It seems that part of the problem might be that she is afraid of being judged crazy or the equivalent. Having someone talk to her about her being crazy (which is how she will probably perceive it) seems like it runs a risk of being counter-productive. I think so far I've only told you what you are implying or saying.

If I have that right, you might think about finding a story -- fictional or biographical -- written from the perspective of someone suffering from similar symptoms and who resolved it through treatment. If she identifies with the protagonist, it might create some willingness to listen to alternatives.

OK, trying to be fair to the original poster, since it appears that he doesn't plan on responding directly in public. Please take this in the nature of "even the devil deserves an advocate" and an exercise in resisting the fundamental attribution error. It's also informed by the thought that the implication that someone is actually advocating rape is an exception claim, so must be supported by exception evidence. And it's informed by a cussed refusal to be mind-killed.

Take a look at the quantity of words. About half of the piece happens before the foreign girls show up. That seems to be a metaphor for people who can't get sex through the types of relationships that the median person has. The second half is almost entirely given over to the foreign girls arriving, trafficking in branch-lifting, and getting prohibited from the community, with the result that the protagonist is vilified. That seems to be a metaphor for prostitution, its illegalization, and the effects on someone found to be buying the services of a prostitute.

Then we get one awful sentence. I'm not justifying it if it means what others have read it to mean, and I'll come back to it at the end.

If by leaving out female preferences, you are referring to just that one sentence, I tend to agree with you that the one sentence is reprehensible if intended. But I don't think that criticism is fair for any of the rest. The first half of the piece is showing the effect of preferences (female in context, but not gendered by necessity). When you make a point, it doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, especially if your goal is to draw attention to some aspect that you believe has had has had insufficient attention. The second half of the piece actually respects some female preferences. Specifically, it respects the preferences of those who prefer to be sex workers. It points out one of the negative effects of oppressing those preferences (by ejecting the foreign girls). Again, it isn't balanced, but I don't really think it has to be. Finally, it points out the oppressive rationale for the oppressive act (of ejecting the foreign girls).

Then it goes off the rails with a single sentence. The piece would have been far more effective if the native girl speaking near the end had imprisoned him for paying a foreign girl to lift the burning branch. The sentence is far from clear to me. I'm not certain that its author really recognized that the metaphor would be to rape. To some degree, it is fair to say, "too bad, that's the risk you take in writing in metaphor!" But it's also fair for us to ask whether one sentence should be taken as such significant evidence of vile character, and whether some other meaning was intended. Specifically, putting a girl under the branch hasn't been how the boys get out from under the branch throughout the rest of the story, so it's not the established metaphor for sex. It could be that the point here was not forcing the girl to lift the branch (which would be metaphorical rape). It could be that the point was to subject girls to being under the branch (which would be metaphorical undesired celibacy). It's not a great metaphor that way, either, because the boys got under the branches in the first place by some strange freak of nature. ("Oh, I didn't see that burning branch falling on me, so now I'm stuck"?) But it might have been intended as "see how you like it." That itself is an unattractive kind of position, but it is quite different from rape.

One final point is that I didn't interpret the criticism here as being directed to feminism. I took it to be directed toward government messing around in things where it ought not and towards the ideal of sex as an expression of romantic love. I read it that one solution that was rejected in the first half was essentially "friends with benefits" -- something that I doubt would find universal condemnation among feminists, and certainly not among most feminists before the 1980's. But the danger with metaphors is that the reader brings more to them than the reader brings to a straightforward statement.

And that's pretty much exhausted my store of charitable interpretation, with apologies to those who would prefer that this mind-killing comment thread simply die a quiet death.

Your list of reasons seem to me to be the very reason we have karma. Why does this post deserve moderation in a system where karma sends the message about the community's desire for more of the same?

And similarly, here's a quotation from economist George Stigler: “every durable social institution or practice is efficient.” ("Efficient" has a specific meaning in context. Don't over-extend it to "good" or similar ideas.)

I doubt I know enough to ask good questions. The article has a very bare-bones reference to it, so here are some basic questions:

1. What is the high level objective?
2. Describe the training from the outside: when, where, who, how much?
3. Describe the training from the inside: what gets taught, what gets learned?
4. What role do you expect mentors to play?
5. How do you support the mentors in playing that role?

That is true with an assumption. The assumption is that I will regularly return to LessWrong and read EA articles if I see them. My own assessment of myself is that I won't, so the assumption would be false. (I could be wrong.) I generally avoid EA articles because I'm not all that interested in them. No knock on the field, it's just not why I'm here. But the fact that I have to wade through articles on EA and all the other topics I don't care about deters me from returning to LessWrong, which I do less frequently than I wish I would, because I miss the optimal time to comment on articles.

I think the key part of that sentence was "I'd like ..."

I can think of several reasons why someone might want to do such a thing.

• They want to begin or enhance a reputation for being an authority in the field.
• They want the organization that they represent to begin or enhance its reputation in the field and to popularize the particular spin that their organization places on such information.
• They are studying the field anyway, so the investment is essentially prettying up their own precis of materials they are reading anyway.
• They want to help the LW community and this is the way they choose to contribute. (For example, if there was interest in the field of law in which I specialize, I'd do the same, but I can;t see that fitting in here.)

Then, empirically, I note that people (who know these fields better than I) do actually post this kind of content here. But I don't see the karma system recognizing them for that contribution as much as being the "editor" of the whatever section would recognize them.

(Subsequently edited for terrible formatting)