From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2022 05:18:33 +0000 (-0700) Subject: memoir: Christmas party 2019 X-Git-Url: http://534655.efjtl6rk.asia/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=1aadd72ae42678909477ae4157e6a932b606e8ef;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git memoir: Christmas party 2019 --- 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 f127ed2..224eece 100644 --- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md +++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md @@ -875,39 +875,73 @@ I said I would bite that bullet: yes! Yes, I was trying to figure out whether I (This seemed correlated with the recurring stalemated disagreement within our coordination group, where Michael/Ben/Jessica would say, "Fraud, if that word _ever_ meant anything", and while I agreed that they were pointing to an important way in which things were messed up, I was still sympathetic to the Caliphate-defender's reply that the Vassarite usage of "fraud" was motte-and-baileying between vastly different senses of _fraud_; I wanted to do _more work_ to formulate a _more precise theory_ of the psychology of deception to describe exactly how things are messed up a way that wouldn't be susceptible to the motte-and-bailey charge.) -[TODO: Ziz's protest] +[TODO: Ziz's protest; Somni? ("peek behind the fog of war" 6 Feb)] + +[TODO: rude maps] [TODO: a culture that has gone off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver] +[TODO: complicity and friendship] + +[TODO: affordance widths] + +[TODO: I had a productive winter blogging vacation in December 2019 +pull the trigger on "On the Argumentative Form"; I was worried about leaking info from private conversations, but I'm in the clear "That's your hobbyhorse" is an observation anyone could make from content alone] + [TODO: "Firming Up ..." Dec 2019: combatting Yudkowsky's not-technically-lying shenanigans] -[TODO: plan to reach out to Rick] +[TODO: plan to reach out to Rick 14 December +Anna's reply 21 December +22 December: I ask to postpone this +Michael asks for me to acknowledge that my sense of opportunity is driven by politics +discussion of what is "political" +mention to Anna that I was postponing in order to make it non-salesy -[TODO: -Scott asked me who to ask about survey design on 20 December, I recommended Tailcalled -https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/30/please-take-the-2020-ssc-survey/ -https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/ +] + +------ + +On 20 December 2019, Scott Alexander messaged me on Discord—that I shouldn't answer if it would be unpleasant, but that he was thinking about asking about autogynephilia on next _Slate Star Codex_ survey, and wanted to know if I had any suggestions about question design, or a suggestion of who to consult on "the other side" of the issue. After reassuring him that he shouldn't worry about answering being painful for me ("I am actively at war with the socio-psychological forces that make people erroneously think that talking is painful!"), I referred him to my friend [Tailcalled](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/), who I thought was more qualified. (Tailcalled had a lot of experience running surveys, and had a better grasp than me of the science of sexology and transgenderism, in constrast to my preoccupation with the philosophical and political aspects of the problem.) -Scott replies on 21 December https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=LJp2PYh3XvmoCgS6E +The next day (I assume while I happened to be on his mind), Scott also [commented on](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=LJp2PYh3XvmoCgS6E) "Maybe Lying Doesn't Exist", my post from back in October replying to his "Against Lie Inflation." -on Christmas Eve, I gave in to the urge to blow up at him +I was ... frustrated with his reply, which I felt was not taking into account considerations that I had already covered. A few days later, on the twenty-fourth, I [succumbed to](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=xEan6oCQFDzWKApt7) [the temptation](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=wFRtLj2e7epEjhWDH) [to blow up at him](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=8DKi7eAuMt7PBYcwF) in the comments. -https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=xEan6oCQFDzWKApt7 -https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=wFRtLj2e7epEjhWDH -https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist?commentId=8DKi7eAuMt7PBYcwF +After commenting, I noticed that maybe Christmas Eve wasn't the best time to blow up at someone like that, and added a few more messages to our Discord chat— -> Like, sibling comments are _very_ not-nice, but I argue that they meet the Slate Star commenting policy guidelines on account of being both true and necessary. +> okay, maybe speech is sometimes painful +> the _Less Wrong_ comment I just left you is really mean +> and you know it's not because I don't like you +> you know it's because I'm genuinely at my wit's end +> after I posted it, I was like, "Wait, if I'm going to be this mean to Scott, maybe Christmas Eve isn't the best time?" +> it's like the elephant in my brain is gambling that by being socially aggressive, it can force you to actually process information about philosophy which you otherwise would not have an incentive to +> I hope you have a merry Christmas -December tussle with Scott, and, a Christmas party— +And then, as an afterthought— -Christmas party -playing on a different chessboard -people reading funny GPT-2 quotes +> oh, I guess we're Jewish +> that attenuates the "is a hugely inappropriately socially-aggressive blog comment going to ruin someone's Christmas" fear somewhat + +Scott messaged back the next morning, Christmas Day. He explained that the thought process behind his comment was that he still wasn't sure where we disagreed, and didn't know how to proceed except to dump his understanding of the philosophy (which would include things I already knew) and hope that I could point to the step I didn't like. He didn't know how to convincingly-to-me demonstrate his sincerity, and rebut my accusations of him motivatedly playing dumb (which he was inclined to attribute to the malign influence of Michael Vassar's gang). + +I explained that the reason I accused him of being motivatedly dumb was that I _knew_ he knew about strategic equivocation, because he taught everyone else about it (as in his famous posts about [the motte-and-bailey doctrine](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/), or [the noncentral fallacy](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world)). And so when he acted like he didn't get it when I pointed out that this also applied to "trans women are women", that just seemed _implausible_. + +He asked for a specific example. ("Trans women are women, therefore trans women have uteruses," being a bad example, because no one was claiming that.) I quoted [an article from the nationally prominent progressive magazine _The Nation_](https://www.thenation.com/article/trans-runner-daily-caller-terry-miller-andraya-yearwood-martina-navratilova/): "There is another argument against allowing trans athletes to compete with cis-gender athletes that suggests that their presence hurts cis-women and cis-girls. But this line of thought doesn't acknowledge that trans women are in fact women." Scott agreed that + +[TODO: I got to the party and people were doing a read-aloud of the "Hero Licensing" dialogue _Inadequate Equilibria_ (with Yudkowsky himself playing the Mysterious Stranger)] + +[TODO: Scott and I retreated to the attic and continued our discussion] + +[TODO: people reading funny GPT-2 quotes, and I got to show off my knowledge of the infomation] A MIRI researcher sympathetically told me that it would be sad if I had to leave the Bay Area, which I thought was nice. There was nothing about the immediate conversational context to suggest that I might have to leave the Bay, but I guess by this point, my existence had become a context. -memoir motivation deflates after Christmas victory -5 Jan memoir as nuke] +[TODO: playing on a different chessboard] + +[TODO: feeling much less ragequitty about the rationalists after the party +to ragequit, the elephant in my brain was able to extort more bandwidth out of Scott + +[TODO: Ben on me not being on the side of clarity] ------- diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md index 1a1453f..967050b 100644 --- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md +++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md @@ -1,12 +1,21 @@ blocky sections corresponding to an "event"— -_ Christmas party (do this today, 22 October?) +_ Christmas party 2019 (do this today, 22 October?) +_ wireheading his fiction subreddit + _ Sasha disaster (dedicate a day?) _ the dolphin war (dedicate a day?) With internet available— +_ italics in _The Nation_ article quote? +_ link "Hero Licensing" chapter of Inadequate Equilibria +_ "not taking into account considerations" → rephrase to quote "God's dictionary" +_ what time of day was my Christmas conversation with Scott? +_ check links and date on the fiction subreddit wireheading +_ when I ref'd Scott to Tailcalled, did I also suggest an opponent?—didn't copy-paste that part +_ "Steve Sailer retweeted me today" (20 November 19)—which Tweet was it? _ "McCarthyist" should link to Moldbug on the "Brown Scare" -_ check on wording of Yudkowsky's anti-Moldbug comment +_ check on wording of Yudkowsky's anti-Moldbug comment on LW _ my public objection to Yudkowsky's denunciation of NRx https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1164259164819845120 _ except when it's net bad to have concluded Y: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BgEG9RZBtQMLGuqm7/[Error%20communicating%20with%20LW2%20server]/comment/LgLx6AD94c2odFxs4 _ my history of sniping in Yudkowsky's mentions @@ -36,6 +45,7 @@ _ dath ilan conspiracy references far editing tier— +_ Anna "everyone knows" we don't have free speech 2 Mar 2019, self-centeredness about which global goods matter _ footnote to explain why I always include the year with the month even though it could be inferred from context _ make sure to quote Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy before calling back to it _ tie off Anna's plot arc?