posted on February 01, 2023 04:19 PM by
u/tangled_girl
45
u/scruiser25 pointsat 1675301382.000000
So… it looks like this blog has some detailed documentation of abuse
coming from CFAR/MIRI, which is worth paying attention to and
amplifying. But it also looks like it isn’t so much recommending exiting
the rationalist movement as going off in different but also problematic
direction with it. Like the “vegan sith” thing. Or complaining about the
removal of Vassar, but iirc Vassar also had sexual harassment complaints
about him, so removing him was probably the right call.
So thank you for the detailed links, and I won’t dismiss your
complaints, but I am concerned…
To add a little more context: the OP's linked blog is by Gwen Danielson, who was close to Ziz and aligns with much of her world view / thought space.
Gwen likely committed suicide recently, per:
https://twitter.com/jessi_cata/status/1561762228352712708?s=20&t=TE42F-R5kTzw_UTN2QyJjw
>Gwen likely committed suicide recently
As did Ziz ([or she drowned accidentally](https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsminer/name/jack-lasota-obituary?id=36432272). Or, some say, she faked her death). And then, a couple months later, one Ziz-follower *impaled their landlord with a samurai sword* and another got shot and killed by the landlord. Ziz, who was supposed to be dead at the time, [was supposedly seen at the scene of the crime](https://twitter.com/jessi_cata/status/1593783526859603970?s=20&t=DKz4pD_Z2N7WyuF-NEBi2A).
Yeah, the person that I've linked to is still deeply brainwashed by MIRI.
My point wasn't that we should take everything they say at face value, but to point out a disturbing pattern that there seems to be a growing number of x-MIRI critics who seem to have been discarded by the community after a mix of mental abuse and excessive drug taking, the latter of which appears to have been intentionally encouraged.
A few weeks ago I came across this
post by ‘Jessicata’ describing various abuse that she received
through being involved with MIRI/CFAR.
(The post itself was inspired by an earlier
post by Zoe Curzi, another victim of abuse at another cult-like
MIRI-adjacent organisation)
The replies to jessi_cata’s post were a level of gaslightning that I
hadn’t seen from LW since Kathy Forth’s suicide - the general consensus
is that she’s crazy, “taking the spotlight away from Zoe”, and should
stop talking.
Of note is Scott Alexander’s response, which accuses Jessicata of
being part of a MIRI splinter group called “the Vassarites” who attempt
to… intentionally trigger psychosis by an overuse of psychedelics, I
guess? This is not to be confused with the ‘Zizzians’, apparently a
different MIRI splinter group who also over-use psychedelics to the
point of psychosis.
So earlier today my morbid curiosity brought me to jessi_cata’s
twitter, where I found a
tweet saying that Ziz has committed suicide, and linking to the blog
of someone called ‘Gwen Danielson’ who might have committed suicide as
well.
On Gwen’s blog I found the blog post that I’ve linked to at the start
of this thread, where Gwen details a lot of allegations against Anna
Salamon - which are very similar in nature to the ‘Brent
Dill confessions’ that Ziz posted on their blog a few years ago
Brent’s DMs are rambling, but his main point is that the MIRI/CFAR
modus operandi is to intentionally push people into hysteria and “let
them take themselves out of the picture”. (Mind you, Brent himself tries
to egg Ziz into suicide at one point in the conversation, saying “I hear
Vicodin and whiskey aren’t a bad way to go”)
Brent mentions at least one other x-MIRI critic who committed suicide
(‘Grognor’), as well as Eric Bruylant whom he alleges was intentionally
spiked with a large dose of LSD before he snapped and assaulted
someone, getting himself arrested
So, uh… even accounting for the fact that none of these people are
reliable narrators, in large part due to psychotic breaks that resulted
from an over-abuse of psychedelics… isn’t it kind of concerning that
there are *just so many* former MIRI/CFAR critics who seem to repeatedly
go insane from an over-abuse of psychedelics?
So I want to re-iterate - what the *fuck* is happening in CFAR?
The "psychotic break" thing is a kind of suspicious narrative. Do you know what kinds of psychedelics are involved?
In the broader drug sphere, people can be very heavy users of psychedelics, dissociatives, etc and still generally keep it together. You get your share of somewhat incoherent self-proclaimed "psychonauts", of course.
My intuition suggests that the drugs are kind of a red herring or distraction from abuse, and bringing them into the conversation primes victims for being gaslighted.
\>Do you know what kinds of psychedelics are involved?
The only one I've seen mentioned explicitly is LSD.
But there was a [thread](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mooAqpyqPZnyMmPBQ/quis-cancellat-ipsos-cancellores) posted shortly after to the jessi\_cata thread that mentioned something about a "drug roulette" happening at Aella's parties, so whatever they took I don't think it was responsible.
\>My intuition suggests that the drugs are kind of a red herring or distraction from abuse,
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think the abuse and the excessive drug taking go together - in Brent's DMs he alleges that there's a "general atmosphere of encouragement" around psychedelics, which Anna allegedly tried to cover up after Eric Bruylant snapped while intoxicated.
So if what he's saying is true, vulnerable people around CFAR/MIRI get encouraged to do a lot of psychedelics, get abused, then when they snap it's blamed on the drugs, not on the people who pressured them into taking drugs or abused them
https://archive.is/SFCwS this may be of interest to you
Interestingly, Aella denies this but then a year later started asking poll questions about ‘drug roulette’.
(I have very strong suspicions there is some kind of sexual blackmail thing going on here - John McAfree did the same stuff in central america).
So if I understood this correctly, Aella basically hosts date rape parties but being the true psycho she is she's found ways to keep plausible deniability i.e. "drug roullette, oops didn't know I was giving you rohypnol so random hehe"
What's especially damning is that most drugs have very different textures/modes of ingestion, so it's literally impossible for this to be completely random, \*someone\* would have to know what they're giving to the person doing the roulette.
It doesn't even need to be just one substance. Imagine someone at this party gives their victim a mix of MDMA and rohypnol - if the victim feels the MDMA hitting first, they might tell the others at the party "oh it's just mdma", then a little while later the rohypnol hits, the attacker takes them away, but to anyone observing from the outside it just looks like a consensual hook-up.
Fucking vile.
This was such an odd read.
The stuff about Aella's parties being unsafe was really important to put out there, but then the poster veers away into discussing "cancellations", and using phrases like "casting doubt on the epistemic processes involved", which makes them look like someone who is both still stuck in cult-think but also surrounded by people who normalise sexual assault to the point that 'cancelling' someone is seen as the greater crime.
\> holy shit I think I figured out who liz is. WTF
Do share.
> https://archive.is/SFCwS this may be of interest to you
consensual non-consent torture? I think I've about had enough internet for this week
edit: wait, no. Aella was @mittenscautious??? What the hell is going on with these people.
e2:
> You may comment on this post from Urbit
oh hell naw
Duncan Sabien, who tried to do be the 'benevolent dictator' of the Dragon House and called himself 'a mix of Tyler Durden and Ender from Ender's Game' ?
Lmao Tyler Durden feels a little high school but i identify a lot with Ender, especially in Speaker for the Dead.
I don’t know what dragon house is, I’m just speaking from being his friend on Facebook for 2+ years and reading the writing he posts as statuses or on lesswrong. Compared to what gets posted here, his writing and opinions seems pretty chill and reasonable.
The Dragon House was one of those rationalist group-houses that he tried to personally run like a "benevolent dictator", ie you would apply to live there and he would control your entire schedule for your "self development".
\> his writing and opinions seems pretty chill and reasonable.
Uh huh.
This is the guy that went to bat for Brent Dill, and kept insisting he was a good guy till the end.
You’re obviously speaking from a much stronger place of experience or knowledge about the Bay Area rationalists; I’m just an LessWrong diaspora ex-rationalist from the Midwest lol. I don’t know who Brent Drill is either.
That's fine, I'm not trying to be too harsh on you, I'm just trying to suggest that sometimes people with reasonable opinions can be good at hiding a lot of less reasonable opinions underneath.
\>You’re obviously speaking from a much stronger place of experience or knowledge about the Bay Area rationalists
Sigh, sadly.
it's less about "I learned from and identify with these protagonists"; it's the fact that the cultural implications of naming those two protags in particular are red flags for "disaffected, possibly violent bro with inflated opinion of himself". to summarize himself that way means he is either *very* obliviously unaware of that perception or doesn't care.
There is nothing wrong with paraphilias aka "fetishes" as long as they involve consenting adult human beings. Let's not let the fact that these are shitty people lead us to paint perfectly innocuous things as somehow equivalent to pedophilia.
Then you can say something like "other paraphilias involving nonconsenting subjects" or something, rather than implicitly lumping dudes who get off on feet in with child abusers.
On top of this, it's well known that psychotic episodes can happen as an effect of unusual stressors like being stuck in an abusive cult. Who knows if that's what happening here but it does seem marginally more likely than "psychedelics".
> Brief psychotic disorder with marked stressor(s) is also referred to as brief reactive psychosis. It is the onset of psychotic symptoms that occur in response to a traumatic event that would be stressful for anyone in similar circumstances in the same culture.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539912/
Thats exactly my impression. See how useful it is to have a psychiatrist doing apologetics for your community?
Edit: also they are really really fond of schizojacketing people as we can see.
Yeah, Scott is the resident gaslighter - any time some critic pops up, Scott is there to label them as insane and not worth listening to.
I still have shivers whenever I think of his response to Kathy Forth's suicide.
I am once again struck by a general suspicion that Scott Alexander is up to some illegal shit. I’m just not quite sure what yet, but his behavior is sketchy AF.
He seems to pop up \*any\* time there are serious allegations against someone in the rationalist community, and uses his psychiatrist credentials to weigh-in and discredit the critic.
That’s pretty central to my “I think this dude is doing some crimes” instinct. It’s entirely possible he’s doing ethically unconscionable but legally clear work for his favorite cults, but I just kinda think he’s not careful enough to keep his hands completely clean.
FWIW, most recent update on Ziz appears to be alive but shot and under arrest in the wake of a landlord stabbing.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/east-bay/vallejo-landlord-attacked-with-samurai-sword/3079258/%3famp=1
>FWIW, most recent update on Ziz appears to be alive but shot and under arrest in the wake of a landlord stabbing.
>
>https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/east-bay/vallejo-landlord-attacked-with-samurai-sword/3079258/%3famp=1
How do we know this is connected to Ziz?
That's not Ziz who was shot and under arrest, that's one of her followers Somnilogical.
Ziz was supposedly at the scene of the crime, but it's very foggy and unknown, because there were only 3 reported to have been directly involved - Somni (arrested), Emma (dead), and someone named Suri Dao (arrested) who is 19 years old and has no internet presence.
The only evidence that Ziz defied death to be there was a statement in an unrelated court case. They were making the case that Ziz was found alive in the scene, was alive and well, and therefore could still be charged. But if that's true and she was at the scene of the crime, she must have escaped because she wasn't arrested.
Bruh that's insane, I used to be online friends with Somnilogical about 6 years ago, I even sent her a package of feminine clothes when she lost a suitcase that contained all of hers. After that we drifted away and she seemed to become increasingly mentally unwell, posted rants that I didn't understand on her Tumblr and it looked like she was homeless at some point.
Wait... Did this Brent Dill go to ASU? I had *a* Brent Dill in my ethics class, and we were friends on Google+ for a while. He was into transhumanism and BDSM... It's gotta be the same guy, right?
This post has a [photo of him](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/brent-dill-is-an-abuser/). He was kicked out of the rationalist community several years ago for [abusing several people](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9hacld/the_ballad_of_brent_dill/).
Oh man, I'm pretty sure that's him! I met him about a decade ago, so I could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure it's him.
Why is it always the ones you most expect?
Apologies for being late to the party. Brent Dill attended ASU and lived about a mile off campus between '09 and '12. He lived in the Tempe area for longer than that (both before and after), but I don't have exact date for when he left.
He did, in fact, attend ASU and you're probably remembering the correct person. Having known him well, I'm convinced that the accusations against him are 100% correct.
>MIRI splinter group called "the Vassarites" who attempt to... intentionally trigger psychosis by an overuse of psychedelics, I guess? This is not to be confused with the 'Zizzians', apparently a different MIRI splinter group who also over-use psychedelics to the point of psychosis.
Calumny! The Zizians use hemispheric sleep to induce psychosis.
uh. So I saw this and did some googling. The author and often
mentioned friend are two of the four people that accosted the CFAR
retreat two years ago wearing masks and were arrested and criminally
charged:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Four-who-wore-hooded-robes-and-Guy-Fawkes-masks-16626537.php
In the time since they appear to have faked their deaths and then one
of them has subsequently been exposed as not being dead after being on
the scene when one of the other above mentioned arrestees attempted to
murder their landlord to prevent an eviction, resulting in the remaining
arrestee actually dying in the process when the would-be-murder-victim
fought back.
Their attorneys withdraw is informative:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.387955/gov.uscourts.cand.387955.52.1.pdf
Thanks for the links! This stuff is completely unhinged, and keeps getting worse the more info comes out.
And I was really confused about whether or not Ziz committed suicide, but trying to fake your own death to your own lawyer is on another level.
More googling turned up [this post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gHovN7DT8Bnou3wh3/who-should-write-the-definitive-post-on-ziz?commentId=kDazRvMufuDAmJbCG) claims Ziz is currently in prison in delaware-- I've no idea if it's due to the California warrant, a name collision, or if there were additional unfortunate events.
Yeah that makes sense, thanks for sharing! I think its a safe bet to assume its from the warrant.
> this post
Ugh, why do they all write like theyre characters from a matrix fanfic.
> Who should write it?
Probably the cops, or whatever journalist finally blows this entire neo-scientology can of worms open
yes but "sith" has a Super Deep Epistemological Meaning here that you may be able to grok if you sift thru 900 pages of navel-gazing blog posts about how actually our personhoods are fully split into our respective brain hemispheres and we need to metaphorically fight vampires & zombies to save the world from certain doom, and other flavors of jesse\_wtf\_are\_you\_talking\_about.jpg
It really makes you think that something this insane can
keep going on without getting any attention from the outside world save
for a few sneerers on a niche subreddit. You’d think this would be
Netflix documentary material. Makes you wonder what other crazy shit is
going down elsewhere in the world without anyone noticing.
is there a reason this is r18+? it makes it harder to browse at work
the actual accusations are no surprise, the nastiness floating around
the phyg has been growing steadily as the folks who are justifiably
adverse to racism/sexism and general stupidity elect to leave
cfar is transphobic and racist. ea is racist. it really sucks that
the people most in-position to help the world fell for the nazi meme.
crazy world out there, stay safe
people are justifiably sneering at you for this:
> the people most in-position to help the world
but i actually wanna ask you straight up if you stand by this statement and on what basis? in my mind, it can't be anything other than because you're a genuine Paperclip Maximizer Believer, but i'd be interested in hearing your perspective.
Yeah, I'm pretty bewildered by that idea.
I guess it's true in the sense of privileged wealthy westerners being most "in position“ to do anything, but it's not like self-declared rationalists would be out there saving lives directly if only they weren't busy blogging.
Not OP, but here's my 2 cents: The rationalist movement had a ton of potential before devolving into navel-gazing, although I have to admit that overcoming human bias was always going to be a heavy lift.
In general, it would be great if more people could think about things more deeply. In particular, one of the big problems with US politics is that people self-sort into information bubbles and succumb to confirmation bias. The BLM movement is doing a lot to expose pervasive racial bias throughout society, and people are talking more about the effect of social media on our politics and well-being.
If they had kept it together, rationalists would have had extremely helpful and relevant thoughts on all of these issues, even before the issues went mainstream. Instead, they spend their time and energy in... Less helpful ways.
> had a ton of potential
That was all PR. It was [always](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/10hdl83/nick_bostrom_longtermism_and_the_eternal_return/) this way.
> The rationalist movement had a ton of potential
No
>If they had kept it together, rationalists would have had extremely helpful and relevant thoughts
No
bankmanfried last year was a billionaire. billionaires are comparable to forces of nature in that they are inhuman and can affect outcomes in a huge way for a lot of people, like how normal people cant.
>bankmanfried last year was a billionaire
And we've since discovered that he was an amateurish grifter who used VCs to launder lies about his ethical commitments in order to buy the access necessary to prevent crypto from being regulated. So I'm thinking the possibility of him having a positive influence was never very high.
You're as much responsible for keeping track of what permissions you gave as the person you're talking to, but there's no need to assign blame in the first place, you forgot, that's fine, whatever.
>cfar is transphobic and racist. ea is racist. it really sucks that the people most in-position to help the ~~world~~ *utility function of the future light cone* fell for the nazi meme. crazy world out there, stay safe
We had these people on this sub a few months ago.
How seriously are we going to take these people?
Looks like a source that’s very difficult to interpret as to what’s
real.
I feel like we have two parties both accusing each other of being
abusers.
The part we should take seriously isnt anything they say, but the overall pattern of LW critics repeatedly overdoing drugs and going insane. As my other comment shows, there are allegations of LW-adjacent people (Vassar, Dill) provoking people into suicide/psychosis intentionally.
Though it seems that insofar as they're accusing CFAR of sexual assault cover up, they're far from the only ones.
>I feel like we have two parties both accusing each other of being abusers.
Im not here to take sides, and I hardly even see them as separate groups. All I see is that theres scientology-level abuse happening here, and I want to publicise it so that people are wise enough to stay away from both groups.
So… it looks like this blog has some detailed documentation of abuse coming from CFAR/MIRI, which is worth paying attention to and amplifying. But it also looks like it isn’t so much recommending exiting the rationalist movement as going off in different but also problematic direction with it. Like the “vegan sith” thing. Or complaining about the removal of Vassar, but iirc Vassar also had sexual harassment complaints about him, so removing him was probably the right call.
So thank you for the detailed links, and I won’t dismiss your complaints, but I am concerned…
Ok, so, I don’t really know where to put this
A few weeks ago I came across this post by ‘Jessicata’ describing various abuse that she received through being involved with MIRI/CFAR.
(The post itself was inspired by an earlier post by Zoe Curzi, another victim of abuse at another cult-like MIRI-adjacent organisation)
The replies to jessi_cata’s post were a level of gaslightning that I hadn’t seen from LW since Kathy Forth’s suicide - the general consensus is that she’s crazy, “taking the spotlight away from Zoe”, and should stop talking.
Of note is Scott Alexander’s response, which accuses Jessicata of being part of a MIRI splinter group called “the Vassarites” who attempt to… intentionally trigger psychosis by an overuse of psychedelics, I guess? This is not to be confused with the ‘Zizzians’, apparently a different MIRI splinter group who also over-use psychedelics to the point of psychosis.
So earlier today my morbid curiosity brought me to jessi_cata’s twitter, where I found a tweet saying that Ziz has committed suicide, and linking to the blog of someone called ‘Gwen Danielson’ who might have committed suicide as well.
On Gwen’s blog I found the blog post that I’ve linked to at the start of this thread, where Gwen details a lot of allegations against Anna Salamon - which are very similar in nature to the ‘Brent Dill confessions’ that Ziz posted on their blog a few years ago
Brent’s DMs are rambling, but his main point is that the MIRI/CFAR modus operandi is to intentionally push people into hysteria and “let them take themselves out of the picture”. (Mind you, Brent himself tries to egg Ziz into suicide at one point in the conversation, saying “I hear Vicodin and whiskey aren’t a bad way to go”)
Brent mentions at least one other x-MIRI critic who committed suicide (‘Grognor’), as well as Eric Bruylant whom he alleges was intentionally spiked with a large dose of LSD before he snapped and assaulted someone, getting himself arrested
So, uh… even accounting for the fact that none of these people are reliable narrators, in large part due to psychotic breaks that resulted from an over-abuse of psychedelics… isn’t it kind of concerning that there are *just so many* former MIRI/CFAR critics who seem to repeatedly go insane from an over-abuse of psychedelics?
So I want to re-iterate - what the *fuck* is happening in CFAR?
I’d be more surprised if something weird weren’t happening at CFAR, really.
uh. So I saw this and did some googling. The author and often mentioned friend are two of the four people that accosted the CFAR retreat two years ago wearing masks and were arrested and criminally charged: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Four-who-wore-hooded-robes-and-Guy-Fawkes-masks-16626537.php
In the time since they appear to have faked their deaths and then one of them has subsequently been exposed as not being dead after being on the scene when one of the other above mentioned arrestees attempted to murder their landlord to prevent an eviction, resulting in the remaining arrestee actually dying in the process when the would-be-murder-victim fought back.
Their attorneys withdraw is informative: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.387955/gov.uscourts.cand.387955.52.1.pdf
we need an undercover citizen journalist bto infiltrate these weirdos and do an expose.
unsurprisingly weird. Also shout out to
can’t we please get a normal vegan movement off the ground before you try adding magic space nazi cosplay to the mix?
Brent is apparently hanging out in the UFO scene these days, afraid his old crew will come after him.
It really makes you think that something this insane can keep going on without getting any attention from the outside world save for a few sneerers on a niche subreddit. You’d think this would be Netflix documentary material. Makes you wonder what other crazy shit is going down elsewhere in the world without anyone noticing.
is there a reason this is r18+? it makes it harder to browse at work the actual accusations are no surprise, the nastiness floating around the phyg has been growing steadily as the folks who are justifiably adverse to racism/sexism and general stupidity elect to leave
cfar is transphobic and racist. ea is racist. it really sucks that the people most in-position to help the world fell for the nazi meme. crazy world out there, stay safe
We had these people on this sub a few months ago.
How seriously are we going to take these people?
Looks like a source that’s very difficult to interpret as to what’s real.
I feel like we have two parties both accusing each other of being abusers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/qcy4fz/dont_know_if_this_fits_here_but_i_have_to_ask_who/