DE-RATTING 1: MAIN LETTER

This is a multi-part letter of resignation from anything involving the Austin rationalist community. I have addressed what I believe to be every concern of both mine and yours. The total wordcount is approximately 10,000. There are several parts:

Preliminary: the original accusation and my responses https://app.simplenote.com/p/wKW9DP
1. The main letter, which is this: https://app.simplenote.com/p/02HJS2
1.a. Memory / awareness as it relates to disregarding archival: https://app.simplenote.com/p/P5Jn9Y
2. Clarifications on frivolous shit: https://app.simplenote.com/p/8gcsJY
3. My concerns going forward: https://app.simplenote.com/p/lmlrpv

disclosure: I have rewritten this partially from a letter I originally wrote someone else.

****** 1. DO NOT REINVITE ME ******

Some of you have talked about reinviting me. I am informing you that this is pointless. Even if you are interested in me returning, I am not interested in me returning.

Not only do I *not want to be* part of the Austin LW community any longer I in fact *do not respect* -- i.e. either look down on on or pity or think are backward -- some of the norms and values structuring the community discourse.

****** 2. WHAT HAPPENED ******

Recall in the original list of accusations that one involved privacy/screenshotting. The "uncomfortable" reason is derivative of this same reason, i.e. the incident with privacy comprises both the "sharing screenshots" and "making others uncomfortable" part of the reasons for banning me.

This incident occurred when I shared a conversation in a groupchat where I was asking for what was in effect relationship advice. (This is not entirely accurate, but for !!!privacy reasons!!! this should be enough for your purposes.) That's the extent of things. One person who is staying unnamed left over this; Kim left when Arpan posted his dumb "actually by one definition of doxxing Scott wasn't akshually doxxed" post.

One person who I am again not naming for $privacy responded in a way that -- I am not going to sugar coat this -- I find insane. This person went through the entire message history between Arpan and myself and manually deleted every message. We know this was manual because there was a time delay and because certain messages were not deleted that would have been if they used a bot. That is hundreds of messages. It took to do this. For... what exactly? Do you think bisexual Indian techbros in the process of moving to Miami are going to rob your house or something? (This is rhetorical; there is almost certainly no reasonable justification grounded in probable or even plausible events. This is volatile threat-modeling, and I am somewhat disturbed at what inhabiting the mood necessary to do this would be like. I am also not the only one.)

For elaboration on my reasoning used to make the above statements, see the below section about privacy and information.

****** 3. UNSTABLE COMMUNITY STANDING ******

Anyway, as far as I know, not that many people have been banned in the Austin community's history. The people I know of who have been banned have been:

- Nicole's ex
- Steff
- me

In that order.

Steff was banned because some of you were insane enough to think she was leaking to the NYT or something. Either way, you clearly weren't rigorous enough in this decision. I don't think much has changed. There is a Gell Mann amnesia type scenario at work here for the ability of organizers to act rigorously and coherently and transparently, among other things, and the burden of proof is why you're right *this* time.

Consider, also, that anyone supporting the decision might be doing so because they, too, don't want to get banned. Once you've opened this box you can't close it.

So, it's clear that:

1. Getting on the bad side of certain people strongly reduces your chances of staying if organizers find something they feel might warrant banning

2. The group has a history of banning for schizo shit (see: the steffisode, the fact that you banned an entire city because anyone who has touched a breakfast taco might be an Alfred MacDonald psyop)

This, in and of itself, should make you question how much time you want to invest here, when linear time/attention means you are necessarily ignoring other groups you could be participating in.

****** 4. DISREGARD FOR ARCHIVAL ******

Those of you who have been paying attention might have noticed my activity drop before then. That's not saying much because I am active a fuckton, but there *was* a noticeable drop.

Specifically, I started to become less interested when the admins deleted the general-fork channel, which had thousands of messages in it. This made it clear to me that the Austin rationalists -- or at least those in charge of the administrative end -- do not value archival as a principle. I don't respect this.

Archival is, on balance, at least as important as privacy and probably more important. I was fucking stunned when "general-fork" was deleted because of the extremely weak reason that "there were too many channels" and it was "hard to follow". Are you fucking kidding me? Are you absolutely fucking serious?! That is UNCONSCIONABLE. The record is gone. You can't get it back. Everyone who participated no longer has access. WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF PARTICIPATING, EVER, IF YOU ARE GOING TO WIPE THE MEMORY OF IT? And for what, your... OCD? Convenience? Short term comfort? Holy shit. That is inexcusable.

FOR A CLARIFICATION ON WHY "WIPING MEMORY" IS A BIG DEAL AT ALL, SEE 1.A. HERE: https://app.simplenote.com/p/P5Jn9Y ******

This is one among several major issues I have with how the community is run. The information/communication norms are also concerning enough for me to decide against participating again.

****** 5. INFORMATION, HONESTY, OPENNESS AND SO FORTH TO SOME EXTENT CONFLICTS WITH PRIVACY ******

The unfortunate reality is that there is a tradeoff between privacy and transparency and authenticity. I prefer openness and transparency and knowing that I can trust people to tell me what's actually on their mind. Once I know you're sacrificing transparency around me, the vibe is like talking to a colleague who at one point tried to fire you. There will be that strained elephant-in-the-room awkwardness which, clearly, this community is not at all good at clearing out of the way. Neither I nor many of the people I know are enthusiastic about the thought process of "what is everyone *really* thinking" over the course of an evening, and I don't feel like I'm any longer able to trust people to tell me what they're really thinking. At the very least, I'm going to worry that any interaction we're on the receiving end of will be muted and self-censored by you.

Extreme adherence to confidentiality reduces available information to something below even hearsay. You are left to take people at their word, which is epistemically about the worst place to be in because the word of people in general is extremely unreliable, as is memory itself. no one should #believeher or #believehim. Accurate records of information are what keep us from being medieval.

It's difficult for me to respect someone who thinks privacy is more important than accurate archival or an accurate record. If this concern isn't informational, or isn't rooted in something else ultimately after a long chain of priorities concerned with the truth on some level — if, in other words, the schizo concern for privacy is just for personal comfort — then this is in result no different than other comfort-over-truth ideologies that many of you are familiar with and I will have more difficulty respecting you.

Some of you think privacy is reasonable all the time, or reasonable in and of itself. I invite you to consider that privacy is in fact a proxy concern for something else, and almost rarely an issue in-and-of itself.

You can tell what privacy issues are irrational and/or copes by using a counterfactual where completely banal information about someone is known. For example, I have never heard anyone at any school cafeteria say "doesn't it bother you that the school knows *exactly what we're eating*" because of course the response is "so what if they do?" -- what, exactly, could a school do with your lunch history? Feed you more square pizza? (If for some reason you were a 1-out-of-thousands kid who actually did think this, please go to any large public school ever. Kids do not have this concern because this is not a thing to be threatened by and if you bring up this concern you will get looks like you're from another planet.)

But it's very obvious that most of us have passively accepted the outcomes of our school knowing our eating patterns and just don't worry about it. If people who claim privacy-qua-privacy were for real, they'd be concerned about wacko domains like the school lunch scenario and this would expand to just about every scenario you can think of. (You'd feel paralyzed at having an order history when doing online shopping, I guess.)

A lot of privacy issues really resolve to things like:

1. What kind of laws/penalties you think society should have? Example: I am opposed to police knowing what drugs I use, but that's because bullshit laws about drugs exist that would get me arrested, and I think those laws should not exist; also, police just in general will find reasons to arrest you. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE) Meanwhile, I don't care if some random person in a different country knows what drugs I use.

2. What kinds of threats you think may exist if someone knows your information? Example: The location of stashed money in my house is not something I want known, obviously because that money puts me at a higher risk of break-ins. By contrast, I don't care if someone knows who I bank with. They're welcome to try to rob a bank.

3. What kinds of judgments you think may befall you? Example: If someone knows your college transcript, they may make erroneous conclusions about what you know/don't know even if your GPA is perfect. By contrast, I don't care if you see my grades in elementary school. Who cares? It's elementary school. (Also, how many guys care about height privacy if they're in the most favorable category? I'm not aware if this has been empirically studied but we have a pretty good intuition about the answer.)

Privacy pertaining to the IRS is a great example. Recently, it was decided that if you have a total of over $600 in PayPal transactions this must be reported to the IRS. Given that a significant chunk of my income comes from RedBubble and therefore PayPal, I am obviously upset by this. However, that's because I want to gaslight the IRS and have more money. Not being able to gaslight the IRS gets in the way of my ability to do that. If I have the same amount of money, I don't care what the IRS knows, because this is about me having more money, which I obviously like and want, as opposed to less money which I don't like as much. (And probably if it were reversed, i.e. the IRS was *giving* people huge chunks of money in exchange for a privacy loss, they'd be okay with it.)

Just to be absolutely clear, because I am sure someone will misread me: I am not saying that privacy is bad; I'm saying it's a proxy concern for something else, and those concerns can have varying levels of reasonability.

****** 6. COMMUNICATION NORMS ******

I have had minimal contact from others since this happened, which is upsetting. A decent amount of people have gone out of their way to keep contact with me; a larger number of people have not, but that's not the issue. The crux of the issue is that I *CANNOT* respect people who are, as a matter of course, weasely; this is to say, indirect/passive-aggressive communicators. This does not mean I expect others to be bold. My friend/ex Rachel for example is extremely shy, but she will bring up an issue when it counts, and she definitely won't hide anything from you and she'll tell you what she really thinks if you ask. For as introverted and curt as her speaking style can be, she is very open. Many of my introverted friends are this way.

For as much as I've tried to stay in a positive mood about it, the way I've been treated afterward — the radio silence and hush-hush minimalism, clearly out of some fear stoked by whatever happened — has felt both hurtful and disrespectful. It makes me feel as if these friendships are precarious, and I feel uneasy about continuing to maintain friendships that are so affected by the verdicts of a handful of community organizers.

This may surprise you -- or not -- but in work environments I have a radically different personality because I have to if I want luxuries like "not being homeless" and "health insurance." My actual personality is not even remotely safe-for-work, which necessitates a worksona, which is different enough that coworkers who met me outside of work were surprised at the reality of hearing me speak swear words, nevermind everything else. The alfred-is-an-iceberg-meme meme is in fact real.

And worksonae are suffocating. (Most of you work in tech, so perhaps this is not the case in the tech industry; it is so widely elsewhere.) Muzzling 90% of your thought at any given time requires conscious effort and is psychologically taxing and at times extremely stressful. If any of you have even remotely paid attention to my ideological leanings, I have an intense distaste for self-censorship, including the kind exercised at corporate-bullshit-heavy workplaces.

The *very appeal* of the rationalist community was that I could speak aggressively uncensored. This is permanently and inexorably no longer possible on the discord, because anything I say could be material for some future banning, which means *EVEN IF* I did return it would be a potential waste of my time; to remain with some degree of confidence I would have to self-censor much more than I have in the past, which makes the discord fungible with any other discussion environment, which means that it's not unique or worth participating in. My interest in attending meetups had *already diminished* after it occurred to me that I was having to self-censor post-aella (see part 2) to remain unbanned, and if I am doing that IRL *and* on discord I might as well be at work. This is why my interest had been limited to parties, and now I'm disinterested in even that.

This is less of an issue to me, but it still is a minor one, and since I'm aiming for transparency I should include it: the communication norms are, at times, suffocatingly white upper middle class (WUMC). The fact that the community is made up of people who are (1) mostly white (2) mostly making six figures (3) mostly from upper middle class or better backgrounds and (4) mostly not-from-Texas is simply a fact; this was recorded as such in the poll subthread.

(If you are concerned with privacy, by the way, I suggest making "polls" a high priority to delete, since most of your discord has internet-stalkable demographic information there. Note, also, that I could have just been silent on this and let you worry about it later, which is what I would have done if I were truly uninterested in your concerns.)

The WUMCness of the communication is palpable in some ways that are understandable, and some ways that are outright irritating. Understandably, there is a low bar for what is considered a hostile interaction. (This is understandable because you can't raise the bar for hostile interaction without being around it, and also because that's not necessarily a good thing anyway.) Also understandably, the group is default-high-trust-until-it's-not-anymore(-then-ban-anyone-suspicious). (It's reasonable to trust someone until you have reason to believe you can't; the issue is that many of you just haven't been burned by enough people, but I don't *want* you to get burned by people.)

Irritatingly, the group will look at behaviors with an overmedicalized lens, such as calling basic hesitancies/insecurities "social anxiety"when in fact they're just normal fragility. In many cases there is functionally little difference between "stop being socially anxious jfc" and "stop being a pussy jfc" but the latter is framed as a thing you just decide to do and the former has been pathologized into a condition that you need a whole course of paid treatment to get over. I want to say that social anxiety would be automatically meaningful if clinical, but I can't even say that because anyone who has sought a diagnosis to get medication knows that you can (and if you are committed, will) find a doctor or psychologist or related professional who just senses you want a rubber stamp and gives it to you. (There is a contradiction in attitudes that is to some extent unsurprising, which is the extent to which ADHD is acknowledged as misdiagnosed -- and it is quite misdiagnosed, btw -- while the more victimhood-enabling diagnoses like social anxiety or whatever are treated as automatically legitimate. I think the reason, like most oddities of this kind, is partially class related and partially subcultural, but here specifically social anxiety fits well with a WUMC model of social behavior while ADHD is either at odds with it or orthogonal.)

Infuriatingly, there is a seriousness in parsing jokes that accompanies a sense of schizo-safetyism, rendering so many otherwise hilarious interactions unsatisfying or unfunny or both. This is not to say that y'all are serious people on the whole; in fact, on many topics you are not serious *enough*. What I mean by this is that the threat modeling here is so distorted that if I say "if you keep posting cringe on twitter I'm calling in a bomb threat to your apartment" some of you will TREAT THIS AS IN ANY WAY PLAUSIBLE. This is not an autism thing, because I know autistic people who easily process this kind of humor; it's a threat-modeling thing. In any comedically well-adjusted group, this would not happen. Because it does, social realism is not so much thrown out the window but shot out of the fucking building by trebuchet.

To put the antithesis of these communication norms to the test, I've started pumping more people into an alt-rationalist discord with norms more forward on what I've learned is called "sharp culture". https://sanerthanlasagna.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/soft-vs-sharp-culture/ This has become quite talkative; I think over the course of one day the #general equivalent had about 800-900 messages. Since doing this it's occurred to me that I was primarily interested in having a place to share thoughts, but more importantly I've learned that I prefer these norms greatly to soft culture norms, which I regret to inform you that the Austin discord is.

*That* is one rumor that is true, and I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. You're bouba.

****** CONCLUSIONS ******

This is good, because it's like being cheated on really early in a relationship. On one hand I feel betrayed -- but on the other, I'm really glad I learned about this incompatibility in advance.



part 2: https://app.simplenote.com/p/8gcsJY