memoir: victim of systemic abuse

Could probably cut some more words here? But that's for the editing
phase; we still have so much further to go to a completed ms. ...

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 0a93747..c6784fc 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
+++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
@@ -530,9 +530,20 @@ mutualist pattern where Michael by himself isn't very useful for scholarship (he
 [TODO: Ziz incident; more upset about gender validation than the felony charges, which were equally ridiculous and more obviously linked to physical violence
 complicity with injustice "Ziz isn't going to be a problem for you anymore"]
 
-[TODO: a culture that has gone off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver]
 
-[TODO: write to Ben about being stuck on memoir]
+In November, I wrote to Ben about how I was still stuck on writing the grief-memoir. My _plan_ had been that it should have been possibly to tell the story of the Category War while glomarizing about the content of private conversations, then offer Scott and Eliezer pre-publication right of reply (because it's only fair to give your former-hero-current-[frenemies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenemy) warning when you're about to publicly characterize them as having been intellectually dishonest), then share it to _Less Wrong_ and the /r/TheMotte culture war thread, and then I would have the emotional closure to move on with my life (learn math, go to gym, chop wood, carry water) and not be a mentally-dominated cultist.
+
+The reason it _should_ be safe to write is because Explaining Things Is Good. It should be possible to say, "This is not a social attack; I'm not saying 'rationalists Bad, Yudkowsky Bad'; I'm just trying to carefully _tell the true story_ about why, as a matter of cause-and-effect, I've been upset this year, including addressing counterarguments for why some would argue that I shouldn't be upset, why other people could be said to be behaving 'reasonably' given their incentives, why I nevertheless wish they'd be braver and adhere to principle rather than 'reasonably' following incentives, _&c_."
+
+So why couldn't I write? Was it that I didn't know how to make "This is not a social attack" credible? Maybe because it's wasn't true?? I was afraid that telling a story about our leader being intellectually dishonest was "the nuclear option" in a way that I couldn't credibly cancel with "But I'm just telling a true story about a thing that was important to me that actually happened" disclaimers. If you're slowly-but-surely gaining territory in a conventional war, _suddenly_ escalating to nukes seems pointlessly destructive. This metaphor is horribly non-normative ([arguing is not a punishment!](https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/argue-politics-with-your-best-friends/) carefully telling a true story _about_ an argument is not a nuke!), but I didn't know how to make it stably go away.
+
+A more motivationally-stable compromise would be to try to split off whatever _generalizable insights_ that would have been part of the story into their own posts that don't make it personal. ["Heads I Win, Tails?—Never Heard of Her"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoPo4PDjgSySquHX8/heads-i-win-tails-never-heard-of-her-or-selective-reporting) had been a huge success as far as I was concerned, and I could do more of that kind of thing, analyzing the social stuff I was worried about, without making it personal, even if, secretly, it actually was personal.
+
+Ben replied that it didn't seem clear to me that I was a victim of systemic abuse, and that I was trying to figure out whether I was being fair to my abuser. He thought if I could internalize that, I would be able to forgive myself a lot of messiness, which would reduce the perceived complexity of the problem.
+
+I said I would bite that bullet: yes! Yes, I was trying to figure out whether I'm being fair to my abusers, and it's an important question to get right! "Other people's lack of standards harmed me, therefore I don't need to hold myself to standards in my response because I have [extenuating circumstances](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XYrcTJFJoYKX2DxNL/extenuating-circumstances)" would be a _lame excuse_.
+
+[TODO: a culture that has gone off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver]
 
 [TODO: plan to reach out to Rick]
 
@@ -710,7 +721,7 @@ A trans woman I follow on Twitter complained that a receptionist at her workplac
 
 It _is_ genuinely sad that the author of those Tweets didn't get perceived the way she would prefer! But the thing I want her to understand, a thing I think any sane adult should understand—
 
-_It was a compliment!_ That poor receptionist was almost certainly thinking of [David Bowie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie) or [Eddie Izzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard), rather than being hateful and trying to hurt.
+_It was a compliment!_ The receptionist was almost certainly thinking of [David Bowie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie) or [Eddie Izzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard), rather than being hateful and trying to hurt.
 
 The author should have graciously accepted the compliment, and _done something to pass better next time_. The horror of trans culture is that it's impossible to imagine any of these people doing that—of noticing that they're behaving like a TERF's hostile stereotype of a narcissistic, gaslighting trans-identified male and snapping out of it.
 
@@ -724,12 +735,7 @@ And if that's too much to expect of the general public—
 
 And it's too much to expect garden-variety "rationalists" to figure out on their own without prompting from their betters—
 
-Then I would have at least expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to be _in favor of_ rather than _against_ his faithful students having these very basic capabilities for reflection, self-observation, and ... _speech_?
-
-I would have expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to not _actively exert optimization pressure in the direction of transforming me into a Jane Austen character_.
-
-
-
+Then I would have at least expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to be _in favor of_ rather than _against_ his faithful students having these very basic capabilities for reflection, self-observation, and ... _speech_? I would have expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to not _actively exert optimization pressure in the direction of transforming me into a Jane Austen character_.
 
 [TODO section: rats from the Scott Alexander era will protest that I'm being uncharitable—failure of perspective taking; but I'm not complaining about Yudkowsky's subjective experience; I'm talking about a very clear pattern of behavior that's gone on for _years_]
 

diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
index 62cb06c..eba9ec2 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
+++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 noncontiguous on deck—
 X reluctance to write a memoir during 2019
-_ pinging Ben about memoir reluctance
-_ coping with the consequentialist argument
+X pinging Ben about memoir reluctance
 _ let's recap / being put in a box
 _ if he's reading this
 _ tie off reply to Xu
@@ -14,6 +13,7 @@ _ Anna vs. Michael factional conflict
 
 with internet available—
 _ "praise Ba'al" language from "Rationalist Blogging"
+_ update "Argue Politics" link to Sarah's static site
 _ link simulacrum posts: Zvi (he has a category), Elizabeth, at least one more from Ben
 _ examples of snarky comments about "the rationalists" 
 _ Discord logs before Austin retreat
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ _ address the "maybe it's good to be called names" point from "Hill" thread
 _ explain "court ruling" earlier
 _ 2019 Discord discourse with Alicorner
 _ edit discussion of "anti-trans" side given that I later emphasize that "sides" shouldn't be a thing
+_ first appearance of "Caliphate"
 _ the right way to explain how I'm respecting Yudkowsky's privacy
 _ explain the adversarial pressure on privacy norms
 _ first EY contact was asking for public clarification or "I am being silenced" (so Glomarizing over "unsatisfying response" or no response isn't leaking anything Yudkowksy cares about)