Scott’s position was that there wasn’t a political lie, because using a different category definition isn’t lying. My position is that “using a different category definition isn’t lying” is itself a political distortion (setting aside as uninteresting whether it’s technically “lying”), a sufficiently egregious one as to invalidate the legitimacy of “the community”. Scott was urging me to not be so quick to give up on the community just because I was (in his view) triggered by culture war material.
makes me wonder somewhat if the description of events here is inaccurate and Scott would not characterize what he said that way.
Specifically, in an 17 March 2019 1:37 a.m. email, I had written:
Anyway, as of today I’m thinking that my best option really is to just write off the community qua community as a loss. This probably doesn’t mean very much in practice (I still love my friends; I’m still going to read your blog; I still have a lot of writing to do that I’m going to share on /r/TheMotte); it’s more of a private mental adjustment I need to make for my own sanity.
In his reply of 17 March 2019 at 3:54 a.m., Scott quoted that passage and said:
I am tempted to make fun of you for this—wouldn’t it be embarrassing if the community solved Friendly AI and went down in history as the people who created Utopia forever, and you had rejected it because of gender stuff? - but instead I’ll be honest. I get this feeling too, all the time. At some point I want to write a blog post about it, but I don’t know exactly how to put it into words that fully explain my model of it or capture what I want to say.
(There’s more, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate to dump the whole email in this comment.)
That is an endearing response, and does change my understanding of what he meant — rather, Scott is saying that just because you are losing one political issue you care about doesn’t mean you should quit on a community with lots of other great things going for it.
(I am personally confused about the exact lines for sharing 1-1 text exchanges publicly and I wouldn’t personally have shared it without permission in your shoes. I don’t mean by this to say I think you necessarily shouldn’t have.)
Scott’s position was that there wasn’t a political lie, because using a different category definition isn’t lying. My position is that “using a different category definition isn’t lying” is itself a political distortion (setting aside as uninteresting whether it’s technically “lying”), a sufficiently egregious one as to invalidate the legitimacy of “the community”. Scott was urging me to not be so quick to give up on the community just because I was (in his view) triggered by culture war material.
Specifically, in an 17 March 2019 1:37 a.m. email, I had written:
In his reply of 17 March 2019 at 3:54 a.m., Scott quoted that passage and said:
(There’s more, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate to dump the whole email in this comment.)
That is an endearing response, and does change my understanding of what he meant — rather, Scott is saying that just because you are losing one political issue you care about doesn’t mean you should quit on a community with lots of other great things going for it.
(I am personally confused about the exact lines for sharing 1-1 text exchanges publicly and I wouldn’t personally have shared it without permission in your shoes. I don’t mean by this to say I think you necessarily shouldn’t have.)