I don't necessarily agree with every line in this post—I'd say I'm better off and still personally kinda like Olivia, though it's of course been rocky at times—but it does all basically look accurate to me. She stayed at my apartment for maybe a total of 1-2 months earlier this year, and I've talked to her a lot. I don't think she presented the JD Pressman thing as about "lying" to me, but she did generally mention him convincing people to keep her out of things.

There is a lot more I could say, and I am as always happy to answer dms and such, but I am somewhat tired of all this and I don't right at this moment really want to either figure out exactly what things I feel are necessary to disclose about a friend of mine or try to figure out what would be a helpful contribution to years old drama, given that it's 1:30am. But I do want to say that I basically think Melody's statements are all more-or-less reasonable.

Yeah, I don't think it's correct to call it baseless per se, and I continue to have a lot of questions about the history of the rationality community which haven't really been addressed publicly, but I would very much not say that there's good reason to like, directly blame Michael for anything recent!

I'd already been incredibly paranoid about how closely they follow my online activities for years and years. I dunno if that counts as "conspiratorial", but to the extent it does it definitely made me less conspiratorial.

I think when I was at my most psychotic some completely deranged explanations for the "rationalists tend to be first borns" thing crossed my mind, which I guess maybe counts, but that was quickly rejected.

I have conspiratorial interpretations of things at times, which I sorta attribute to the fact that rationalists talk about conspiracies quite a lot and such?

Nope. I've never directly interacted with Vassar at all, and I haven't made any particular decisions at all due to his ideas. Like, I've become more familiar with his work as of the past several months, but it was one thing of many.

I spent a lot of time thinking about ontology and anthropics and religion and stuff... mostly I think the reason weird stuff happened to me at the same time as I learned more about Vassar is just that I started rethinking rather a lot of things at the same time, where "are Vassar's ideas worth considering?" was just one specific question that came up of many. (Plausibly the expectation that Vassar's ideas might be dangerous turned slightly into a self-fulfilling prophecy by making it more likely for me to expand on them in weirder directions or something.)

I want to say I have to an extent (for all three), though I guess there's been second-hand in person interactions which maybe counts. I dunno if there's any sort of central thesis I could summarize, but if you pointed me at like any more specific topics I could take a shot at translating. (Though I'd maybe prefer to avoid the topic for a little while.)

In general, I think an actual analysis of the ideas involved and their merits / drawbacks existing would've been a lot more helpful for me than just... people having a spooky reputation was.

...Yeah I'm well aware but probably useful context

It was historically a direct relationship, but afaik hasn't been very close in years.

Edit: Also, if the "Vassarites" are the type of group with "official stances", this is the first I've heard of it.

Not on LSD, I've done some emotional processing with others on MDMA but I don't know if I'd describe it as "targeted work to change beliefs", it was more stuff like "talk about my relationship with my family more openly than I'm usually able to."

I was introduced to belief reporting, but I didn't do very much of it and wasn't on drugs at the time.

I agree I am "more schizophrenic", that's obvious. (Edit: Though I'd argue I'm less paranoid, and beforehand was somewhat in denial about how much paranoia I did have.) I very clearly do not fit the diagnosis criteria. Even if you set aside the six months requirement, the only symptom I even arguably have is delusions and you need multiple.

Yeah, I'm not meaning to actively suggest taking psychedelics with any of them.