the girl in question has publicly declared some of the psychological techniques she uses on people in order to induce altered states to be downstream of michael
it’s very easy to claim to be downstream of someone without them actually having much to do with them at all. this would be like me claiming that it was Eliezer’s fault i stubbed my toe because the house i live in is downstream of reading the sequences. i agree that the woman in question claims to be a “vassarite”, but it reads more like cargo culting than anything else.
Michael Vassar has lots of different ideas and is someone who’s willing to share his ideas in a relatively unfiltered way. Some of them are ideas for experiments that could be done.
Without knowing concrete facts of what happened (I only talked to Michael when he was in Berlin):
Let’s say, Michael suggest that doing a certain “psychological technique” might be a valuable experiment. Alice, did the experiment and it had outcome. Michael thinks it had a bad outcome. Alice, however think the outcome is great and continues doing the technique.
If you conclude from that that Michael is bad, because he proposed an experiment that had a bad outcome, you are judging people who are experimenting with the unknown for their love of experimenting with the unknown.
If you want to criticize Michael because he’s to open to experimentation, do that more explicitly because then you need to actually argue the core of the issue. Michael is person who thinks that various Chesterton’s fences are no reason to avoid experimentation.
Michael also is very open about talking to anyone even if the person might be “bad”, so you might also criticize him for speaking with Olivia in the first place instead of kicking Olivia out from he conversations he had.
Given that Ziz was actually a student at CFAR, calling Ziz a CFARian and blaming CFAR for Ziz would make a lot more sense than blaming Michael for Olivia. Jessica suggests that Olivia was also trying to study from Anna Salomon, so probably Olivia was at CFAR at some point, so might also be called a CFARian.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s correct to call it baseless per se, and I continue to have a lot of questions about the history of the rationality community which haven’t really been addressed publicly, but I would very much not say that there’s good reason to like, directly blame Michael for anything recent!
I don’t think he is directly responsible. But recent events are imo further evidence his methods are bad. If I said some dangerous teacher was Buddhist I would not be implicating the Buddha directly. Though it would be some evidence for the Buddha failing as a teacher.
she talked with him sometimes in group conversations that included other people, 2016-2017. idk if they talked one on one. she stopped talking with him as much sometime during this partially due to Bryce Hidysmith’s influence. mostly, she was interested in learning from him because he was a “wizard”; she also thought of Anna Salamon as a “wizard”, perhaps others. Michael wasn’t specifically like “I am going to teach Olivia things as a studient” afaik, I would not describe it as a “teacher/student relationship”. at this point they pretty much don’t talk and Michael thinks Olivia is suspect/harmful due to the whole Eric Bruylant situation where Eric became obsessed with Vassar perhaps due to Olivia’s influence.
the girl in question has publicly declared some of the psychological techniques she uses on people in order to induce altered states to be downstream of michael
it’s very easy to claim to be downstream of someone without them actually having much to do with them at all. this would be like me claiming that it was Eliezer’s fault i stubbed my toe because the house i live in is downstream of reading the sequences. i agree that the woman in question claims to be a “vassarite”, but it reads more like cargo culting than anything else.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I certainly don’t claim that Michael is to blame for her actions.
Michael Vassar has lots of different ideas and is someone who’s willing to share his ideas in a relatively unfiltered way. Some of them are ideas for experiments that could be done.
Without knowing concrete facts of what happened (I only talked to Michael when he was in Berlin):
Let’s say, Michael suggest that doing a certain “psychological technique” might be a valuable experiment. Alice, did the experiment and it had outcome. Michael thinks it had a bad outcome. Alice, however think the outcome is great and continues doing the technique.
If you conclude from that that Michael is bad, because he proposed an experiment that had a bad outcome, you are judging people who are experimenting with the unknown for their love of experimenting with the unknown.
If you want to criticize Michael because he’s to open to experimentation, do that more explicitly because then you need to actually argue the core of the issue. Michael is person who thinks that various Chesterton’s fences are no reason to avoid experimentation.
Michael also is very open about talking to anyone even if the person might be “bad”, so you might also criticize him for speaking with Olivia in the first place instead of kicking Olivia out from he conversations he had.
Given that Ziz was actually a student at CFAR, calling Ziz a CFARian and blaming CFAR for Ziz would make a lot more sense than blaming Michael for Olivia. Jessica suggests that Olivia was also trying to study from Anna Salomon, so probably Olivia was at CFAR at some point, so might also be called a CFARian.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s correct to call it baseless per se, and I continue to have a lot of questions about the history of the rationality community which haven’t really been addressed publicly, but I would very much not say that there’s good reason to like, directly blame Michael for anything recent!
I don’t think he is directly responsible. But recent events are imo further evidence his methods are bad. If I said some dangerous teacher was Buddhist I would not be implicating the Buddha directly. Though it would be some evidence for the Buddha failing as a teacher.
What kind of student teacher relationship did Vassar and Olivia had and for what amount of time did they have it?
she talked with him sometimes in group conversations that included other people, 2016-2017. idk if they talked one on one. she stopped talking with him as much sometime during this partially due to Bryce Hidysmith’s influence. mostly, she was interested in learning from him because he was a “wizard”; she also thought of Anna Salamon as a “wizard”, perhaps others. Michael wasn’t specifically like “I am going to teach Olivia things as a studient” afaik, I would not describe it as a “teacher/student relationship”. at this point they pretty much don’t talk and Michael thinks Olivia is suspect/harmful due to the whole Eric Bruylant situation where Eric became obsessed with Vassar perhaps due to Olivia’s influence.