Ask Bear anything
I wanted to do something to thank my subscribers, but my rules prohibit subscriber-only articles, so this suggested itself to me. Everyone can read the questions and answers, but only paid subscribers and those who can’t afford a subscription can ask questions. This will be an honor system, if I see you’re not a paid subscriber and you’ve asked a question I’ll assume it’s because you can’t afford to subscribe.
There are two answer modes. You can ask for an answer from me, or from Bear. Please specify which you want.
Dear Bear, I just read your essay on the Ballad of Reading Jail in your book and loved it — so thank you.
I've been trying to think of a way to phrase a question I have for Bear as a persona, that doesn't seem trite and obvious. Maybe it just _is_ trite and obvious.
I think a _lot_ of people who are in, or adjacent to, the EA / Rationalism world are shaped heavily in how they think about things by the experience of feeling different, outside, rejected, minoritarian. But that cashes out in an astonishingly diverse array of behaviors and ideological commitments. In some cases people get truly quite warped. (See: https://www.wired.com/story/delirious-violent-impossible-true-story-zizians/ ) You get the neo-reactionaries (and before that the Ayn Rand acolytes) who decide that what the world needs is a ruling elite (which naturally includes them) that's not held back by the peons. But from the same* backgrounds, you get a lot of people who marshal their feelings of isolation and difference into an ethic of solidarity and liberal pluralism.
* At least I think it's the same? I remember reading Rand when I was a college freshman and feeling the pull. I also read some "pick-up artist" stuff in that same era. (I think originally because I was taking a Natural Language Programming class, and somehow stumbled over some creepy page about using "neuro-linguistic programming" to manipulate women)... I can kind of see how a lonely nerd with the same background as I had could've gotten sucked into incel / manosphere stuff. There were definitely times in high school and college when I resented "being friend-zoned".
I had bullies calling me a fag as early as elementary school. It turned out they were partly though not entirely wrong -- I'm a mildly swishy, mildly genderqueer pansexual. But in my adult life, people _frequently_ mistake me for a straight man. My attractions lean heavily towards femme -- though femme-y guys and nb folks are great, and in fact I married a trans nb person. But since _they_ get mistaken for femme by folks who need to categorize everyone, I get mistaken for straight.
I definitely feel like being queer, and in particular the experience of being recognized as, and threatened for, being queer, helped build my sense that it's important that society protect minority identities, as long as they're not substantively hurting anyone.
But clearly it didn't work out that way for Peter Thiel! I guess maybe it's just, he's lucky enough to have won the lottery, and lacks the moral imagination to care about the next kid growing up with his own past circumstances. But it's just so alien. I guess I struggle to project myself into the mind of somebody who, themself, _doesn't_ imagine themself in others' circumstances. Like, the exercise of trying to imagine not caring about other people, makes me not care about the person who has that perspective, and then my brain coredumps and reboots.
I guess the question is, does this sound familiar? Do you think experience as an outsider, particularly because of queer identity, pushed you towards the kind of humanist and transhumanist politics you write about? Do you find it as unsettling as I do that while that kind of path feels logical when you're on it, there are examples that suggest things are much more random and contingent? That potentially quite small changes of circumstance, _not_ changes to what we would think of as our most important experiences, might result in a very different sense of self.
(I guess you said you're writing something about the fluidity of identity already? I'm guessing I will find that very interesting, if it's published somewhere I can read it.)