conflict theorist, ama
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As a non-Bay rationalist lurker, I was kinda taken in by Brent's SSC comments and his "sad shy nerd trampled by the cruel social world" thing. Should I be taking a lesson away from this?
Anonymous
On one hand, as the saying goes, if someone tells you who they are, believe them. Brent told us over and over and over again who he was, through his misogynistic and rapey and frankly cognitively distorted writings, and we didn’t believe him, and at least two people paid the price. Maybe we should have listened.
On the other hand, Brent is an abuser who plays on people’s best and most virtuous tendencies: their kindness and compassion and desire to help the weak and struggling and outcast. And there are many many people who write things that are as obviously cognitively distorted as Brent’s writings were, but who would never abuse or rape or harass anyone. I think it would be a mistake to say “I don’t want to be taken in by Brent-like people, so I’m just not going to be kind to people who are suffering and hurting and maybe don’t have the most insight into what’s going on.”
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valiantfoxdinosaur reblogged this from hamnox and added: Yeah, I…think I had the impression that he seemed self-aware enough about his distortions that I too figured he’d, if...
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hamnox reblogged this from valiantfoxdinosaur and added:
Highly respected but controversial is true.I sympathized greatly with the ‘no amount of people claiming they respect and...
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taymonbeal said: @spiralingintocontrol: I feel that misses an important nuance. Most humans have an anti-cynicism bias and rationalist susceptibility to cynicism mostly comes out of an earnest attempt to fight this. (A few are just regular cynics, but not most.)
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spiralingintocontrol said: I would summarize this as “some rationalists have a pro-cynicism bias”
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tchtchtchtchtch reblogged this from taymonbeal and added:
I’m not sure what you mean by “out-there”. If you mean epistemically out there, idk, maybe? but at least some of the...
Well, I didn’t like him. I think he’s still respected in some of the more out-there parts of the community, but I care...
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