I’ve read Slate Star Codex on rape a while ago, and I apologize, but I can’t take his opinions seriously.
Maybe some context would be helpful. There was a previous case in EA with a woman named Kathy Forth who made a bunch of accusations. The consensus seems to be that those accusations were false and/or overblown. It seems many people knew this and shared it through a whisper network, and Scott Alexander was one of a fairly small number of people willing to state it publicly. So, hopefully this explains why dismissing him might be a bit of a red flag with me and some other people here.
BTW, I’m wondering if a good heuristic is: If someone makes a lot of accusations, they’re likely to be a liar. If someone receives a lot of accusations, they’re likely to be guilty. The idea being that genuine victimhood (from a crime/false accusation) happens to people at a fairly even background rate, but people who are bad actors tend misbehave more than once.
In my personal experience talking to victims since, I’ve noticed that this is one of the most scary heuristics of all. Every woman I’ve spoken to in this community who comes forth about SA once feels like they are now more than twice as vulnerable for being targeted by predators.
Very personally, several of my house co-founder’s friends had an intentionally loud conversation outside my door about unfortunate things that might happen to “girls who cry wolf” since nobody will believe them on subsequent claims.
Maybe some context would be helpful. There was a previous case in EA with a woman named Kathy Forth who made a bunch of accusations. The consensus seems to be that those accusations were false and/or overblown. It seems many people knew this and shared it through a whisper network, and Scott Alexander was one of a fairly small number of people willing to state it publicly. So, hopefully this explains why dismissing him might be a bit of a red flag with me and some other people here.
BTW, I’m wondering if a good heuristic is: If someone makes a lot of accusations, they’re likely to be a liar. If someone receives a lot of accusations, they’re likely to be guilty. The idea being that genuine victimhood (from a crime/false accusation) happens to people at a fairly even background rate, but people who are bad actors tend misbehave more than once.
In my personal experience talking to victims since, I’ve noticed that this is one of the most scary heuristics of all. Every woman I’ve spoken to in this community who comes forth about SA once feels like they are now more than twice as vulnerable for being targeted by predators.
Very personally, several of my house co-founder’s friends had an intentionally loud conversation outside my door about unfortunate things that might happen to “girls who cry wolf” since nobody will believe them on subsequent claims.
That’s horrifying, sorry to hear about it
wait, what? how do we know this?
I underwent a palpable shock at this factoid, it was unexpected, while also being sad etc.