memoir bulleting

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 2d6fd14..9409adc 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
@@ -1087,7 +1087,7 @@ In contrast, category "boundaries" tell you which regions of very high-dimension
 
 But the trick only works to the extent that the category is a regular, non-squiggly region of configuration space: if you know that egg-shaped objects tend to be blue, and you see a black-and-white photo of an egg-shaped object, you can get _close_ to picking out its color on a color wheel. But if egg-shaped objects tend to blue _or_ green _or_ red _or_ gray, you wouldn't know where to point to on the color wheel.
 
-The analogous algorithm applied to national borders on a political map would be observe the longitude of a place, use that to guess what country the place is in, and then use the country to guess the latitude—which isn't typically what people _do_ with maps. Category "boundaries" and national borders might both be _illustrated_ in a diagram as a closed region in two-dimensional space, but philosophically, they're very different entities. The fact that Scott Alexander was appealing to national borders to explain why gerrymandered categories were allegedly okay, showed that he Didn't Get It.
+The analogous algorithm applied to national borders on a political map would be to observe the longitude of a place, use that to guess what country the place is in, and then use the country to guess the latitude—which isn't typically what people _do_ with maps. Category "boundaries" and national borders might both be _illustrated_ similarly in a two-dimensional diagram, but philosophically, they're very different entities. The fact that Scott Alexander was appealing to national borders to explain why gerrymandered categories were allegedly okay, showed that he Didn't Get It.
 
 I still had some deeper philosophical problems to resolve, though. If squiggly categories were less useful for inference, why would someone _want_ a squiggly category boundary? Someone who said, "Ah, but I assign _higher utility_ to doing it this way", had to be messing with you. Where would such a utility function come from? Intuitively, it had to be precisely _because_ squiggly boundaries were less useful for inference; the only reason you would _realistically_ want to do that would be to commit fraud, to pass off pyrite as gold by redefining the word "gold."
 
@@ -1103,7 +1103,8 @@ I put the question to a few friends (Subject: "rubber duck philosophy"), and Jes
 
 [TODO:
  * Yudkowsky made a stray remark about social media causing people to say crazy thing
-
+ * I got enraged, posted a couple Tweets, including a preview of "Unnatural Categories"
+ * something in my boiled over, and I eventually ended up staying up late writing an angry email
 ]
 
 [TODO: "out of patience" email]

diff --git a/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md b/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md
index 48e5f33..60c825a 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md
+++ b/content/drafts/agreeing-with-stalin-in-ways-that-exhibit-generally-rationalist-principles.md
@@ -9,9 +9,27 @@ Status: draft
 >
 > _Atlas Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand
 
-[TODO: Sasha disaster, breakup with Vassar group]
+[TODO: Sasha disaster, breakup with Vassar group, this was really bad for me]
+
+[TODO: NYT affair and Brennan link, prelude to pronouns post
+ * Cade Metz's story came out, and it was pretty bad in the ways you'd expect
+ * notably, the Charles Murray guilt-by-association was a reach on the part of the reporter
+ * What's particularly weird is that if you actually read Scott's work (e.g. "High School Science Project", he's obviously sympathetic to genetic explanations; it's _possible_ for Jews to be smart for genetic reasons but the black/white gap to be fake and environmental
+ * Scott's denial doesn't go into this, of course
+ * Brennan email leak
+ * my comment on bullies and heresy / my Twitter comment on lying
+ * Yudkowsky reopens the conversation?! Why?!
+
+
+https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1362514650089156608
+> Hypothesis:  People to whom self-awareness and introspection come naturally, put way too much moral exculpatory weight on "But what if they don't know they're lying?"  They don't know a lot of their internals!  And don't want to know!  That's just how they roll.
+
+Oh, this was also on 18 February 2021 (same day as my comment about SneerClub); maybe the conjunction of the two made me more salient
+https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1362555980232282113
+> Oh, maybe it's relevant to note that those posts were specifically part of my 21-month rage–grief campaign of being furious at Eliezer all day every day for lying-by-implicature about the philosophy of language? But, I don't want to seem petty by pointing that out! I'm over it!
+
+And I think I _would_ have been over it, except—
 
-[TODO: NYT affair and Brennan link
 https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article
 https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/643403673004851200/reddragdiva-topher-brennan-ive-decided-to-say
 https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159408250519228
@@ -379,12 +397,10 @@ https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1096769579362115584
 ]
 
 [TODO section existential stakes, cooperation
- * so far, I've been writing this from the perspective of _rationalit
-
-
-
-
-
+ * so far, I've been writing this from the perspective of caring about _rationality_ and wanting there to be a rationality movement, the common interest of many causes
+ * e.g., as recently as 2020 I was daydreaming about working for an embryo selection company as part of the "altruistic" (about optimizing the future, rather than about my own experiences) component of my actions 
+ * if you have short timelines, and want to maintain influence over what big state-backed corporations are doing, self-censoring about contradicting the state religion makes sense
+ * you could tell a story in which I'm the villain for undermining Team Singularity with my petty temporal concerns
 ]
 
 > [_Perhaps_, replied the cold logic](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good). _If the world were at stake._
@@ -392,10 +408,12 @@ https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1096769579362115584
 > _Perhaps_, echoed the other part of himself, _but that is not what was actually happening._
 
 [TODO: social justice and defying threats
-
- * back in 'aught-nine, SingInst had made a point of prosecuting Tyler Emerson 
-
-at least Sabbatai Zevi had an excuse: his choices were to convert to Islam or be impaled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatai_Zevi#Conversion_to_Islam
+ * There's _no story_ in which misleading people about this is on Yudkowsky's critical path!! I can cooperate with censorship that doesn't actively interfere with my battle, but Yudkowsky was interfering
+ * I don't pick fights with Paul Christiano, because Paul Christiano doesn't take a shit on my Something to Protect
+ * back in 'aught-nine, SingInst had made a point of prosecuting Tyler Emerson, citing decision theory
+ * there's a lot of naive misinterpretations of timeless decision theory out there that don't understand the counterfactual dependence thing, but the parsing of social justice as an agentic "threat" to be avoided rather than a rock to be dodged does seem to line up with the fact that people punish heretics more than infidels
+ * But it matters where you draw the zero point: is being excluded from the coalition a "punishment" to threaten you out of bad behavior, or is being included a "reward" for good behavior?
+ * at least Sabbatai Zevi had an excuse: his choices were to convert to Islam or be impaled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatai_Zevi#Conversion_to_Islam
 ]
 
 
@@ -406,13 +424,20 @@ I could forgive him for taking a shit on d4 of my chessboard (["at least 20% of
 But if he's _then_ going to take a shit on c3 of my chessboard (["In terms of important things? Those would be all the things I've read [...] describing reasons someone does not like to be tossed into a Male Bucket or Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate"](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228)),
 
 
-
+[TODO cap off chess analogy—
 
 The turd on c3 is a pretty big likelihood ratio!
+] 
 
 
 
-[TODO: the dolphin war, our thoughts about dolphins are literally downstream from Scott's political incentives in 2014; this is a sign that we're a cult
+[TODO the dolphin war: 
+ * Yudkowsky retweeted Soares on dolphins, and I _lost it_; I had specifically covered the dolphin example!!
+ * the memetic dead hand of "... Not Man for the Categories" was very clear in the arguments; it got linked three times in the comments and Nate Liked it
+ * I did, actually, overestimate the probability that Nate was messing with me
+ * I overheated in the comments section in a way that was a huge misplay
+ * nevertheless, the fact that our thoughts about dolphins are literally downstream from Scott's political incentives in 2014 (even if people who caught the meme weren't thinking about gender); this is a sign that we're a cult rather than having a special engine of reasoning that can re-generate correct beliefs
+ * "Blood Is Thicker Than Water" followup
 
 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404700330927923206
 > That is: there's a story here where not just particular people hounding Zack as a responsive target, but a whole larger group, are engaged in a dark conspiracy that is all about doing damage on issues legible to Zack and important to Zack.  This is merely implausible on priors.
@@ -424,6 +449,7 @@ I mean, I wouldn't _call_ it a "dark conspiracy" exactly, but if the people with
 ]
 
 [TODO: 
+ * depressed after talking to him at Independence Day party 2021 (I can mention that, because it was outdoors and probably lots of other people saw us, even if I can't talk about content)
  * It wouldn't be so bad if he weren't trying to sell himself as a religious leader, and profiting from the conflation of rationalist-someone-who-cares-about-reasoning, and rationalist-member-of-robot-cult
  * But he does, in fact, seem to actively encourage this conflation (contrast to how the Sequences had a litany against gurus)
  * a specific example that made me very angry in September 2021
@@ -533,6 +559,8 @@ I don't doubt Yudkowsky could come up with some clever casuistry why, _technical
 
 [TODO: elaborate on how 2007!Yudkowsky and 2021!Xu are saying the opposite things if you just take a plain-language reading and consider, not whether individual sentences can be interpreted as "true", but what kind of _optimization_ the text is doing to the behavior of receptive readers]
 
+[TODO: address Yudkowsky's clarification in Eliezerfic that it's a strictly first-person exercise]
+
 On the offhand chance that Eliezer Yudkowsky happens to be reading this—if someone _he_ trusts (MIRI employees?) genuinely thinks it would be good for the lightcone to bring this paragraph to his attention—he should know that if he _wanted_ to win back _some_ of the trust and respect he's lost from me and everyone I can influence—not _all_ of it, but _some_ of it[^some-of-it]—I think it would be really easy. All he would have to do is come clean about the things he's _already_ misled people about.
 
 [^some-of-it]: Coming clean _after_ someone writes a 80,000 word memoir explaining how dishonest you've been, engenders less trust than coming clean spontenously of your own accord.
@@ -557,7 +585,9 @@ Again, that's the administrator of Yudkowsky's _own website_ saying that he's de
 
 ... but I'm not, holding my breath. If Yudkowsky _wants_ to reply—if he _wants_ to try to win back some of the trust and respect he's lost from me—he's totally _welcome_ to. (_I_ don't censor my comment sections of people whom it "looks like it would be unhedonic to spend time interacting with".) 
 
-[TODO: I've given up talking to the guy (nearest unblocked strategy sniping in Eliezerfic doesn't count), my last email, giving up on hero-worship I don't want to waste any more of his time. I owe him that much.]
+[TODO: I've given up talking to the guy (nearest unblocked strategy sniping in Eliezerfic doesn't count), my last email, giving up on hero-worship I don't want to waste any more of his time. I owe him that much.
+  * like a crazy ex-girlfriend (["I have no underlying issues to address / I'm certifiably cute, and adorably obsessed"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMHz6FiRzS8))
+]
 
 [TODO: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe 
  * when Jessica published her story, the karma took a nosedive when Scott commented blaming all of Jessica's problems on Michael, and Yudkowsky backed up Scott; to me, this looks like raw factional conflict: Jessica had some negative-valence things to say about the Calilphate, so Caliphate leaders move in to discredit her by association. 
@@ -568,18 +598,22 @@ Again, that's the administrator of Yudkowsky's _own website_ saying that he's de
 
 "Death With Dignity" isn't really an update; he used to refuse to give a probability, and now he says the probability is ~0
 
-/2017/Jan/from-what-ive-tasted-of-desire/
+ * swimming to shore analogy
 
+/2017/Jan/from-what-ive-tasted-of-desire/
 ]
 
 [TODO:
  * I wrote to him asking if he cared if I said negative things about him, that it would be easier if he wouldn't hold it against me, and explained my understanding of the privacy norm
  * in retrospect, I was wrong to ask that. I _do_ hold it against him. And if I'm entitled to my feelings, isn't he entitled to his?
+ * Is this the hill _he_ wants to die on? The pronouns post mentions "while you can still get away with disclaimers", referring to sanction from the outside world, as if he won't receive any sanction from his people, because he owns us. That's wrong. Yudkowsky as a person doesn't own me; the Sequences-algorithm does
+
+If the world is ending either way, wouldn't it be more dignified for him to die _without_ Stalin's dick in his mouth?
+
+ * Maybe not? If "dignity" is a term of art for log-odds of survival, maybe self-censoring to maintain influence over what big state-backed corporations are doing is "dignified" in that sense
 
-like a crazy ex-girlfriend (["I have no underlying issues to address / I'm certifiably cute, and adorably obsessed"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMHz6FiRzS8))
 ]
 
 [TODO: regrets and wasted time
  * Do I have regrets about this Whole Dumb Story? A lot, surely—it's been a lot of wasted time. But it's also hard to say what I should have done differently; I could have listened to Ben more and lost faith Yudkowsky earlier, but he had earned a lot of benefit of the doubt?
-
 ]

diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md
index 035e123..9a18cc9 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/memoir-sections.md
+++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md
@@ -7,16 +7,20 @@ waypoints—
 - Yudkowsky is trying to be a religious leader
 
 sections—
-_ existential risk interlude; social justice game theory; I could forgive him
-_ September 2020 Category War victory
-_ prelude to pronouns post
+- existential risk interlude; social justice game theory; I could forgive him
+- September 2020 Category War victory
+- prelude to pronouns post
+
+dedicated day each?—
 _ the dolphin war
 _ Michael Vassar and the Theory of Optimal Gossip
 _ Sasha disaster 
 
 
+
 With internet available—
-_ university library
+_ record of Yudkowsky citing TDT as part of decision to prosecute Emerson?
+_ university library sells borrowing privileges
 _ Aaron Terrell and Corina Cohn
 _ Eddie Izzard
 _ more examples of Yudkowsky's arrogance (MIRI dialogues, knew how to say anything at all)
@@ -1097,9 +1101,8 @@ I have a _seflish_ interest in people making and sharing accurate probabilistic
 
 when I was near death from that salivary stone, I mumbled something to my father about "our people"
 
-If the world is ending either way, wouldn't it be more dignified for him to die _without_ Stalin's dick in his mouth?
 
-[Is this the hill he wants to die on? The pronouns post mentions "while you can still get away with disclaimers", referring to sanction from the outside world, as if he won't receive any sanction from his people, because he owns us. That's wrong. Yudkowsky as a person doesn't own me; the Sequences-algorithm does
+
 
 https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/pfbid0331sBqRLBrDBM2Se5sf94JurGRTCjhbmrYnKcR4zHSSgghFALLKCdsG6aFbVF9dy9l?comment_id=10159421833274228&reply_comment_id=10159421901809228
 > I don't think it *should* preclude my posting on topics like these, which is something I get the impression Zack disagrees with me about. I think that in a half-Kolmogorov-Option environment where people like Zack haven't actually been shot and you can get away with attaching explicit disclaimers like this one, it is sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful to post your agreement with Stalin about things you actually agree with Stalin about, in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles, especially because people do *know* they're living in a half-Stalinist environment, even though it hugely bugs Zack that the exact degree of Stalinism and filtration can't be explicitly laid out the way they would be in the meta-Bayesian Should Universe... or something. I think people are better off at the end of that.
@@ -1593,15 +1596,6 @@ http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/egoism-as-defense-against-a-life-of-unending-
 
 I assume starting a detransition market would be not-OK
 
-https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1362514650089156608
-> Hypothesis:  People to whom self-awareness and introspection come naturally, put way too much moral exculpatory weight on "But what if they don't know they're lying?"  They don't know a lot of their internals!  And don't want to know!  That's just how they roll.
-
-Oh, this was also on 18 February 2021 (same day as my comment about SneerClub); maybe the conjunction of the two made me more salient
-https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1362555980232282113
-> Oh, maybe it's relevant to note that those posts were specifically part of my 21-month rage–grief campaign of being furious at Eliezer all day every day for lying-by-implicature about the philosophy of language? But, I don't want to seem petty by pointing that out! I'm over it!
-
-And I think I _would_ have been over it, except—
-
 -----
 
 FYI, I think this turned out significantly harsher on you than my January 2022 emails made it sound, thus occasioning this one additional email (because I want to be very sure I'm only attacking you and not betraying you; a true friend stabs you in the front).
@@ -1615,4 +1609,4 @@ I'm planning on publishing the drafts linked below on [dates].
 
 I'm available if you want to contest anything you think is unfair or challenge my interpretation of the "can't directly refer to private conversations" privacy norm, but I doubt it's a high-value use of your time. End transmission.
 
-----
\ No newline at end of file
+----