Eliezer Yudkowsky@allTheYud
As a general rule, I glomarize -- do not confirm or deny -- if asked whether I have committed crimes, or done things merely unpopular, or eg written any writing not explicitly under my name. I'm about to break that rule, under some weird circumstances. But of course there's going to be a long preamble first.
If you ask me whether I've ordered any non-FDA-approved medications, and I don't know you well, I will reply, "I will not confirm or deny." This is even though my Twitter timeline mentions that I'm trying retatrutide. Perhaps I found some lying in the street after it fell off the back of a truck.
You can storm up and demand to know if I use LSD, and I'll say, "I will not confirm or deny" (unless I know you somewhat). Even though, elsewhere on my Twitter timeline, you can find me screaming at people to please please please not use psychedelics because the mean results I've seen have been overwhelmingly heartbreakingly negative. (Some people benefit a little from psychedelics; a few people lose A LOT.) The standard rule of glomarizing is that you glomarize everywhere inside a category, so that the absence of a "no" answer doesn't provide signal.
Much of what modern society and government condemns, is unjustly condemned; I think it is the law of an unjust society to criminalize psychedelic use. I can see the case for a law against selling LSD to 14-year-olds. But to criminalize the *use* of LSD -- or even its use by 14-year-olds? That's absurd, and an instance of "victimless crime"; and in the case of the 14-year-old it's a mad insane evil law that makes it harder for the supposed victims to get help, because the thing they want help about is a crime. So it would not be a better world for us all to live in, if there were a moral imperative saying that people had to tell the truth when asked if they had committed legal crimes; because so much law is unjust, evil, or simply bullshit; and because actual hurting-people criminals could just ignore that moral imperative and lie.
I will, sometimes, reply to requests for general information about what sort of crimes I *would* commit. Not everyone ought to answer honestly about this, eg, a child living with controlling parents; but I think it's okay for people to ask *me*. This is how I try to respect other people's legitimate interest in knowing what sort of person I am. Am I the sort of person who, if he decided for himself that it was a good idea, would try LSD despite that being illegal? Yes, absolutely. I have approximately zero respect for modern-day society's ability to decide that for me better than I can decide myself. I consider it a violation of rights and liberty that the USA tries. If you'd judge me for being the sort of person who considers LSD a bad idea, *but* who'd cheerfully violate that law if I considered it a good idea instead, then go ahead and judge me for that.
Would I give LSD to a 14-year-old, even one who seemed to have sincerely decided for themselves that they wanted to try LSD on their own recognizance? Not under almost any ordinary circumstances. It's not just that I think it's a bad idea, but that it's against the law; and in this particular case I think that exact law is not bullshit, and I do want to obey the actual real laws that are not bullshit, because that is part of how a human civilization holds together.
What if the 14-year-old wanted to try LSD microdosing in order to treat suicide-level pain from migraine headaches, which have very few known treatments other than LSD microdoses? A more intelligent civilization (which we do not live in) would have a test you could take as a 14-year-old in order to determine whether you were competent to go into the Ill-Advised Consumer Goods Store and buy substances that were not generally for sale. Or maybe society would run a prediction market about whether ten years later the 24-year-old would think that it was a terrible terrible idea for them to have microdosed LSD as a kid. If society's rules were that sensible, I would obey them in detail; and with a sense of gladness and relief, for my being able to obey them. But almost no rules are that sensible, and therefore there are very few rules I see myself as obligated to obey without exception. This does not mean I run out and offer 14-year-olds LSD. I expect that to actually hurt them, and also, it *is* against the law.
I have a similar attitude toward countries and states setting various age limits on who is allowed to have sex with who. It does seem to me that informed consent is more difficult to obtain, as a person is younger and has a harder time correctly processing information. But under present law in many states and countries, it is possible for a 13-year-old and a 12-year-old to be simultaneously prosecuted for 'raping' each other, which makes a mockery of the actually-important concept of rape. (When it comes to terminology, "unlawful congress" would at least make sense as a phrase, and not confuse "telling immature minds what they can't do" with "people have the right to decide who they won't have sex with".) Looking at it from the viewpoint of our own bumbling society that cannot administer qualification tests or run prediction markets, that society still has to draw some sort of line somewhere. Saying that a 30-year-old cannot have sex with a 17-year-old (in CA) or a 16-year-old (in NY) is not a crazy law; it is the sort of "I would like to live in a civilization" law that I prefer to obey.
If I heard about a couple violating those laws, my default attitude would be somewhat similar to hearing that, say, a couple had decided to practice their own private version of BDSM with no safewords. Suppose that in the case of this BDSM couple, though they presented as outwardly happy at the time, a few years later the submissive accused the dominant of having done actual real rape absent any safewords. Well, there was a widely recognized rule about how to set a clear boundary, meant as a guardrail against exactly that kind of outcome; and the dominant -- the presumed more powerful partner in that situation -- took their life into their own hands when they decided to ignore that standard guardrail. But if hypothetically you ask me whether I know about any couples currently doing this ill-advised thing, where it has *not yet* blown up, then I do not confirm or deny; it would not be my job to run their lives. This is true even if all they'd face is a lot of community frowning about BDSM common wisdom, rather than legal consequences. It is very hard to get me to butt into two people's lives, if they are both telling me to get out and mind my own business; maybe even to the point of it being an error on my part, because if I was erring there, I sure do know which side I would be erring on. But if later someone holds herself injured, there is a clear presumption about whose fault it (more) was; and if a court also makes that presumption, it does so reasonably, on my view.
If you now turn around and ask me, "Hey, so, do you use a safeword in your own BDSM relationships?" I will... well, realistically, I will look at you quizzically or possibly even in horror and say, "Yes, absolutely. Are you not doing that??!?" Because I would by default assume you were asking a real question; possibly one that indicated a dangerous ignorance about how these things should almost always work for almost everyone. But *if* I was asked that question clearly in the context of some busybody outsider trying to investigate me for BDSM Compliance, I might well tell them, "Mind your own business", about their entire questionnaire.
However.
My logic for usually having a general rule of saying "I do not confirm or deny", about this sort of thing, does not apply absolutely under circumstances that could not reasonably have been arranged to elicit information from me, if there's something to be gained by speaking. I freely choose to mention that I've tried retratrutide, because the context in which it comes up is not an outside busybody trying to investigate me for FDA rules compliance.
Now on to the main point.
There's a cult known as 'Zizians', who have killed a couple of people. That cult began among, and recruited from, a vulnerable subclass of a class of people who had earlier found tolerance and shelter in what calls itself the 'rationalist' community. I am not explicitly naming that class of people because the vast supermajority of them have not joined murder cults, and what other people do should not be their problem. (Though I'm also told that, although the media hasn't chosen to focus there, much of the more extreme ideology in the Zizian group actually came from less exciting sources like eg animal activism.) (Most animal activists have also not joined murder cults.)
I for my own part had no idea who these people were before they went nuts. I am not claiming the Zizians were unconnected to what I'd see as a community connected to me; but I did not myself know who these people were. I haven't looked into the Zizians in a ton of detail even now, among other reasons because I do not think attention should be a reward for crime. I have never read, and plan to never read, Ted Kaczynski's manifesto (aka the "Unabomber" manifesto). I wasn't reading the Zizians' blog posts before they started killing people, so by strong default I am not going to read them now.
However, I have inevitably ended up learning *some* things about how the Ziz cult started. And apparently, one of their FOUNDING BELIEFS, is that I had sex with somebody underage (mutually desired sex, according to the Zizians)... and then MIRI, a nonprofit I started, paid money (to a third-party extorter) to hush that up... which payment, according to the Zizians, is in violation of DECISION THEORY... and, therefore, for THAT EXACT REASON (like specifically the decision theory part), everything believed by those normie rationalists who once befriended them is IRRETRIEVABLY TAINTED... and therefore, the whole world is a lie and dishonest... and from this and OTHER PREMISES they recruit people to join their cult. I am sure that I am missing many details here, and if anyone writes me an explanation of those details, I will not read it. Attention should not be a reward for crime, and I wasn't reading their blog posts before they started killing.
At least some of their targets may still credit that I prefer to practice the way of glomarization rather than the ordinary path of lying; hence, that what I do choose to affirm, is evidence about its truth / honesty.
And it seems to me to be realistically incredibly unlikely that this murder-cult was started *in order to* extract information from me about which legal crimes I have or haven't committed. Likewise unlikely that, if I make an exception to my surface guidelines here, anyone will try to start ANOTHER MURDER-CULT about a DIFFERENT alleged crime to extract more information (though I would in any case not except again / in a predictably manipulable way). This whole business is the sort of event that, on a well-run planet mostly full of sane people, would not happen to ANYONE LITERALLY EVER.
So.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never in my life had sex with anyone under the age of 18.
I have not had sex, at all, with the particular person the Ziz cult thinks I had sex with, whom I am not naming here for reasons of their own privacy.
This is true for the legal definition of sex, and for the commonsense definition of sex, and for relatively expansive definitions of sex. I am not playing any clever word-games; the thing I expect people will understand me as saying, is true.
Maybe this helps someone. May they reason validly.
I do not consider myself obligated to do this thing, by people having otherwise set themselves on a course to do harm. I am not obligated to do any more of it. May it nonetheless help.
