poke at "A Hill" as if I'm alive

This wasn't actually terribly productive, but at least I'm actually
interacting with the ms. instead of avoiding it. Future days will be
better, and I'll finish the Whole Dumb Story.

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 0f6f411..e8229be 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
@@ -162,11 +162,13 @@ My shift in belief, from thinking the narrative is true about other people but n
 
 But many of the people I talked to seemed to report similar experiences to me—at least, to the low resolution of the conversation; talking about this stuff _at all_ was hard enough, that I wasn't going to press people for the specific details of their sexual fantasies—but seemed to me to be either pretty delusional, or privately pretty sane but (from my view) oddly indifferent to the state of public knowledge.
 
-One trans woman told me that autogynephilia is a typical element of cis woman sexuality. (This, I had learned, was a [standard cope](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-gostak-distims-the-doshes/), but one I have [never found remotely plausible](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#am-i-supposed-to-claim).) She told me that if I don't feel like a boy, I'm probably not one. (Okay, but again, _what does that mean?_ [TODO: what is the underlying truth that "probably" is pointing at])
+One trans woman told me that autogynephilia is a typical element of cis woman sexuality. (This, I had learned, was a [standard cope](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-gostak-distims-the-doshes/), but one I have [never found remotely plausible](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#am-i-supposed-to-claim).) She told me that if I don't feel like a boy, I'm probably not one. (Okay, but again, _what does that mean?_ There needs to be some underlying truth condition for that "probably" to _point to_. If it's not sex, _what is it?_)
 
-Another wrote a comment in one discussion expressing skepticism at the idea that someone would undergo a complete medical and social transition because of a fetish: it might be _possible_, she admitted, but it must be extremely unlikely. Elsewhere on the internet, the _same goddamned person_ reported being sexually into gender-bender manga and finding it arousing at the same time when she was first seriously questioning her gender identity. [TODO: my reaction; it's rude for me to probe and doubt, but this is gaslighting]
+Another wrote a comment in one discussion expressing skepticism at the idea that someone would undergo a complete medical and social transition because of a fetish: it might be _possible_, she admitted, but it must be extremely unlikely. Elsewhere on the internet, the _same goddamned person_ reported being sexually into gender-bender manga and finding it arousing at the same time when she was first seriously questioning her gender identity.
 
-The privately-sane responses were more interesting. "People are crazy about metaphysics," one told me (quotes edited for clarity and grammar). "That's not new. Compare with transubstantiation and how much scholarly work went in to trying to square it with natural materialism. As for causality, I think it's likely that the true explanation will not take the shape of an easily understood narrative."
+[TODO: my reaction; it's rude for me to probe and doubt, but this is gaslighting]
+
+The privately-sane responses were more interesting. "People are crazy about metaphysics," one told me. "That's not new. Compare with transubstantiation and how much scholarly work went in to trying to square it with natural materialism. As for causality, I think it's likely that the true explanation will not take the shape of an easily understood narrative."
 
 Later, she told me, "It's kind of funny how the part where you're being annoying isn't where you're being all TERFy and socially unacceptable, but where you make very strong assumptions about truth due to being a total nerd and positivist—mind you, the vast majority of times people deviate from this the consequences are terrible."
 
@@ -176,22 +178,19 @@ Another trans woman I talked to was less philosophical. "I'm an AGP trans girl w
 
 ------
 
-As the tension between what I was seeing and what I felt allowed to say in public kept mounting, I started
-
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/concerns/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/identity/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/apostasy/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/wicked-transcendence/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/falself/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/prescription/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-world-by-gaslight/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/the-roark-quirrell-effect/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/book-recommendations-i/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/wicked-transcendence-ii/
-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/concerns-ii/
-
-[TODO: September 2016: I start my "secret" blog under a pen name]
+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 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](http://unremediatedgender.space/2016/Sep/apophenia/).
+
+[TODO—aside on pen name, URL
+
+I had already claimed [email protected]_ in 2014, to participate in [a contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html) by one of the [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/)
+
+    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
+    "West" (+ an extra syllable) after a character in a serial novel whose catchphrase is "Somebody had to and no one else will" 
+]
 
 [I commissioned https://srconstantin.github.io/2016/10/06/cross-sex-hormone-therapy.html ] 
 

diff --git a/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md b/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md
index 6cdc30b..fc7eb64 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md
+++ b/content/drafts/friendship-practices-of-the-secret-sharing-plain-speech-valley-squirrels.md
@@ -6,7 +6,9 @@ Status: draft
 
 In the days of auld lang syne on Earth-that-was, in the Valley of of Plain Speech in the hinterlands beyond the Lake of Ambiguous Fortune, there lived a population of pre-intelligent squirrels. Historical mammologists have classified them into two main subspecies: the west-valley ground squirrels and the east-valley tree squirrels—numbers 9792 and 9794 in Umi's grand encyclopædia of Plain Speech creatures, but not necessarily respectively: I remember the numbers, but I can never remember which one is which.
 
-Like many pre-intelligent creatures, both subspecies of Plain Speech Valley squirrels were highly social animals. Much of their social lives 
+Like many pre-intelligent creatures, both subspecies of Plain Speech Valley squirrels were highly social animals.
+
+Much of their social lives 
 
 
 (well, there's a reason the ascension of Earth-that-was would be sparked by the _H. sapiens_ line of hominids some millions of years later, rather than by the Plain Speech species 9792 and 9794.)

diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
index 08732e3..409f364 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
+++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
@@ -256,6 +256,9 @@ I'm worried about the failure mode where bright young minds [lured in](http://be
 >  I'm not trying to get Eliezer or "the community" to take a public stance on gender politics; I'm trying to get us to take a stance in favor of the kind of epistemology that we were doing in 2008. It turns out that epistemology has implications for gender politics which are unsafe, but that's more inferential steps, and ... I guess I just don't expect the sort of people who would punish good epistemology to follow the inferential steps? Maybe I'm living in the should-universe a bit here, but I don't think it "should" be hard for Eliezer to publicly say, "Yep, categories aren't arbitrary because you need them to carve reality at the joints in order to make probabilistic inferences, just like I said in 2008; this is obvious."
 
 Scott got a lot of pushback just for including the blog that I showed him in a links post (Times have changed! BBL is locally quasi-mainstream after Ozy engaged)
+https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/01/links-1116-site-unseen/
+https://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/post/152736458066/hey-scott-im-a-bit-of-a-fan-of-yours-and-i
+
 
 It's weird that he thinks telling the truth is politically impossible, because the specific truths I'm focused on are things he _already said_, that anyone could just look up. I guess the point is that the egregore doesn't have the logical or reading comprehension for that?—or rather (a reader points out) the egregore has no reason to care about the past; if you get tagged as an enemy, your past statements will get dug up as evidence of foul present intent, but if you're doing good enough of playing the part today, no one cares what you said in 2009
 
@@ -360,6 +363,8 @@ https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1107874587822297089
 
 Robert Stadler
 
+----------
+
 https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508?page=14
 > Real people have concepts of their own minds, and contemplate their prior ideas of themselves in relation to a continually observed flow of their actual thoughts, and try to improve both their self-models and their selves. 
 
@@ -373,6 +378,9 @@ _She is not giving up that easily.  Not on an entire planet full of people._
 
 https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508?page=21
 
+
+-----------
+
 Really, it's impressive how far we got in establishing a cult of Bayesians in a world where "discimination" is a transgression against the dominant ideology! I can't be the only one who got the joke
 
 https://stefanfschubert.com/blog/2020/12/22/legitimate-epistocracy

diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt
index 5bc0e00..d174aab 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/notes.txt
+++ b/notes/notes.txt
@@ -3098,3 +3098,6 @@ CovfefeAnon points out the microfoundations of "egregores": it solves the common
 https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/jen-psaki-groomers-spokeswoman-transgender-children/
 
 https://cutdowntree.substack.com/p/purification-rites
+
+I read that the Snapchat gender filter works live (unlike FaceApp, which uses a static image), so I immediately downloaded and set up Snapchat ... but the "live" doesn't work for the gender lens (although it does for others). Do I need to buy a new phone? (My Galaxy S7 from 2016.) Is this the thing that spurs me to upgrade? https://blog.evjang.com/2019/05/fun-with-snapchats-gender-swapping.html
+

diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt
index 7a1ca30..4fa252f 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/post_ideas.txt
+++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt
@@ -8,10 +8,8 @@ _ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
 
 
 Minor—
-_ GPT-3 guest post
 _ my medianworld: https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1619639#reply-1619639
 
-
 _ Happy Meal
 _ Link: "On Transitions, Freedom of Form, [...]"
 _ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia
@@ -68,7 +66,8 @@ _ "You'll Never Persuade Anyone"
 _ Longtermism + Hinge of History = Shorttermism (not my original idea, but don't remember whose blog I read this on, so I'll write my own version)
 _ Point of No Return is Relative to a Class of Interventions
 _ Simulationist Headcanon for Ontologically Basic Train Show
-_ My Fire Alarm
+_ Existential Risk Science Fiction Book Club: Rainbows End
+_ Existential Risk Science Fiction Book Club: The Gods Themselves
 _ Angelic Irony
 _ Good Bad Faith
 _ Cromwell's Rule Is About Physical Symmetry, Not Fairness
@@ -84,6 +83,7 @@ _ Phenotypic Identity and Memetic Capture (working title)
 _ How do unwind one's "rationalist" social identity?
 _ Daniel C. Dennett on Near-Term Alignment Problems
 
+
 _ Honesty Is Activism
 
 _ agents with different learning algorithms would find it hard to agree on words?