Frankly fascinating how much higher the standard of evidence was for
Brent
Dill. Both Ozy and unitofcaring
indicated that they’d heard testimony from reliable people in their
lives and seen material evidence of Brent’s abuse. Unitofcaring
emphasized how much she hated callouts in her callout, despite
participating in the Quinn thread without qualms.
Meanwhile, curated screenshots (y’know, the things a kid could edit
in Paint and which Eron did edit for privacy and brevity, at very least)
and anecdotes from a heartbroken ex were enough to condemn Zoe
Quinn.
That double standard has the unintended effect of making their own
community more dangerous. So that’ a great victory for rationalism,
obviously.
Actually I'm searching a bit, he does seem to be openly friends with this "Multiheaded" person as well as with "drethelin"/"Misha". Not sure if they became friends before or after Gamergate.
Wait, you mean an anti-feminist with a strong anti-feminist bias might lie claim to be a feminist ? No one could POSSIBLY do that, right ?
(/s if it's not clear)
I’m wracking my brain for examples of people saying the evidence against Brent was bad/insufficient, or of other behavior that would justify saying the standard of evidence was higher
Unless I’m much mistaken, the delay in publicizing Brent’s actions was at the request of the victims, not because people didn’t think there was enough evidence
To [paraphrase](https://reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8twc72/serious_a_post_about_jaxs_reactions_to_the/) Jax: *why weren't they doing anything to protect their friends?*
I think (to paraphrase Jax again) they weren't doing anything to protect their friends. You believe in their rationalizations over someone who was abused by rationalists' own statements about what is allowing abuse in the rationalist community.
To quote a comment you didn’t respond to, not publicizing =/= not doing anything, and I'm not sure how helping in private vs public relates to standards of evidence?
If you’re asserting that they’re lying about the things they did in private, or if you’re asserting they should have ignored the wishes of survivors, that’s your prerogative but I’m not sure how to respond productively.
Rationalizations again. Again, I'm trusting the woman who was abused by rationalists over you rationalists. Especially given Ozy was one of the people she explicitly referred to when making that statement, and this was before Brent Dill was revealed to be an abuser-rapist.
I'm pointing out the ease with which Ozy called out Zoe Quinn and the significantly higher standard of evidence they needed to accuse Brent.
To the best of my knowledge, Ozy doesn't know Zoe or Eron. Heck, in the posts they quote in their post, *Eron* wasn't calling Zoe abusive. (ETA: Although it is possible that 'manipulative' and 'jerk' were him using the language he understood at the time, and he'd go back and call her an abuser now.) But Ozy felt comfortable enough to label Zoe an abuser, even though the evidence was from a collection of motivated, curated screenshots.
Fast forward to Brent. Apparently he's been a massive, obvious creep for years. He's discussed his hugely maladaptive views on rationalist messageboards. People who knew him were aware of his behaviour. There was a whisper network about him. And yet, none of that was enough for Ozy. They only came forward after a few other rationalist heavyweights condemned him in no uncertain terms.
To me, that's a clear case of an in-group member being given the benefit of the doubt, unreasonably so.
> They only came forward after a few other rationalist heavyweights condemned him in no uncertain terms.
Is that the case? Theirs was the first or second post about Brent I saw, possibly after TUOC, but I might well have just missed earlier ones.
The blogpost in question emerged a full month after the allegations against Brent. TUOC's info-post came out on September 22; Ozy wrote on their blog October 30th. They reblogged some briefer anti-Brent info and responded to questions on their tumblr before that. Their post also followed some unsuccessful intra-community efforts to sanction Brent.
Basically, the timeline comes across like feet-dragging rather than due diligence to me.
I know the post in the OP was much more recent, yes. But Ozy actively helping to spread the mittenscautious et al posts, and putting their reputation behind those posts (*"I personally know one of the authors and can vouch for the accuracy of the description. I have been troubled for a long time by Brent’s continued presence in the rationalist community, but have not wanted to speak publicly because the victims did not wish to come forward. I am glad that they are coming forward now and hope this will prevent future victimization"*, from their Sept 19 post), doesn't feel like it fits a feet-dragging narrative very well.
> unsuccessful intra-community efforts to sanction Brent
I'm not sure what you mean - what more sanction could be delivered by a community than banning someone from community spaces? Law enforcement could be called in, ofc, though my understanding is that a lot of survivors (entirely sanely) want to avoid the stress and re-traumatization that can be involved :/
> I have been troubled for a long time by Brent’s continued presence in the rationalist community, but have not wanted to speak publicly because the victims did not wish to come forward.
Why is it essential for victims to come forward before Brent can be publicly accused? Can't Ozy-- with the full weight of their reputation behind them-- say, "Hey guys, I have it on reliable evidence that a violent rapist comes to our parties. I feel morally obligated to tell you this."? Policing a community that functions as a BDSM meet-up group/housing arrangement network/babysitting club should, to my mind, require rigorous standards.
Or to put it another way, we consider it mealy-mouthed whining when the Catholic church says, "Man, we wanted to protect the victims and therefore we buried and ignored Father XYZ's crimes, allowing him to reoffend again and again." Why is this situation different?
As for Ozy's (ETA: tumblr)post vs. Ozy's blog, I take content on the latter more seriously. The former is where they post Zootopia fanfiction. Their independent Brent condemnation post, both in terms of content and location, is suspiciously late in the game.
> I'm not sure what you mean - what more sanction could be delivered by a community than banning someone from community spaces?
CFAR reviewed Brent's actions and initially decided he wasn't such a bad dude. (Link here, for more information: https://jbeshir.tumblr.com/post/178335220773/responses-to-the-brent-dill-affair) Then, they realized how badly they screwed things up: http://rationality.org/resources/updates/2018/acdc
In short, mass resignations and the inability to say, "Rapists are bad," make me think that Ozy should have posted way sooner.
> To the best of my knowledge, Ozy doesn't know Zoe or Eron.
however a pile of other rationalists do know Eron, so Ozy is considerably closer in the social graph (and was at the time as well).
I always feel guilty when I vaguely dislike someone and don't really know why. It's a relief when that person turns out to be a fucking GamerGate dead-ender. It happens surprisingly frequently.
> i always feel guilty when i vaguely dislike someone and don't really know why. it's a relief when that person turns out to be a fricking gamergate dead-ender. it happens surprisingly frequently.
FTFY
I assume Randy is saying that a feminist is obligated to take all claims of domestic emotional abuse seriously without some compelling reason not to. I know that was a bad-faith GG talking point for about an hour in 2014.
You're the mod, you're in charge.
But yeah, it's a plague. I think I can blame it on we focusing too much on /r/slatestarcodex and getting a huge chunk of rationalists practicing intra-cult fighting. I've been trying to fix this and all of my posts' comment sections are the who's who of rationalist infiltration of this subreddit complaining how of much a bad person I am for criticizing their fraction of the "community".
*Trump voice on* When the rationalist community sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing Gamergate apologetics. They're bringing anti-feminism. They're MRAs. I speak to mods and they tell us what we're getting. And it only makes common sense. They're sending us not the right people. It's coming from more than /r/slatestarcodex. It's coming from all over Rationalist Tumblr and Twitter, and it's coming probably – probably – from LessWrong. But we don't know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don't know what's happening. And it's got to stop and it's got to stop fast. *Trump voice off*
That, plus the weird persistence of GamerGate apologetics in the most unlikely places.
That stench was completely overwhelming on reddit for a full year, until Trump came along. It never quite went away.
Just to pick an example: there is currently [a +20 comment](https://reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9ug9ut/ff29180d_gets_it/e95dljd/) on a first-page thread from a friend and ex-colleague of Scott Alexander who include Slate Star Codex in her blogroll saying that she "hung around LW since the beginning and learned a lot from it, and from Scott as well".
Why should I leave a LWer, friend of Scooter, and SSC fan, out of it ? Zinnia Jones is a member of the catchment area that sneerclub sneers at. She extensively promote LW and SSC e.g. [here](https://genderanalysis.net/2015/06/stop-calling-trans-women-male-gender-analysis-07/), [here](https://genderanalysis.net/2017/10/medical-professionals-increasingly-agree-trans-women-are-female-trans-men-are-male/), [here](https://genderanalysis.net/2016/01/everything-is-pretty-great-gender-analysis-15/), [here](https://genderanalysis.net/2017/06/depersonalization-in-gender-dysphoria-widespread-and-widely-unrecognized/), and in her ["More Trans" project](https://genderanalysis.net/topic/more-trans/).
If there are things y'all need me to do or not do, I'm potentially open to that. I don't often come here or to SSC and I'm likely out of the loop on a lot of things.
Wait, things we all need you to do or not do in order to do what ? Do you really want to join the sub dedicated to mocking the part of the blogosphere you described as your key philosophical influence ? Anyway, the only advice I can give without feeling weird and/or stepping over the mods' magisterium is to look at what people here and elsewhere highlight as LWist-SSCist shittiness and decide if you think they are wrong to highlight it ([as you sometimes do](http://zjemptv.tumblr.com/post/152678801025/multiheaded1793-slatestarscratchpad)) or they are right to highlight it ([as you sometimes do too](https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1010354664334921728)). You can take OP as an example, do you think I am right or wrong to highlight it ? Or not do that, if you don't want to, I guess.
I do keep telling people to stop beating it, but /u/completely-ineffable is also dead right. If you can't see what the problem is with this shit maybe you're part of the problem. This isn't /r/sneerclub because there are fascists on /r/slatestarcodex, it's because "rationalism" is bullshit even without the fascism.
Would you consider doing a longer explainer post on this?
It does sound a lot more potentially interesting and useful than shitting on the Dragon Army guy.
The parts of Rationalism we focus on, that I know about, have been in decline for years. Newcomers to SSC/LW are generally young, naive, or right-wing dregs.
I agree, but it's not like those are separate rationalisms. To pick an example, Ozy Frantz work for [this EA cult](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9q23s5/apparently_the_rationalists_are_making_their_own/).
> Sure, but EA is huge, and it would be nice to see more posts addressing it directly.
Make them if you want, but please stop trying to turn /r/sneerclub into a moral crusade. If people successfully try to make this subreddit into something *useful* I'm leaving. And for fucks sake stop saying "we" like I have anything in common with you outside shitting on internet morons.
Perhaps because the "gossip" led to an harassment campaign that transmuted into a misogynist anti-feminist hate group that still continue to this day and was a key event in the creation of the alt-right ?
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate)
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Frankly fascinating how much higher the standard of evidence was for Brent Dill. Both Ozy and unitofcaring indicated that they’d heard testimony from reliable people in their lives and seen material evidence of Brent’s abuse. Unitofcaring emphasized how much she hated callouts in her callout, despite participating in the Quinn thread without qualms.
Meanwhile, curated screenshots (y’know, the things a kid could edit in Paint and which Eron did edit for privacy and brevity, at very least) and anecdotes from a heartbroken ex were enough to condemn Zoe Quinn.
That double standard has the unintended effect of making their own community more dangerous. So that’ a great victory for rationalism, obviously.
lmaooo
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