There’s a model-fragment that I think is pretty important to understanding what’s happened around Michael Vassar, and Scott Alexander’s criticism.
Helping someone who is having a mental break is hard. It’s difficult for someone to do for a friend. It’s difficult for professionals to do in an institutional setting, and I have tons of anecdotes from friends and acquaintances, both inside and outside the rationality community, of professionals in institutions fucking up in ways that were traumatizing or even abusive. Friends have some natural advantages over institutions: they can provide support in a familiar environment instead of a prison-like environment, and make use of context they have with the person.
When you encounter someone who’s having a mental break or is giving off signs that they’re highly stressed and at risk of a mental break, the incentivized action is to get out of the radius of blame (see Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics). I think most people do this instinctively. Attempting to help someone through a break is a risky and thankless job; many more people will hear about it if it goes badly than if it goes well. Anyone who does it repeatedly will probably find name attached to a disaster and a mistake they made that sounds easier to avoid than it really was. Nevertheless, I think people should try to help their friends (and sometimes their acquaintances) in those circumstances, and that when we hear how it went, we should adjust our interpretation accordingly.
I’ve seen Michael get involved in a fair number of analogous situations that didn’t become disasters and that no one heard about, and that significantly affects my interpretation, when I hear that he’s been in the blast-radius of situations that did.
I think Scott Alexander looked at some stories (possibly with some rumor-mill distortions added on), and took a “this should be left to professionals” stance. And I think the “this should be left to professionals” stance looks better to him, as a professional who’s worked only in above-average institutions and who can fix problems when he sees them, than it does to people collecting anecdotes from others who’ve been involuntarily committed.
There’s a model-fragment that I think is pretty important to understanding what’s happened around Michael Vassar, and Scott Alexander’s criticism.
Helping someone who is having a mental break is hard. It’s difficult for someone to do for a friend. It’s difficult for professionals to do in an institutional setting, and I have tons of anecdotes from friends and acquaintances, both inside and outside the rationality community, of professionals in institutions fucking up in ways that were traumatizing or even abusive. Friends have some natural advantages over institutions: they can provide support in a familiar environment instead of a prison-like environment, and make use of context they have with the person.
When you encounter someone who’s having a mental break or is giving off signs that they’re highly stressed and at risk of a mental break, the incentivized action is to get out of the radius of blame (see Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics). I think most people do this instinctively. Attempting to help someone through a break is a risky and thankless job; many more people will hear about it if it goes badly than if it goes well. Anyone who does it repeatedly will probably find name attached to a disaster and a mistake they made that sounds easier to avoid than it really was. Nevertheless, I think people should try to help their friends (and sometimes their acquaintances) in those circumstances, and that when we hear how it went, we should adjust our interpretation accordingly.
I’ve seen Michael get involved in a fair number of analogous situations that didn’t become disasters and that no one heard about, and that significantly affects my interpretation, when I hear that he’s been in the blast-radius of situations that did.
I think Scott Alexander looked at some stories (possibly with some rumor-mill distortions added on), and took a “this should be left to professionals” stance. And I think the “this should be left to professionals” stance looks better to him, as a professional who’s worked only in above-average institutions and who can fix problems when he sees them, than it does to people collecting anecdotes from others who’ve been involuntarily committed.