This was an incredible read. Thank you for the transcription, Rob.
Habryka said: “As long as you have power over people, they will want you to be held accountable somehow, and want you to play by their norms. And you’ve had large amounts of power over people for many years.” I think this is exactly correct. Geoff is trying to find some way to not be accountable for the ideas he put into the world, the organization that he built, and the outcomes that they had on the people he had direct power over. It’s telling that he wishes to be absolved by a representative of the rationalist community, rather than the people who were harmed by him.
Also, like some of the participants in chat, I am pretty curious about the significance of the “demons” and “objects” from Zoe’s post. Is it just social contagion? The elevated language makes it seem like they developed some unique theories that a lot of intelligent people found persuasive (and harmful — at least in the social context of what sounds like a toxic workplace). Has any light been shed on this somewhere?