Thomas Pilgrim

Karma: −131

Thomas Pilgrim 17 Dec 2023 6:00 UTC
−36 points
1 ∶ 3
in reply to: Ivy Mazzola’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Also it is funny that if you read those Facebook threads, Michael Vassar is named as a primary source for some of those claims they discuss whether or not they could they be true.
Read the facebook thread again and don’t equivocate. Vassar was the primary source only for the claim that MIRI gave into blackmail. Vassar was not the source for the claims of statutory rape.
The comment that says “I am confident that some of the things on the Miri cult website have nonzero truth to them” was not from Vassar. The discussions about whether the statue of limitations still applies did not involve Vassar either.
Yudkowsky, for his part, went on the record saying that “pedophilia is not the same as ephebophilia.” around the same time. Do you think that is an acceptable opinion?
The miricult stuff was alleged to have happened 10 years ago (and I’m not sure this relates to EA anyway tbh)
The very same Eliezer Yudkowsky came on this forum telling EAs that they should keep money they received from FTX—money that was known to be stolen from FTX customers in SBF’s criminal fraud.

So yeah, I think the question of whether Yudkowsky is a pedophile (or “ephebophile”, to use Yudkowsky’s preferred term) does relate to EA, because his opinion seems to hold a lot of weight in this community.

Thomas Pilgrim 16 Dec 2023 6:13 UTC
−58 points
0 ∶ 11
in reply to: Ivy Mazzola’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Brent Dill was not the only case. There were also accusations of statutory rape against Eliezer Yudkowsky (and others):
https://archive.ph/Kvfus
Here’s an open letter to Vitalik Buterin discussing miricult.com, the donations from Jeffrey Epstein, and other things (if the facebook discussion mentioned in the link is real, it’s pretty damning):
https://fredwynne.medium.com/an-open-letter-to-vitalik-buterin-ce4681a7dbe
I really can’t overstate how important it is for there to be answer about what happened with miricult.com, but all I really know is that no one seems to be willing to talk about it.
Anyways, there’s more:
https://twitter.com/RuffleJax/status/1009140252085243906
https://twitter.com/RuffleJax/status/1009630452322316289
Time Magazine article

https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/

Thomas Pilgrim 16 Dec 2023 5:44 UTC
0 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
My comment was meant to address the part of the original post that says “Alice has similarities to Kathy Forth”

Thomas Pilgrim 15 Dec 2023 18:28 UTC
−46 points
1 ∶ 19
on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Kathy Forth was proven right though: EA/rationalism does have a sexual assault problem. A few weeks after her suicide note was made public it was revealed that in fact CFAR personnel had in fact known about the accusations against Brent Dill and had refused to make them public.
I find Scott Alexander’s conduct in this affair extremely questionable. Despite the fact that Brent had revealed his manipulative nature on SSC , Scott effectively introduced Brent to the Bay Area community, and AFAIK he has not made a blog post publicly calling out Brent Dill as he did with Kathy Forth.
I have documented a timeline of relevant events below:
April 18, 2014 Brent Dill comments “I suppose ‘reactionary’ is just the closest affiliation I can latch onto; my actual worldview is a weird sort of nihilistic, depersonalized, ultra-authoritarian fascism straight out of 1984, so it’s kinda hard to find people to flag tribal affiliation towards. 🙁” https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/18/confounder-of-the-day-how-sexy-your-parents-were/
June 3, 2014 Scott Alexander suggests to Brent Dill that he should move to the Bay Area. Elsewhere in the thread, Brent Dill says “Well, I have a LOT of medical debt, but I am also a pretty good computer programmer. On the gripping hand, I’m not conventionally hirable due to mental instability. 🙁” and “I left Phoenix Arizona for here after burning out all of the Phoenix community’s goodwill with my mental health drama.” https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/03/southeast-michigan-meetup-68/
August 10, 2014 Brent Dill says “manipulation is my only natural skill, and the one that I’ve honed the most. (Remember, narcissistic upbringing; probably a lot of unpleasantly narcissistic tendencies in myself as well.)”, “I completely get and agree with Neoreaction, my only objection is about scale. In the world I want to live in, I am a Sovereign King of my own household, where the only options are Obedience and Exit.”, ” I lived with a harem of attractive, submissive women who called me their ‘Master’ and pretty much voluntarily structured their lives around making me happy.” in SSC comments section https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/09/friendship-is-still-countersignaling/
September 19, 2014 Scott Alexander makes a blog post, asking for people to help Brent Dill move to the Bay Area https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/19/open-thread-5-my-best-friends-threadding/
Date unknown, 2014 Brent Dill joins a Berkeley rationalist group house https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent
November 11, 2017 “An Exploration of Sexual Violence Reduction for Effective Altruism Potential” posted by Kathy Forth https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gFpaHk2aKq2jGijnd/an-exploration-of-sexual-violence-reduction-for-effective
November 17, 2017 “Sexual Violence Risk Reduction—Let’s Do Tracking!” posted by Kathy Forth https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/suiTJeeEMnv7aPu8p/sexual-violence-risk-reduction-let-s-do-tracking
January, 2018 (precise date unknown) ACDC receives report of Brent Dill’s abuse from a former partner of his https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent
March 14, 2018 “EA Survey: Sexual Harassment Questions—Feedback Requested” posted by Kathy Forth https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3oukNayDZXWLzte7c/ea-survey-sexual-harassment-questions-feedback-requested
March 17, 2018 Kathy Forth commits suicide
April 15, 2018 announcement of Kathy Forth’s death https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s93F5JmhCxKDxWukD/remembering-the-passing-of-kathy-forth#
April 2018 (precise date unknown) ACDC recommends not banning Brent Dill from CFAR events, CFAR leadership follows this recommendation https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent
June 18, 2018 Kathy Forth suicide letter published https://medium.com/@itai.ilyich/if-i-cant-have-me-no-one-can-kathleen-rebecca-forth-born-april-11-1980-31c49ed15121
June 22, 2018 9:05 PM Scott Alexander publishes a response to Kathy Forth suicide letter, accusing Kathy of false accusations of sexual assault https://web.archive.org/web/20221111065956/https://www.tumblr.com/slatestarscratchpad/175157697076/content-warning-sexual-harassment-suicide-i
September 17, 2018 mittenscautious publishes “Brent, a warning” https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/brent-a-warning-38e447c55ab0
September 19, 2018 mittenscautious publishes “Warning 2”, <real name redacted>’s account of Brent https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/warning-2-153ed9f5f1f3
September 19, 2018 mittenscautious publishes “Warning 3”, <real name redacted>’s account of Brent https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/warning-3-8097bb6747b1
September 21, 2018 8:22 AM CFAR internal memo regarding Brent Dill is leaked https://pastebin.com/fzwYfDNq
September 21, 2018 CFAR temporarily bans Brent Dill, publishes apology https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2018/acdc
September 21, 2018 r/slatestarcodex mods remove all references to Brent Dill, including external links to medium posts https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9ghlh1/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_september_17/e6e9sbn/?context=999
November 23, 2018 CFAR publishes further update regarding Brent Dill, specifying that he is permanently banned from CFAR events https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2018/further-updates
February 17, 2019 Bay Area REACH declines to make investigation of Brent Dill public, ostensibly to avoid legal liability https://archive.is/6kyIM

Thomas Pilgrim 9 Dec 2023 1:57 UTC
9 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: EliezerYudkowsky’s comment on: Why Yudkowsky is wrong about “covalently bonded equivalents of biology”
A short and oversimplified answer is that the keratin in horn is not as densely linked with bonds as diamond is, and consequently the atoms are less confined (in a way diamond is sort of like a maximally crosslinked material, though it’s not usually described that way).
Generally speaking, crosslinking polymers (including proteins) tends to increase their rigidity. To use a non-living example, when latex is treated with sulfur, the polymer chains also get crosslinked with those same disulfide bonds, producing “vulcanized” rubber which is harder and tougher.
The crosslinks are why you’ll sometimes see people say that vulcanized rubber is “one big molecule” (though in practice it’s hard to tell if the crosslinking was actually so complete and to link every polymer chain). This is also why vulcanized rubber doesn’t really melt, increasing the temperature will cause chemical changes instead (and while I’m not sure, my educated guess it that something similar would happen if you try to melt animal horns).

P.S. I didn’t bring it up earlier, but I don’t think your earlier statement about the way the masses of the atoms affect the bond strength is accurate. As a counterexample I’d point out that the deuterium-oxygen bond in heavy water is actually a little stronger than that of the protium-oxygen bond in regular water, and in that case the only change is using a more massive form of hydrogen.

Thomas Pilgrim 6 Dec 2023 21:41 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: EliezerYudkowsky’s comment on: Why Yudkowsky is wrong about “covalently bonded equivalents of biology”
I think there is an important way of looking at questions like these where, at the final end, you ask yourself, “Okay, but does my argument prove that flesh is in fact as strong as diamond? Why isn’t flesh as strong as diamond, then, if I’ve refuted the original argument for why it isn’t?” and this is the question that leads you to realize that some local strong covalent bonds don’t matter to the argument if those bonds aren’t the parts that break under load.
It’s not clear to me that covalent bonds aren’t the ones that are breaking under load when talking about flesh though.
Covalent crosslinks (such as the disulfide bond you mentioned earlier) aren’t merely an irrelevant edge case, proteins like collagen (which is used in the extracellular matrix and connective tissue) and keratin (used in hair, nails, horns and hooves) also have such crosslinks.

Thomas Pilgrim 16 Mar 2023 1:41 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Under heaven’s eyes: For the dignity of consequentialism
I think most non-utilitarians would say that the real reason you’d save a loved one instead of a stranger is because you *love* them (duh!). And the reason you come across as having an “alienated mentality” is precisely because you intellectualize your decision and dress it up with utilitarian philosophy instead of just admitting that emotions are relevant and matter.
Even your decision to be a utilitarian is probably more motivated by feelings and your own self-conception as a “rational” smart person than anything about the philosophy itself. To wit: I almost never see utilitarians actually construct an argument for why being having utilitarian beliefs is the best way to achieve utilitarian ends. Instead it’s simply assumed.
I think you’ll have a better understanding of yourself, other people, and the world if you admit to yourself that math and rationality aren’t the only things that matter. I don’t think people can truly get beyond limited human perspective, and if you try to take the perspective of the entire universe you’ll just be reinforcing your own biases in a slightly less direct manner.