Sad to hear that an end of a relationship had such an unfortunate fallout, as if the pain of splitting up is not enough.
At the time of the event, I was executive director of Oak (the California branch of the Monastic Academy), and Shekinah was visiting for a one-month training program. I had made specific monastic agreements not to engage sexually or romantically with others in the organization, and I broke those agreements by engaging with Shekinah, so I informed and apologized to the community.
Stuff happens to the best of us… and it’s understandable. No one is perfectly rational and it sometimes feels impossible in the moment to honor our precommitments. That said, there is a price to be paid later for breaking them, and delaying the payment tends to compound the interest quite significantly. I wonder if that’s something that happened. Should you have, say, stepped down and distanced yourself from the organization the moment the “monastic agreement” was broken, the debt may have stayed commensurate to the misdeed.
Edit:
After finding and reading the relevant reddit thread and the medium post (which you didn’t link, why?), I feel like the post is at least a little disingenuous, and the whole organization gives a strong cultish vibe. Apparent financial considerations, lack of transparency, severe gender imbalance, lack of expertise and poor understanding of the issues and vulnerabilities that novices face upon engaging with the organization look like significant red flags. While it’s impossible for someone who was not there to figure out what really transpired, it is pretty clear that the setup was ripe for the new people getting hurt pretty badly, and I am quite surprised that not more people came forward about their pain and trauma after being a part of the Monastic Academy. But then it took a long time for the darkness in several of rat-affiliated orgs to bubble up into the public view.
The lack of compassion for your ex in your post, while understandable, is a sign that the lessons of the incident have not been taken seriously.
It is hard to see the events you are describing as anything other than a clear pattern of leader worship and resulting abuse of trust. I hope the branch will not attempt to shrug off the events as an isolated incident and continue its practices as business as usual.
Should you have, say, stepped down and distanced yourself from the organization the moment the “monastic agreement” was broken...
Well just so you know, I actually did step down right after the incident. It was a bit of a mess because I stepped down informally the day after I told the community what had happened, then we decided that this action was hasty and hadn’t given the board of directors time to make their own assessment, so we reversed it, then about a week later the board of directors agreed that I should step down and I did so. You can imagine how on edge everyone in the org was at a time like this. I certainly had no real power from the moment I first stepped down.
But why would it be good for me to distance myself from the community though? In general I have the sense that when you make a mistake like this you should stay and help and do your best to face the consequences, plus it was all so psychologically terrible that I really benefited at that time from structured spiritual practice.
the relevant reddit thread and the medium post (which you didn’t link, why?)
I didn’t link them because both they are both so emotionally charged and at the same time invoke all the maximally triggering stuff (gurus, sexual assault, cover-ups, and so on) that it’s very hard to read them and stay sane. I see in your comment that you start with quite an understanding tone and then by the end you’re talking about this darkness that lies at the heart of various rationalist orgs. The meme complexes in Shekinah’s post do give this very strong suggestion of a kind of sexual darkness in the hearts of various men, but it’s more like a very powerful subtext than something she really argues for.
I want to flag a few things here that I dislike about this comment. So let me say before I do that… like, I don’t gel with what might be called “the meditation scene”. I’m divided on whether that’s more of a “y’all just don’t communicate in the same way as me” thing or more of a “one of us is actually just wrong in a deep way” thing.
So like, I’m about to be super critical of something you wrote, where you’re defending yourself against accusations of malfeasance.
I want to be clear that I’m not directly talking about the accusations. Which is not to pretend that this isn’t some kind of attack. The criticisms I’m about to make do, I think, have some bearing on how I think we should think about the accusations. But I don’t want anyone to come away thinking like “philh’s criticisms seem valid, so I guess Alex must be in the wrong here”.
And I want to leave open the possibility that “the thing that caused you to write in such a way that philh wanted to critique” is standard meditation-scene stuff or something; that if we understand that thing, we’d decide that actually my criticisms should have approximately zero bearing on how we think about the accusations.
I don’t think I believe that, but I think there’s at least a chance of it that’s worth noting.
To disclaim my background knowledge. I’m pretty sure I read Shekinah’s writing shortly after she first posted it here, as well as the comments here. I don’t remember many details, and I don’t remember reading a reddit thread about it. I haven’t reread it since. I think it did lower my opinion of Monastic Academy, which I think was already not high. I’m trying not to let that flavor this comment, but I’d be surprised if I completely succeeded.
I see in your comment that you start with quite an understanding tone and then by the end you’re talking about this darkness that lies at the heart of various rationalist orgs.
So firstly I want to flag that this observation is consistent with the world you assert, where Shekinah’s writing and the associated commentary suggest things in a way that makes it hard to read them and maintain a grip on what is and isn’t asserted, what is and isn’t true, and similar things that it’s important to keep a grip on. (To paraphrase in a way that I hope roughly preserves what you meant.)
In that world, declining to link those things is… well, I don’t love it; I prefer not to be protected from myself. But I think it’s understandable, at least.
But it’s also consistent with a different world, where those things are straightforwardly revealing of failures on the part of yourself and/or Monastic Academy, and Shminux is just correctly picking up on that. And in that world, declining to link those things seems likely some mix of deliberate dishonesty and motivated cognition.
(This is not to take a position on which of these worlds is more likely; nor to say that those are the only possible worlds.)
this darkness that lies at the heart of various rationalist orgs
Secondly, I want to flag that this specific phrase… seems like kind of a strange thing to pick out from Shminux’s comment? When I read that phrase in your post, especially combined with the earlier “it’s very hard to read them and stay sane”, it comes across sort of conspiracy-flavored? Like Shminux is extrapolating from the things-you-didn’t-link to some vague darkness that has no concrete features nailing it to reality. Obviously you don’t explicitly say that’s what Shminux is doing, but, well, it’s a very powerful subtext that I pick up on.
But when I go back and reread what Shminux wrote, that’s not at all how it comes across. It sounds like they already believed in this darkness, it was already a part of their world model, and now they’re using it as a “well, that tracks I guess” with one detail of what they’ve inferred about Monastic Academy. They don’t give any concrete detail about this darkness, but like, that seems fine because it’s not about the darkness.
The meme complexes in Shekinah’s post do give this very strong suggestion of a kind of sexual darkness in the hearts of various men
Thirdly I want to flag that Shminux seemed to make several criticisms, and none of them were particularly about sexual darkness in anyone’s heart. Like, it sounds like you’re saying you didn’t link to those things, because they suggest-without-saying… something that Shminux didn’t bring up. Which feels not-super-relevant.
A fourth thing I want to flag is that Alex said two weeks ago he was intending to reply more, and has not done so. Which means he hasn’t replied to any of the things I wanted to flag. The one thing he replied to was basically an aside, separate from the main point of “you’ve explained your observation, but here’s another possible explanation for it”.
I want to flag this for the same reason as I wanted to flag the others. It seems to me that Alex’s comments have a substantial amount of the “it’s hard to read this and stay sane” thing.
To explain this flag in more detail: I think that if a person reads this discussion and doesn’t track carefully, they might see that: “Alex replied to something philh said. He gave a different explanation for his behaviour than philh suggested, and then followed up in more detail. His explanation seems reasonable.” And they might lose sight of: “but the thing Alex replied to was an aside. The main point of that flag is still open, and so are the other flags.”
And this person might see: “Alex appears cooperative and non-defensive here, and has said he’ll reply further.” And they might think: “there’s no need to reach any conclusions now, I can wait until I know more”. And if they notice that Alex didn’t reply further: “oh, well, maybe he just forgot, or got busy, or....” And they might simply stop thinking about it, and fail to reach any conclusions.
I don’t claim to know what’s happening inside Alex’s head. But it does seem to me that his writings have these effects.
It’s possible this is a fairly normal level of “hard to read and stay sane”? I may only be picking up on it because he accused Shekinah’s original letter of doing the thing, and that primed me to look out for it, or something. This doesn’t feel like it’s the case to me, but it might be.
Even if that is the case, it seems worthwhile to point out these effects explicitly.
And they might simply stop thinking about it, and fail to reach any conclusions.
I don’t want to make this mistake myself. It’s important not to jump to premature conclusions, but it’s also important to be able to reach conclusions eventually. I’ve now reread the original letter, along with this comment thread and Shekinah’s follow up.
There’s no obvious reason for me to share my conclusions. I have no relationship to any people or organizations involved here. But given my previous comments, especially the preamble to my first one… it feels like some kind of failure mode for me not to share them. Like I’m saying “here is how we do things” and then not caring whether we actually do the things. So with that in mind:
But it’s also consistent with a different world, where those things are straightforwardly revealing of failures on the part of yourself and/or Monastic Academy, and Shminux is just correctly picking up on that.
I now believe we’re in substantially this world. Alex raped Shekinah. OAK/MA attempted to cover this up. Shekinah’s original letter made this much clear. Alex is some combination of lying and delusional about the situation.
I don’t know all the details, but I don’t expect those particular conclusions would change if I did.
Having no connection to this situation, my sense is that there’s nothing particular I should be doing with these conclusions. Alex is unwelcome at any events that I run, but since we live on different continents he was unlikely to anyway.
Well no I definitely did not rape Shekinah. I don’t think even she accuses me of that in her post.
It’s been quite a difficult few weeks at this end, which is why I haven’t replied more to your comment. I see the following points in your comment:
The paragraph that goes “So firstly I want to flag that this observation is consistent with the world you assert… But it’s also consistent with a different world, where those things are straightforwardly revealing of failures on the part of yourself and/or Monastic Academy” where you critique my non-linking to Shekinah’s medium post
The part where you critique my talking about “this darkness that lies at the heart of various rationalist orgs” in response to shminux’s post
The part that goes “I want to flag that shminux seemed to make several criticisms …” where you mention that I didn’t respond to all of shminux’s points
I believe I have responded to (1). Given that you’ve apparently decided that I’m definitely a rapist (“I now believe we’re in substantially this world. Alex raped Shekinah.”), are you interested in further dialog on (2) or (3), and are there any further points that I’ve missed?
I don’t think even she accuses me of that in her post.
Recall that the description in the original letter was:
Without any conversation about consent, without any kissing or foreplay, or any previous sexual engagement and despite the boundaries previously stated; he then jumped on top of me and entered my body. This encounter was over before I could even react. I did NOT have an opportunity to make a choice and I did NOT give my consent.
The thing Shekinah describes here is rape, legally and ethically, whether she uses the word or not.
There is more I’d like to say here. There are questions that I don’t really know how to navigate, around respecting Shekinah’s agency and privacy and right to self-definition. But having that conversation with Alex seems disrespectful. So anyone who isn’t Alex is welcome to PM me for further thoughts.
I believe I have responded to (1).
You have not. In a previous comment I pointed out that you responded to an aside, in ways that made it easy for someone not paying attention to think you had responded to (1).
Critiquing your non-linking was simply not the point of that flag. The structure of the main thing I was going for was: “you provide explanation A for observation X. But B would also explain X.” And the reason I was saying this was something like: it’s easy to see an explanation, check that it makes sense/is consistent with the available evidence, and then assume it’s true. I think we more reliably arrive at true conclusions if we keep in mind that there are other possible explanations, and pointing out another possible explanation helps with that.
you’ve apparently decided that I’m definitely a rapist
I do think you’re a rapist, but “definitely” is coming out of nowhere here.
are you interested in further dialog on (2) or (3)
Probably not super interested.
But, to be clear… this is only partly because I think you’re a rapist? It’s also because this is a frustrating conversation for me even completely ignoring that.
I said, early on, that I wasn’t directly talking about the accusations. That was true, and for the most part it’s still true. I have now directly spoken about the accusations. But none of the things I flagged were directly about them; and the things I flagged are not primarily why I believe them.
But like, I specifically said that you didn’t address point (1). And then you said you thought you’d addressed it, without even acknowledging that I said you hadn’t. So...
...combine that with the multiple other ways, in this thread, that I’ve pointed out where I think you’ve essentially “missed the point”, zero of which you’ve replied to...
...I really don’t see this being a productive conversation? Especially not for the amount of effort it’s taking.
And then there’s the fact that, yeah, I think you’re a rapist and I feel kinda weird having a semi-polite conversation with you on what’s kind of a question of procedural norms? Especially in this particular comment thread.
All that said: I do think the questions “is Alex a rapist” and “are Alex’s comments bad in the ways I think they are” are different questions. You get to defend yourself on the second even if you’re guilty on the first.
(And obviously you get to defend yourself on the first question too. I’m not having that conversation in public, but I’d be potentially open to a private conversation through a mediator we both trust, if you happen to want that.)
So like, if you think your comments are not bad in the ways I think they’re bad, and you want to put in the effort to defend them… I don’t promise a reply, and conditional on a reply I don’t promise an effortful one. But I do think you should feel able to do that.
Something I wanted to say was: in Shekinah’s followup post, she does use the word rape to describe the experience. For example, she says explicitly “This incident of sexual assault meets the federal definition of “rape”″. And in reply to a commenter saying “What you’re describing is unambiguously rape”, she says “I straightforwardly agree”.
I was hesitant to say this initially, because although it’s already linked in this comment section, I didn’t know for sure if Alex had read it. If he had not, then by saying the above, I’d essentially be directing a rapist’s attention back towards his victim, which seems like a bad thing to do in general. I have since been in communication with Shekinah, and she has given me the okay to say it.
She also tells me that in private conversation with Alex, before he blocked her, she made him aware that she considers it rape. She has given me the okay to share this, too.
(And obviously you get to defend yourself on the first question too. I’m not having that conversation in public …)
Yeah I am also very pessimistic about having the core argument about sexual assault on the public internet so I agree with not trying to resolve that part right here.
Critiquing your non-linking was simply not the point of that flag. The structure of the main thing I was going for was: “you provide explanation A for observation X. But B would also explain X.” And the reason I was saying this was something like: it’s easy to see an explanation, check that it makes sense/is consistent with the available evidence, and then assume it’s true. I think we more reliably arrive at true conclusions if we keep in mind that there are other possible explanations, and pointing out another possible explanation helps with that.
Got it! Sorry! I really thought you were directly critiquing my non-linking to Shekinah’s post. I think I read your comment in the midst of feeling wrongfully accused about stuff and didn’t read as carefully as I should have.
Ok so yeah I really agree about keeping in mind that there are other possible explanations, and the value of that for not over-weighting the first plausible explanation found.
It’s hard though. In this particular case you might point out an alternative explanation for my actions, and I might respond “yeah but I remember reasoning in such and such a way”. That could be introduction of new evidence, too.
Yet memories about intentions and mental states quickly become extremely fuzzy. Sometimes it’s better to go based on concrete actions taken.
Probably not super interested
I won’t expand on (2) or (3) for now then. Just noting this for readers who are evaluating my helpfulness/unhelpfulness on this thread (which I support readers doing btw!). Sorry it was such a long time between comments. I may not have come back at all if you hadn’t pointed out my long absence, so thank you for doing that.
Thanks for taking the time to write this comment philh.
So firstly I want to flag that this observation is consistent with the world you assert, where Shekinah’s writing and the associated commentary suggest things in a way that makes it hard to read them and maintain a grip on what is and isn’t asserted, what is and isn’t true, and similar things that it’s important to keep a grip on.
Yup this is a good paraphrase of what I meant.
In that world, declining to link those things is… well, I don’t love it; I prefer not to be protected from myself.
Yup. Well I try to write in a way that conveys a point as straightforwardly as possible, and I judged that linking to the medium post would hinder that goal. I may have been wrong about this but I wouldn’t say that I was trying to protect the reader from themselves (and I agree that trying to protect readers from themselves when writing on the internet is rarely helpful).
[Meta: I’m now going to try to compare this to some imperfectly analogous situations and I want to flag that using imperfect analogies in the context of accusations of sexual assault is kind of dangerous because the non-rhyming aspects of the analogies can appear kind of flippant or rude if taken to be rhyming aspects.]
Analogy: I wrote a while ago about optimization. The post had a lot of connections with dynamical systems. I didn’t link much or discuss much the connections with dynamical systems, beyond a general nod in the direction, because I judged that it didn’t help to illuminate the topic very much. By doing so I wouldn’t say that I was protecting the reader from themselves, but I was making a judgement about how to present the thing in a straightforward way. Now one might say that dynamical systems was the most important thing to link because the whole content of my own post was building on top of that foundation. But just as with my non-linking to Shekinah’s article, I mentioned the existence of the dynamical systems literature in my post, and anybody who wanted to look it up could easily find the relevant content via a google search. I had the sense that linking it explicitly would suggest that the reader ought to either understand the main concepts at the other end of the link or else not expect to understand my own post, neither of which was true w.r.t. dynamical systems in that post or w.r.t. Shekinah’s article in this post.
[Am intending to reply more to your further points. Thank you again for taking the time to go into this.]
I had the sense that linking it explicitly would suggest that the reader ought to either understand the main concepts at the other end of the link or else not expect to understand my own post, neither of which was true w.r.t. dynamical systems in that post or w.r.t. Shekinah’s article in this post.
Hm. This feels like a different reason than you gave before though?
That is, I think I understand the reason “I didn’t link them because … it’s very hard to read them and stay sane.” And I think I understand the reason (paraphrased) “I didn’t link them because they aren’t prerequisites and I didn’t want the reader to think they were”. But I don’t think they’re the same reason, and it appears to me that you’ve switched from one to the other.
Yeah right. I actually spent quite a while considering this exact point (whether to link it) when writing the post. I was basically convinced that if I did link it, many people would jump straight to that link after reading the first ~paragraph of my post, then would return to read my post holding the huge number of triggering issues raised in Shekinah’s post, and ultimately I’d fail to convey the basic thing I wanted to convey. Then I considered “yes but maybe it’s still necessary to link it if my post won’t make any sense without reading that other post” but I decided that it wasn’t really a necessary prerequisite, so ultimately I didn’t link it.
In the dynamical systems example, it’s not just that it’s not a necessary prerequisite, but that if you go to the wikipedia page for dynamical systems and just start learning from scratch about dynamical systems with the intention to do it quickly and then return to the previous post, then you’ll end up kind of frustrated at the hugeness of the topic because it’s not really something you can learn in a short time, and then you’ll return to the post about optimization in a state of mind that is already bubbling with oodles of concepts that will make the simple point of the optimization essay not easy to digest. That’s my sense of it, and this is the way that this example is similar to the not-linking to Shekinah’s post.
Sad to hear that an end of a relationship had such an unfortunate fallout, as if the pain of splitting up is not enough.
Stuff happens to the best of us… and it’s understandable. No one is perfectly rational and it sometimes feels impossible in the moment to honor our precommitments. That said, there is a price to be paid later for breaking them, and delaying the payment tends to compound the interest quite significantly. I wonder if that’s something that happened. Should you have, say, stepped down and distanced yourself from the organization the moment the “monastic agreement” was broken, the debt may have stayed commensurate to the misdeed.
Edit:
After finding and reading the relevant reddit thread and the medium post (which you didn’t link, why?), I feel like the post is at least a little disingenuous, and the whole organization gives a strong cultish vibe. Apparent financial considerations, lack of transparency, severe gender imbalance, lack of expertise and poor understanding of the issues and vulnerabilities that novices face upon engaging with the organization look like significant red flags. While it’s impossible for someone who was not there to figure out what really transpired, it is pretty clear that the setup was ripe for the new people getting hurt pretty badly, and I am quite surprised that not more people came forward about their pain and trauma after being a part of the Monastic Academy. But then it took a long time for the darkness in several of rat-affiliated orgs to bubble up into the public view.
The lack of compassion for your ex in your post, while understandable, is a sign that the lessons of the incident have not been taken seriously.
It is hard to see the events you are describing as anything other than a clear pattern of leader worship and resulting abuse of trust. I hope the branch will not attempt to shrug off the events as an isolated incident and continue its practices as business as usual.
Well just so you know, I actually did step down right after the incident. It was a bit of a mess because I stepped down informally the day after I told the community what had happened, then we decided that this action was hasty and hadn’t given the board of directors time to make their own assessment, so we reversed it, then about a week later the board of directors agreed that I should step down and I did so. You can imagine how on edge everyone in the org was at a time like this. I certainly had no real power from the moment I first stepped down.
But why would it be good for me to distance myself from the community though? In general I have the sense that when you make a mistake like this you should stay and help and do your best to face the consequences, plus it was all so psychologically terrible that I really benefited at that time from structured spiritual practice.
I didn’t link them because both they are both so emotionally charged and at the same time invoke all the maximally triggering stuff (gurus, sexual assault, cover-ups, and so on) that it’s very hard to read them and stay sane. I see in your comment that you start with quite an understanding tone and then by the end you’re talking about this darkness that lies at the heart of various rationalist orgs. The meme complexes in Shekinah’s post do give this very strong suggestion of a kind of sexual darkness in the hearts of various men, but it’s more like a very powerful subtext than something she really argues for.
I want to flag a few things here that I dislike about this comment. So let me say before I do that… like, I don’t gel with what might be called “the meditation scene”. I’m divided on whether that’s more of a “y’all just don’t communicate in the same way as me” thing or more of a “one of us is actually just wrong in a deep way” thing.
So like, I’m about to be super critical of something you wrote, where you’re defending yourself against accusations of malfeasance.
I want to be clear that I’m not directly talking about the accusations. Which is not to pretend that this isn’t some kind of attack. The criticisms I’m about to make do, I think, have some bearing on how I think we should think about the accusations. But I don’t want anyone to come away thinking like “philh’s criticisms seem valid, so I guess Alex must be in the wrong here”.
And I want to leave open the possibility that “the thing that caused you to write in such a way that philh wanted to critique” is standard meditation-scene stuff or something; that if we understand that thing, we’d decide that actually my criticisms should have approximately zero bearing on how we think about the accusations.
I don’t think I believe that, but I think there’s at least a chance of it that’s worth noting.
To disclaim my background knowledge. I’m pretty sure I read Shekinah’s writing shortly after she first posted it here, as well as the comments here. I don’t remember many details, and I don’t remember reading a reddit thread about it. I haven’t reread it since. I think it did lower my opinion of Monastic Academy, which I think was already not high. I’m trying not to let that flavor this comment, but I’d be surprised if I completely succeeded.
So firstly I want to flag that this observation is consistent with the world you assert, where Shekinah’s writing and the associated commentary suggest things in a way that makes it hard to read them and maintain a grip on what is and isn’t asserted, what is and isn’t true, and similar things that it’s important to keep a grip on. (To paraphrase in a way that I hope roughly preserves what you meant.)
In that world, declining to link those things is… well, I don’t love it; I prefer not to be protected from myself. But I think it’s understandable, at least.
But it’s also consistent with a different world, where those things are straightforwardly revealing of failures on the part of yourself and/or Monastic Academy, and Shminux is just correctly picking up on that. And in that world, declining to link those things seems likely some mix of deliberate dishonesty and motivated cognition.
(This is not to take a position on which of these worlds is more likely; nor to say that those are the only possible worlds.)
Secondly, I want to flag that this specific phrase… seems like kind of a strange thing to pick out from Shminux’s comment? When I read that phrase in your post, especially combined with the earlier “it’s very hard to read them and stay sane”, it comes across sort of conspiracy-flavored? Like Shminux is extrapolating from the things-you-didn’t-link to some vague darkness that has no concrete features nailing it to reality. Obviously you don’t explicitly say that’s what Shminux is doing, but, well, it’s a very powerful subtext that I pick up on.
But when I go back and reread what Shminux wrote, that’s not at all how it comes across. It sounds like they already believed in this darkness, it was already a part of their world model, and now they’re using it as a “well, that tracks I guess” with one detail of what they’ve inferred about Monastic Academy. They don’t give any concrete detail about this darkness, but like, that seems fine because it’s not about the darkness.
Thirdly I want to flag that Shminux seemed to make several criticisms, and none of them were particularly about sexual darkness in anyone’s heart. Like, it sounds like you’re saying you didn’t link to those things, because they suggest-without-saying… something that Shminux didn’t bring up. Which feels not-super-relevant.
A fourth thing I want to flag is that Alex said two weeks ago he was intending to reply more, and has not done so. Which means he hasn’t replied to any of the things I wanted to flag. The one thing he replied to was basically an aside, separate from the main point of “you’ve explained your observation, but here’s another possible explanation for it”.
I want to flag this for the same reason as I wanted to flag the others. It seems to me that Alex’s comments have a substantial amount of the “it’s hard to read this and stay sane” thing.
To explain this flag in more detail: I think that if a person reads this discussion and doesn’t track carefully, they might see that: “Alex replied to something philh said. He gave a different explanation for his behaviour than philh suggested, and then followed up in more detail. His explanation seems reasonable.” And they might lose sight of: “but the thing Alex replied to was an aside. The main point of that flag is still open, and so are the other flags.”
And this person might see: “Alex appears cooperative and non-defensive here, and has said he’ll reply further.” And they might think: “there’s no need to reach any conclusions now, I can wait until I know more”. And if they notice that Alex didn’t reply further: “oh, well, maybe he just forgot, or got busy, or....” And they might simply stop thinking about it, and fail to reach any conclusions.
I don’t claim to know what’s happening inside Alex’s head. But it does seem to me that his writings have these effects.
It’s possible this is a fairly normal level of “hard to read and stay sane”? I may only be picking up on it because he accused Shekinah’s original letter of doing the thing, and that primed me to look out for it, or something. This doesn’t feel like it’s the case to me, but it might be.
Even if that is the case, it seems worthwhile to point out these effects explicitly.
I don’t want to make this mistake myself. It’s important not to jump to premature conclusions, but it’s also important to be able to reach conclusions eventually. I’ve now reread the original letter, along with this comment thread and Shekinah’s follow up.
There’s no obvious reason for me to share my conclusions. I have no relationship to any people or organizations involved here. But given my previous comments, especially the preamble to my first one… it feels like some kind of failure mode for me not to share them. Like I’m saying “here is how we do things” and then not caring whether we actually do the things. So with that in mind:
I now believe we’re in substantially this world. Alex raped Shekinah. OAK/MA attempted to cover this up. Shekinah’s original letter made this much clear. Alex is some combination of lying and delusional about the situation.
I don’t know all the details, but I don’t expect those particular conclusions would change if I did.
Having no connection to this situation, my sense is that there’s nothing particular I should be doing with these conclusions. Alex is unwelcome at any events that I run, but since we live on different continents he was unlikely to anyway.
Well no I definitely did not rape Shekinah. I don’t think even she accuses me of that in her post.
It’s been quite a difficult few weeks at this end, which is why I haven’t replied more to your comment. I see the following points in your comment:
The paragraph that goes “So firstly I want to flag that this observation is consistent with the world you assert… But it’s also consistent with a different world, where those things are straightforwardly revealing of failures on the part of yourself and/or Monastic Academy” where you critique my non-linking to Shekinah’s medium post
The part where you critique my talking about “this darkness that lies at the heart of various rationalist orgs” in response to shminux’s post
The part that goes “I want to flag that shminux seemed to make several criticisms …” where you mention that I didn’t respond to all of shminux’s points
I believe I have responded to (1). Given that you’ve apparently decided that I’m definitely a rapist (“I now believe we’re in substantially this world. Alex raped Shekinah.”), are you interested in further dialog on (2) or (3), and are there any further points that I’ve missed?
Recall that the description in the original letter was:
The thing Shekinah describes here is rape, legally and ethically, whether she uses the word or not.
There is more I’d like to say here. There are questions that I don’t really know how to navigate, around respecting Shekinah’s agency and privacy and right to self-definition. But having that conversation with Alex seems disrespectful. So anyone who isn’t Alex is welcome to PM me for further thoughts.
You have not. In a previous comment I pointed out that you responded to an aside, in ways that made it easy for someone not paying attention to think you had responded to (1).
Critiquing your non-linking was simply not the point of that flag. The structure of the main thing I was going for was: “you provide explanation A for observation X. But B would also explain X.” And the reason I was saying this was something like: it’s easy to see an explanation, check that it makes sense/is consistent with the available evidence, and then assume it’s true. I think we more reliably arrive at true conclusions if we keep in mind that there are other possible explanations, and pointing out another possible explanation helps with that.
I do think you’re a rapist, but “definitely” is coming out of nowhere here.
Probably not super interested.
But, to be clear… this is only partly because I think you’re a rapist? It’s also because this is a frustrating conversation for me even completely ignoring that.
I said, early on, that I wasn’t directly talking about the accusations. That was true, and for the most part it’s still true. I have now directly spoken about the accusations. But none of the things I flagged were directly about them; and the things I flagged are not primarily why I believe them.
But like, I specifically said that you didn’t address point (1). And then you said you thought you’d addressed it, without even acknowledging that I said you hadn’t. So...
...combine that with the multiple other ways, in this thread, that I’ve pointed out where I think you’ve essentially “missed the point”, zero of which you’ve replied to...
...I really don’t see this being a productive conversation? Especially not for the amount of effort it’s taking.
And then there’s the fact that, yeah, I think you’re a rapist and I feel kinda weird having a semi-polite conversation with you on what’s kind of a question of procedural norms? Especially in this particular comment thread.
All that said: I do think the questions “is Alex a rapist” and “are Alex’s comments bad in the ways I think they are” are different questions. You get to defend yourself on the second even if you’re guilty on the first.
(And obviously you get to defend yourself on the first question too. I’m not having that conversation in public, but I’d be potentially open to a private conversation through a mediator we both trust, if you happen to want that.)
So like, if you think your comments are not bad in the ways I think they’re bad, and you want to put in the effort to defend them… I don’t promise a reply, and conditional on a reply I don’t promise an effortful one. But I do think you should feel able to do that.
Something I wanted to say was: in Shekinah’s followup post, she does use the word rape to describe the experience. For example, she says explicitly “This incident of sexual assault meets the federal definition of “rape”″. And in reply to a commenter saying “What you’re describing is unambiguously rape”, she says “I straightforwardly agree”.
I was hesitant to say this initially, because although it’s already linked in this comment section, I didn’t know for sure if Alex had read it. If he had not, then by saying the above, I’d essentially be directing a rapist’s attention back towards his victim, which seems like a bad thing to do in general. I have since been in communication with Shekinah, and she has given me the okay to say it.
She also tells me that in private conversation with Alex, before he blocked her, she made him aware that she considers it rape. She has given me the okay to share this, too.
Yeah I am also very pessimistic about having the core argument about sexual assault on the public internet so I agree with not trying to resolve that part right here.
Got it! Sorry! I really thought you were directly critiquing my non-linking to Shekinah’s post. I think I read your comment in the midst of feeling wrongfully accused about stuff and didn’t read as carefully as I should have.
Ok so yeah I really agree about keeping in mind that there are other possible explanations, and the value of that for not over-weighting the first plausible explanation found.
It’s hard though. In this particular case you might point out an alternative explanation for my actions, and I might respond “yeah but I remember reasoning in such and such a way”. That could be introduction of new evidence, too.
Yet memories about intentions and mental states quickly become extremely fuzzy. Sometimes it’s better to go based on concrete actions taken.
I won’t expand on (2) or (3) for now then. Just noting this for readers who are evaluating my helpfulness/unhelpfulness on this thread (which I support readers doing btw!). Sorry it was such a long time between comments. I may not have come back at all if you hadn’t pointed out my long absence, so thank you for doing that.
Thanks for taking the time to write this comment philh.
Yup this is a good paraphrase of what I meant.
Yup. Well I try to write in a way that conveys a point as straightforwardly as possible, and I judged that linking to the medium post would hinder that goal. I may have been wrong about this but I wouldn’t say that I was trying to protect the reader from themselves (and I agree that trying to protect readers from themselves when writing on the internet is rarely helpful).
[Meta: I’m now going to try to compare this to some imperfectly analogous situations and I want to flag that using imperfect analogies in the context of accusations of sexual assault is kind of dangerous because the non-rhyming aspects of the analogies can appear kind of flippant or rude if taken to be rhyming aspects.]
Analogy: I wrote a while ago about optimization. The post had a lot of connections with dynamical systems. I didn’t link much or discuss much the connections with dynamical systems, beyond a general nod in the direction, because I judged that it didn’t help to illuminate the topic very much. By doing so I wouldn’t say that I was protecting the reader from themselves, but I was making a judgement about how to present the thing in a straightforward way. Now one might say that dynamical systems was the most important thing to link because the whole content of my own post was building on top of that foundation. But just as with my non-linking to Shekinah’s article, I mentioned the existence of the dynamical systems literature in my post, and anybody who wanted to look it up could easily find the relevant content via a google search. I had the sense that linking it explicitly would suggest that the reader ought to either understand the main concepts at the other end of the link or else not expect to understand my own post, neither of which was true w.r.t. dynamical systems in that post or w.r.t. Shekinah’s article in this post.
[Am intending to reply more to your further points. Thank you again for taking the time to go into this.]
Hm. This feels like a different reason than you gave before though?
That is, I think I understand the reason “I didn’t link them because … it’s very hard to read them and stay sane.” And I think I understand the reason (paraphrased) “I didn’t link them because they aren’t prerequisites and I didn’t want the reader to think they were”. But I don’t think they’re the same reason, and it appears to me that you’ve switched from one to the other.
Yeah right. I actually spent quite a while considering this exact point (whether to link it) when writing the post. I was basically convinced that if I did link it, many people would jump straight to that link after reading the first ~paragraph of my post, then would return to read my post holding the huge number of triggering issues raised in Shekinah’s post, and ultimately I’d fail to convey the basic thing I wanted to convey. Then I considered “yes but maybe it’s still necessary to link it if my post won’t make any sense without reading that other post” but I decided that it wasn’t really a necessary prerequisite, so ultimately I didn’t link it.
In the dynamical systems example, it’s not just that it’s not a necessary prerequisite, but that if you go to the wikipedia page for dynamical systems and just start learning from scratch about dynamical systems with the intention to do it quickly and then return to the previous post, then you’ll end up kind of frustrated at the hugeness of the topic because it’s not really something you can learn in a short time, and then you’ll return to the post about optimization in a state of mind that is already bubbling with oodles of concepts that will make the simple point of the optimization essay not easy to digest. That’s my sense of it, and this is the way that this example is similar to the not-linking to Shekinah’s post.