All of Aella's Comments + Replies

Strong disagree. This is an ineffective way to create boredom. Showers are overly stimulating, with horrible changes in temperature, the sensation of water assaulting you nonstop, and requiring laborious motions to do the bare minimum of scrubbing required to make society not mad at you. A much better way to be bored is to go on a walk outside or lift weights at the gym or listen to me talk about my data cleaning issues

I've been dating Nate for two years (tho wanna clarify we are not doing marriage-kids and we're both actively looking for more serious other partners).

Nate is profoundly wonderful in many ways, like often surprises me in new ways of wonderfulness, and has raised my standards in partners. He's deeply caring, attentive, competent, hilarious, and of course brilliant.

Also, many of the complaints about him in the comments resonate with my experience, particularly your description above. I often find that in disputes I feel dismissed, I perceive him as having a ... (read more)

why does lesswrong suddenly feel good and homey

I can confirm this. There's a transcript from the interview somewhere, I can dig it up if you want.

Yeaaah the response was weird. One, I deliberately only kept it to facts; I didn't address his tone or the leadup or his framing, I was pretty bare bones like "the concrete claims are wrong." I have a little annoyed if he thinks that's frame control he has no idea. I suspect he might be seriously misunderstanding my writings on frame control.

But also like... for example this paragraph

"Many of the substances one can imagine employing here — most saliently, rohypnol, the date rape drug; but also others — would put people into compromised states in which they... (read more)

I posted it to Facebook first. I was friends/roommates with Persephone, discussed the post beforehand, and offered (or she asked, maybe?) to post it publicly there to get readership so she could also preserve her anonymity. This was scary for me at the time, as afaik I'd seen no negative discussion about Brent like that, and I was new to the community and didn't know the temperature/how people would react. Walking into a new community and being the conduit for a bomb dropping on one of its members is not a comfortable experience. I don't regret it though!

B... (read more)

Re the postscript, I go over the claims here

This post is almost entirely factually incorrect, but to go point-by-point

1. For the parties I throw - I assume the person is referring to some of the parties in 2017, as those were the ones that had "a lot of sex"? I agree consent wasn't very clearly set out, but I'm not sure I regret this. I've never had anybody express to me the concerns laid out in the post, this is the first time I'm becoming aware events I've thrown have had a negative impact on people. I do genuinely not want this to happen and am now thinking about what and how to change about my e... (read more)

Yeah, great point. I think my frame control post is overly simplified and not 100% representative of my full worldview, because I don't have the energy or skill required to put "actually everything is just narrative tho" in there and still maintain my point. 

As far as I have the capacity to understand about myself, the 'reclaiming' post was true. It happened seven years ago now, and I still haven't had the issues come back I did prior to that reclaiming moment, and I've had no further detection of unhonored or ignored pain. 

But uhhh I'm not sure ... (read more)

I stand by the thing I was trying to communicate in point 1, though I might have communicated poorly. I have met many people who are well established, very smart, who are not socially submissive, who still make the little moves that demonstrate vulnerability. I think Eliezer does this, for example.

To try to parse for me here, what I took away from each point:

1. "Where are the concrete claims that allow people to directly check"
2. Discomfort mixing claims about frame control with claims about Geoff, as lots of bad claims or beliefs can get sneaked in through the former while talking about the latter
3. I had a lot of trouble parsing this one, particularly the paragraph starting with "Uncharitable paraphrase/caricature:". I'm gathering something like "unease that I am making arguments that override normal good truth-seeking behavior, with the end goal ... (read more)

I'm slightly confused, because (unless I'm missing one) only one of my examples given was in reference to the live conflict. Unless maybe you mean the generalized timing of the post as a whole, or the other examples given for other events/people unrelated to the community but still ongoing? I am probably not down to post another two separate posts, as writing this was a lot of effort, and I'd probably feel sad if someone else did it for me. Would it just make more sense for me to unlink or remove the one example?

I like the rule, and if it's possible to come up with engagement guidelines that have asymmetrical results for frame control I would really like that. I couldn't think of any clear, overarching while writing this post, but will continue to think about this.

And you're right in that the concept of frame control will get inevitably weaponized. I am afraid of this happening as a result of my post, and I'm not really sure how to handle that.

Ahhh these are fantastic examples that clearly map onto frame controllers I know and I didn't think of it when writing this post; really great points.

I think there's a difference here I didn't really touch upon in the post; I think it's possible for someone to clearly know a lot more than you, but still make their moves salient. For example; I know two men who are friends, both high status, have 'followers', are very smart, and hold extremely similar beliefs. One is the one I mentioned who I had a long talk with, and I consider him to have been doing frame control. The other similarly advocated for his own beliefs, wasn't open to mine, but his frame was much more salient; he was clear about his moves, a... (read more)

Here's anonymous submission of Leverage's Basic Information Acknowledgement Checklist document. The submitter said "The text of this document has been copied word for word from the original, except with names redacted."

https://we.tl/t-KaDXP3vrW3

I don't have an object-level opinion formed on this yet, but want to +1 this as more of the kind of description I find interesting, and isn't subject to the same critiques I had with the original post.

as a tiny, mostly-uninformed data point, i read "if you realized how bad taxation is for the economy, you'd never stop screaming" to have a very diff vibe from Eliezer's tweet, cause he didn't use the word bad. I know it's a small diff but it hits diff. Something in his tweet was amusing because it felt like it was pointing to a presumably neutral thing and making it scary? whereas saying the same thing about a clearly moralistic point seems like it's doing a different thing. 

Again - a very minor point here, just wanted to throw it in.

Also fwiw, I took psychedelics in a relatively memetic-free environment. I'd been homeschooled and not exposed to hippie/drug culture, and especially not significant discussion around enlightenment. I consider this to be one of the reasons my experience was so successful; I didn't have it in relationship to those memes, and did not view myself as pursuing enlightenment (I know I said I was inwardly pursuing enlightenment in my above comment, but I was mostly riffing off your phrasing; in some sense I think it was true but it wasn't a conscious thing.)

LSD d... (read more)

fwiw as a data point here, I spent some time inwardly pursuing "enlightenment" with heavy and frequent doses of psychedelics for a period of 10 months and consider this to be one of the best things I've ever done. I believe it raised my resting set point happiness, among other good things, and I am still deeply altered (7 years later).

I do not think this is a good idea for everyone and lots of people who try would end up worse off. But I strongly object to this being seen as virtuous as obsessive masturbation. Sure, it might not be your thing, but this fra... (read more)

I perceive you as doing a conversational thing here that I don't like, where you like... imply things about my position without explicitly stating them? Or talk from a heavy frame that isn't explicit? 

1. Which stated intentions? Where she asks people 'not to bother those who were there'? What thing do you think I want to do that Zoe doesn't want me to do? 
2. Are you claiming I am advocating violence? Or simply implying it?
3. Are you trying to argue that I shouldn't be conflict oriented because Zoe doesn't want me to be? The last part feels a little weird

As I mentioned in my post, I am good friends with Zoe and I sent her my comment here right after I posted it. She approved.

I feel like here and in so many other comments in this discussion that there's important and subtle distinctions that are being missed. I don't have any intention to conditionlessly accept and support all accusations made (I have seen false accusations cause incredible harm and suicidality in people close to me). I do expect people who make serious claims about organizations to be careful about how they do it. I think Zoe's Leverage post easily met my standard, but that this post here triggered a lot of warning flags for me, and I find it important to pay attention to those.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here - call on Zoe as an authority to disapprove of me? Would it update you at all if the answer was what you doubted?

I don't think "don't police victims' timing" is an absolute rule; not policing the timing is a pretty good idea in most cases. I think this is an exception. 

And if I wasn't clear, I'll explicitly state my position here: I think it's good to pay close attention to negative effects communities have on its members, and I am very pro people talking about this, and if people feel hurt by an organization it seems really good to have this publicly discussed. 

But I believe the above post did not simply do that. It also did other things, which is frame th... (read more)

Scott's comment does seem to verify the "insular rationalist group gets weird and experiences rash of psychotic breaks" trend, but it seems to be a different group than the one named in the original post.

I... think I am trying to attack the bad people? I'm definitely conflict-oriented around Leverage; I believe that on some important level treating that organization or certain people in it as good-intentioned-but-misguided is a mistake, and a dangerous one. I don't think this is true for MIRI/CFAR; as is summed up pretty well in the last section of Orthonormal's post here. I'm down for the boundaries of the discussion being determined by the scope of the problem, but I perceive the original post here to be outside the scope of the problem. 

I'm also no... (read more)

I find something in me really revolts at this post, so epistemic status… not-fully-thought-through-emotions-are-in-charge?

Full disclosure: I am good friends with Zoe; I lived with her for the four months leading up to her post, and was present to witness a lot of her processing and pain. I’m also currently dating someone named in this post, but my reaction to this was formed before talking with him.

First, I’m annoyed at the timing of this. The community still seems in the middle of sensemaking around Leverage, and figuring out what to do about it, and this... (read more)

Would you happen to have/be willing to share those emails?

Saw it immediately after I posted, will draft this ty

Here's a long, detailed account of a Leverage experience which, to me, reads as significantly more damning than the above post: https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-research-17e96a8e540b
 

Yeah, 'cult' is a vague term often overused. Yeah, a lot of rationality norms can be viewed as cultish. 

How would you suggest referring to an 'actual' cult - or, if you prefer not to use that term at all, how would you suggest we describe something like scientology or nxivm? Obviously those are quite extreme, but I'm wondering if there is 'any' degree of group-controlling traits that you would be comfortable assigning the word cult to? Or if I refer to scientology as a cult, do you consider this an out-grouping power move used to distance people from scientology's perspective?

Wanna +1 all these things are points I've heard from people who were at Leverage, also. I also have a more negative opinion of Leverage than might be implied by the points alone, for the record.

-edit: did not know about the pm feature