Previous: A Clownish Test
Following Ziz’s dismissal of her “gender test”, Anna recommends to the staff of both CFAR and MIRI that Ziz be disinvited from a summer program aimed at better prepping researchers to combat future demonic AIs. While this program may read as folly to us, to poor Ziz it reads as *precisely what she came to the predatorily-overpriced Bay Area to do*.
When asked why Ziz should be disinvited, Anna replied that she had "a bad feeling" abt her, & that she "wore black clothes, took supervillains as role models,& came up w/ dangerous plans".
These 1st 2 charges are ofc referring to Ziz's religious practices as a "vegan Sith". The cops, btw, already routinely harass Ziz for her black Sith robes. The 3rd charge is a little more puzzling.
At that schmancy & fateful CFAR conference, Ziz had confided in Anna her & Gwen's recent brainwave: that ppl can be "good" regardless of their status w/in a social hierarchy. CFAR has, ipso facto, no need to go on excluding the input of those lower on their dumb little totem pole.
That is our admittedly non-STEM-whiz translation of the "dangerous plan" which Ziz shared w/ Anna.
Now, as discussed in pt. 6, Ziz has indeed been writing on her blog abt her so-called “turn to the dark side”. (Ziz’s musings on “sociopathy” & “psychopathy” will not be published for another year). It is possible that Anna has discovered Ziz’s blog, and has understandably balked at the post titled “My Journey to the Dark Side”. W/in this possibility, we have 2 options:
1. Anna may not have read or fully comprehended the behaviors which Ziz— rather unfortunately, & w/ Zizesque dramatic flare— labels as “the dark side”: that is, giving herself permission to act directly on what she feels to be true and necessary.
2. On the other hand, Anna may have *fully* comprehended Ziz’s brave efforts to extract herself from Rationalism’s clutches. This may indeed have read to Anna— a card-carrying member of the Rationalist establishment— as a “dangerous plan”.
We also have a 4th possibility: that Anna has not been particularly shocked by either Ziz’s comments to her, or by Ziz’s online writings; that she is, in fact, bringing up “dangerous plans” as a cover for the *real* reasons she wants to exclude Ziz: a) bc Ziz is trans, & b) bc Ziz has questioned her execrable “gender” test.
Like us, Ziz is confused by Anna's recommendation. She wonders: "Did what I said piss her off that much?" Then she wonders if, en fait & au contraire, she has stumbled onto a battlefield of our ongoing "cishet war".
Poor Mz. Ziz, as we have extensively yet alas, not exhaustively discussed,is well-acquainted w/ the shells & bombs of the cishet war. Re: this war, she reflects:
I'm so used to, people in so many ways calling me a monster for how I was born, that the social reality concerning me will be of me as a, delusional pervert or worse, and do much worse than call names as well, having most people I trusted turn against me like that, and worse, gaslight me about it to protect their image, security guards stalking me pretending not to be following me (in places I'm perfectly allowed to be) banging on my truck, yelling about how "it is hiding in there".
Buried in the foundations of our cultural cached thoughts about gender are a whole lot of bodies from the cishet war.... It's a mistake to think of us as collateral damage in the cishet war. We are prey.
Ziz had, until this pt., "[held] out hope that the Schelling point* for truthseeking could be, well, true (rather than propaganda against my people.)"
*A "Schelling point" is one of the Rationalists' fav terms, one of Ziz's fav terms, & one of our least fav terms. Our best non-STEM-whiz translation is: "a natural place where coordination happens be it feels like the obvious choice." In this context, transphobia appears to be a popular Schelling point amidst the Rationalists.
We now weep for Mz. Ziz as the stars fall from her eyes; as she realizes, in the immortal words of Gwen, that "the rationality community, for all that it promises, is the same as everywhere else."
*****
Next: Unpacking Skullduggery