* I had sent Blanchard fan mail on 10 August 2016
* I had sent Bailey fan mail on 7 January 2017, and then followed up on 11 February with a link to the blog ("I didn't mention this in my email the other month because it seemed uncouth to self-promote in a thank-you message")
* "fan mail; and, self-promotion" to Alice Dreger on 2 March
- * Blanchard Tweets my blog in Feb and March 2017: https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/830580552562524160 , https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/837846616937750528
+ * Blanchard Tweets my blog in Feb and March 2017: https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/830580552562524160 (11 Feb), https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/837846616937750528 (3 Mar)
* The world is not actually large; "famous" people (on the order of scientists or professors) often answer their email. (Although this probably stops being true for, like, Taylor Swift.)
* I wrote to Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence/Cantor (Subject: "trans infovism against trans activism?? (was: Fwd: The Scintillating But Ultimately Untrue Thought)")
Michael asked me what I thought of recently disgraced right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos (Subject: "Milo"). I said I hadn't been following that drama, except that I was really annoyed at local effective-altruism priestess Kelsey Piper (then blogging as _The Unit of Caring_) [playing dumb about what was at issue](http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/156812598746/calling-milos-conduct-random-cruelty-to-people) when criticizing Yiannopoulos for calling out a trans student by name during a speech. ("The woman in question was not 'still choosing to present as a man', she was not passing for a cis woman [...] If my university weren't letting me use the women's restrooms I would absolutely file a title IX complaint," Piper wrote.)
-I agreed with Piper that ridiculing a named individual in a public speech is _mean_, and it's preferable to avoid mean things if there's any way to make the same point with the same force and quality; it would be better if we could just directly renegotiate social norms without being mean. In that sense, I was not pro-Milo. But if we couldn't peacefully coordinate and were doomed to do politics, the victimhood identity-politics mind-virus's strategy of gerrymandering categories seemed like a strategy of [asymmetrical warfare](http://devinhelton.com/afghanistan-fractally-stupid-war), less of a fair fight than just trading insults. I could respect Yiannopoulos as an ordinary soldier.
+I agreed that ridiculing a named individual in a public speech is _mean_, and it's preferable to avoid mean things if there's any way to make the same point with the same force and quality; it would be better if we could just directly renegotiate social norms without being mean. In that sense, I was not pro-Milo. But if we couldn't peacefully coordinate and were doomed to do politics, the victimhood identity-politics mind-virus's strategy of gerrymandering categories seemed like a strategy of [asymmetrical warfare](http://devinhelton.com/afghanistan-fractally-stupid-war), less of a fair fight than just trading insults. I could respect Yiannopoulos as an ordinary soldier.
Michael said that the issue that ultimately took down Yiannopoulos was actually as obvious as my issue, and that it was striking that it did so even while Trump got away with being open about sexual assault.
* Apophenic numerology: in retrospect, I agree with my "useless garbage (lots of probabilities are ~30%)"
- * Disagreeing with Michael about violence terminology
+
* Michael writes to me about sleep
> As I recall, at the time, I was thinking that people may know far less or far more than I might have previously assumed by taking their verbal behavior literally with respect to what I think words mean: people have to gently test each other before really being able to speak the horrible truth that might break someone's self-narrative (thereby destroying their current personality and driving them insane, or provoking violence). I thought that you and Anna might be representatives of the "next level" of scientists guarding the human utility function by trying to produce epistemic technology within our totalitarian-state simulation world, and that I was "waking up" into that level by decoding messages (_e.g._, from the Mike Judge films that you recommended) and inferring things that most humans couldn't.
------
+As part of being less submissive to authorities in general and the medical establishment in particular, it felt appropriate to get some gray-market HRT, so I ordered a pack of Progynova 1mg (estradiol) and a pack of Aldactone 25mg (spironolactone) from AllDayChemist, an online pharmacy located in some other country (India?) with fewer laws about this sort of thing.
+
+I didn't need it (and didn't end up using it); my regular health care provider got me equipped to [re-start my HRT experiment](/2017/Mar/hormones-reboot-spironotacular/) (including the spiro this time). It was the principle: that I could just buy drugs of my own choice using money, without the pretense of an authority diagnosing me with "gender dysphoria".
+
[TODO: ordering DIY hormones, and ordering on Alice Monday's behalf
- * As part of my distrust for institutions, it made sense to get some DIY hormones, rather than solely being dependent on the legitimate system: I ordered a pack of Progynova - 1 mg (Estradiol) and a pack of ALDACTONE - 25mg (Spironolactone) for myself from AllDayChemist
* found out about it from Alice Monday, a young trans woman who wasn't very nice
* Alice said something about how every once in a while, someone runs off with the payments database
* on 31 March, I ordered some more (5 packs E, 2 packs Spiro) for Alice
✓ footnote about telephone game of "self present"
✓ interacting with the outpatient program
✓ Vassar discourse I
-- Vassar discourse II, incl. community health check
+✓ community health check
+✓ Vassar discourse II
+_ Vassar discourse III
_ emailing Blanchard/Bailey/Hsu/Lawrence/Cantor/Dreger
_ asking Anna for promise
_ ordering DIY hormones
------
With internet available—
+_ AllDayChemist info
+_ Yugoslavia violence
+_ Blanchard "Non-monotonic relation of autogynephilia and heterosexual attraction" on developmental competition
+_ google Heinlein autogynephilia
+_ find the part of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ with the AGP telepathy!!
+_ Michael on OB in 'aught-eight on smart kids internalizing rules meant for the norm of reaction of a dumber population
+_ "remember, this was 2017" footnote for ACLU
+_ link to issue that ultimately took down Milo Y.
+_ Ben Hoffman locker room talk
+_ Tweet from Dreger
_ accuracy/spelling of "Moloch, the god of Carthagean myth"
_ sluggish schizophrenia
_ "mononymic aura" link to Yudkowsky on "aura of destiny"?
_ Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy
far editing tier—
+_ make sure I mention father asking me to wait before re-starting HRT
_ rename "Trent" again (collision with vaticidalprophet Trent)
_ "People": say something about the awkward racial/political dynamics of three of my four anecdotes being about black people? Salient because rare? Salient because of my NRx-pilling?
_ Christmas with Scott: mention the destruction of "voluntary"?
https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1634338145016909824 re "malinformation"
> If we don't have the concept of an attack performed by selectively reporting true information—or, less pleasantly, an attack on the predictable misinferences of people we think less rational than ourselves—the only socially acceptable counter is to say the info is false.
-Blanchard Tweets my blog in Feb and March 2017
-https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/830580552562524160
-https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/837846616937750528
-
-
I said that I couldn't help but be reminded of a really great short story that I remembered reading back in—it must have been 'aught-nine. I thought it was called "Darkness and Light", or something like that. It was about a guy who gets transported to a fantasy world where he has a magic axe that yells at him sometimes, and he's prophecied to defeat the bad guy, and he and his allies have to defeat these ogres to reach the bad guy's lair. And when they get there, the bad guy _accuses them of murder_ for killing the ogres on the way there.
(The story was actually Yudkowsky's ["The Sword of Good"](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good), but I was still enjoying the "Robin Hanson's blog" æsthetic.)
Seems significant in light of Jack blaming me for sleep nagging with "Lenore"
My crazy verbosity: "when I asked what were the ways he thought I could help" → "when I asked how I could help" (cut 5 words)
+
+"Circling" meta-trainwreck was weeks before appealing to Said to critique Jessica's thing; in retrospect, that was probably causal (even if I wasn't thinking at the time, "I wouldn't be emailing Said if it weren't for that trainwreck thread)
+
+Another Said bafflement example: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/8xLtE3BwgegJ7WBbf/is-rationalist-self-improvement-real#comment-rm4NW4weWd7cSnTBX (from https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/pC74aJyCRgns6atzu/meta-discussion-from-circling-as-cousin-to-rationality/comment/C5qMvFvX8jQ2vjnve)
+
+> Dear Suzanne Martin & Albert Lee—please learn auction theory; it will help you actually be an effective altruist, which is something your currently not trying to do, but which you'll realize was important later. I have the honor to be, your obedient servant,
+> Zack M. Davis
+
+(I had promised my father to wait a month after my psych ward ordeal to re-start HRT, but I [would restart](/2017/Mar/hormones-reboot-spironotacular/).)
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