[meta for onlookers: I’m investing more energy into holding John to high standards here than Jacy because I’m more convinced that John is a good faith actor and I care about his standards being high. I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”, but I get a bad smell from the way he seems to consistently turns to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions, so absent further evidence I’m just not very interested in engaging]
“I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”.”
I don’t understand this and claims like it. To recap, he was thrown out of university in 2012 for sexual misconduct. Someone who was at Brown around this time told me that no-one else was expelled from Brown for sexual misconduct the entire they were there. This suggests that his actions were very bad.
Despite being expelled from Brown, at least five women in the EA community then complain to CEA because of his sexual misconduct. CEA thinks these actions are bad enough to ban him from all EA events and dissociate from him completely. Despite Jacy giving the impression that was due to clumsy flirting, I strongly doubt that this is true. Clumsy flirting must happen a fair amount in this community given the social awkwardness of EAs, but few people are expelled from the community as a result. This again suggests that the allegations against Jacy are very bad.
This should update us towards the view that the Brown allegations were also true (noting that Jacy denies that they are true).
In your view he also makes statements that are gross exaggerations/delusional in order to further his career (though I mustn’t say that he lied).
I think we have enough evidence for the ‘bad actor’ categorisation.
It’s from “man things in the world are typically complicated, and I haven’t spent time digging into this, but although there surface level facts look bad I’m aware that selective quoting of facts can give a misleading impression”.
I’m not trying to talk you out of the bad actor categorization, just saying that I haven’t personally thought it through / investigated enough that I’m confident in that label. (But people shouldn’t update on my epistemic state! It might well be I’d agree with you if I spent an hour on it; I just don’t care enough to want to spend that hour.)
Yes, I personally want to do that, because I want to spend time engaging with good faith actors and having them in gated spaces I frequent.
In general I have a strong perfectionist streak, which I channel only to try to improve things which are good enough to seem worth the investment of effort to improve further. This is just one case of that.
(Criticizing is not itself something that comes with direct negative effects. Of course I’d rather place larger sanctions on bad faith actors than good faith actors, but I don’t think criticizing should be understood as a form of sanctioning.)
Is Jacy’s comment above where he seemed to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions? Or the Apology post? I don’t really see how you’re getting that smell. John wrote a very negative comment, whether or not you think that negativity was justified, so it makes sense for Jacy to reply by pointing out inaccuracies that would make him seem more positive. I think it would take an extremely unusual person to engage in a discussion like this that isn’t steering in a more positive direction towards them. I also just took the questions he “ignored” as being ones where he doesn’t see them as inaccurate.
This is all not even mentioning how absolutely miserable and tired Jacy must be to go through this time and time again, again regardless of what you think of him as a person...
In my opinion, this is a bizarre comment. You seem to have more sympathy with Jacy, who has been accused of sexual harassment at least six times in this life for having to defend himself than eg the people who are reading this who he has harassed, or the people who are worried that he might harass them in the future as he tries to rejoin the community.
Actually no I got reasonably good vibes from the comment above. I read it as a bit defensive but it’s a fair point that that’s quite natural if he’s being attacked.
I remember feeling bad about the vibes of the Apology post but I haven’t gone back and reread it lately. (It’s also a few years old, so he may be a meaningfully different person now.)
I actually didn’t mean for any of my comments here to get into attacks on our defence of Jacy. I don’t think I have great evidence and don’t think I’m a very good person to listen to on this! I just wanted to come and clarify that my criticism of John was supposed to be just that, and not have people read into it a defence of Jacy.
(I take it that the bar for deciding personally to disengage is lower than for e.g. recommending others do that. I don’t make any recommendations for others. Maybe I’ll engage with Jacy later; I do feel happier about recent than old evidence, but it hasn’t yet moved me to particularly wanting to engage.)
[meta for onlookers: I’m investing more energy into holding John to high standards here than Jacy because I’m more convinced that John is a good faith actor and I care about his standards being high. I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”, but I get a bad smell from the way he seems to consistently turns to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions, so absent further evidence I’m just not very interested in engaging]
“I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”.”
I don’t understand this and claims like it. To recap, he was thrown out of university in 2012 for sexual misconduct. Someone who was at Brown around this time told me that no-one else was expelled from Brown for sexual misconduct the entire they were there. This suggests that his actions were very bad.
Despite being expelled from Brown, at least five women in the EA community then complain to CEA because of his sexual misconduct. CEA thinks these actions are bad enough to ban him from all EA events and dissociate from him completely. Despite Jacy giving the impression that was due to clumsy flirting, I strongly doubt that this is true. Clumsy flirting must happen a fair amount in this community given the social awkwardness of EAs, but few people are expelled from the community as a result. This again suggests that the allegations against Jacy are very bad.
This should update us towards the view that the Brown allegations were also true (noting that Jacy denies that they are true).
In your view he also makes statements that are gross exaggerations/delusional in order to further his career (though I mustn’t say that he lied).
I think we have enough evidence for the ‘bad actor’ categorisation.
It’s from “man things in the world are typically complicated, and I haven’t spent time digging into this, but although there surface level facts look bad I’m aware that selective quoting of facts can give a misleading impression”.
I’m not trying to talk you out of the bad actor categorization, just saying that I haven’t personally thought it through / investigated enough that I’m confident in that label. (But people shouldn’t update on my epistemic state! It might well be I’d agree with you if I spent an hour on it; I just don’t care enough to want to spend that hour.)
Here is an interesting post on the strength of the evidence provided by multiple independent accusations of sexual misconduct throughout one’s life.
http://afro-optimist.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-you-should-probably-believe-ford.html
Isn’t the upshot of this that you want to be more critical of good faith actors than bad faith actors? That seems wrong to me.
Yes, I personally want to do that, because I want to spend time engaging with good faith actors and having them in gated spaces I frequent.
In general I have a strong perfectionist streak, which I channel only to try to improve things which are good enough to seem worth the investment of effort to improve further. This is just one case of that.
(Criticizing is not itself something that comes with direct negative effects. Of course I’d rather place larger sanctions on bad faith actors than good faith actors, but I don’t think criticizing should be understood as a form of sanctioning.)
Is Jacy’s comment above where he seemed to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions? Or the Apology post? I don’t really see how you’re getting that smell. John wrote a very negative comment, whether or not you think that negativity was justified, so it makes sense for Jacy to reply by pointing out inaccuracies that would make him seem more positive. I think it would take an extremely unusual person to engage in a discussion like this that isn’t steering in a more positive direction towards them. I also just took the questions he “ignored” as being ones where he doesn’t see them as inaccurate.
This is all not even mentioning how absolutely miserable and tired Jacy must be to go through this time and time again, again regardless of what you think of him as a person...
In my opinion, this is a bizarre comment. You seem to have more sympathy with Jacy, who has been accused of sexual harassment at least six times in this life for having to defend himself than eg the people who are reading this who he has harassed, or the people who are worried that he might harass them in the future as he tries to rejoin the community.
Actually no I got reasonably good vibes from the comment above. I read it as a bit defensive but it’s a fair point that that’s quite natural if he’s being attacked.
I remember feeling bad about the vibes of the Apology post but I haven’t gone back and reread it lately. (It’s also a few years old, so he may be a meaningfully different person now.)
I actually didn’t mean for any of my comments here to get into attacks on our defence of Jacy. I don’t think I have great evidence and don’t think I’m a very good person to listen to on this! I just wanted to come and clarify that my criticism of John was supposed to be just that, and not have people read into it a defence of Jacy.
(I take it that the bar for deciding personally to disengage is lower than for e.g. recommending others do that. I don’t make any recommendations for others. Maybe I’ll engage with Jacy later; I do feel happier about recent than old evidence, but it hasn’t yet moved me to particularly wanting to engage.)