Cornelius Dybdahl

Karma: 151

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 8, 2024, 4:32 AM
0 points
−1
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
By sacrificing that status, I lost the ability to continue engaging in those things. For instance by criticizing Bailey on his core misbehavior, he did his best to get rid of me, which lost me the ability to continue criticizing him, thus closing off that angle of behavior.
Your self-serving bias is a bias and not a rational stance of calculated actions. It sways your reasoning and the beliefs you arrive at, not your direct behaviour towards Michael Bailey.
Is that getting your position right?
No. I am not making any point about what discourse selects for. I could make such points, but they would look quite different from what you have imputed. My point was about your behaviour and the psychology implied by it.
I then learned that they weren’t interested in new information, especially not if it was disadvantageous to their political interests. It seems valid for me to share this to warn others who were in a similar position to me. If Blanchardians don’t like this, they shouldn’t have promoted me as their intellectual/researcher/teacher without warning me ahead of time.
Does this lead to Blanchardians getting held to higher standards than anti-Blanchardians? I suppose it does, because anti-Blanchardians openly announce their political biases, and so I wouldn’t have felt betrayed in the same way by them.
I swear you are inventing more and more elaborate ways to miss the point. The issue is that you portray yourself as a reasonable mediator while having these asymmetric standards. I do not object to you holding Blanchardianism to higher standards when acting in your capacity as an expert critic of Blanchardianism, but here you were commenting on a feud between Zack and LessWrong, and my point was specifically that LessWrong’s treatment towards Zack has been abusive, not that they have made more factual errors or that they were more ideologically motivated than him. Your position as an expert critic of Blanchardianism does not in the slightest justify an enormous bias in standards of behaviour when mediating a feud. It is irrelevant.
I suppose you might argue that you were not intending to act as a mediator, but that is precisely why it is objectionable that your behaviour is strongly goal-oriented to portraying yourself as a reasonable mediator willing to call out both sides when they are wrong.
False. It is not simply a way of “positioning myself above it all”. It is also factually true; I spent the last few years, including much of the time I should have spent on e.g. education on it, so “so tired of it all” is a factual description of me, and similarly by any reasonable means of counting, I’m cut away from the discourse on this topic, so I am also defeated.
Again you nitpick a single word (in this case the word “simply”) as a way of avoiding the issue. The point is that you described yourself as “so tired of and defeated by it all” as an argument that you are not positioning yourself above it all, as if the two were in conflict (hence your usage of the word “instead”), when in fact they are strikingly congruent.
I know more about the Blanchardian and Blanchardian-adj side than I know about the anti-Blanchardian side. More qualifiers are justified due to greater uncertainty.
I call bullshit again. There was no need for that qualifier. Sapphire’s argument could have been used with minimal alteration to tell people off for being dissidents in nazi germany. It was overtly abusive and the qualifier was not necessary in the slightest.
But, if Blanchardians are insisting that they are focusing on etiology, then onlookers will concentrate on looking for whether Blanchardians have good etiological insights, and when they see there are none, it’s not so surprising if they abandon it.
They really don’t. They first see the sociological implications, not even of the position, but of the delivery, of the other stances held by the proponents, etc. You know this. Not only is this addressed extensively in the Sequences (eg. in politics is the mindkiller) but it is also something you yourself have frequently called out in the past, specifically pertaining to the reaction of the LessWrong community toward Blanchardianism. So I simply do not buy the argument that the proponents of Blanchardianism view it through a more sociological lens than the critics do. I do not even buy that you believe otherwise.
When I talk about disruptive transsexuality, this is not the factor I am talking about, and in fact anecdotally HSTSs tend to be elevated on the general factor of disruptiveness. I think this is what you might be getting at when you are talking about disruptive HSTSs?
No, I simply clicked your link and read what you wrote about the disruptive/pragmatic typology.
Maybe one could design a study that measures this factor, then show that there’s a huge sexual orientation difference in it, and then switch to calling the factor “androphilic/nonandrophilic” or something, idk.
Androphilia is not however limited to HSTS’s, as in the case of meta-attraction or whatever is the current explanation for why some trans women who psychologically resemble exclusively gynephilic trans women are also attracted to men. This latter case is also prone to being viciously oppressive to gay men.
Are there any publicly accessible healthy communities that you’d recommend I peek at as a starting point?
Not in the sense you probably mean by “publicly accessible”. These days, public accessibility is almost impossible to reconcile with being a healthy community. The only way to maintain a healthy community at this point is to exclude the people who would destroy it.
But to give you an idea: a typical boxing gym, a traditional martial arts class, a group of fishermen, a scouting organization, or for that matter Bohemian smalltown is a very healthy community. I can also think of some healthy internet communities, but they are not publicly accessible.
I’ve recently taken a liking to htmx—see their discord here and twitter here. Is that some strain of narcissism too? (Cringemaxxing narcissism maybe?)
Yes. It is less unhealthy than the communities you are used to, which is probably why you like it, but it is still unhealthy. Cringemaxxing stems from profound insecurity and low self-esteem. People cringemaxx to preempt criticism, or to find cathartic release from their habitual vigilance against being cringy, or some other variety of either guardedness or catharsis. Cringemaxxers are, in fact, neurotics.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 8, 2024, 3:32 AM
0 points
−1
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
but I don’t see anything manipulative or under-false-pretenses about what you’re complaining about here.
He responded to me in a manner that seemed to only suggest an intention of addressing the subject matter of discussion in this post, not an intention of swaying my stance towards him in our private feud, but then in the text I quoted, he explicitly states that his purpose was to sway my stance in that private feud. That’s practically the definition of false pretenses.
You’re falling prey to the halo effect. You are put off by my more disagreeable manner, and so you impute other negative characteristics to me and become blinded to even very blatant abuses from tailcalled towards me. For my part, I am compelled to be very forcefully assertive by tailcalled’s extreme evasiveness.
(And, for what it’s worth, reading this thread I get a much stronger impression of “importing grudges from elsewhere” from you than from tailcalled.)
That’s because you’ve fallen for his manipulation tactics. He literally admitted the false pretenses, stopping only short of actually using that label. His original reply to me was, by his own admission, motivated by the private feud, which means he was the one who imported a grudge from elsewhere, regardless of what vibe you are getting.
And the sole reason I am coming across as more begrudging than he is because he keeps evading the points so I have to keep directing him back towards them, making me appear forceful, which you may remember was precisely what I said would happen if I follow his prescription for defusing these manipulation tactics.
All of that is him manipulating you, and you have fallen for it.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 7, 2024, 5:32 PM
−6 points
−5
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
But the thing is, Robin DiAngelo and other CRT people are constantly bluffing. They keep citing evidence for their beliefs that doesn’t actually precisely pin down their position, but instead can accommodate a wide variety of positions. In such a case, it’s not unreasonable or unexpected that people would pick and choose what ideas they find most plausible.
Good thing then that I’m calling you out on self-serving bias rather than special pleading, then.
I don’t know to what extent this is just poor communication (maybe she does have the relevant evidence but doesn’t cite it) or a grift (considering she axiomatically rejects innate racial differences, and falsely presents innate racial differences as the reigning ideological explanation for racial inequality, there’s probably at least a nonzero element of grift).
It’s a gift. She is doing precisely the same thing she is calling out other white progressives on, but when you think about it, that only corroborates her point that race grifting is something white progressives are liable to do.
The case with Scott Alexander seems like an exception to this, though? If Scott is someone who is extremely prone to not paying attention to this subject matter, then I am clearly not simultaneously contrasting myself with people who are extremely prone to paying attention to this subject matter. Instead I am making comments all over the place.
The two major factions in a controversy are rarely perfectly orthogonal. I am not suggesting that you are contrasting yourself with people who are extremely prone to paying attention to the subject matter, merely that you are setting yourself up as the moderate who fairly critiques both factions, despite actually having an absolutely immense bias in what standards you hold each side to.
But that doesn’t mean I’m “above it all”, instead I’m way deep into it all and I’m so tired of and defeated by it all.
Describing yourself as “so tired of and defeated by it all” is simply another way of positioning yourself above it all, differing only in that it insinuates a kind of martyrdom at the same time. Your behaviour is almost comically narcissistic.
Possibly I have a habit of using the word “arguably” wrong, idk, I plead ESL. Plus dictionaries agree with my usage.
Missing the point again — the point is simply that you use a lot more qualifiers when critiquing one side than the other, even if the former is actually behaving a lot worse. ESL or not, I am pretty sure you are able to tell that “sapphire is abusive” is a much more assertive formulation than “sapphire is arguably abusive”, therefore I am inclined to call bullshit on your ESL excuse.
Body map theory is pretty stupid, but Zack hasn’t really done much to address it (and I think for a while he might even have been sympathetic to it applying to HSTSs? Idk, I may be wrong).
Again missing the point, which is simply that Zack’s discussion of these concepts actually did provide a lot of genuine value and insights, even if there were also many points where he was flatly wrong, and the total dismissiveness of the community, again, simply cannot be explained by flaws that were subtle enough for even you to take a while to discover them.
And again this gets to the meat of the issue.
No, this was simply me describing my impression of Michael Bailey. I am well aware that Blanchardianism is not a theory of sociology, and is not about masculinity and femininity.
Of course, these lines of thought would be insane if Blanchardianism was a sociological theory. A sane line of thought if Blanchardianism was a sociological theory would be something like the disruptive/pragmatic typology, though of course since Blanchardianism is claiming to be an etiological theory, it is instead absolutely insane to take the evidence for the disruptive/pragmatic typology as being some huge validation of Blanchardianism.
Disruptive HSTS’s are however disruptive in very different ways than other disruptive trans women. In particular, HSTS’s, disruptive or not, are much less likely to be extremely oppressive to gay men.
I mean it would be insane for me to just simply avoid those 2 pathologies. Instead I should ask more generally what the community is trying to achieve, whether it is good at achieving that, whether I want to achieve that and whether it would be helpful for me to be in it, whether it is responsive to critique and accountable, etc..
No, going with an immunity analogy, that will still only give you immunity to specific strains of narcissism as you learn to recognise them. What you ought to do instead is to find healthy communities so that you can train your system 1 to immediately recognise the difference between a healthy community and an unhealthy one. The approach you are using is much too vulnerable to self-deception.
But that’s just the community side of things. You are still leaving unexamined the question of why those pathological communities appealed to you in the first place.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 7, 2024, 2:54 PM
−1 points
−1
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
The issue at hand is a critique of the rationalist community. A community is the product of its members.
Although, in this particular case, part of the issue is that tailcalled is having a private feud with me on the side, which he decided to bring into this comment section under false pretenses, cf. his own words:
My actual motivation with my original comment was to try to point you at some of the areas in which Blanchardians are wrong or even abusive, since (in our other Discussion, in the emails) you were skeptical that my views are all that much driven by my experiences with Blanchardianism.
There is no excuse for this kind of manipulative behaviour, but it is par for the course when it comes to the LessWrong community and thus eminently relevant to critiquing that same community.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 7, 2024, 1:40 AM
−5 points
−5
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
The apparently-not-critical-theory-but-instead-something-else impression I got still made me question a bunch of my past behavior.
Indeed, and some of those lines of questioning yourself did indeed lead to regrets — for a time. Until you walked back your few genuine displays of good faith (edit: excepting the one with the discord server, though you did weaponise my emphasis on that one against me, which is arguably similar to walking it back). That sort of thing gives me an impression that even the process of questioning your past behaviour is basically just a self-serving preemptive defence against criticisms such as this one.
If critical theorists have come up with some relevant theory, then feel encouraged to post it. I’m not going to be convinced by vague allusions to figures I don’t know anything about.
Iirc it is mostly in its applied forms, as in critical race theory. Robin DiAngelo for example frequently argues that white progressives are just appropriating the language of the civil rights movement and of subsequent theories (CRT being one) in a way that doesn’t properly engage with the issues and is really just a self-serving tactic to preserve their privileged position and their white saviour complex. I believe Herbert Marcuse also argued something similar in One-Dimensional Man, albeit obviously without the focus on race.
I’ve added one more way to feel above it all and congratulate myself on it? How?
Because, whether by calculation or (as I think) by political instinct, all your critiques of Zack’s critics are goal-oriented towards making you appear as the sensible moderate as contrasted with the extremists on both sides, even though in point of fact I have had to practically drag you to make even this admission. At first you were describing sapphire as only arguably abusive, and even your previous comment you were still creating an outrageously one-sided portrayal of Zack’s interactions with the community that simply portrayed his arguments as bad while glossing over the fact that he was pointing to a lot of real substance. Even after your break with Blanchardianism, you are after all still using most of the terminology that you were introduced to through Blanchardianism. There is real substance there, even if most (all?) of it predates Blanchard’s own work, and the idea that the rationalist community dismissed it all simply because of flaws in Zack’s arguments does not even come remotely close to being a reasonable characterisation. I think you know this on some level.
In short, your behaviour is goal oriented towards keeping up appearances of being a sensible moderate, charitable to both sides, while in actual fact having an absolutely immense bias.
- Zack… doesn’t seem to have discussed brainsex much?
Not by that term, but that is what is implied when discussing whether LOGD is an intersex condition. It’s not like he was referring to XXY chromosomes or some such.
- Feminine essence theory isn’t really the leading alternative to Blanchardianism.
I am not convinced you are correctly interpreting that market.
Approximately nobody in these rationalist debates are claiming that all MtFs are HSTS
Of course not. Almost none of them would’ve even encountered the term if not for Blanchardianism, which is the point I’m getting at. Previously they would have simply recognised HSTS’s as “straight transwomen” and left it at that.
- It’s not clear how you’re asking it to be investigated, and Zack hasn’t written much about this either. (I have extensive opinions about how it should be investigated! But nobody listens to me about this...)
It’s not like I am criticising them for failing to spend lots of effort pursuing some particular line of investigation, just pointing out that their rejection of Zack simply cannot be explained by some flaws in Blanchardianism that took even you quite a while to uncover.
Look, I am going to be blunt and say that you have a profound proclivity for bullshitting and you really need to learn to get it under control.
Well, for one, because you don’t seem to agree with me in the case of Zack.
Zack is being complicit in his own abuse in much the same way you are complicit in it, albeit to a lesser extent.
Also I’m not super convinced by your opposition to Michael Bailey as you probably don’t know the specifics of that conflict. For all I know, you might support Bailey if you knew more. And considering that Michael Bailey did offer something like a debate, it seems like you need to be more specific about which subject you’d like to see me debate with him, in order for you to truly illustrate that you are not simply on his side.
I indeed don’t know the specifics of that conflict; certainly not enough to be “simply on his side”. I have however read your explanation of how he came to block you, and am willing to take your word for it, since it seems consistent with the vibe I get from him. He actually kinda reminds me of a very particular kind of annoying Catholic father figure^[1]. So although I do not know the specifics of that conflict, I do know enough to have a negative overall impression of him, just going by vibes.
My bad impression of him has been sufficient to deter me from looking closer into him without a clear reason, though such a reason was to some extent granted by his view of femininity as you related them to me (something to the effect that straight men will never be truly feminine). There, I am probably mostly on his side, though I suspect he has less understanding of the more aristocratic kind of femininity that I consider more central to the concept.
Given that they were all abusive in like 2 very specific ways, yes, but also this makes me able to identify them in the future.
Yes, you will be able to identify these particular manifestations of narcissism, and thus find communities in which it manifests differently, in ways you are less aware of, and hence will have even less self-awareness of perpetrating. If there is an improvement implied here, I fail to see it.
1. ^
  and I say this as someone who both prefers Catholicism to Protestantism and patriarchy to feminism. There are nevertheless some very annoying, very prejudiced Catholic patriarchs in Texas, and he reminds me of them. I don’t mean to imply that he actually is Catholic, of course.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 7, 2024, 12:57 AM
0 points
3
in reply to: Lyrongolem’s comment on: Defense Against The Dark Arts: An Introduction
In typical terms, ultra-BS is lying. (as in, you know you are wrong and speak as if you’re right anyways). In my view, however, there’s also an extension to that. If you are aware that you don’t have knowledge on a topic and make wild assertions anyhow to support a narrative (say, if I declared that Kremlin whisperers are considering a coup against Putin) I would also be ‘BS-ing’. I’m not lying in the traditional sense, as it’s certainly possible I’m correct (however unlikely). But if I clearly don’t have information then I can’t act as if I do. Thus I’d consider some ‘erroneous’ arguments by Vivek to be bullshit, because it displays an information gap I have trouble believing he wasn’t aware of.
I understand how you use the terms, but my point is that Vivek does not in fact demonstrate the information gap you impute to him. I am confident he would be easily able to address your objections.
The same cannot be said for 2) and 3), however.
The fact that the war has persisted for so long seems sufficient proof that, in the absence of the aid, Ukraine would have quickly surrendered or at worst suffered a quick defeat. In either case, the war would have been shorter. Point 3 is unambiguously correct, and even most people on your side of the issue would agree with that (ie. they believe that a large part of the reason Ukraine has been able to fight so long has been the aid)
With knowledge about the specific situation in Ukraine, you cannot reasonably believe 2) and 3).
There are lots of people of the realist school of geopolitics who know a lot about the specific situation in Ukraine and who nevertheless at least claim to believe 2. Are they all liars? I don’t think so. I guess you could argue that they are all unreasonable and thus capable of believing it despite contrary evidence, but such a stance is again merely arguing that point 2 is erroneous, not that it is dark arts.
Is my position more clear now?
No. Your position was already quite clear from the original post. It’s just incorrect, not unclear.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 6, 2024, 2:06 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: Lyrongolem’s comment on: Defense Against The Dark Arts: An Introduction
Is this correct?
Sort of, but you’re missing my main point, which is simply that what Vivek did is not actually dark arts, and that what you are doing is.
His arguments, as you summarised them into bullet points, are topical and in good faith. They are at worst erroneous and not an example of bullshitting. You have convinced yourself that if he were to contend with your objections, he’d resort to surface level arguments about battlefield outcomes, pressing domestic concerns, etc., which actually would fall under your category of ultra-bullshit. Ie. you did in fact assume that he does not have substantive arguments in favour of, say, paleoconservative geopolitical principles, and you accuse him of practising dark arts simply on account of the response you assume he would come up with.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 6, 2024, 12:51 AM
6 points
0
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
My dabbles in critical theory arose from and is almost entirely limited to my contact with Zack’s associates, and from critical theorists seeming to describe pathologies that I have frequently faced from Blanchardians. As such, Blanchardianism basically screens off (in a probabilistic DAG sense) other critical theory topics for me. If critical theory says that my behavior in these topics is that of Bad Centrists, then I say “hmm then maybe those Bad Centrists were actually onto something, idk”. I don’t know anything about how combative Malcolm X was, nor do I know anything about William F. Buckley, I just know that Blanchardianism sucks, and if critical theorists don’t know that then they lack basic information for commenting on this subject matter.
So the whole critical theory thing really was just self-serving, then. Funny, the critical theorists wrote about that, too.
I guess “Zack only recently began more directly calling out the rationalist community” is maybe a natural way for an outsider/newcomer to parse this conflict, idk. I don’t find this parsing super intuitive because I immediately think of posts from 2018-2020 like this and this and this and this. But I was following his blog during this time, and these haven’t really been discussed on LessWrong due to the “no politics!” restriction.
Look, I am really becoming quite impatient with this whole tangent of nitpicking one single adjective that was never particularly essential to my argument. There are older cases of him calling out the LessWrong community, some of them even before 2018, and there are also older cases of him being abused in various ways. His more recent interactions are met with an abusive reception more consistently than his older interactions. I am not going to bother continuing to defend my choice to use the phrase “constant abuse”. My point stands without it, and as far as I can tell, there is no point to this endless nitpicking other than simply evading the actual argument.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Zack is Simply Crazy And That’s Why He’s Doing This. I agree that Scott’s weird stonewalling of him makes it worse.
Great, you’ve added one more way to feel above it all and congratulate yourself on it. Now if you could see how your own behaviour makes it worse, we might actually get somewhere.
I’m… somewhat ambivalent about describing sapphire as “Wielding massive social and financial pressures against thoughtcriminals, to silence them and champion a progressive cause”?
She didn’t create the pressure, but she invoked it when talking about how he has gone insane and is losing friends, etc., and she certainly wielded it against him. But actually my point was simply that even the creation of such pressures is so widely accepted that your callout of sapphire’s comparatively milder abuse would fly beneath the radar of most people, and thus not work effectively as a callout.
It doesn’t seem to me that sapphire has been consistent enough towards this topic to be described as “constantly” anything
Hold on; I talked about the abuse he’s been receiving as an explanation for his insanity, not as part of an accusation that sapphire was constantly abusing him. I was in fact in the process of collecting examples of abusive behaviour and other bad faith engagement, to use for a post about the existence of unintentional manipulation and other forms of bad faith that the perpetrator may not be aware of engaging in, because there is in the LessWrong community a completely erroneous implicit assumption that people are always aware when they’re being manipulative. I wanted to make a post correcting this error, explaining some things about the boundaries of consciousness, about what it means for intents to be conscious, etc., and I wanted to illustrate it with examples of people unknowingly engaging in bad faith.
If we interpret sapphire as making a forceful threat, then Zack’s poor writing doesn’t justify the forceful threat. (On the other hand, if Zack was e.g. a university professor or a clinical researcher, then poor argument for his theories would justify a threat of firing—it’d literally be his job to do proper research.) This wasn’t really how I interpreted it, and last I heard from Zack, it’s not really something he has feared. But I guess I can see how one could interpret it that way.
I did not interpret it as a forceful threat either.
But… again if we take someone like Viliam, I think calling his comment “abuse” is just wrong? If Zack’s original arguments against rationalists were bad, then rationalists shouldn’t be convinced by them, and it’s not that outrageous that that they sort of make a half-assed counter and then ignore the topic, and it’s a relevant point to ask “but wait, what were your original arguments? doesn’t this seem overly convoluted?”.
The only way you’re getting this analysis to sound reasonable at all is by omitting a lot of crucial points. For example, the cultishness of trans theory in assuming that gender dysphoria in an AMAB implies female brainsex, the fact that his arguments, though erroneous in some of the particulars, did point to a very real and very central point, which I will here just indicate as the point that not all MtFs are HSTS, whatever the explanation for the others, the disinterest in seriously investigating these issues at all, despite how massively they impact so many members of this community, etc. There was plenty of very real bad faith in the LW community’s reception of Zack’s points, well beyond what can be explained by factual errors, especially when they were the sort that took even you a considerable amount of time to discover.
My actual motivation with my original comment was to try to point you at some of the areas in which Blanchardians are wrong or even abusive
Most Blanchardians I have interacted with were TERFs, whom I consider to be some of the most dishonest, abusive people I have ever encountered. Even with our current falling out, I am still utterly enraged at how Rod Fleming treats you. He is probably in my top ten of least likeable people I have ever encountered. I am very annoyed at Michael Bailey’s behaviour towards you, because I would very much have liked to see debates between you and him.
I am not sure why you think you need to convince me that Blanchardians are wrong and most of them abusive. I think it is worth pointing out that you are just now making the case that a community you interact with a lot, and which you were a part of for a long time, is wrong and abusive. You have made the same observation about a lot of other such communities. I don’t remember the exact list, but I seem to recall that it included liberals (and perhaps antifeminists? idk).
Here’s the kicker: I agree.
I also happen to think it might be fruitful for you to wonder if you might be drawn to these abusive communities, and whether the abusiveness might have been something of a constant throughout your changing affiliations, and whether it might not have persisted through your most recent such changes.
since (in our other Discussion, in the emails) you were skeptical that my views are all that much driven by my experiences with Blanchardianism.
Because, regarding your dabbles in critical theory, I was paying attention to the bright little spark of genuine contrition and good faith, not to the apparently much larger component that was merely self-serving. Perhaps I was being overly Christian.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 9:00 PM
1 point
−3
in reply to: M. Y. Zuo’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
Thanks for confirming my suspicions, since the precise wording must have been very embarrassing to intentionally delete without a trace, I won’t pry, and I’ll let bygones be bygones.
I already told you what the comment said. I deleted it not because I thought it was embarrassing, but because I thought it was irrelevant.
Is there some way for moderators or admins to identify the content of a deleted comment? If so, I give my permission for them to do so and state publicly what it contained.
I understand it can be a bit scary and frustrating when someone much more experienced and well established takes a counter-argument line
I have been in this community for over ten years.
This latest comment of yours is utterly disgraceful and contemptible by any reasonable standard. Purely an attempt to humiliate me, and on an entirely speculative basis. So much for “letting bygones be bygones”, eh?

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 8:53 PM
0 points
−1
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
Yes, there was abuse before then, but it wasn’t constant. It has since then become constant abuse. Do we really need to endlessly nitpick my usage of the phrase “constant abuse”?
I still think the word “constant” is sufficiently apt, but more importantly, my argument does not depend in the slightest on the aptness of that one particular word, yet here we are, idk how many comments in, still discussing it. That strikes me as merely a way to evade the point by endless nitpicknig.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 8:29 PM
13 points
20
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
The tactic consists of two prongs, both of which I have seen used in isolation in other places than LessWrong. I have not however seen both together with this switching tactic elsewhere. Non-rationalists may also dismiss arguments addressing the big picture by calling them baseless assertions or manipulative or conspiracy theories or whatever, but they will not be in the habit of prompting people to revisit underlying assumptions, and if the proponent does this of his own initiative, they might accuse him of spin and of making elaborate excuses to hold on to an obviously untenable view.
They will not however follow the discussion to these prior assumptions and engage with these, tracing it all the way back to the epistemology of classification, or by some other manner of obfuscation induce the proponent to write several pages of explanation, and only then turn around and accuse him of making things needlessly complicated. That, as far as I can tell, really does seem to be a tactic unique to the LessWrong crowd.
Edited to add:
For clarification, I don’t think it’s solely a matter of degree. The difference is that the LessWrongian approach has an intermediate step of encouraging the added complexity, instead of immediately making accusations of obfuscation. In the non-LW version, the approach is to accuse the overall argument of being baseless or manipulative, and then when more substantiation is added, to accuse the proponent of making excuses. The LessWrongian approach would at this state debate with these, accusing the additional substantiation of being insufficient or baseless or of simply not being argumentation at all, then keep this going for a while, and only after quite a long time turn around and accuse the proponent of obfuscation. That intermediate step is the crucial bit, because it obscures what is going on by causing people to lose track of the conversation, and it creates so many circumlocutions that the charge of obfuscation will seem credible to people who haven’t noticed the tactic that was employed.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 4:24 PM
2 points
1
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Defense Against The Dark Arts: An Introduction
This is spot on, as is your subsequent point that the real defense is to simply be right and not let counterarguments change your mind. The fact that you are getting downvoted is a rather sad commentary on the state LessWrong has reached. What you are preaching is the twelfth rationalist virtue, which is really the culmination of all the others.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 4:22 PM
2 points
−1
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Defense Against The Dark Arts: An Introduction
As I said, I don’t know how one can consistently recognize traps like this. It seems exceedingly difficult to me, but that’s what an actual defense would look like.
It is exceedingly difficult, but it can be learned. Unfortunately libertarianism (I get anarcho-capitalist vibes from you but I could be wrong) is itself captured by one of these traps, being basically a way of subverting leftism and turning it against itself. If you’re curious, the Austrian school was “pure” in a sense up to and including Mises, but then Ayn Rand was heavily inspired by Mises and wrote Atlas Shrugged, which is a brilliant book but also profoundly flawed, in no small part because its sociology is basically Marxian. Rothbard, heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, then made Austrolibertarianism into a revolutionary ideology rather than a reactionary one. That is a trap.
I’ve figured out the correct answer: there is no such thing as a morally legitimate state.
Non-aggression principle? My own principle is best formulated by Alexander Pope: For forms of government let fools contest, whichever governs best is best (slightly paraphrased), or alternatively, the old Catholic doctrine: error non habet ius. There are correct and incorrect principles of government; correct governance is always legitimate; incorrect governance never is.
Embrace the light side. The liberal establishment is not an establishment at all; it is an interregnum by edgy rebels who are against the establishment, ie. the ancien régime. Revolution, like Protestantism^[1], is a disease of the soul.
It seems exceedingly difficult to me, but that’s what an actual defense would look like.
I can now return to this. The way to resist these artificial narratives is to simply learn to recognise archetypes in general. Archetypes of revolution, of patriarchy, of dark side epistemology, and so on. You will be able to see all the false narratives from the outside, as part of a larger worldview that subsumes them all.
I would love to do a quick rebuttal of libertarianism from a Carlylean standpoint, but unfortunately this is one of those issues where bullshit asymmetry applies. I can give a few pointers, however: libertarian theory is basically correct in its refutations of progressive economic policies, but there is a case to be made for political economy where the goal is something other than the maximisation of current GDP — averting the problem of the zero marginal product of labour, for example, by making labour artificially scarce. Yes, that is a tax and diminishes the productivity of the economy in the GDP sense, but it will nevertheless be conducive to general flourishing because productivity and flourishing, though aligned, are not the same. Mises understood this distinction, hence his insistence on keeping his economic theory descriptive only. Rothbard did not understand, being not quite on par with Mises. If you doubt this, just look at their faces to see which one was the greater man. As your name seems Indian to me, I would also recommend Late Victorian Holocausts as a helpful refutation of libertarianism.
I realise that various aspects of this comment are likely to be irritating. It is somewhat patronising and consists of various pointers and hints but not any actual arguments. I am making it because you stand out to me as someone who is a lot smarter than a typical member of this community, and you deserve the chance to take it to the next level by discovering the world entirely outside of the revolutionary bubble, rather than merely the ideologies at its periphery. It is presumably clear to you that OP is stuck inside a bubble like in the Matrix which you have broken out of. Problem is that it’s a Matrix within a Matrix.
How to recognise traps? Break through all the layers of the bubble and all the traps will be as overtly parochial as OP’s post is.
1. ^
  Not intended as an endorsement of Catholicism, but Catholicism is merely incorrect. It is not a psychic illness that distorts its believers’ views of absolutely everything, including secular matters, the way that Protestantism does. Anarchism, incidentally, is a culturally Protestant ideology.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 3:54 PM
−1 points
3
on: Defense Against The Dark Arts: An Introduction
Have you given even a moment’s thought to what Vivek might say in response to your objections? I get the impression that you haven’t, and that you know essentially nothing about the views of the opposing side on this issue.
The three bullet points in your summary of his argument are not an example of dark arts just on account of seeming unconvincing to you. They are actual arguments that you may disagree with, and which you consider obviously stupid simply because you have no clue what response he would give to your objections, and so you blithely assume that he would have no response and that there is no more substance behind his arguments than what he is able to provide in that particular debate forum. That assumption is flatly incorrect.
Here are a few examples:
- Promotion of liberal/democratic values
That’s literally the exoteric party line that even the people of your side do not believe in, if they are in-the-know. It’s not about promoting liberal/democratic values, it’s about safeguarding the pax americana to preserve a progressive technocracy within USA. One that is more Rousseauvian than liberal. Read some Mahan, Brzezinski, hell even Walter Lippmann or for that matter even Noam Chomsky should be fully sufficient to dispel this illusion.
Russian actions aren’t unique, however. Rather, history shows Russia acted very similarly in Georgia, where military force was used in response to threats of European integration. Yet, curiously, we do not see the same force applied to NATO member states. Finland’s accession did not spark a military invasion. The Baltics still remain safe from Russian military aggression. If there has been a consistent deterrent to Russia, it has been military force, vis-a-vis NATO membership.
Finland was already part of the geopolitical west as evidenced by its membership in the EU. Becoming a member of NATO did not constitute a threatening expansionist move the way that Ukraine’s prospective membership does.
In all cases, we see countries asking to join NATO, not the other way around, because those countries understand that to defend their national sovereignty they need NATO membership as a safeguard against Russian invasion.
“Sovereignty” here being an interesting euphemism for being a protectorate of USA and the international order. What is the difference between suzerainty and sovereignty again? Let’s ask Emer de Vattel, hm… Oops.
Well at least now we know why European covid policy, monetary policy, government spending, etc. is practically a carbon copy of USA. You may want to rethink some conclusions of which nations exactly are sovereign.
So appeasement doesn’t work. Who’d have guessed?
Ah there we have it, the cult of Churchill. Appeasement was a highly idealistic doctrine with its own fair share of issues compared to the geopolitics of the pre-Wilsonian era, but compared to the deranged foreign policy USA is pursuing these days, it works like a charm, and would have sufficed in WW2 as well if followed in a principled manner. See eg. Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker or Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War by Pat Buchanan. Incidentally, Pat Buchanan got that phrase, “the unnecessary war”, from none other than Churchill, who was indeed referencing WW2 which he deemed unnecessary in hindsight. Even Churchill himself, the absolute maniac, was not quite maniacal enough to be a Churchillian.
If Ukraine falls, the Baltics are likely next, and the world will face the terrifying prospect of a clash between nuclear powers. And, as America is distracted, maybe a Taiwan Strait Crisis as well.
It is facing that prospect as it is. Being excessively bellicose does not diminish the danger, or at least not so obviously as you seem to be implying.
What about Ukraine? Ukrainians have died in the hundreds of thousands to defend their country. Civil society has mobilized for a total war. Zelensky retains overwhelming popular support, and by and large the populace is committed to a long war.
Is this the picture of a people about to give up? I think not.
Indeed not; it is the picture of sunk cost fallacy in a case with tragically high stakes.
Though wrong, his answers are straightforward, and reflect a clear, internally cohesive narrative. The uninformed judge cannot tell him from someone with a genuine understanding of geopolitics. In fact, he’s far more convincing than his opposing candidates, who defend Ukraine aid with overt emotional appeals.
Because his opposing candidates, with their “overt emotional appeals” are the dark side, and Vivek is constrained by the debate medium and by time limitations. Likewise, I am constrained by having to get at very deep disagreements and a profoundly distorted view of history held by the establishment, more than can possibly be overcome in a comment, or even a post. It would require several entire books, or at least many very lengthy conversations in a very different spirit than some hot button debate about a pressing topic.
So I understand if this comment seems annoying on account of just referencing a bunch of books. But the point I am trying to make is not really about the geopolitics of the Ukraine situation, but rather about the fact that these books do exist, that you have very little familiarity with them and yet consider yourself informed on the issue, that even if Vivek has not read these books, the ideas they contain are part of the discourse in his political sphere.
You have not shown a way to defend against the dark arts. You have shown a way to defend the dark arts.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 5, 2024, 2:44 PM
17 points
8
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
See the thing is for a long time I used to think Zack’s ultimate point was his original tagline, but as I kept pushing him more and more to focus on empirical research in the area instead of on arguing with rationalists, eventually he stopped me and corrected me that his true point wasn’t really trans etiology anymore, it was philosophy of classification.
True point =/= ultimate point. The ultimate point is where your line of argumentation terminates, whereas the true point is simply the point you care most about in the given moment. At this point it appears to me that his focus has shifted all the way to calling out “the blight” or “epistemic rot”, ie. the apparent decline of a community he loves or loved. That, then, would be his present true point, though the ultimate point is nevertheless the one corresponding to his original tagline.
The other two topics can’t be relegated to secondary relevance in this way. This post is a critique of the rationalist community, but it’s a critique with respect to the philosophy of classification (and autogynephilia?), and so understanding the point of the original conflict around philosophy of classification is a necessary condition for understanding the meaning of the critique of the rationalist community.
That is what I meant by “secondary”, though, in analogy to how a necessary instrumental goal is sometimes described by non-LessWrongers as being secondary to their final purpose.
Overall, I don’t think the pattern is as bad as you say.
Most of those posts are from before the thing I call “constant abuse” began on LessWrong. It started when Zack began more directly calling out the rationalist community. The only post you gave as an example from this period was the Assume Bad Faith one, and that one wasn’t one in which he directly addressed any of the three topics enumerated (LOGD not being an intersex condition, philosophy of classification, critique of LW), so it is not actually a counterexample of the trend I am talking about. If you look at his recent posts on these topics, you will find that the pattern of abuse began at some point and was a constant occurrence since.
Of course, he was having some mental health issues before then, but as his chronicle shows, he was being met with a lot of abuse well before that abuse became a constant trend in his LessWrong comment sections in particular. The reason I attribute his present mental health issues to the present constant abuse, however, is that I don’t think of mental illness as a switch that’s turned on somehow and then remains turned on, caused by the initial trigger. I attribute his past mental illness to past abuse, and his present mental illness to the current stream of abuse, ie. the one I referred to as “constant abuse”. While I have no doubt that there are endogenous factors to his mental illness (eg. his decision to try to save this sinking ship that is LW rather than walking out on it), I don’t think those are the main factors that make him deviate from baseline mental health. That seems distinctly attributable to the mistreatment of him, rather.
One of the abusers was sapphire, who I posted a pretty decisive rebuttal to. Is this not putting her in her place? There was a subtext of “you seem to be part of the forces that are trying to control Zack”, would it have been sufficient to surface this subtext?
Potentially. The way your comment was written was decidedly insufficient, however. Wielding massive social and financial pressures against thoughtcriminals to silence them and champion a progressive cause — is so ubiquitous and widely accepted that a subtext is certainly not sufficient social punishment for someone who evidently takes such controlling behaviours (and her right to them) for granted, and indeed sapphire responded to your comment with more of the same abuse: “I don’t think we should help him convince other people of a position that seems to have driven him kinda insane.”
More importantly, when I called out the abuse more directly^[1], you immediately made a comment that seemed to imply that the constant abuse could not be the reason for what sapphire calls his insanity, by arguing that the abuse was not constant. In this comment, you also described sapphire’s mistreatment of him as being merely “arguably” abusive, when it quite clearly had the form of a bully telling the victim that he shouldn’t have picked the losing side — a grossly and overtly abusive behaviour. You then characterised what seems to me like an abusive pattern of weaponised confusion and the catch 22 tactic I mentioned earlier as being merely “unstructured and unproductive” rather than abusive, and attributed to this to what you deem as flaws in Zack’s writings. That is you using the very same abusive tactic to downplay the abuse he is being met with.
Also, whatever flaws his writing may have, none of them come even close to justifying the way in which he is treated, and your initial comment in this thread obscured this important point by way of blaming the victim with a semi-plausible critique of his writing.
By being less abusive than sapphire and simultaneously two-siding it with “to be fair, they do have a point that Zack’s writing is unclear”, you are juxtaposing these two criticisms and making the case seem a lot more even than it is. One side is engaging in gross overt abuse against someone who has been gaslit by progressive ideology, the other side writes posts that are too long and meandering. Guess I’ll take the middle ground. Also worth noting that you wrote considerably more words to criticise Zack’s writing than to call out sapphire’s abusive behaviour. You effectively set yourself up to appear as a sensible middle-ground, creating a position of compromise between Zack and his abusers, which is frankly worse than anything sapphire did, but even setting that whole tactic aside, you were also being directly abusive to him yourself as I pointed out two paragraphs ago.
It is true that I have come up with opinions about how Zack should communicate his message, but I don’t really think it is accurate to characterize it as me setting myself up as a helpful mediator. A lot of it comes down to the fact that I have spent the past few years researching transgender topics for my own purposes, for a long period believing in autogynephilia theory, but then uncovering a wide array of flaws.
I am again in the position of having to remind you that being incorrect about factual issues is not a sufficient justification for others to engage in vicious abuse against you. Also, it was specifically your behaviour in this comment thread that I am characterising as setting yourself up as a helpful mediator. Your comment in this thread was not directed at Zack, pointing out flaws in his autogynephilia theory, but directed at me, undermining my attempt to call out sapphire’s blatantly and grossly abusive behaviour.
I don’t think this is true because if it gets off track one can sort of take stock and “regroup”, getting rid of irrelevant side-threads and returning to the core of it.
That approach does not diffuse the moral opprobrium levelled against a person for being long winded or making baseless assertions. These “regroupings” can equally well be engaged in by the person wielding the abusive tactic as by the person trying to defend himself against it, but it is typically the abuser and not the defender who has more experience controlling and weaponising the complexity of a discussion.
Not sure I understand this.
The defensive person is in the position of having to demand regroupings, or else of trying to simply impose them. Either one gives a weapon to the attacker if done repeatedly.
I’m not even sure who you say I am enabling in that link—Jiro or S. Verona Lišková? Both?
That’s beside the point. The point is that you are not the recipient of the abuse and so your situation is fundamentally different, and the only reason it even looks successful is because it manages to set you up as a reasonable mediator who is above it all, thus flattering your narcissism.
My take is that I am consistently able to navigate rationalist conversations about autogynephilia theory or sex differences without getting caught up in these sorts of issues.
My take is that that reflects negatively on your own communication tactics and merely indicates being skilful at manipulation, though in this case it is probably as simple as two-sides’ing everything. Your take reminds me of the “white allies” who say that Malcolm X was setting himself up for trouble by being too combative, or, on the other end of the political aisle, of William F. Buckley trying to clean up the mainstream right by silencing eg. libertarians, paleoconservatives, and populists. I believe your recent dabbles in critical theory have taught you something or other about this social dynamic, which is itself a part of the abuse I am accusing the LessWrong community of being guilty of.
1. ^
  Incidentally I was sorely tempted to invoke Godwin’s law and point out that she could’ve wielded the same tactic against frustrated, embittered dissidents living under nazism, and with only very slight variations she could’ve used it to condemn the Edelweiss pirates, the swings, etc., eg. “I don’t think we should help him convince other people of a position that seems to have gotten him ostracised and driven him into trouble with the SS”. Granted, it was “mere” psychiatrists that Zack had gotten in trouble with.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 4, 2024, 8:25 PM
−1 points
0
in reply to: M. Y. Zuo’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
Do you realize I can see when you’ve posted replies and then ‘deleted them without trace’ immediately afterwards? The mods can too.
For any others wondering, the deleted comment simply said ”… That’s what I get for engaging with a blatant troll”, or something to that effect. It was because M. Y. Zuo’s manipulative bs had made me forget my actual reasons for engaging, and I deleted the comment when I remembered what they were.
But it seems superfluous at this point, since any reasonable person can tell that M. Y. Zuo’s behaviour is absolutely reprehensible. But I also have to admit that any such person can also tell that I’ve “bitten the bait” and engaged with him too long, to the point where my behaviour has become ridiculous and embarrassing.
There is a lot of wisdom to Mark Twain’s admonition to never argue with a fool, lest they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience — wisdom which, I am sorry to report, I seem to have not yet learned.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 4, 2024, 8:06 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: M. Y. Zuo’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
I can’t possibly hope to convince you when you are engaging in abysmally bad faith. My purpose is to call you out, because you should not be getting away with this shit.
On another note, I did in fact “list out actual arguments”, exactly as you said. I can only surmise that they didn’t satisfy the “criteria of the counter-party”, and for some unguessable (/s) reason, you once again will not give even the slightest indication of what you deem to be insufficient about them.
How exactly am I supposed to convince an interlocutor who will not even explain why he is unmoved by the arguments provided? Again, this is insane.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 4, 2024, 7:24 PM
−1 points
−4
in reply to: M. Y. Zuo’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
Since you seem to have completely lost track of what actually happened, I will remind you:
- Zack made this post and was met with a barrage of abuse
- Some of the abusers were blaming Zack for making a post that random passersby might not care about
- I pointed out that the people making this critique had in fact interacted much more with the post than somebody who genuinely wouldn’t care
- You pointed out that these people had interacted with the post in ways beside the one I just mentioned
- I pointed out that this obviously corroborates my point rather than detracting from it
- Instead of addressing this obvious point, you just called it incoherent and started delivering a barrage of insults instead of making any actual arguments
Ie. you are the one just asserting opinions, whereas I made arguments, and then pointed out the arguments when you denied their existence, and now you seem to be asserting that your opinion is just as valid as mine, a thinly veiled “that’s just your opinion, man”, while still ignoring the actual arguments rather than actually addressing them. That is insane.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 4, 2024, 7:15 PM
24 points
20
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
The thing is this tactic needs the cooperation of both participants to work. If the participant getting attacked with the catch 22 just makes a clear description of the central point, and then writes quick clear answer to each sidetracking about how they are sidetracking, it’s easy to resist.
No it doesn’t, it just requires that the person engaging in the tactic is sufficiently persistent to resume immediately after the victim of the tactic has defused it using the defence you recommend. The tactic will succeed if there’s even the slightest failure in the victim’s vigilance, and your prescription still not only leaves the victim on the defensive, but also (at least in the example conversation you linked) puts the person using this defensive tactic in the position of having to make demands, which may well become repetitive if the attacker is being persistent, and which on that account opens further vulnerabilities.
Also, your example gives a grossly distorted picture because, 1., it is a case in which you are playing the role of a “helpful mediator”, or, more bluntly, that of an enabler, and 2., the tactic I am describing was not particularly central to the strategy of either person’s side in that particular case. It simply is not a relevant example to any appreciable degree.
I disagree, because Zack’s Ultimate Point is also somewhat unclear to me.
Because you like other LessWrongers are in the habit of being fooled by your own manipulations, such as the aforementioned weaponised confusion, and even then you have correctly identified Zack’s ultimate point in your reference to this original tagline.
That said, if he was purely making a philosophical point about locally valid types of reasoning for classification, then that would be OK. What I’m saying is that part of what shapes the conflict a lot is that people don’t really believe that he is purely making a philosophical point about classification.
Valid principles of classification are valid even if their proponents are advocating them with a view to some other, more specific point, and the fact that he has that point in mind when making posts about those principles of classification does not alter the fact that such posts are about principles of classification and not about the points he plans to make with them. This is not merely a high-decoupling vs low-decoupling thing; I am not suggesting that people should feign ignorance of his broader point, simply pointing out that the fact that he may advocate some principles of classification as part of a more specific line of argumentation about autogynephilia does not in fact create ambiguity surrounding the thesis/theses of a single given post. They can still straightforwardly be classified as making a point about autogynephilia, about the philosophy of classification, about the flaws of the rationalist community, or some combination of these. This post is clearly mainly a critique of the rationalist community, with the other two topics being secondary to that.
I do think there are gains to be made in increasing cooperativeness, but my experience is that there tends to be a need for greater order
I think there has been an excess of cooperativeness. Setting yourself up as a helpful mediator between Zack and his abusers is an injustice to Zack. The abusers need to be put it in their place, rather.

Cornelius Dybdahl Jan 4, 2024, 6:40 PM
−2 points
−1
in reply to: M. Y. Zuo’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
Like I said, one person’s opinions regarding the supposed characteristics of another’s comments simply cannot outweigh the opinions of anyone else.
Utterly irrelevant since I never asked anybody to take my opinions as outweighing their own.
But if you genuinely want to productively engage, I’ll give one final chance:
Can you offer some actual proof or substantive backing, not in edited comments, for at least half of all the stuff written so far?
Again, I have already presented arguments for my case. If you do not consider them sufficiently substantive, then I invite you to tell me what you see as the flaw, or why you deem them insufficient.