Then, in November 2018, while criticizing people who refuse to use trans people's preferred pronouns, Yudkowsky proclaimed that "Using language in a way _you_ dislike, openly and explicitly and with public focus on the language and its meaning, is not lying" and that "you're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning". But _that_ seemed like a huge and surprising reversal from the position articulated in ["37 Ways Words Can Be Wrong"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong).
-(And this November 2018 reversal on the philosophy of language was much, much worse than the March 2016 reversal on the psychology of sex, because the latter is a complicated empirical question about which reasonable people might read new evidence differently and change their minds; in contrast, there's no plausible good reason for him to have reversed course on whether words can be wrong.)
+(And this November 2018 reversal on the philosophy of language was much, much worse than the March 2016 reversal on the psychology of sex, because the latter is a complicated empirical question about which reasonable people might read new evidence differently and change their minds. In contrast, there's no plausible good reason for him to have reversed course on whether words can be wrong.)
After attempts to clarify via email failed, I eventually wrote ["Where to Draw the Boundaries?"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries) to explain the relevant error in general terms, and Yudkowsky eventually [clarified his position in September 2020](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10158853851009228).
> It's strange and disingenuous to pretend that the master truthseekers of any age of history, must all have been blurting out everything they knew in public, at all times, on pain of not possibly being able to retain their Art otherwise. I doubt Richard Feynman was like that. More likely is that, say, he tried to avoid telling outright lies or making public confusions worse, but mainly got by on having a much-sharper-than-average dividing line in his mine between peer pressure against saying something, and that thing being _false_.
-I've read _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_. I cannot imagine Richard Feynman trying to get away with the "sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful" line. (On the other hand, I couldn't have imagined Yudkowsky doing so in 2009.)
+I've read _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_. I cannot imagine Richard Feynman trying to get away with the "sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful" excuse. I think if there were topics Richard Feynman didn't think he could afford to be honest about, he—or really, anyone who valued their intellectual integrity over their public image as a religious authority—would just not issue sweeping public proclamations on that topic while claiming the right to ignore counterarguments on the grounds of having "some confidence in [their] own ability to independently invent everything important that would be on the other side of the filter and check it [themself] before speaking".
-Other science educators in the current year such as [Richard Dawkins](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments), University of Chicago professor [Jerry Coyne](https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/08/27/on-helen-joyces-trans/), or ex-Harvard professor [Carole Hooven](https://www.thefp.com/p/carole-hooven-why-i-left-harvard) have been willing to pay political costs to stand up for the scientific truth that biological sex continues to be real even when it hurts people's feelings.
+The claim to not be making public confusions worse might be credible if there were no other public figures doing better. But other science educators in the current year such as [Richard Dawkins](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments), University of Chicago professor [Jerry Coyne](https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/08/27/on-helen-joyces-trans/), or ex-Harvard professor [Carole Hooven](https://www.thefp.com/p/carole-hooven-why-i-left-harvard) _have_ been willing to stand up for the scientific truth that biological sex continues to be real even when it hurts people's feelings.
If Yudkowsky thinks he's too important for that (because his popularity with progressives has much greater impact on the history of Earth-originating intelligent life than Carole Hooven's), that might be the right act-consequentialist decision, but one of the consequences he should be tracking is that he's forfeiting the trust of everyone who expected him to live up to the epistemic standards successfully upheld by UChicago or Harvard biology professors.
What I can and do blame someone for is actively fighting for Feelings while misrepresenting himself as the rightful caliph of epistemic rationality. There are a lot of trans people who would benefit from feedback that they don't pass but aren't getting that feedback by default. I wouldn't necessarily expect Yudkowsky to provide it. (I don't, either.) I _would_ expect the person who wrote the Sequences not to proclaim that the important thing is the feelings of people who do not like to be tossed into a Smells Bad bucket, which don't bear on the factual question of whether someone smells bad.
-That person is dead now, even if his body is still breathing.
-
-I think he knows it. In a November 2022 Discord discussion, [he remarked](/images/yudkowsky-i_might_have_made_a_fundamental_mistake.png):
-
-> I might have made a fundamental mistake when I decided, long ago, that I was going to try to teach people how to reason so that they'd be able to process my arguments about AGI and AGI alignment through a mechanism that would discriminate true from false statements.
->
-> maybe I should've just learned to persuade people of things instead
-
-I got offended. I felt like a devout Catholic watching the Pope say, "Jesus sucks; I hate God; I never should have told people about God."
-
-Later, I felt the need to write another message clarifying exactly what I found offensive. The problem wasn't the condescension of the suggestion that other people couldn't reason. The problem was that "just learn[ing] to persuade people of things instead" was giving up on the principle that the arguments you use to convince others should be the same as the ones you used to decide which conclusion to argue for. Giving up on that amounted to giving up on the _concept_ of intellectual honesty, choosing instead to become a propaganda AI that calculates what signals to output in order to manipulate an agentless world.
-
-[He put a check-mark emoji reaction on it](/images/davis-amounts-to-giving-up-on-the-concept-of-intellectual-honesty.png), indicating agreement or approval.
+That person is dead now, even if his body is still breathing. Without disclosing any specific content from private conversations that may or may not have happened, I think he knows it.
If the caliph has lost his [belief in](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/duvzdffTzL3dWJcxn/believing-in-1) the power of intellectual honesty, I can't necessarily say he's wrong on the empirical merits. It is written that our world is [beyond the reach of God](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god); there's no law of physics that says honesty must yield better consequences than propaganda.
Second, it's a conditional: _if_ Yudkowsky can't unambiguously choose Truth over Feelings, _then_ he's a fraud. If he wanted to come clean, he could do so at any time.
-He probably won't. We've already seen from his behavior that he doesn't care what people like me think of his intellectual integrity. Why would that change?
+He probably won't. We've already seen from his behavior that he doesn't give a shit what people like me think of his intellectual integrity. Why would that change?
Third, given that "fraud" is a semantically meaningful description rather than an emotive negative evaluation, I should stress that evaluation is a separate step. If being a fraud were necessary for saving the world, maybe being a fraud would be the right thing to do? More on this in the next post. (To be continued.)
_ look for a place to link http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/discursive-warfare-and-faction-formation/
_ the mailing list post noted it as a "common sexual fantasy"
_ cite more sneers; use a footnote to pack in as many as possible
-_ add headers to pt. 2 and link back?
time-sensitive globals TODOs—
✓ consult Said
✓ patriate-links script TODOs
+✓ draft #drama strategy opening remarks
+✓ #drama strategy session
+✓ consult Anna
+✓ draft Twitter thread
- remaining pt. 4 edit tier
-- draft #drama strategy opening remarks
-- consult Anna
-_ #drama strategy session
-_ draft Twitter thread
_ consult lc?
_ bully Jeff Ladish
_ PUBLISH pt. 4!!
02/25/2024,118965,0\r
02/26/2024,118965,0\r
02/27/2024,118989,14\r
-02/28/2024,,
\ No newline at end of file
+02/28/2024,119389,450\r
+02/29/2024,119280,-109\r
+03/01/2024,,\r
-### Option A (just a link, with just the meme denunciation)
-
I've now told enough of my Whole Dumb Story that it's time for the part where I explain how @ESYudkowsky has not been consistently candid in his communications with his followers, hindering their ability to exercise their responsibilities: [link]
-### Option B (thread with more explicit denunciation)
-
-I've now told enough of my Whole Dumb Story that it's time for the part where I explain how @ESYudkowsky has not been consistently candid in his communications with his followers, hindering their ability to exercise their responsibilities: [link] 1/7
-
-The Whole Dumb Story is 87K words so far, which few will read, so in this thread I'll briefly summarize why I think @ESYudkowsky has relinquished his Art and lost his powers (with the disclaimer that this is only a summary & the full Story covers nuances that don't fit here). 2/7
-
-Since 2016, I've been frustrated that Society has apparently decided that men can be women by means of saying so. There's a lot of nuance that I've covered elsewhere, but briefly, in less than 280 characters, my objection is that this just isn't true. 3/7
-
-I know that Yudkowsky knows that it isn't true, because I learned it from him in 2008. But as I document in the post, since 2016, he's repeatedly made public statements that obfuscate and prevaricate on this point, switching to new arguments after I've critiqued the old ones. 4/7
-
-Coming from any other public intellectual, this might not be a big deal. But Yudkowsky makes a lot of grandiose claims to authority, that he's an "epistemic hero", that "too many people think it's unvirtuous to shut up and listen to [him]", &c. https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1509944888376188929 5/7
-
-I consider these authority claims to be morally fraudulent. Someone who behaves the way @ESYudkowsky has (as I describe thoroughly in the post) is not an epistemic hero, and I think he knows that. 6/7
-
-If the world is ending either way, I prefer to die with my committment to public reason intact. It's been heartbreaking coming to terms with the realization that the person who wrote the Sequences apparently doesn't feel the same way. I thought you deserved to know. 7/7
-
-----------
-
-So, I'm almost ready to publish pt. 4 of my memoir sequence, which features a loud public denunciation of Yudkowsky for intellectual dishonesty. Is anyone interested in offering advice or "hostile advice" (trying to talk me out of something you see as destructive, _e.g._ kicking up intra-cult infighting while the world is about to end)?
-
-(This is unpleasant, but at this point, it's my only other option besides laying down and dying. I tried making object-level arguments _first_, for years, and he made it very, very, clear that he doesn't see any problem with marketing himself as an epistemic hero while reserving the right to ignore counterarguments on political grounds. What is there left for me to do but cry "Fraud!" at the top of my lungs? Does anyone want to make a case that I _should_ lay down and die, for some reason?)
-
-My ideal outcome is for Eliezer to actually learn something, but since that's probably not going to happen (by the Law of Continued Failure), I'll settle for dealing justified reputational damage.
-
-I thought about taking out a Manifold market for "Will Yudkowsky reply to [post tile] in a way that an _Overcoming Bias_ reader in 2008 would consider non-evasive, as assessed by [third party judge]?" and buying some NO. (I think Ben Pace is credibly neutral and would agree to judge.) The idea being that the existence of the market incentivizes honesty in a potential reply, because it would look very bad for him if he tries the kind of high-verbal-IQ ass-covering I've seen from him in the past and the judge rules that a 2008 _Overcoming Bias_ reader wouldn't buy it.
-
-But I'm leaning against the Manifold gambit because I don't want it look like I'm expecting or demanding a reply. I've more than used up my lifetime supply of Eliezer-bandwidth. The point is for me to explain to _everyone else_ why I think he's a phony and I don't respect him anymore. If he actively _wants_ to contest my claim that he's a phony—or try to win back my respect—he's welcome to do so. But given that he doesn't give a shit what people like me think of his intellectual integrity, I'm just as happy to prosecute him _in absentia_.
-
-As for my Twitter marketing strategy, I tried drafting a seven-Tweet thread summary of the reputational attack (because no one is going to read a 16K word post), but I'm unhappy with how it came out and am leaning towards just doing a two Tweets (option C: <https://gist.github.com/zackmdavis/7395e1978c42e0251cd8ae7add406ebc>) rather than trying to summarize in a thead. That's possibly cowardly (pulling my punches because I'm scared), but I think it's classy (because it's better to not try to do complicated things on Twitter; the intellectual and literary qualities that make my punches _hit hard_ to people who have read the Sequences don't easily compress to the 280-character format)
-
-[TODO: reply to message in question]
-I do quote this November 2022 message in the post, which I argue doesn't violate consensus privacy norms, due to the conjunction of (a) it not being particularly different-in-character from things he's said in more public venues, and (b) there bring _more than 100 people in this server_ (not sure about this channel particularly); I argue that he can't have had a reasonable expectation of privacy (of the kind that would prohibit sharing a personal email, even if the email didn't say anything particularly different-in-character from things the author said in a more public venue). But I'm listening if someone wants to argue that I'm misjudging the consensus privacy norms.
-
------
-My guess is that that's what the mutual best response looks like: I deal reputational damage to him in the minds of people who care about the intellectual standards I'm appealing to, and he ignores it, because the people who care about the standards I'm appealing to aren't a sufficiently valuable political resource to him. If there's a Pareto improvement over that, I'm not seeing it?
-
-[TODO: at this point, the entire debate tree has been covered so thoroughly that Caliphate loyalists don't have anything left other than, "accusing people of bad faith is mean". E.g., Xu and Kelsey. Did I stutter?]
-
-[TODO: maybe he'll try to spin complaints about the personality cult into more evidence for the personality cult]
-
-It's really striking how, despite sneering about the lost of art of perspective taking, he acts as if he's incapable of entertaining the perspective under which the published text of the Sequences might have led someone to form higher expectations of him. Oli Habryka gets it! (<https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/juZ8ugdNqMrbX7x2J/challenges-to-yudkowsky-s-pronoun-reform-proposal/comment/he8dztSuBBuxNRMSY>) Vaniver gets it! (<https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/yFZH2sBsmmqgWm4Sp/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them/comment/dSiBGRGziEffJqN2B>) Eliezer Yudkowsky either doesn't get it, or is pretending not to get it. I almost suspect it's the first one, which is far worse
-
-----------------
-
Post later (can't afford to spend more Twitter time now)—
https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1436039564032823313
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff
