Evrart Claire: A Case Study in Anti-Epistemology
This man nearly tricked me.
I acknowledge that he is a fictional character, but he nearly tricked me all the same.
Evrart is the leader of the 2,000-person Workers’ Union of Martinaise; they are on strike as part of a conflict with Wild Pines, the multi-billion dollar logistics company that employs the dockworkers. During the strike, a lynching has occurred, and you play the homicide detective leading the investigation.
In my conversations with Evrart Claire during my play through of the game, I had a strong hunch that I was being played by Evrart, but no legible proof, leaving me feeling helpless to defend myself in a way I have felt many times before. I’m dissatisfied and somewhat alarmed by this, so in this post I’m going to look into his dialogue, figure out how he did that, and figure out how I can be better defended against it for the rest of my life.
(Spoiler warning in this footnote.[1])
What’s Wrong with Evrart Claire?
I have written about the rationalist vice of assuming good faith, which I think I have grown out of a lot since my youth, but am still subject to; Evrart Claire is squarely taking advantage of this. He constantly presents himself well, and all his bad behavior is covered in plausibly-deniability. You can never quite prove him to be a liar and a cheat, he’s always got excuses and counter-narratives, and insists he’s the good guy in all of this.
On LessWrong we sometimes refer to this as though it were a whole school of practice, namely “anti-epistemology”, of how to obfuscate the truth and misdirect people, as though it had rigorous rules on how to do so, that are the inversion of good epistemic practices and rules for systematically forming accurate beliefs. Claire is the character in Disco Elysium who wields anti-epistemology with the most skill and effectiveness, and is also one of the most powerful characters because of it.
Claire’s character is not supposed to be subtle. The most violent and racist hooligans in the town work for him; he constantly asks you to do sketchy stuff for him before he’ll give you information pertinent to your investigation; he keeps trying to give you money without saying why; and he’s rumored to have made his rival union leader disappear before the election. These are all behaviors much more probable under the hypothesis that his behavior is corrupt and his character rotten.
Yet what stands out to me about his trickery are his communication patterns, that make it harder for you (or anyone else) to learn the truth or understand what is going on.
There are many tricks that Evrart uses to gain power and make people behave badly. There’s a common trick named the foot-in-the-door technique, where you get someone to agree to a small ask on the way to getting them to make a big ask. Evrart uses this, first asking you to do something slightly shady for him, and then increasingly asking you to do more shady things. There are certainly things like that going on that one could list, but my focus here is going to be on questions of information flows and how he causes people around him to have an inaccurate map of the territory.
Together, let’s read some of the dialogue between you and Evrart. In future posts I’ll summarize his patterns , clarify his heuristics, and outline some possible antidotes to his trickery. But in this essay I simply want to get to grips with what he says and does.
Maintaining Plausible Deniability
Here’s one of your character’s first interactions with him, when you intend to interview him about the murder.
 | “I want to talk about the hanging.” –You |
| “Oh, of course. That’s your main thing here. That’s *why* you’re in Martinaise.” He nods. “I know everything that goes on around here and I would *love* to discuss it with you.” –Evrart Claire |
| “I mean, it’s no secret that the lynching is connected to the strike—so much to talk about! Honestly, it’s been weighing on me so heavily. I understand—you need to *interview* me...” –Evrart Claire |
| “I sense there’s a *but*.” –You |
| ”...but there’s a *thing* that’s been keeping me up at night. I *want* to talk about the hanging. I mean… if we could just calmly talk, exchange information, we could blow this thing wide open!” –Evrart Claire |
| “Yes, let’s blow it open.” –You |
| “But I *can’t* think straight with this thing weighing on me...” He slaps himself on the forehead. “You’re a police officer, aren’t you? I have a crazy idea. You guys are basically door-opening machines. Incredibly talented at opening doors.” –Evrart Claire |
| “Kim, is that true? Are we door-opening machines?” –You |
 | “I’m not sure I understand.” He looks to the Union boss. “If you’re asking us to break down someone’s door, it’s not going to happen.” –Kim Kitsuragi[2] |
| “Come now. I just need you to go open a *little* door for me—and leave it unlocked. A simple thing. Absolutely nothing shady about it.” –Evrart Claire |
| “Why don’t you just open it yourself?” –You |
| “Harry, I’m a very busy man and, more importantly, I don’t have that extraordinary physique you do.” He slams his fists together. “You look like you could run around all day!” –Evrart Claire |
| “You want to send someone a message that the police are working for you.” –Kim Kitsuragi |
| “I repeat, I’m a very, *very* busy man, Mr. Kitsuragi, and therefore I must occasionally enlist… outside help.”[3] He turns back to you. “So what will it be, Harry?” –Evrart Claire |
| “Whose door is it?” –You |
| “Oh, no one’s. It’s just a weasel. A weasel lives there. Nothing for you to worry about.”[4] –Evrart Claire |
| “What do you mean by a ‘weasel’?” –You |
| “A loud blabbering weasel. When weasels feel no one is watching, they start acting *foolishly…*” He removes his glasses and rubs his nose. –Evrart Claire |
| “I bet you don’t even know anything about the hanging.” –You |
| “Harry, my dear friend.” He sinks deeper into the chair. “I am what people call a *local big wig*. I know everything that goes on in Martinaise.” –Evrart Claire |
| “Damnit, fine, I’ll look into it, we need to talk about that murder.” (Accept the task.) –You |
| “Fantastic, my friend! Just let me know when it’s done and we can take our friendship to the next level.” He flicks his fingers. –Evrart Claire |
There’s a lot to unpack here already. I hope you agree with my basic read of this which is that he’s asking you to do something (slightly shady) for him before he’ll help you. There’s a tit for tat element here. But what’s he doing epistemically? I expect that’s also clear to many, but I will nonetheless spell it out.
First, Evrart carefully presents a plausible innocent narrative about his actions and motives.
The story he presents is that he would like to help you with your case, but he is so emotional and distracted by something else, and you’re in a position to help him with that. This isn’t my read of the actual agreement that is taking place, which is a more corrupt tit-for-tat, but it is an account of things that you can tell third parties that doesn’t sound bad.
Second, Evrart refuses to acknowledge any alternative illicit narrative.
When you ask “Why don’t you just open [this door] yourself?” he replies “Harry, I’m a very busy man and, more importantly, I don’t have that extraordinary physique you do.” Which is giving you a logically consistent reason, but is not a likely reason —he has over 2,000 people in his union and many staff who report to him that could do this for him.
When Kim goes on to explicitly bring up the hypothesis that Evrart wants this in order to signal that the police work for him, he doesn’t even address the hypothesis Kim raises, he simply repeats his improbable narrative “I repeat, I’m a very, *very* busy man, Mr. Kitsuragi, and therefore I must occasionally enlist… outside help.”
Evrart is offering you tit-for-tat, where you help him out and then he’ll help you out. But, insofar as this happens, he does this in a way that is very illegible to other people, and doesn’t remove all possibility of doubt about the trade you’re making. He never says what is being agreed, it was not written anywhere, and everything he says is logically consistent with his innocent narrative. Some of the standard tools used for people to check what agreements he made (e.g. “What did he explicitly say?” and “Did he give you a non-corrupt reason for why he wanted it?”) have been carefully routed around.
All Narrative, No Facts, Avoids Details
Next, here’s some dialogue between you and Joyce Messier, a powerful lady who represents the board of Wild Pines.
| “One more thing—you said something *happened* in the elections?” –You |
 | “I’m glad you asked. There was a woman—the previous forewoman of the Union. She disappeared.” –Joyce Messier |
| “Disappeared?” –Kim Kitsuragi |
 | “Yes. On the last day of the local chapter elections her daughter phoned in and said she wasn’t running anymore—or coming to work. Ever. End of story.” –Joyce Messier |
| “Eerie.” –You |
 | “Downright *haunting* if you ask me. The Wild Pines suspected foul play, but what could they do? It was a Union matter.” –Joyce Messier |
 | “The point of the presentation is—these kinds of things *happen* around the Claires. Watch out when you’re dealing with him.” –Joyce Messier |
| “Thank you for your concern, ma’am. We’ll be just fine.” –Kim Kitsuragi |
Now here’s a different scene, where you are talking to Evrart about the same matter.
| “Joyce said the previous Union leader vanished under suspicious circumstances.” –You |
| “*Vanished*?! Harry, the woman left her casserole in the oven and couldn’t make it here in time for the voting.” –Evrart Claire |
| “‘Oh, did I leave my casserole on? Better go home and check. The election can wait!’” The man frowns, disapprovingly. “When she got back the whole thing was over.” –Evrart Claire |
 | Wait… there was no mention of a casserole from Joyce. –Drama[5] |
| “Funny, Joyce didn’t mention any casserole.” –You |
| “Harry, Harry, Harry!” He flicks his fingers. “Do not fixate on this little matter. Maybe it was a rabbit stew… or a hair dryer, or an iron. The point is, her heart wasn’t in it. Mine *was*.” –Evrart Claire |
 | That much is true. His heart *truly* is in it. Though you wouldn’t think so by looking at him. –Inland Empire |
 | This particular brand of humour he has… it makes for a fine distraction. –Conceptualization |
 | If it’s spilled blood you’re looking for then there certainly isn’t any in his expression, or demeanor now. –Empathy |
First, he gives you essentially no evidence other than a contrary narrative.
Second, he dismisses getting the details right.
Both of these seem to me like tools of anti-epistemology, and the latter especially strong.
Let’s look at another example of avoiding details. At this point in the game you’ve been on a side-quest looking into some rumors about something shady happening in his organization. He implicitly asked you to do one thing, but you’ve done the opposite.
| “The shady brew. You told me to make it even shadier. I didn’t. It had alcohol in it. Now there’s no alcohol.” –You |
| “Did I? Well done then, Harry. I like not knowing about it and I’m sure you made the right call. I spend the whole day delegating tasks, and it’s a great relief to see people taking initiative.” –Evrart Claire |
| “I don’t even want to know what all of that means — brew, shady, alcohol, turned off. I’m gonna let the world *surprise* me.” –Evrart Claire |
Evrart seems to encourage people working for him to not let him know what’s going on. After you explain that you did something that probably is against his interests, he emphasizes that the details are below his pay grade, he doesn’t know about them, and he trusts you to sort it out.
Avoiding knowing what’s going on looks to me like another trick of anti-epistemology, to distance himself from crimes.
It makes it easier for him to perform “being forthcoming about all he knows”. It regularly allows him to appear honest and open about giving you all the information that he has, because he genuinely doesn’t know what happened.
Avoiding looking into shady business, and encouraging your people not to tell you about it, is also a great way to allow people to get away with shady business that helps you out without you being directly culpable and without you being able to give it up. When the people who do the dirty work know the boss doesn’t want to hear about it and isn’t going to come asking questions, they can get on with wrong actions in peace.
Emphasize Loyalty and Trust
In the following bit of dialogue, you’ve just told Evrart about a key piece of evidence that contradicts what he says his men told him. (I’ve redacted the detail to avoid a major spoiler.)
| “How odd.” The man shrugs. “I don’t know what to say, lieutenant. They told me [X]. [X] is what I saw when I took a look into that yard…” –Evrart Claire |
| It’s impossible to say if he’s telling the truth, sire –Drama |
| “What I *do* know is — the case is in safe hands. If anyone can get to the bottom of this [discrepancy], it’s my two little policemen. Godspeed, policemen!” –Evrart Claire |
As before, he avoids the details and probably does not know them. I think it’s especially interesting that, when he is on the back foot, he does not address the possibility that he may have knowingly misled you or be responsible for the situation in any way, and instead (performatively, in my opinion) reinforces his positive relationship with you.
Here’s a different scene where he does that again.
| “Now please, let’s get back to the good stuff, the police stuff, Harry! I just see myself as one of you guys. Think of me as a sergeant or something.” He smiles broadly. “Let’s *crack* this, Harry.” –Evrart Claire |
| [Presents a new piece of evidence, something that suggests Evrart wasn’t entirely forthcoming with you][6] –You |
| “[repeats it]?!” He grabs his head with both hands. “You guys are just light-years ahead of me.” –Evrart Claire |
| “I have *so much* confidence in the ability of your organization. I’m relieved you’re doing this and leaving me to do what *I* do best—helping people. With the power of *politics*.” –Evrart Claire |
It seems to me that Evrart Claire treats hypotheses of his own bad behavior or untrustworthiness like a Popperian Scientist treats theories other than their favorite theory. Evrart’s theory is that he’s a good person with good intentions, and he’ll keep holding that it’s the only theory that fits the facts unless you can falsify that narrative, not merely provide Bayesian evidence against it. He will act and speak in accordance with that narrative and reprimand you for considering alternatives in the absence of proof – a kind of proof which is very rare to get in the social world (especially in the presence of active anti-epistemology and stemmed information flows).
A hypothesis many would naturally consider in the above quote is that Evrart Claire is hiding information from you. But Evrart does not acknowledge this theory and will resist unless you have proof. The truth is that I cannot prove this is what’s happening. I am confident that bad behavior on his part is a natural hypothesis going on but I cannot prove it, and I know this means he will not even allow it to be a part of the conversation, and this is frustrating. I think his avoidance of such a hypothesis is adversarial, and to instead say that he has complete confidence in you to be doing good work attempts to put him on your side and deflect any further questioning.
(I detest this.)
Here’s one more time he reinforces his trust and good relationship with you, with an internal note from your inner encyclopedia that I find amusing.
| “Ah yes, your side-investigation! Thank you.” He adjusts his glasses. “You’ve got some spirit, clearing up phony drug accusations alongside this murder. I’ll talk to the mayor and see if I can get you the key to the city, Harry. Now let’s talk real business.” –Evrart Claire |
 | Actually, Revachol doesn’t have a mayor… –Encyclopedia[7] |
Inverting Basic Principles
If you accept Evrart’s request to open someone’s door, you are later given the opportunity to lie to him about whether you did it. Here is how that little interaction goes down.
| (Lie.) “I opened the door to your weasel’s den.” –You |
| “Are you shitting me Harry? Did you not really open the door and are now just telling me you did?” His lively eyes are mapping your face. “You’re a wild one, Harry!” –Evrart Claire |
| “You’re right, I was just testing you.” –You |
| “Of course, Harry!” He exclaims. “What are friends for if not for measuring the falsehood one can pass in the disguise of truth.” –Evrart Claire |
A slight caricature of me would be more likely to say “What are friends for if not for getting true information and feedback from them?”. I myself have been known to send out surveys about myself to dozens of my friends in order to get honest feedback! So I find this amusing as a direct reversal of good epistemic norms in friendship.
And look how he smooths over your relationship immediately afterwards! It seems to me like he doesn’t actually feel personally hurt by you lying to him, and that much if not all of the loyal friendship he speaks of between the two of you is utterly performative.
Performing Emotions
Here’s the last stretch of dialogue in this essay.
| “I met Joyce, the company representative.” –You |
| “Oh, that’s very nice. I haven’t gotten around to her yet—I’m very, very busy, you see.” He adjusts a button on his sleeve. “I hope you’re getting along.” –Evrart Claire |
| “One thing I wanna make very clear, Harry, is that this is not some kind of Union *versus* Corporation situation. Everyone is just pals here.” –Evrart Claire |
| “Just pals?” –You |
| “Yes, we’re all trying to do what’s best for Martinaise.” His smile widens. “Don’t feel like you shouldn’t work with her just because you and I are such good friends. I’m not a jealous guy.” –Evrart Claire |
 | Whoa… that’s so nice of him. Suspiciously nice… –SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] |
| “Are you sure? I find it a little odd.” –You |
| “I’m just a nice guy, Harry. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I wasn’t nice.” He slams his fist into his hand. “Politics is all about *emotions*, and I want you to have positive emotions when you think of me.” –Evrart Claire |
| “Okay, let’s talk about something else.” (Conclude.) –You |
| “Of course, Harry. Let me just assure you one more time — it’s perfectly okay to share anything we discuss here with this… *Joyce*. This is a completely transparent organization.” “I have no interest in what she is doing, but I myself have *nothing* to hide. Your business is your business and I respect your privacy. Just remember, none of this…” He makes an all-encompassing gesture. “… is secret.” “Tell her about all of it. My brother’s picture, my singing swordfish clock.” He looks around. “Tell her how overweight I am and how I’m helping you find your lost gun. Tell her about everything — Evrart doesn’t mind.” –Evrart Claire |
| “I’m told the Union is involved in the local drug trade.” –You |
| “What?!” He smacks his forehead, completely flabbergasted. “Harry… how could you say that to me? You know I appreciate a joke as much as any jolly fat guy, but I can’t take *slander*. Are you actually investigating this?” –Evrart Claire |
| The reaction appears to be sincere, but… it’s impossible to tell with this guy, honestly. —Drama |
| “I am.” –You |
| “You’ve hurt me, Harry—me! A friend!” The man rubs his temple and closes his eyes, in pain. “But you know what?” He perks up. –Evrart Claire |
 | And gets over it in two seconds? Seems like it didn’t really hurt him. —Pain Threshold |
| “I trust you, like I trust all my friends. And I know you’ll never talk to me about this again, because you don’t want to *wound* me. So do what you want—and let’s change the subject.” –Evrart Claire |
 | He’s hiding his real reaction beneath courtesy. –Rhetoric |
| “Thank you for understanding,” the lieutenant looks him in the eye. “We will continue to do what we must.” –Kim Kitsuragi |
| “You too, lieutenant—heh!” He chuckles, suddenly. “You know, I like you, but you never were my favourite. I’m a Harry-guy. I’m Team Harry.” –Evrart Claire |
| “None taken,” the lieutenant quickly replies and then turns to you: “Did we have anything else to do here, Harry?” –Kim Kitsuragi |
First, I will point to Evrart’s principle of encouraging “positive emotion” when you think of him, which seems to really disregard the idea that emotions should track reality, and makes me think of his character as almost entirely performative. Then, once again, he insists on leaning on your loyal friendship in order to get out of discussing the matter.
But it was the section of dialogue about transparency that befuddled me for the longest time of anything he says – because it isn’t true. It later turns out he is absolutely in a massive conflict with Joyce, so he’s lying to say otherwise. And he definitely doesn’t want her to know his full plans, so it’s false for him to say the org is totally transparent.
Why would he say this? What does he have to gain by emphasizing something so far away from reality? Wouldn’t he be found out by something so blatant? How could this be a reasonable thing to say? Is there a perspective from which he is being transparent?
I really was trying to make sense of what perspective would produce these words, but eventually it struck me: he’s saying it because it would be good for him if you believed it, and he thinks he can get away with saying it without you catching him out.
That is the sort of adversarial epistemic optimization happening here. If a bunch of sentences would be good for him to say, he will say them. These are not being checked against any world model for something resembling accuracy. There is no good-faith perspective from which this is a reasonable thing for him to say.
I was being too charitable. He is blatantly and forthrightly lying.
So what are his key tools of trickery? I’ll give my answer to that question in the next post...
- ^
Spoiler Warning
There are over 80 characters and 1,000,000 words of dialogue in Disco Elysium. I’m going to be quoting a lot of dialogue with one character in particular. I don’t think reading it spoils your experience of the game, it’s such a rich world and there’s tons of important plot points I don’t give away, but it does contain 5-10 minor plot points that are surprises or mysteries.
It is one of the top 10 games I have ever played, and I have successfully encouraged many of my friends to play it. If you want to play the game unspoilered, but you want to read about anti-epistemology, you can just wait and read the subsequent posts in this sequence, which focus on the principles rather than these characters. Though I think it really helps to have the dialogue and details of this particular character in-mind, so come back after you’ve played it!
- ^
Kim Kitsuragi is your cop partner.
- ^
Note here that Claire doesn’t answer the question.
- ^
Once again, he doesn’t answer the question.
- ^
This is an instance of one of your mind’s attributes talking to you internally. “Drama” is good at helping you lie and detect others’ lies.
- ^
I have removed the text as it unnecessarily spoils an interesting plot point that isn’t relevant to this post.
- ^
Yes, “Encyclopedia” is another of your mind’s internal attributes, that works to “Call upon all your knowledge. Produce fascinating trivia.”
I talked with Zvi Mowshowitz who is quite skilled at seeing all the things being communicated at once, about the last section of dialogue above, where Evrart Claire talks about being transparent with Joyce Messier. This befuddled me for a while.
He said that what is being communicated is:
I know that you’re talking with my primary political opponent.
That’s okay with me, I’m still happy to work with you.
Also you haven’t got anything on me; nothing I’ve ever said is actually incriminating (as per the plausible deniability point).
(By implication: And of course, if we’re going to talk about shady stuff, don’t forget that I’ve got stuff on you.)
I didn’t quite notice that 1 and 2 were intended to be communicated. I don’t think of myself as someone to hide, so number 1 was not something I noticed.
Anyway, I am personally kind of annoyed that both (a) many things are being communicated at once, and (b) not all of them can be said explicitly (and in fact the explicit content of the words is kind of the opposite of true and of what’s being discussed). I wish either everyone stopped doing this, or I were better at tracking it all. (Zvi roughly said “That’s what your brain is built for, tracking this all.”)
Discussion on anti-epistemology might benefit from the concept of semiotics, the study of signs: “an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.”
In anti-epistemology, people use signs to communicate meaning that diverges from a straightforward literal interpretation, often its opposite. I offer a tasty meal to see if you’ll be suspicious enough to reject it as possibly poisoned, which means you might be a trustworthy criminal associate. I tell jokes to see if you’ll laugh, which means you’re too comfortable, don’t know your place at the bottom of the hierarchy, and need a public reprimand. I say something absurd and offensive, to see if you’re also willing to say the kind of absurd and offensive things that are capable of warping social dynamics.
In general, I tell you things, see if you can reliably translate them into the opposite meaning by observing your behavior, and gradually increase your access to high risk/reward criminal, immoral, or stigmatized opportunities if I can tell you’re understanding this coded language correctly (and demonstrating that you’re contaminating yourself with culpability while being capable enough not getting caught). Perversion of such signs is necessary for the sustenance of the criminal or outsider society, and therefore are deontologically imperative, obligatory. It can’t be straightforward encryption, both because encryption can be unambiguously cracked and because that would limit the ability to onboard outsiders, who wouldn’t understand how to decrypt and for whom it would be too risky to teach them how to decrypt.
Rationalists get called “quokkas,” I think, not because they naively believe the signs they’re exposed to are all literally meant as true, but because they want to live in a world where all signs are literal, and their strategy to achieve that world is to treat all signs as literally true, as if that could make it so. When everybody can see the signs aren’t literally meant as true, it can make what rationalists intend as a form of activism appear as naivete, tilting at windmills, or dangerously confrontational with the underlying coded order, particularly when the perversion of the literal meaning of the sign is so widely understood that treating its literal meaning as primary is actually confusing to most people.
There’s been some writing on LessWrong recently about paranoia. What I’m saying here can sound paranoid, but paranoia implies having false, fearful beliefs about the world. Instead, I think people often have true, non-fearful beliefs about the world, just based on non-literal but commonplace meanings of signs. The boss says you don’t have to do X, you clearly understand he means you do have to do X, so you do X, and you keep your job. It might be scary or harmful to have to do X, but you’re correctly, clearly understanding that you’re being told that you do in fact have to do it to keep your job. You’re not paranoid. You are reading the sign backwards, as intended. Boss wouldn’t have mentioned not doing X if he hadn’t intended you to do it, or would have conveyed the doing of X as being attached to a threat of retribution. Everybody understands they’re surrounded by an enormous number of conspiracies all the time, and it’s not so much frightening as an extremely irritating slog to parse them and try and complete their goals.
I agree with Christian that there’s more going on here, but I interpreted Evrart as counter-signaling mean-ness. By mentioning literally how open and on-the-same-team he and the company are, he is communicating that no, they are very much not on the same team, and enemies, and you really really don’t want to go sharing damaging information with them.
That is, the absurdity of his performative niceness is meant to try to communicate that he is very much not going to be nice on this issue. As an example, he says
Well, obviously he didn’t get where he is now by being nice, he got there by being mean. While he is literally telling you he’s nice, what he means is he will fuck you up if you try to fuck him up here, as emphasized by his fist slamming into his hand.
As christian mentioned, he is threatening also to embarrass you by revealing you lost your gun too. But presumably you’ve also done other shady stuff for this guy. You’re meant to think, “wait, if all of this isn’t secret, what about all the shady stuff I did for him?”. Then you implicitly have a choice about which narrative you can live in. You can live in the world where all of that is in fact secret, where you “cooperate” with the guy by not revealing his secrets, or you can live in the world where nothing is secret, you “defect” with the guy, and both of you are harmed in the process.
I think there are multiple things going on here. One of the things Evrart is advising the character to transparent about is that Evrart works to get the characters gun back. That means that he wants the character to tell Joyce something that suggests that the the character has a debt towards Evrart.
Evrart suggest that he is not going to violate the privacy of the character, which concretely might mean telling other people about the gun. If the character however decides not to tell Joyce about the gun after being explicitly told that he can do so, the character joins into being complicit with hiding information.
A big part of what Evrart is doing is frame setting. What kind of person is he, what is the nature of your relationship with him and how does that relate to specific things that you might do, what is his role in the city, etc.? He comes right out and tells you, trying to directly influence how you think of him and the social scripts & roles that you see as applying. And if you come to him in another frame that he doesn’t want, he sidesteps that framing rather than interacting in the role that that frame puts him in.
Also related: his larger-than-life personality. He crafts a personality that 1) fits with the frames he wants (friendly, gregarious, nice) and which 2) gives him leeway for acting outside normal social expectations, such as by putting forward a frame or sidestepping one (it’s a strange thing to do but that’s Evrart being Evrart). Something about his personality even makes it seem kind of okay for him to put forward frames that seem implausible or inaccurate. (Though IMO he is not able to do this in a way that avoids seeming fishy.)