He couldn't claim that everyone does this and that it was therefore insane to expect better, because (picking an arbitrary example) Paul Christiano didn't make those kinds of political statements while claiming that everyone from Earth is insane unlike him (!) while claiming the right to ignore counterarguments on political grounds (!!), because Paul Christiano wasn't trying to be a religious leader.
-I gave a parable (along the lines of ["it's not the incentives; it's you"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5nH5Qtax9ae8CQjZ9/tal-yarkoni-no-it-s-not-the-incentives-it-s-you) to illustrate the problem: a senior scientist publishes a paper with a conclusion favorable to an organization that gave his lab a grant. The scientist's faithful student points out a fatal flaw in the paper, and suggests publishing a retraction. The scientist says, "No, that would be bad for my career." The student gets angry. The scientist says, "You're supposed to not get angry at the people who didn't create those career incentives. That's insane. Your issue is with Moloch: the publish-or-perish incentives of grant-funded science. If you can't take that down, then don't blame others who can't do that, either."
+I gave a parable (along the lines of ["it's not the incentives; it's you"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5nH5Qtax9ae8CQjZ9/tal-yarkoni-no-it-s-not-the-incentives-it-s-you)) to illustrate the problem: a senior scientist publishes a paper with a conclusion favorable to an organization that gave his lab a grant. The scientist's faithful student points out a fatal flaw in the paper, and suggests publishing a retraction. The scientist says, "No, that would be bad for my career." The student gets angry. The scientist says, "You're supposed to not get angry at the people who didn't create those career incentives. That's insane. Your issue is with Moloch: the publish-or-perish incentives of grant-funded science. If you can't take that down, then don't blame others who can't do that, either."
That is, blaming people who commit fraud (where an innocent mistake _becomes_ fraud if you refuse to acknowledge it after it's been pointed out) is _part_ of a strategy for defeating Moloch, an attempt to coordinate on norms against fraud.
+I successfully baited Lintamande, the other _Planecrash_ coauthor, into engaging with me. Lintamande said I was impossible to talk to about my special topic, because of the bizarre hostile performative thing I did in place of truthseeking inquiry; I imposed too stark of a trade-off on my interlocutors between successfully saying anything at all and not getting immediately whalloped with 30,000 words from me about how they fundamentally lack intellectual integrity; my behavior discouraged stifled genuine discussion in places where I might see it.
+
+(I almost wondered whether this might be a good thing from a _realpolitik_ perspective. I'd prefer to argue people out of bad ideas, but if the threat of an argument disincentivized people from spreading them, did that not have similar consequences at lesser expense? The game theory went both ways; I'd _also_ been doing some amount of self-censoring to avoid fights.)
+
+I said that Lintamande was giving good feedback on my social behavior—which, okay, I should work on that—but which didn't particularly bear on the substance of my position. I was super-fighty because I was super-traumatized, because there was social–political territory I was trying to defend. The thing I was trying to keep on Society's shared map was, Biological Sex Actually Exists and Is Sometimes Decision-Relevant; Biological Sex Actually Exists and Is Sometimes Decision-Relevant _Even When It Makes People Sad_; Biological Sex Actually Exists and Is Sometimes Decision-Relevant _Even When a Prediction Market Says It Will Make People Sad_.
+
+Lintamande said they agreed with those claims; Yudkowsky concurred with a "+1" emoji.
+
[TODO—
- * I successfully baited Lintamande, the other _Planecrash_ coauthor into engagement
- * Linta says I'm impossible to talk to and the anticipation of my pouncing stiffles discussion. (I almost wonder if this is a good thing, from a _realpolitik_ perspective? I'd prefer to argue people out of bad ideas, but if the threat of an argument disincentivizes them from spreading ...? Game theory goes both ways—I've been self-censoring, too.)
- * I said that Lintamande was giving me a lot of good feedback about my social behavior. I was super-fighty because I was super-traumatized, and I should plausibly work on fixing that, whereas I didn't intellectually disagree that different cultures are different, different people are different. The reason I was super-fighty is because there was social–political territory I was trying to defend.
- * The thing I was trying to keep on Society's shared map was, Biological Sex Actually Exists and Is Sometimes Decision-Relevant; Biological Sex Actually Exists and is Sometimes Decision-Relevant _Even When It Makes People Sad_; Biological Sex Actually Exists and is Sometimes Decision-Relevant _Even When a Prediction Market Says It Will Make People Sad_. Lintamande said they agreed with these claims. Yudkowsky replied with a "+1" emoji.
* "like, if you just went and found Eliezer!2004 and were like 'hey, weird sci fi hypothetical'"
_speaking of the year 2004_; the thing I'm at war with is that I don't think he would _dare_ publish the same essay today The 2004 mailing list post was almost _mocking_ the guy, for being so naïve, for not seeing the type mismatch between the deep structure of reality, and mentalistic fantasies vaguely gestured at with English words.
* And the 2016–2021 posts _couldn't even acknolwedge that Biological Sex Actually Exists_. Did Yudkowsky expect us not to _notice_?? Coming from anyone else in the world, I wouldn't have minded. But the _conjunction_ of these political games and the eliezera racial supremacy rhetoric was just _insulting_.
* April said she didn't think the "Changing Emotions" argument was making claims relevant to trans people. The only claim you really needed was that it was reasonable for cis men and trans men, and cis women and trans women, to be in the same category for the purposes of general social interaction; whether you would need post-Singularity tech to make a biological male indistinguishable from a cis woman had little bearing on what we should make of trans women. That was interesting. April's profile said she was 19 years old and transfeminine. April saying that the essay wasn't making claims relevant to trans people; but _I_ thought it was relevant in 2008. (My dream of a fiction of animosity between a Yudkowsky-like and Lynn Conway-like character.)
* someone said "the word in their language doesn't match the word in yours"; and got a +1 emoji from Big Yud; I resisted the temptation to say "So ... I can define a word any way I want"; I call a killthread.
]
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projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff