Salamon told Open Vallejo that LaSota attended three CFAR events between 2014 and 2018. Concerned by their “weird” behavior and interactions with other CFAR attendees, Salamon tried to convince a joint admissions committee between the Machine Intelligence Learning Institute and CFAR to not admit LaSota into their month-long summer fellowship in 2018. Salamon, however, was overruled.
“When LaSota attended the final program in summer 2018, I was physically afraid in a way I’ve never been with anyone else,” Salamon said in an email to Open Vallejo.
[...] Salamon told Open Vallejo that she requested Bauckholt not be invited back for similar reasons as LaSota. LaSota and Bauckholt did not attend any events at the same time, according to Salamon, and it is not clear if they had ever met in person.
OK, so Anna Salamon obviously was the smart one in the room. The rest of the team should update about listening to her concerns. (Added: Eh, this was needlessly harsh. Different smart people have different strengths and weaknesses. But, at least in this case, Anna seems like a good judge of character, and that is a thing that seems to be in a very short supply. The others are probably too easy to impress by someone being smart and contrarian, and fail to notice that the person also is insane.)
I am updating towards “yes, there are things the rationalist community could have done better (in addition to being less lenient towards drug junkies).”
EDIT:
Actually, the Zizians’ version of the story is that MIRI/CFAR called the cops. That’s probably where I originally got that information from.
The rest of the team should update about listening to her concerns.
I believe (though my memory in general is very very fuzzy) that I was the one who most pushed for Ziz and Gwen to be at that workshop. (I don’t recall talking with Anna about that at all before the workshop, and don’t see anything about that in my emails on a quick look, though I could very easily have forgotten. I do recall her saying at the workshop that she thought Ziz shouldn’t be there.) I did indeed update later (also based on other things) quite strongly that I really truly cannot detect various kinds of pathology, and therefore have to be much more circumspect, deferent to others about this, not making lots of decisions like this, etc. (I do think there was good reason to have Ziz at the workshop though, contra others; Ziz was indeed smart and an interesting original insightful thinker, which is in short supply. I’m also unclear on what evidence Anna had at the time, and the extent to which the community’s behavior with Ziz was escalatorily causing Ziz’s eventual fate.)
Anna seems like a good judge of character,
Uh, for the record, I would definitely take it very seriously, probably as pretty strong or very strong evidence, if Anna says that someone is harmful / evil / etc.; but I would not take it as strong evidence of someone not being so, if she endorses them.
On a second thought, maybe this is not about some generic “human judgment skill”, but different people sensitive to different sets of red flags (perhaps based on their previous experience). So Anna may notice some that other people missed, other people notice something that Anna missed, etc.
Problem is that the red flags are sometimes difficult to communicate; you often feel them rather than find them by conscious evaluation. Something like “this person makes me feel very scared, but I can’t put it in words why—every detail about them has a good explanation or an excuse, and probably each of those details individually would be okay on a different person, it’s just the entire setup plus some things I can’t even point my finger at”. Also, some things are difficult to put in words. But our society has a strong cultural taboo against excluding people without an accepted legible reason. (In extreme cases, not being able to explain why you excluded someone could result in a lawsuit.)
I informed the team that I thought Ziz and some other people had arrived. The venue staff member assured us that the venue could handle it, and I think that the venue staff had called the police.
As far as I remember (it’s been while since I read through all the information), there were children who attended a previous event at the location that were inside of the location when Ziz and her crew showed up. Then the person responsible for the venue called the cops. Ziz at al were charged with false imprisonment for preventing the children from leaving. That collateral damage is quite inconvenient for Ziz’s narrative of the situation.
Thanks for the interesting facts. The news articles I’ve looked at were like “cops were called” without specifying by whom exactly.
It was a perfect shield that Ziz used with great skill. And yeah, we should have been smarter about it.
EDIT:
Found this:
OK, so Anna Salamon obviously was the smart one in the room. The rest of the team should update about listening to her concerns. (Added: Eh, this was needlessly harsh. Different smart people have different strengths and weaknesses. But, at least in this case, Anna seems like a good judge of character, and that is a thing that seems to be in a very short supply. The others are probably too easy to impress by someone being smart and contrarian, and fail to notice that the person also is insane.)
I am updating towards “yes, there are things the rationalist community could have done better (in addition to being less lenient towards drug junkies).”
EDIT:
Actually, the Zizians’ version of the story is that MIRI/CFAR called the cops. That’s probably where I originally got that information from.
I believe (though my memory in general is very very fuzzy) that I was the one who most pushed for Ziz and Gwen to be at that workshop. (I don’t recall talking with Anna about that at all before the workshop, and don’t see anything about that in my emails on a quick look, though I could very easily have forgotten. I do recall her saying at the workshop that she thought Ziz shouldn’t be there.) I did indeed update later (also based on other things) quite strongly that I really truly cannot detect various kinds of pathology, and therefore have to be much more circumspect, deferent to others about this, not making lots of decisions like this, etc. (I do think there was good reason to have Ziz at the workshop though, contra others; Ziz was indeed smart and an interesting original insightful thinker, which is in short supply. I’m also unclear on what evidence Anna had at the time, and the extent to which the community’s behavior with Ziz was escalatorily causing Ziz’s eventual fate.)
Uh, for the record, I would definitely take it very seriously, probably as pretty strong or very strong evidence, if Anna says that someone is harmful / evil / etc.; but I would not take it as strong evidence of someone not being so, if she endorses them.
On a second thought, maybe this is not about some generic “human judgment skill”, but different people sensitive to different sets of red flags (perhaps based on their previous experience). So Anna may notice some that other people missed, other people notice something that Anna missed, etc.
Problem is that the red flags are sometimes difficult to communicate; you often feel them rather than find them by conscious evaluation. Something like “this person makes me feel very scared, but I can’t put it in words why—every detail about them has a good explanation or an excuse, and probably each of those details individually would be okay on a different person, it’s just the entire setup plus some things I can’t even point my finger at”. Also, some things are difficult to put in words. But our society has a strong cultural taboo against excluding people without an accepted legible reason. (In extreme cases, not being able to explain why you excluded someone could result in a lawsuit.)
Yes, Ziz does make that claim.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CJPdj0eBg-lII9KKkCAImxkg7x4-Kc4XxfrZTnVfS5c/edit?tab=t.0 is an account from Elizabeth from CFAR about what happened that day and it states:
As far as I remember (it’s been while since I read through all the information), there were children who attended a previous event at the location that were inside of the location when Ziz and her crew showed up. Then the person responsible for the venue called the cops. Ziz at al were charged with false imprisonment for preventing the children from leaving. That collateral damage is quite inconvenient for Ziz’s narrative of the situation.