All of which is to say that I spend a decent chunk of the time being the guy in the room who is mostaware of the fuckery swirling around me, and therefore the guy who is most bothered by it. It’s like being a native French speaker and dropping in on a high school French class in a South Carolina public school, or like being someone who just learned how to tell good kerning from bad keming. I spend a lot of time wincing, and I spend a lot of time not being able to fix The Thing That’s Happening because the inferential gaps are so large that I’d have to lay down an hour’s worth of context just to give the other people the capacity to notice that something is going sideways.
If Duncan is going to make claims like these it is important people are allowed to cite his actual track record. His track record is quite poor. In my understanding, he was a close associate to serial sexual abuser in the rationalist-adjacent community (Brent), for example Duncan was involved in running Brent’s burning man group. It is public record he was among the last defenders of said abuser. Duncan will dispute this characterization but I will include the full text he posted on facebook long after everyone else figured Brent out.
The context for Brent and his relationship with Duncan:
Brent Dill was a long time rationalist community member. For example, he led the structure building project at Berkeley’s Summer Solstice.
He was also close personal friends with multiple community leaders. No one is going to release records documenting how close they were to Brent, but Duncan was quite close to Brent. For example, Duncan was involved in running Brent’s burning man camp (Black Lotus).
Brent was involved in (at least) two relationships that were considered abusive. One of the people who had been involved with Brent, “Persephone”, made a post about abusive behavior on Facebook that did not name Brent explicitly but nevertheless was clear to insiders. At first, Brent apologized for his behavior and this apology seemed to be broadly accepted by the Bay Area rationalists.
Later multiple very serious accusations were made publicly.
Here are some representative quotes the accusations:
Brent had a habit of responding to me saying I wanted to break up, or that I didn’t want to do a scene, with something like “If you deprive me of this thing I want, you’re doing violence to me; please just punch me in the face so it can be universally recognised as violence.” Refusing to punch him and sticking to my guns re. my preferences would go nowhere, and often he’d self-injure to get me to agree to do what he wanted.
My ability to be the engine for this group depends on my confidence. I am confident when I know I have money, sexual access to youthful and attractive women, and true power in my demesne. What can you do?” — Brent
Brent pushed back against that idea. He told me that previous partners had been manipulated, by their therapists, into thinking that he was abusive and that he interpreted me seeking therapy as me losing trust in him.[about Brent]
” There were fewer times, but probably still dozens, that he didn’t ensure I had a safeword when going into a really heavy scene, or disrespected my safeword when I gave it. Safewording was never safe. It routinely led to him complaining, afterwards, about the fact that I’d ended the scene, and was occasionally completely disregarded.” [about Brent]
It seems clear that Brent made little effort to hide his deranged ideology. Duncan was close to Brent. Despite this, Duncan was one of the last people left defending Brent. I encourage you to read his own words. Here is what he posted on Facebook long after the situation was clear:
“There’s a Thing going on in my social circles. Someone I know (who wishes to remain anonymous) recommended that a version of the following statement be posted by the person at the center of the Thing. I don’t think that person is likely to follow that advice. I imagine that they’re pretty overwhelmed, whether they’re guilty or innocent or something in between. I’m posting it here myself, instead, putting words in their mouth, to see how people respond. For instance, I can imagine people saying that it makes sense, or that it’s not enough, or that it’s manipulative, or that it’s good but sets up bad incentives, etc. I wonder if a statement like this would be seen as meaningful, in this whole situation, or if it would simply be confirming evidence to both sides. I’m curious to hear your reactions. I am unlikely to respond to any of them. Again, this is me, a third party who knows everyone involved reasonably well, IMAGINING words that they might say, in response to prompting from another anonymous third party. None of this is secretly a sock puppet campaign, for instance. The people involved can’t see this post or your replies to it. (I’m trying to figure out subtle social stuff, and NONE of them need the stress of watching us throwing a bunch of hypotheticals back and forth when their lived experience is real and present-to-them and traumatic. But at the same time, I think the rest of us HAVE to be able to discuss these things, and not to let our knee-jerk reactions run the show.) You’re allowed to be emotional in your response, if you have one. You don’t have to try to adhere to my usual standard of rationality. You can say things that you don’t fully endorse or can’t fully defend (and I will defend you from others attacking those things, though they’re welcome to disagree with them). But avoid escalation/accusations/flame wars on this hypothetical thread; if things get too tribal or too fight-or-flight I’ll just delete them.”
-------------------------------------------------------- A statement from an imaginary version of Brent:
“Two of the women I have dated believe I have abused them. Others might feel the same. From my point of view, I think the story is more complex, and there’s a lot of difficult-to-predict and difficult-to-understand stuff going on with consent and power dynamics and people asking you to do things in unusual contexts and people processing trauma. However, I agree that I hurt them, and I agree that their present pain is at least half on my shoulders. I have tried repeatedly to atone and apologize, and been unable, in part because our history understandably makes it difficult for them to let me get close enough to do so. I’m not adding a public apology here, because that just sets up a weird dynamic. But I regret what happened, did not want them to be where they are now, and would do things differently given a time machine. Here are their statements [link]. Here is mine [link]. If you are thinking of dating me, this is information you deserve to have. I don’t think all of what’s written there is true, but it’s all believed by those who wrote it, and that counts for something even if facts are uncertain. I don’t think these stories disqualify me from being a good romantic partner, or an upstanding member of society. I do think they provide evidence about my ability to tell where the line is, or to distinguish between what my partners seem to me to want in the moment versus what they will endorse having wanted in the future. If you’re uncertain about your ability to stand your own ground, or susceptible to pressure and confusion, you shouldn’t date me. If you think I’m an abuser, you absolutely shouldn’t date me. But I don’t think that all people fall into those buckets, and I don’t think the answer to my past is to preemptively make everyone else’s decisions for them in the future.”
-------------------------------------------------------- Two things to add (since, again, I don’t plan on responding much to comments): 1)
I (Duncan) do think there remains genuine uncertainty about matters of fact and blame. I think that the statements of the women are entirely accurate insofar as they honestly represent the pain and trauma experienced, and what was going on for them both in the past and now. I don’t think they’re exaggerating what it felt like to go through what they went through. I think they deserve trust, care, support, and protection, and that they are acting in honest defense of future women who they want to protect from similar experiences. AND YET it still seems to me, given my present state of knowledge (which includes private conversations with all involved parties at various points in time), that all of the data admit of multiple explanations, not all of which require malice, and that it’s my moral obligation to not throw away those explanations in which the cause is [tragedy and confusion and it’s-hard-to-communicate-around-sex-and-power and people-often-mispredict-how-they-will-respond-to-things] as opposed to [overt intent-to-harm or sociopathic disregard for others]. I agree 100% that unintended harm is STILL HARM, and that risky behavior is STILL RISKY even when people consent, and that it’s reasonable to take concrete action to prevent the future from resembling the past when the past caused damage. This is not a call for “no action.” But we can take preventive action without incorrectly vilifying people, and I don’t yet have sufficient reason to believe that vilification is the right direction to move in.
2) If you ever find yourself in a position like the one described by the women involved in this situation, and you reach out to me, I will come for you, I will get you out, and I will 100% respect your autonomy and sovereignty as I do so. I have done this in the past and I will continue to do it in the future. I don’t have to know who’s right and who’s wrong and whose fault it is to simply help create space for people who desperately need it.
You can make up your own mind on whether Duncan should be making these grandiose claims about his ability to model social situations. It is harder to cite but Duncan is also famously combative even on relatively unimportant topics. I am not saint either. I have made a lot of mistakes too. But I don’t go around saying “All of which is to say that I spend a decent chunk of the time being the guy in the room who is mostaware of the fuckery swirling around me”. I am really sorry for the ways I fucked up. People can do better, I am trying to do better. But doing better is going to require some level of humility. The track record of Duncan’s ideology is not good. Duncan needs to be taking a very different approach.
Duncan hosted 2+ long FB threads at the time where a lot of people shared their experiences with Brent, and I think were some of the main ways that Berkeley rationalists oriented to the situation and shared information, and overall I think it was far better than the counterfactual of Duncan not having hosted those threads. I recall, but cannot easily find, Kelsey Piper also saying she was surprised how well the threads went, and I think Duncan’s contributions there and framing and moderation were a substantial part of what went well.
It is public record he was among the last defenders of said abuser. Duncan will dispute this characterization but I will include the full text he posted on facebook long after everyone else figured Brent out.
Just to share my impression, I think it’s false to say “long after everyone else figured Brent out”. I think it’s more accurate to say that it was “shortly after it became very socially risky to defend Brent”, but I think a lot of people in the threads confessed to still being quite disoriented, and I think providing a defense of Brent was a positive move to happen in the dialogue, even while I think it was not the true position. I don’t think Duncan punished anyone for disagreeing with him which is especially important, I think he did a pretty credible job of bringing it up as a perspective to engage with while not escalating in a fight.
For a bit more primary source, here’s some Duncan quotes from his post atop the second FB thread:
I focused yesterday’s conversation on what I suspected would be a minority viewpoint which might be lost in a rush to judgment. I wanted to preserve doubt, where doubt is often underpreserved, and remind people to gather as much information as they could before setting their personal opinions. I was afraid people would think that helping those who were suffering necessarily meant hurting Brent—that it was inextricably a zero-sum game.
and
I want to reorient now to something that I underweighted yesterday, and which is itself desperately important, and which I hope people will participate in with as much energy:
Are there concrete things I can do to help Persephone?
Are there concrete things I can do to help T?
Are there concrete things I can do to help other people in a similar boat?
Are there concrete things I can do to stop others from ending up in that same boat?
I also had nothing to do with the Burning Man group (have never been to Burning Man, came out to a beach in San Francisco once along with [a dozen other people also otherwise not involved with that group] to see a geodesic dome get partially assembled?) and the confidence with which that user asserts this falsehood seems relevant.
I also note that I was lodging a defense of “not leaping straight to judgment” far more than I was lodging a defense of Brent, i.e. I think the text above is much more consistent with “Duncan wants us to track multiple possible worlds consistent with the current set of observations” than with “Duncan has a strong and enduring preference for believing one of those worlds.”
This is exactly the sort of nuance that is precious, and difficult to maintain, and I am still glad I tried to maintain it even though it ultimately turned out that the null hypothesis (Brent is an abuser) proved correct.
To add the voice of someone who is not a “well known” or community landmark, the reading I got was one of pedantry, not defense. I read it in the same way as you might say “Wow, it would be great if we had 10,000 apples, but I am not sure that our 4+x apples sums to that many. Let’s keep open the possibility that x is 4 or 30″.
Hopefully tacking this on makes it
Easy for you to see how people might read this
Easy for other people to share that same support (or to disagree, I just think the former is more likely here)
Maybe there is some norm everyone agrees with that you should not have to distance yourself from your friends if they turn out to be abusers, or not have to be open about the fact you were there friend, or something. Maybe people are worried about the chilling effects of that.
If this norm is the case, then imo it is better enforced explicitly.
But to put it really simply it does seem like I should care about whether it is true that Duncan and Brent were close friends if I am gonna be taking advice from him about how to interpret and discuss accusations made in the community. So if we are not enforcing a norm that such relationships should not enter discussion then I am unclear about the basis of downvoting here.
Some facts relevant to the question of whether we were close friends:
We spent a grand total of well under 200 total hours in each other’s company over the years 2014 − 2018 (the estimate is deliberately generous) with the bulk of that estimated time coming from a month of me mostly-by-myself using tools in his garage, but him occasionally coming out to work on his geodesic dome.
We did not at any point embark on any large projects together.
We did not at any point go on trips together, or have sleepovers, or schedule “let’s go grab dinner together.” We played Magic: the Gathering together once just the two of us (maybe five or six times with multiple others).
We did not at any point owe each other money.
We did spend a decent chunk of those 200 hours engaged in online discussion, often about norms and models of how-communities-work, typified by the Affordance Widths post.
We did not describe each other as friends, either to each other or to third parties.
To the extent that we would occasionally discuss heavy or sensitive or emotional topics, I spent well over half of that time aggressively challenging and disagreeing with his models and perspectives, and a large number of third parties can verify this.
The word “friend” is super motte-and-bailey vulnerable; people have an extremely wide range of what they mean by it. It’s certainly reasonable under that very wide umbrella for e.g. somebody at CFAR to have said something like “Oh, yeah, Brent and Duncan are friends” based on seeing us chat at CFAR workshop afterparties, or something? I invited him to an early Dragon Army experiment weekend along with 30 other people, for instance, though I did not invite him to join the experiment proper (and he very explicitly wanted to join it).
But I both was and continue to be objectively much more of a friend to one of the published victims, who has not believed that my interactions with Brent should cause them to trust me less or think that others should, either. I won’t summon that person here but if somebody absolutely must check I would ask that person to reach out to you, which they would likely do as a favor to me.
And even though I’m 2-5x more that-person’s-friend than I was Brent’s, I still wouldn’t describe my relationship to that person with a word as strong as “friend.” We are friendly acquaintances, occasional allies. We have some baseline trust. I doubt they would let me know if they were in the hospital. I doubt I would let them know if I was in the hospital.
So even though “friend” is defensible, “close friend” is objectively false.
As to questions of distancing yourself from people if they turn out to be abusers, I last spoke with Brent in person maybe a week and a half after the Medium posts went up, and last spoke with him online a few months after that (after substantially changing my relationship in ways that were publicly discussed; that post is from October but it was originally shared in a group of some ~50 rationalists not long after the situation blew up). I haven’t spoken to or heard from Brent since some time in 2018 EDIT: COVID messed with my sense of time, FB tells me I blocked Brent late in 2019; we weren’t chatting much in the lead-up, though.
People often like to say “X is relevant” when they expect that it will support their prior belief, but then X is strangely not relevant once it turns out to be contra their expectations.
Yeah, I don’t act by that norm, and I did update negatively on the judgment of people I knew who supported Brent in the community. (I don’t think of Duncan centrally in that category.)
If Duncan is going to make claims like these it is important people are allowed to cite his actual track record. His track record is quite poor. In my understanding, he was a close associate to serial sexual abuser in the rationalist-adjacent community (Brent), for example Duncan was involved in running Brent’s burning man group. It is public record he was among the last defenders of said abuser. Duncan will dispute this characterization but I will include the full text he posted on facebook long after everyone else figured Brent out.
The context for Brent and his relationship with Duncan:
Brent Dill was a long time rationalist community member. For example, he led the structure building project at Berkeley’s Summer Solstice.
He was also close personal friends with multiple community leaders. No one is going to release records documenting how close they were to Brent, but Duncan was quite close to Brent. For example, Duncan was involved in running Brent’s burning man camp (Black Lotus).
Brent was involved in (at least) two relationships that were considered abusive. One of the people who had been involved with Brent, “Persephone”, made a post about abusive behavior on Facebook that did not name Brent explicitly but nevertheless was clear to insiders. At first, Brent apologized for his behavior and this apology seemed to be broadly accepted by the Bay Area rationalists.
Later multiple very serious accusations were made publicly.
Accusation 1
Accusation 2
Accusation 3
Here are some representative quotes the accusations:
Here is another summary by Ozy.
Duncan’s Response:
It seems clear that Brent made little effort to hide his deranged ideology. Duncan was close to Brent. Despite this, Duncan was one of the last people left defending Brent. I encourage you to read his own words. Here is what he posted on Facebook long after the situation was clear:
You can make up your own mind on whether Duncan should be making these grandiose claims about his ability to model social situations. It is harder to cite but Duncan is also famously combative even on relatively unimportant topics. I am not saint either. I have made a lot of mistakes too. But I don’t go around saying “All of which is to say that I spend a decent chunk of the time being the guy in the room who is most aware of the fuckery swirling around me”. I am really sorry for the ways I fucked up. People can do better, I am trying to do better. But doing better is going to require some level of humility. The track record of Duncan’s ideology is not good. Duncan needs to be taking a very different approach.
Duncan hosted 2+ long FB threads at the time where a lot of people shared their experiences with Brent, and I think were some of the main ways that Berkeley rationalists oriented to the situation and shared information, and overall I think it was far better than the counterfactual of Duncan not having hosted those threads. I recall, but cannot easily find, Kelsey Piper also saying she was surprised how well the threads went, and I think Duncan’s contributions there and framing and moderation were a substantial part of what went well.
Just to share my impression, I think it’s false to say “long after everyone else figured Brent out”. I think it’s more accurate to say that it was “shortly after it became very socially risky to defend Brent”, but I think a lot of people in the threads confessed to still being quite disoriented, and I think providing a defense of Brent was a positive move to happen in the dialogue, even while I think it was not the true position. I don’t think Duncan punished anyone for disagreeing with him which is especially important, I think he did a pretty credible job of bringing it up as a perspective to engage with while not escalating in a fight.
For a bit more primary source, here’s some Duncan quotes from his post atop the second FB thread:
and
I also had nothing to do with the Burning Man group (have never been to Burning Man, came out to a beach in San Francisco once along with [a dozen other people also otherwise not involved with that group] to see a geodesic dome get partially assembled?) and the confidence with which that user asserts this falsehood seems relevant.
I also note that I was lodging a defense of “not leaping straight to judgment” far more than I was lodging a defense of Brent, i.e. I think the text above is much more consistent with “Duncan wants us to track multiple possible worlds consistent with the current set of observations” than with “Duncan has a strong and enduring preference for believing one of those worlds.”
This is exactly the sort of nuance that is precious, and difficult to maintain, and I am still glad I tried to maintain it even though it ultimately turned out that the null hypothesis (Brent is an abuser) proved correct.
Yeah that’s why I added the primary source, I went and read it and then realized that was what you were doing.
To add the voice of someone who is not a “well known” or community landmark, the reading I got was one of pedantry, not defense. I read it in the same way as you might say “Wow, it would be great if we had 10,000 apples, but I am not sure that our 4+x apples sums to that many. Let’s keep open the possibility that x is 4 or 30″.
Hopefully tacking this on makes it
Easy for you to see how people might read this
Easy for other people to share that same support (or to disagree, I just think the former is more likely here)
I’ll take it. =)
Like, the person adversarially quoting me above wants me to be seen as a rape apologist, and I’ll take “pedant” over that.
Haha, I was being pedantic when I said that. Replace it with “You were being lawful, which I respect the hell out of” for a better compliment
This quoted material has increased my respect for Duncan. Thank you for posting it.
Maybe there is some norm everyone agrees with that you should not have to distance yourself from your friends if they turn out to be abusers, or not have to be open about the fact you were there friend, or something. Maybe people are worried about the chilling effects of that.
If this norm is the case, then imo it is better enforced explicitly.
But to put it really simply it does seem like I should care about whether it is true that Duncan and Brent were close friends if I am gonna be taking advice from him about how to interpret and discuss accusations made in the community. So if we are not enforcing a norm that such relationships should not enter discussion then I am unclear about the basis of downvoting here.
Some facts relevant to the question of whether we were close friends:
We spent a grand total of well under 200 total hours in each other’s company over the years 2014 − 2018 (the estimate is deliberately generous) with the bulk of that estimated time coming from a month of me mostly-by-myself using tools in his garage, but him occasionally coming out to work on his geodesic dome.
We did not at any point embark on any large projects together.
We did not at any point go on trips together, or have sleepovers, or schedule “let’s go grab dinner together.” We played Magic: the Gathering together once just the two of us (maybe five or six times with multiple others).
We did not at any point owe each other money.
We did spend a decent chunk of those 200 hours engaged in online discussion, often about norms and models of how-communities-work, typified by the Affordance Widths post.
We did not describe each other as friends, either to each other or to third parties.
To the extent that we would occasionally discuss heavy or sensitive or emotional topics, I spent well over half of that time aggressively challenging and disagreeing with his models and perspectives, and a large number of third parties can verify this.
The word “friend” is super motte-and-bailey vulnerable; people have an extremely wide range of what they mean by it. It’s certainly reasonable under that very wide umbrella for e.g. somebody at CFAR to have said something like “Oh, yeah, Brent and Duncan are friends” based on seeing us chat at CFAR workshop afterparties, or something? I invited him to an early Dragon Army experiment weekend along with 30 other people, for instance, though I did not invite him to join the experiment proper (and he very explicitly wanted to join it).
But I both was and continue to be objectively much more of a friend to one of the published victims, who has not believed that my interactions with Brent should cause them to trust me less or think that others should, either. I won’t summon that person here but if somebody absolutely must check I would ask that person to reach out to you, which they would likely do as a favor to me.
And even though I’m 2-5x more that-person’s-friend than I was Brent’s, I still wouldn’t describe my relationship to that person with a word as strong as “friend.” We are friendly acquaintances, occasional allies. We have some baseline trust. I doubt they would let me know if they were in the hospital. I doubt I would let them know if I was in the hospital.
So even though “friend” is defensible, “close friend” is objectively false.
As to questions of distancing yourself from people if they turn out to be abusers, I last spoke with Brent in person maybe a week and a half after the Medium posts went up, and last spoke with him online a few months after that (after substantially changing my relationship in ways that were publicly discussed; that post is from October but it was originally shared in a group of some ~50 rationalists not long after the situation blew up). I haven’t spoken to or heard from Brent since some time in
2018EDIT: COVID messed with my sense of time, FB tells me I blocked Brent late in 2019; we weren’t chatting much in the lead-up, though.People often like to say “X is relevant” when they expect that it will support their prior belief, but then X is strangely not relevant once it turns out to be contra their expectations.
Great, thanks.
Yeah, I don’t act by that norm, and I did update negatively on the judgment of people I knew who supported Brent in the community. (I don’t think of Duncan centrally in that category.)