This is gold. Perfect example of what goes wrong with Rationalism. So EY has a shower thought which he thinks will help traumatized people (which fair enough, helping people is good. (I also assume he showers and not I don't know rub backingsoda all over himself as a lifehack. I only know these people over the internet)).

Sadly the thought itself is a first principles vulkanlike thought, which ignores the whole emotional part of trauma (and how complex trauma is), and starts from a wrong conclusion. (Trauma is the brain making learning a wrong thing). Then, what would a normal inquisitive person do, after they just had a thought like this? Well, ask people who know more about this, or if you have enough followers, phrase your shower thought as a question. But, because we think this is normal that is why we are not cult leaders, CEO's, Alpha Males, Innovators, etc. The thought is posted as a statement, a commandment from from up high. 'Thou shall not think of thyself as traumatized in my lightcone, after X thy meat incorrectly learned that Y!'

And when a few nonbluecheck fans (ow god why do the ones who agree with him all have bluechecks? (im giving him the benefit of the doubt and assume Musk gave it to him because Musk wants to suck up to EY)) disagree with him this gets handwaved away, or countered in a way that wrecks the initial remark.

Then there is the inclusion of the 'im being bullied for my dangerous ideas! But I tricked by bullies because they are dumb jocks who are traumatized by variables' part (of course he doesn't really want to get rid of the bullies, this is signaling to his audience). Absolute classic addition, this is why he is still The King. And also the small thing that he never loops his new idea back in on himself to realize that he himself has traumatized himself by making up AI fear scenarios.

Gold.

I wonder if he's ever applied this advice to himself. Because one could argue that trauma was a significant factor in his obsession with transhumanism and the singularity.

When Yud's younger brother died tragically at age 19, it clearly traumatized him. In this case, X was "the death of my little brother". From this he learned Y: to be angry and fearful of death ("You do not make peace with Death!"). His fascination with the singularity can be seen in this light as a wish to cheat death, while his more recent AI doomerism is the singularity's fatalistic counterpart: an eschatological distortion and acceleration of the reality that death comes for us all.

This is cringe. Reframing trauma is normal therapy stuff, but if you’ve internalised a trauma and it presents as behavioural patterns, it’s probably a lot more complicated than X happened, Y was the result. Thinking that it is that simple is probably going to hinder your unpacking of trauma. In other words, if you are able to effectively break it down to just variables and simple causal statements, you probably have done the prerequisite work, and aren’t going to find this advice useful.

I don't understand what he means by "my brain incorrectly learned" - he's comfortable reducing everyone's trauma down to X and Y variables AND asserting that their trauma is always based on a brain fart?

"variables" lol

unparalleled rhetorical sophistication

I have to admit, for a brief moment i thought he was correctly expressing displeasure at twitter.

Same here. I think that it also works as a defense of Twitter - reframing the trauma that you experienced by reading Nazi tweets as "learning the wrong thing" from them.

Whenever I see some new pearl of wisdom from Mr Yudkowsky, I think, "Surely it can't be that plainly, baldly wrong. Surely he can't have it that twisted, but still speak with so much authority...." I'm no expert, but I know slightly more about trauma than I do about computer science, maths or formal logic and this seems so incorrect.

Surely trauma is defined as something that you learn from in your body, not your mind; from your subconscious, not your conscious. By their nature, people cannot understand the meaning of a traumatic experience the same way they can understand an abstract idea.

Does Yudkowsky think traumatic memories aren't different from other memories - but psychiatrists are just too self interested to expose this? That people could get over their traumatic memories - but they're just too dopey to do so without a helpful tweet from Eliezer Y? And while it's fairly trivial really, does he actually think that the general public are impressed and intimidated by X and Y variables, a concept most of us were introduced to when we were 12 or 13?

~~My dad traumatized me as a kid by telling me I was a spoiled brat for crying too often~~ When I was a kid, observing my dad’s reaction to my own behavior caused my brain to incorrectly learn that I was a spoiled brat. But now, I understand that it was irrational of child me to internalize his shitty opinions! My self-esteem issues are now cured forever thanks to the power of facts and logic! /hj