+If you think it "sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful" to got out of your way to say positive things about Republican candidates and never, ever say positive things about Democratic candidates (because you "don't see what the alternative is besides getting shot"), you can see why eople might regard you as a _Republican shill_—even if all the things you said were true, and even if you never told any specific individual, "You should vote Republican."
+
+https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154110278349228
+> Just checked my filtered messages on Facebook and saw, "Your post last night was kind of the final thing I needed to realize that I'm a girl."
+> ==DOES ALL OF THE HAPPY DANCE FOREVER==
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404821285276774403
+> It is not trans-specific. When people tell me I helped them, I mostly believe them and am happy.
+]
01/09/2023,76029\r
01/10/2023,76060\r
01/11/2023,76304\r
+01/12/2023,77319\r
+01/13/2023,77337\r
+01/14/2023,
\ No newline at end of file
> The central thing here is that Maria is really good at being trans.
+<u>that's</u> the takeaway?!
+
+> Yeah, Maria says, The problem with the Internet is that most of the trans women who manage to transition and still be dirtbags or punkers or weirdos or dykes or radicals or whatever stay way away from those people, too, and there's this narrative of 'deep stealth' that makes it seem like maybe we don't exist or we stop being trans but actually what happen is that we keep living our lives and being dirty weirdos we just—I should only speak for myself I guess, but I just got bored of talking about it.
+
+HSTS resentment trope
+
+> Okay sorry, Maria says, Let's not talk about capitalism or anarchism or anything except I do want to say that those things ended up being totally essential to my understanding of being trans and feminism and my location and the things that suck about being trans.
+
+she's bluffing—Maria is not theory-driven
+
+> James thinks, like, yeah and you're a heroin addict? And like, you were inevitably unhappy with your life because you're trans, right? Meaning, transition doesn't work. But what he says is, It took you a month to drive a couple thousand miles?
+
+good catch on James's part—that's like ~65 miles per day
+
+> I was like, Piranha, man, why the fuck aren't you fuckin rich, you are a genius, I said this kind of through tears, and she was like, Uh, Maria, I'm not rich because I'm trans and because I'm a woman. I was like, Oh yeah.
+
+Martine Rothblatt has more fighting spirit than that
+
+> He looks down and his body is all scrunched up, knees to his chest in the little passenger seat of this little car. He's pretty tall, which is <u>important for a lot of reasons</u>, but he's making himself tiny.
+
+Maria said he wasn't tall (p. 177)
+
+> But yeah, she says, Steph rules and is smart and good at what she's doing—she's definitely the kid who kept her principles. She works at fucking <u>Callen-Lorde</u> when she's not at work!
+
+apparently, the New York analogue of Lyon-Martin
+
+> Oh you just don't know? James says. Like nobody cheated on anybody and you didn't just stop having interests in common and you still liked all the same movies and you just looked up one day and you were like, Well see you, I think I'm gonna steal your fucking car and drive it thousands of miles to fucking Star City Nevada for no fucking reason?
+
+brutal
+
+> Here's the thing, Maria says. Nobody pays attention to J. Michael Bailey any more. He's just some dude who wrote a book about how trans women are perverts, which is an easy thing to get a press to publish. You'll never go broke selling regressive 'common sense.' But his body Kenneth Zucker is still a big deal. <u>He runs this clinic in Canada</u> and advocates like—
+
+not anymore, thanks to the likes of you
+
+I guess the <u>Archives of Sexual Behaviors</u> is still kind of a big deal
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff