trees are harlequins, words are harlequins

Like it’s weird to think about how I first started reading myc almost immediately after I moved into this apartment, the one I’m sitting in right now

It’s been a long time, and I’m still here, and she is very definitely not still here, in a way that wasn’t true yesterday, even though I’d stopped following her months ago

There is definitely a startling emptiness that’s going to be here for a while

(I don’t mean to draw attention away from people she affected directly, this is just my own personal blogging)

1st Sep 20142 notes

bohtie replied to your post:re: last post about lesswrong: I think part of her power came from being so hardcore, tho. Like, bland niceness gives you a handful of followers, getting your academic radical qrrr theory to the point where cis men should all stop being cis will alienate 90% and make 10% devoted? like, her signals were offputting to passers-by too, in a way you tend to speculate about the community-building powers of strangeness over at LW.

Not being as immersed, my impression was that this person was clearly using their ideology to attract a certain type of person for reasons that were sketch and in light of what I’ve readtoday that appears to have been confirmed and cracked wide open.

Pretty much

But like I said in the post she had built up a lot of cred as a generally cool person over the course of several years and it’s kind of hard to convey the sway that had or the … I dunno, the reasons I understand so well why people trusted her, I guess

Like, this is weird and maybe not the “right” response to have in several ways, but I am sad almost to the point of crying right now because for a long time “monetizeyourcat” was one of my favorite people I’d found on tumblr, and a person I felt a lot of connection and fellow-feeling to just from reading her posts, a lot of which were individually pretty brilliant, and I already knew that her worldview had drifted far enough from mine that I couldn’t stand to follow her blog anymore, but the revelation and confirmation that she’s actually a nasty person interpersonally really breaks my heart somehow

Her blog really added a lot to my life for a long time there and it’s weird and sad to think that she may have been just as personally nasty back then

1st Sep 201410 notes

Anonymous asked: Def. agree with your latest LessWrong post. One of the reasons I tend to rail so hard against Big Yud (and Mike Darwin/cryonics in other contexts) is that I feel like they are taking advantage of people I find to be largely decent, good natured people. But I think you are off when you say the rationalist community sends off the 'wrong' social signals- its about the people they want to bring in-group. Lots of people DO respond to those signals.

I agree with you about that. I addressed that among other things in this long response to anononthewater (warning for everyone: please read the first paragraph of that post before deciding if you want to read the rest).

1st Sep 20141 note

anononthewater-deactivated20140 asked: re: last post about lesswrong: I think part of her power came from being so hardcore, tho. Like, bland niceness gives you a handful of followers, getting your academic radical qrrr theory to the point where cis men should all stop being cis will alienate 90% and make 10% devoted? like, her signals were offputting to passers-by too, in a way you tend to speculate about the community-building powers of strangeness over at LW.

(Under the cut for more pontificating, this time involving many more specifics about myc. I know there are several reasons some people might not want to read this; it’s under a cut for a reason. TBH I feel kind of weird about talking stuff about this from the somewhat outside perspective I have on it, and also I have had a bit to drink and may not be as capable of leaving well enough alone as I should be. But for better or for worse it’s on my mind, so here we go.)

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1st Sep 20147 notes

beforeness asked: I don't know how to phrase it, but your post about LW, even though I broadly agree with it, kind of irked me, I'm not sure how the surface signal stuff really plays into all of it, when the reason the LW community is so good has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the quality of the people there - surely if LW doesn't have these kinds of things happen that's all that matters, since it has its own language which hypothetically would could be used by manipulative people in same way?

(Cut for the same reason the last one was cut)

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1st Sep 20147 notes

Okay I am going to indulge myself and say one thing here, which is not even about the issue itself, but about something else that’s tangentially related

(Cut for some soapboxing about Less Wrong and how to judge character, which you may find uninteresting or annoying – I don’t know why you’d think I’d be especially knowledgable about this stuff anyway)

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1st Sep 201435 notes

Something big just happened in the tumblrsphere and basically I just hope everyone’s okay

(As I’m sure you’d expect, I have other thoughts and feelings about it but they’re not interesting, insightful or worth dwelling on – they’re exactly what you’d expect and you can extrapolate them if you want)

(If you don’t know what this post is about, don’t worry)

#myc ////

1st Sep 20149 notes