Astral Codex Ten

#MeToo

7 min read

MeToo

Article

MeToo is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 16, 2024 and September 06, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “#MeToo didn’t happen because people learned the new fact that there was at least one abuser in Hollywood”; “she talked about her own alleged sexual assault. Although her suit was dismissed in 2022, newspapers are no different than o… taking her off MeToo stories”; “Wallace had been posthumously MeToo’ed”. It most often appears alongside Joe Biden, Reagan, US.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: January 16, 2024
  • Last seen: September 06, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Against Learning From Dramatic Events
January 16, 2024 · Original source
Obviously there are some things that aren’t really distributions, but just things where you learn how the world works. If your spouse cheats on you the first chance that they get, you should make a big update about their chance of doing so in the future too. But I think the most fundamental counterargument is that dramatic events are unimportant from an epistemic point of view, but very important from a coordination point of view. Harvey Weinstein abusing people in Hollywood didn’t cause / shouldn’t have caused much of an epistemic update. All the insiders knew there was lots of abuse in Hollywood (many of them even knew that Harvey Weinstein specifically was involved!) #MeToo didn’t happen because people learned the new fact that there was at least one abuser in Hollywood. It happened because it served as a Schelling point for coordination. Everyone who wanted to get tough on sexual assault suddenly felt that everyone else who wanted to get tough on sexual assault would be energized enough to support them. You can think of this as a common knowledge problem. Everyone knew that there were sexual abusers in Hollywood. Maybe everyone even knew that everyone knew this. But everyone didn’t know that everyone knew that everyone knew […] that everyone knew, until the Weinstein allegations made it common knowledge. Or you can think of it as producing a hyperstitional cascade. A campaign against sexual abuse will only work if people believe that it will. That is, people will only want to join an anti-sexual-abuse campaign if they’ll be on the winning side - both because they don’t want to waste their time, and because they don’t want sexual abusers to retaliate against them. And their campaign will only win if many people support it. Most of the time, no individual anti-abuse crusader is sure enough of winning to start a campaign and get momentum behind it. But the Weinstein allegations produced a mood where everyone felt like “it was time” for an anti-sexual-assault campaign, so everyone believed such a campaign would work, so everyone was willing to support it, so it did work. I think same mechanism is true of terrorist attacks, mass shootings by the outgroup, and lab leak pandemics. There are people who are against all of these things. But they have trouble coordinating. Also, they would benefit from the support of the “stupid people” demographic, and stupid people only remember that something is possible for a space of a few days immediately after it happens, otherwise it’s “science fiction”. So crusaders build on the sudden uptick of stupid-person-support to bootstrap a movement and a “moment” and shift to a new equilibrium in which they’re coordinated and respectable and their opponents aren’t. And sometimes this blossoms into some giant coordinated push like #MeToo or the Global War On Terror. All of this is true, and if you’re an activist you should take advantage of it. Certainly the balance of the world depends on who can leverage sudden shifts in the mood of stupid people most effectively. I’m just saying, don’t be a stupid person yourself. Even if you opportunistically use the time just after a lab leak pandemic or a sex scandal to push the biosecurity agenda or feminist agenda you had all along, don’t be the kind of person who doesn’t care about biosecurity or feminism except in the few-week period around a pandemic or sex scandal, but demands an immediate and overwhelming response as soon as some extremely predictable dramatic thing happens. Dramatic events are a good time to agitate for a coalition, but this is a necessary evil. In a perfect world, people would predict distributions beforehand, update a few percent on a dramatic event, but otherwise continue pursuing the policy they had agreed upon long before. 1Assume that before COVID, you were considering two theories: Lab Leaks Common: There is a 33% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade.
Inline links: a common knowledge problem, hyperstitional cascade, coordinated, respectable, don’t be a stupid person yourself, 1
Book Review: The Origins Of Woke
May 01, 2024 · Original source
If a major newspaper being influenced in its staffing and editorial choices by civil rights law seems too absurd to contemplate, consider that Felicia Sonmez, a reporter for the Washington Post, sued her employer on the grounds that it was discriminatory to take her off #MeToo stories after she talked about her own alleged sexual assault. Although her suit was dismissed in 2022, newspapers are no different than other employers in responding to incentives. Sonmez was eventually fired by the Washington Post in 2022 for weeks of publicly attacking coworkers on Twitter. It is reasonable to wonder whether the employer’s hesitancy to part ways with her was based on the incentives created by civil rights law and their downstream cultural effects.
Your Book Review: The Pale King
September 06, 2024 · Original source
I knew that Wallace had been posthumously #MeToo’ed. Having felt the sting of being judged by the left for what felt like trivial indiscretions, it was easy at first to pattern-match onto Wallace. Surely the allegations weren’t so serious, not that I knew since I wasn’t looking too closely, but no one’s perfect, and besides, wasn’t there something ugly about kicking someone who couldn’t defend themselves? The truth was simpler: I’d been through so many disillusionments that I didn’t want to face another.