memoir: a ridiculous digression about adherence to privacy norms

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
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--- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
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@@ -194,9 +194,19 @@ Again, I realize this must seem weird and cultish to any normal people reading t
 
 Anna didn't reply, but I apparently did interest Michael, who chimed in on the email thread to Yudkowsky. We had a long phone conversation the next day lamenting how the "rationalists" were dead as an intellectual community.
 
-[TODO: section about the policy I'm following here respecting Yudkowsky's privacy]
+As for the attempt to intervene on Yudkowsky—here I need to make a digression about the constraints I'm facing in telling this Whole Dumb Story. _I_ would prefer to just tell the Whole Dumb Story as I would to my long-neglected Diary—trying my best at the difficult task of explaining _what actually happened_ in a very important part of my life, without thought of concealing anything. But a lot of _other people_ seem to have strong intuitions about "privacy", which bizarrely impose constraints on what _I'm_ allowed to say about my own life: in particular, it's considered unacceptable to publicly quote or summarize someone's emails from a conversation that they had reason to expect to be private. I feel obligated to comply with these widely-held privacy norms, even if _I_ think they're paranoid and [anti-social](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/blackmailers-are-privateers-in-the-war-on-hypocrisy/).
 
-As for the attempt to intervene on Yudkowsky—well, [again](/2022/TODO/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#cheerful-price-privacy-constraint), I don't think I should say whether he replied to Michael's and my emails, or whether he accepted the money, because any conversation that may or may not have occured would have been private. But what I _can_ say, because it was public, is we saw [this addition to the Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1068071036732694529):
+So I would _think_ that the commonsense rule I should hold myself to while telling this Whole Dumb Story is that I obviously have an inalienable right to blog about _my own_ actions, but that I'm not allowed to refer to private conversations in cases where I don't think I'd be able to get the consent of the other party. (I don't think I'm required to go through the ritual of asking for consent in cases where the revealed information couldn't reasonably be considered "sensitive", or if I know the person doesn't have hangups about privacy.) Specifically, I'm allowed to talk about _me_ emailing Yudkowsky (because that was _my_ action), but I'm not allowed to talk about anything he might have said in reply, or whether he replied.
+
+Unfortunately, there's a potentially serious loophole in the commonsense rule: what if some of my actions (which I would have _hoped_ to have an inalienable right to blog about) _depend on_ content from private conversations? You can't, in general, only reveal one side of a conversation.
+
+Supppose Alice messages Bob at 5 _p.m._, "Can you come to the party?", and also, separately, that Alice messages Bob at 6 _p.m._, "Gout isn't contagious." Should Alice be allowed to blog about the messages she sent at 6 _p.m._ and 7 _p.m._, because she was only describing her own actions, and didn't confirm or deny whether Bob replied at all, let alone quote him?
+
+I think commonsense privacy-norm-adherence intuitions actually say _No_ here: the text of Alice's messages makes it too easy to guess that sometime between 5 and 6, Bob probably said that he couldn't come to the party because he has gout. It would seem that Alice's right to talk about her own actions in her own life _does_ need to take into account some commonsense judgement whether that leaks "sensitive" information about Bob.
+
+In part of the Dumb Story that follows, I'm going to describe several times when I others emailed Yudkowsky to try to argue with what he said in public, without telling whether Yudkowsky replied, or what he might have said if he did reply. I maintain that I'm within my rights here, because I think commonsense judgement will agree that me talking about the arguments _I_ made, doesn't leak any sensitive information about the other side of a conversation that may or may not have happened: the story comes out about the same whether Yudkowsky didn't reply at all, or whether he replied in a way that I found sufficiently unsatisfying as to merit the futher emails with followup arguments that I describe. (Talking about later emails _does_ rule out the world where Yudkowsky said, "Please stop contacting me," because I would have respected that, but the fact that he didn't say that isn't "sensitive": you probably don't reply to spammers demanding your precious time, either.)
+
+In accordance with the privacy-norm-adherence policy just described, I don't think I should say whether Yudkowsky replied to Michael's and my emails, nor ([again](/2022/TODO/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer/#cheerful-price-privacy-constraint)) whether he accepted the cheerful price money, because any conversation that may or may not have occured would have been private. But what I _can_ say, because it was public, is we saw [this addition to the Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1068071036732694529):
 
 > I was sent this (by a third party) as a possible example of the sort of argument I was looking to read: [http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/). Without yet judging its empirical content, I agree that it is not ontologically confused. It's not going "But this is a MAN so using 'she' is LYING."
 
@@ -926,7 +936,7 @@ In order to take the side of Truth, you need to be able to tell Joshua Norton th
 
 If you don't want to say those things because hurting people is wrong, then you have chosen Feelings.
 
-Scott Alexander chose Feelings, but I can't really hold that against him, because Scott is very explicit about only acting in the capacity of some guy with a blog. You can tell from his writings that he never wanted to be a religious leader; it just happened to him on accident because he writes faster than everyone else. I like Scott. Scott is great. I feel bad that such a large fraction of my interactions with him over the years have taken such an adversarial tone.
+Scott Alexander chose Feelings, but I can't really hold that against him, because Scott is very explicit about only acting in the capacity of some guy with a blog. You can tell from his writings that he never wanted to be a religious leader; it just happened to him on accident because he writes faster than everyone else. I like Scott. Scott is great. I feel sad that such a large fraction of my interactions with him over the years have taken such an adversarial tone.
 
 Eliezer Yudkowsky ... did not _unambiguously_ choose Feelings. He's been very careful with his words to strategically mood-affiliate with the side of Feelings, without consciously saying anything that he knows to be unambiguously false.