Alicorn comments on Open Thread for February 3 - 10 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: NancyLebovitz 03 February 2014 03:30PM

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Comment author: ITakeBets 08 February 2014 03:11:54PM 6 points [-]

So... What do we make of this?

Excerpt:

He is a rationalist who is deeply against living by social norms and just sees them as defaults, and is “non-default” about pretty much everything including work path, values etc., as well as lifestyle including cooking (lives off takeaway so as not to spend time grocery shopping and cooking), cleaning (does not have much of a regular cleaning habit – I broke glass in his kitchen a month ago and he said I shouldn’t have to clean it up and it’s still there), sleeping (he has no regular sleep schedule and sleeps when he wants to. The kind of work that he does is largely from home with long deadlines. He ships a prescription anti-narcolepsy from overseas which allows him to stay awake for long stretches on little sleep – although he plans on giving this up soon). He also takes party drugs and for a while, was taking quite high amounts of MDMA on a weekly basis, which pretty much wiped him out the day or two after. I have always been uncomfortable around drugs, although he did not really know the extent of my discomfort, and I can’t take them myself due to mental health. He dropped back to once a month after I expressed concerns about escalation and he acknowledges that he has some susceptibility to addiction, although he is not currently dependent.“

One serious issue we had was that he gave me an STI. He had rationalised that he had a very limited risk of having an STI so despite my repeated requests and despite being informed that a previous partner had been infected, did not get tested. I was furious at his intellectual arrogance and the danger he had put us both in. I lost a week of unpaid time off work and my mum had to nurse me through my allergic reaction to the treatment. I told him I wanted to break up, but we ended up supporting each other through the treatment and ultimately decided to get back together and work things out.

Comment author: Alicorn 08 February 2014 04:55:29PM *  4 points [-]

The letter writer mentions her (ex-)boyfriend's OK Cupid account screenname in the comments. I looked at it and didn't recognize him. I checked the same screenname on Reddit, which she said he also used (no account under that name) and here (an account exists by that name, but I don't think it's the same person - in particular the OKC account has a characteristic punctuation error that the local account doesn't make). If anyone from Missouri wants to see if he looks familiar there are breadcrumbs to follow.

It's possible that the choice of the word "rationalist" was a coincidence and this is not a peripheral community member mistreating his Muggle girlfriend, but just some random guy. I think it is worth finding out if we can.

Comment author: ITakeBets 08 February 2014 05:45:28PM 0 points [-]

It appears the letter writer is in or from Sydney, Australia. Does this ring a bell to any Sydney LWers?