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Andy B Harassment Continues

Andy B has been harassing my FI community using many false identities. He left after I caught and exposed him, but he returned in Aug 2020. He’s written over 100 new curi.us messages under the names Periergo and Anonymous, and his Periergo Less Wrong account has been banned by Less Wrong for targeted harassment against me.

Unfortunately, he succeeded at his goal of destroying my discussions with Less Wrong.

Andy’s actions – including threats, doxxing, spamming, infiltrating the FI Discord with multiple sock puppets for months, and posting hundreds of harassing curi.us messages – violate multiple laws. He’s attacked several other FI members, not just me. His real name is unknown.

If anyone is actually willing to discuss this matter, I will provide additional evidence as appropriate. I have extensive documentation. I already posted evidence, and none of the facts are disputed.

Andy’s Friends

Andy is a David Deutsch (DD) fan who is friends with the “CritRat” DD fan community, including the “Four Strands” subgroup. They have turned a blind eye to Andy’s actions. They’ve refused to ask him to stop or to say that they think harassment is bad. The CritRat community is toxic and has also been an ongoing source of (milder) trouble from people besides Andy.

Andy’s friends include many of DD’s associates and CritRat community leaders. They know what he’s done but apparently don’t care. They’re providing him with encouragement and legitimacy in a social group, and some of them have egged him on. The public communications with Andy that I link below are all from months after Andy’s harassment was exposed.

  • Lulie Tanett has friendly tweets with Andy (related, she tweets saying we need to use force and threats, which she considers a useful “technology”). She’s DD’s current closest associate and long time IRL friend, who he often promotes on Twitter and does joint projects like videos with. She’s promoted on DD’s website. She has a history of knowingly associating with people like online harassers, doxxers and spam botters.
  • Sarah Fitz-Claridge follows Andy on Twitter. She co-founded Taking Children Seriously with DD and is his long time IRL friend. She has a hateful attitude towards ET.
  • Sarah’s husband has friendly communications with Andy on Twitter. He’s had discussions with DD for many years. He’s said hateful things about ET.
  • Brett Hall tweets with Andy (examples 2 and 3). He’s promoted on DD’s website and by DD’s tweets, and he’s said hateful things about ET.
  • Samuel Kuypers tweets with Andy. He’s promoted on DD’s website and recently co-authored a physics paper with DD.
  • Bruce Nielson tweets with Andy (more). He’s a Four Strands leader/moderator.
  • Aaron Stupple tweets with Andy. He’s a Four Strands leader/moderator.
  • Dennis Hackethal talks with Andy publicly and was co-moderator of a DD related subreddit with Andy. He’s a Four Strands leader/moderator who has libeled and plagiarized ET. DD has promoted him on Twitter.

All of these people, as well as DD, have so far refused to communicate about this problem. They apparently have no interest in a truce or deescalation. They’re making the problem worse.

They’ve stated no grievances against FI, no terms they want, no willingness to negotiate, and no approaches to problem solving that they’d try. They’ve given no explanation of how they view the Andy problem, and they haven’t said anything to discourage the harassment coming from their community. They haven’t made no contact requests either; they just ghost me and others without explanation. (Except Dennis asked me not to email him again about Andy, which I haven’t.) I’m willing to communicate using proxies, involve a neutral mediator, or take other reasonable steps.

The situation is asymmetric. The FI community is peaceful. Harassment doesn’t come from FI towards CritRats or anyone else. If any FI member did harass someone, I’d ask them to stop or ban them, rather than encouraging them. (Or I’d discuss my doubts about the accusation, if I had any. What I wouldn’t do is ignore the matter with no comment, and ghost the victim, while continuing a friendly relationship with the person accused of extensive harassment, illegal actions and aggressive force.)

Warning

Andy hasn’t harassed FI since his Less Wrong account was banned recently. Maybe he’s decided to leave me alone because he got caught again? I hope so. Or maybe he’ll continue on any day.

Despite Andy’s repeated aggression against FI, as well as the misdeeds of other CritRats, I would still prefer to deescalate the situation.

But this is a chronic problem which is doing major harm, and Andy has a pattern of returning to harass again. I’ve been extraordinarily patient and forgiving, but this can’t go on forever. Andy started harassing us two years ago. If any CritRats are willing to speak to me about deescalating or improving this situation, please contact me (comment below, email [email protected] or use Discord). So far the communications of myself and others just get ignored by CritRats. They’ve repeatedly ghosted the victims instead of the harassers.

So I’m issuing a warning: If Andy comes back to harass me again, I will hold his supporters accountable. If you’re encouraging Andy while not even giving lip service to peace, and you’re refusing to communicate about any conflict resolution, then I will blame you and take defensive actions like writing about how you’re violating my rights and sharing evidence. I’ll particularly criticize the community leaders, especially the top leader, DD. If (like me) you don’t want this outcome, clean up your community and stop harassing FI.


Elliot Temple on September 22, 2020

Messages (57)

If you want to help, talk with CritRats. See if any will communicate, explain themselves, negotiate, be reasonable, etc.


curi at 2:40 PM on September 22, 2020 | #18107 | reply | quote

> your RULES say your forum is UNMODERATED and UNCENSORED and that you can post WHATEVER YOU WANT... but Because, you disagree with my opinions and my religion you delete my posts... thats hideous you are goinaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa to rot in hells

In addition to harassing me with your apparent anti-semitism, and trolling about Trump and capitalism, *you posted a 17,000 word spam about George Washington and a 14,000 word spam about Michael Jackson*. All your posts were in bad faith, and the long spams were clearly malicious vandalism, not expressing your ideas.

Leave me the hell alone. If you keep spamming, I will consider you a criminal.


curi at 8:22 PM on December 28, 2020 | #47 | reply | quote

#47 Note: I removed his comments and I moved my comment here to get it out of a thread where it was off topic.


curi at 8:53 PM on December 28, 2020 | #19291 | reply | quote

#19291 Now, the next day after 20 malicious comments from someone familiar with navigating this site, curi.us is being DDoSed. The user agents claim it's not a web crawler or other bot, just a regular browser (meaning a person DDOSing me on purpose or a very shady bot that isn't targeting me personally), it's distributed over many IPs, and the request volume was enough that I got an error when trying to post a comment.

I haven't had any negative interactions with anyone community recently. Not even like a heated debate.

Cloudflare DDoS protection is now enabled, which means it'll check your browser before letting you access the site.

DD, Lulie and other Crit Rat leaders still have not said a single word to discourage the harassment and toxic culture they've instigated. They are likely to blame.


curi at 11:51 AM on December 29, 2020 | #19301 | reply | quote

I posted this comment: https://curi.us/2287-andy-b-harassment-and-four-strands#19329

before realizing that it's more suited to be posted in this thread instead since the ongoing evidence and developments are here. I've pasted the comment's contents below as a crude way of moving it here. Please feel free to delete or hide my original comment in that other thread as appropriate.

Sucks to see that they're DDoSing curi.us again. IIRC last time was right after you called Dennis out for plagiarism. Weird that it's happening with no clear provocation this time. Documenting everything to have a clear trail of evidence is a good idea and I will contribute however I can. I'm also hopeful that evidence like this can help show (some) CritRats that this is a real problem and criminal behaviour. Not holding my breath though since there's already so much evidence for them to draw their own judgment of the issue if they are willing to look through it.

-------

The people currently defending Andy on Twitter (PresidentSunday, KS) aren't providing any evidence or arguments and are willfully ignoring the evidence provided to them, including this thread.

They're also lying about Elliot with no evidence or arguments.

Below tweet from KS is a reply to an unrelated tweet by DorfGinger. I thought I should post it here since it doesn't directly mention curi42 and wouldn't directly notify Elliot.

https://twitter.com/ks445599/status/1344438715339268096

KS:

> Hey you have your DM off so I just want to tell you that Elliot Temple (curi 42) is a terrible person. He became super angry with David Deutsch and critical rationalists for no real reason. Basically he thinks he's a genuis and he thinks we should should all worship him.

¬

Assertions but no evidence or arguments. Smears framed as helpful warning rather than tentative judgment open to correction. It's libel and wrong!

More tentatively: I dislike that they seem to be treating it like a social game, defending their ally Andy, rather than a truth-seeking endeavour based on the facts of Andy's history at FI. Trying to discredit Elliot doesn't change any of the evidence, but it sure gives them an excuse to ignore it.

I hate that fact-backed claims about their wrongdoing get buried or ignored with time. Like Dennis Hackethal's book filled with plagiarism of Elliot and DD is still for sale and Amazon censored the one honest review (Elliot's review explaining the plagiarism issues and poor scholarship). Only Scott Hamilton seemed to take those plagiarism claims seriously to publicly ask Dennis some critical questions (although only about a separate issue, whether Dennis had plagiarized any of Scott's ideas for a discussion platform design).

The secondary David Deutsch discussion group seem content to continue discussing with Andy and Dennis and not calling out any of their problematic behaviour. That's terrible and their own thinking is being harmed by those choices. If they're doing it because there's a scarcity of people interested in CR for them to discuss with, they'd be better off requesting some constrained. bounded discussions with FI and trying to expand on those instead of accepting and condoning criminal behaviour.


Anonymous at 4:34 AM on January 2, 2021 | #19330 | reply | quote

#19330 I agree they're being social and I haven't done socially effective things to improve this situation. (I'm busy and those are not my speciality. If someone else would do those, please and thank you). Over a year of cyberstalking, and more, is apparently not enough to get many people to focus on objective reality instead of social reality.

My Amazon review was likely deleted due to flagging/reporting, possibly in an automated fashion. I don't know why no one else has posted a review.

I appreciate your comments and summary, which I broadly agree with.

The DDoS started the day after 20 malicious comments, which I removed, so you may not have seen them. The commenter appeared to have some familiarity with my site, e.g. they likely used the Recent Comments page to find stuff. They repeatedly asked if I was Jewish, posted two >10k word wikipedia articles as spam (to escalate when ignored re jewish), and then started flaming about censorship stuff. I often leave hostile comments up but I started removing his comments when he posted the long spams. I also tried communicating with him once but that didn't help. The commenter said some weird anti-atheist stuff, and called me a criminal. He used the word "evader" which is an uncommon word that relates to one of the things Andy was particularly triggered about (as well as to Objectivism more generally). He also said things like "HITLER was no worse than you lying, Cheating, and So ON." He seemed to hate Trump and capitalism (like Andy and Andy's friend or sock puppet President Sunday). He also used a VPN to evade an IP block (like Andy has done).


curi at 4:06 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19332 | reply | quote

#19330 Oh and the previous two DDoSes were very likely from the same person. The first of those was after I privately emailed Dennis a draft of my plagiarism article, but before I made it public. That indicates the DDoSer is Dennis or someone that Dennis told. Dennis refused to say who he told about my article, so he's at least some sort of DDoS accomplice/enabler.

And Andy has a history of starting things out of the blue, so it could easily be him. His Periergo sock puppet showed up for no particular reason or special timing. Partly he also has some history of becoming busy or something (sometimes for multiple months) and spending a lot less time online (I think his life situation is a bit unstable and I know he's worked some low end jobs), so partly he'll just leave and show up again when he has free time.


curi at 4:09 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19333 | reply | quote

Here are my full DMs with @PresidentSunday

I blocked him after the blatant flaming. I think every one of his messages was hostile.

Then he went public to attack me, e.g. this targeted attempt to damage my career and destroy my ability to interact specifically with people I respect who are not FI community members:

The selection of who to tweet from everyone I'm following is good. Either he's been following me for a while or was advised on who to send the tweets to by someone who has, likely Andy. Andy knows enough about me to pick a list of 3 people like that and do a good job with knowing which ones I care about who are outside the FI community and who have talked with me some.

Nasty stuff.

There's also this:

And:

Also KS (Maybe Kevin Schoedel? Kevin was a TCSer from the early days who is in the Sarah social circle. I've met him IRL.) is trying to escalate the situation:


curi at 4:45 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19334 | reply | quote

#19334 Note that you can click images to expand them.


curi at 4:46 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19335 | reply | quote

I think you need to take stronger action against this, like involve a lawyer or something. Weak action will only encourage them and cause you even more grief in the future.

It kinda reminds me of how Trump should have taken stronger action before the election knowing that the Democrats were going to try to steal it. He didn't and is now paying a big price.


Anonymous at 5:44 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19336 | reply | quote

#19336 Involve a lawyer how? I don't know Andy's real name. And a lot of the others are international.


curi at 10:21 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19338 | reply | quote

#19338 And I basically don't think our legal system is good enough to handle people in an enabler role for this (e.g. LT or DD), even though I believe they are initiating force and would face major legal consequences in a better world (and most of them, knowing that, wouldn't do it in that world).

There are people who have dealt with significantly worse problems (e.g. IRL stalking + threats of harm + caught with a weapon) and have trouble getting the police or legal system to help much.

Put another way: our government sucks at protecting us.


curi at 10:26 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19339 | reply | quote

#19336 An alternative way to proceed with stronger action is to start publishing things about DD (e.g. private messages or certain old public messages) that he doesn't want published until he or others respond. I could also do this to LT. (They are the two that I have a *lot* of material for.) I don't believe that would be a violation of their legal rights. It would normally be a violation of their moral rights, but not in this case because it'd be part of a defensive strategy in response to their violations of my moral rights.

But, despite their actions, I really don't want to hurt them. I was planning to maybe do it anyway if more severe harassment continued. It's also something that's hard to do without causing a lot of people to think I'm in the wrong. I did a mild version of it here ( Praise from David Deutsch ) which was multi-purpose (also helps set record straight against a campaign of lies) and also significantly less offensive to most readers due to the positive focus.

I also fear they would still be unwilling to do any common preference finding, problem solving or basic negotiating a truce pretty much regardless of what I did. I think they rationalized that I'm impossible to talk to in their own minds and doing things they hate might not get them talking. (BTW there exist quite nasty articles about ghosting people and getting all your friends to join in. Some articles have very harmful, bad advice. And the articles broadly assume the person who thinks they are a victim is right and that they should ghost the other person they regard as toxic. I think what they're doing is partly a current cultural thing. Although even those articles generally recommend making a "no contact" request, which DD/LT/etc have never done. (And even if they did make a no contact request, it would be invalid in a situation like this where they are helping enabling harassment of me.)

I also really don't want to spend my energy fighting with people.


curi at 10:48 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19340 | reply | quote

#19336 I am aware that things only improved with Andy when I took the stronger action of posting public accusations with extensive evidence against him, including a chart of comments with IPs. (I didn't delay that very much while attempting to speak to people about the problem privately first. That's because I started speaking to them before I had all the Andy info figured out. The blog post went up soon after I had all the info in it. Before that I tried telling Andy that I knew everything and to fuck off forever, but he wouldn't listen. After I posted he thought he lost and gave up for months, but started showing his face again when he realized none of the CritRats rejected him. Andy expected them to shun him for his misdeeds, but they didn't. Also previous to that, the initial Andy harassment stopped only when I convinced him I really did have hard evidence that it was him – before that he tried lying and gaslighting, but when he was absolutely sure he was caught then he gave up and left for months. But then he came back on multiple sock puppets. He actually has mixed feelings, btw. He's come back multiple times and always tries to learn from me before getting triggered, raging, and trying to hurt me.)


curi at 10:56 PM on January 2, 2021 | #19341 | reply | quote

They used Twitter's rules against targeted harassment to target and harass me by mass flagging a tweet from over 4 years ago. My account is locked unless/until I delete it. I don't actually care about it but I dislike editing my archive on principle. Even if it were a bad tweet[1], I wouldn't want to remove that history.

[1] It's short and assumed a lot of contextual knowledge to understand it; it's not important and I don't care about it; but I did have reasons for thinking and communicating something negative about DD, which I didn't explain in the tweet, but which I stand by now.

I screenshotted that on my phone then went to the next screen. Then I went on my computer and found out *you can't go back to the prior screen* which is lame. Good thing I screenshotted it the first time!

This is a nasty feature by Twitter which is meant to enable cancel culture and to benefit the kind of people who use it (e.g. I don't recall ever reporting/flagging a tweet despite seeing some very nasty ones). Twitter also hides how automated this is, how many people are in the mob(?) that's harassing my account, etc. There's a broad lack of transparency.

Also it'd make more sense to lock you out of posting tweets but still enable reading tweets. If they'd do that, I could actually just leave it locked for months with little inconvenience. But they intentionally make the website hard to use while logged out, don't let you use the app at all without logging in (I think), and I'd rather not use a different account to read Twitter. Locking read access when you want to lock write access is an ongoing issue that people seem not to think about or something. E.g. forums routinely ban people (can't read or write) instead of disabling their ability to post. Once I asked a google group moderator in advance about that and suggested that posting bans make more sense and there's no need to kick people off the group. *He agreed with me and thought it made sense.* Some weeks later he banned me in the normal way that prevented me from reading the group anymore. There's something kinda ingrained about full bans. I think maybe they want to punish the person and destroying an extra thing seems like a bonus to them instead of like needless (and therefore malicious) destruction.


curi at 1:01 AM on January 3, 2021 | #19342 | reply | quote

#19342 Twitter offers me a "remove" button but *has already removed the tweet* before I press the button. The button really means "i agree not to appeal the claim that the tweet violates twitter rules". Twitter won't let you have your account back plus have the option to appeal later. Their info is misleading and is a bit dystopian (it's kinda demanding people in a dispute positively affirm that Twitter is right, instead of allowing disagreement to exist). I do not agree with them.

Twitter is also bad at coding, in yet another way. Here's the Twitter iOS app when I opened it this morning after not hitting "Remove" yesterday:


curi at 12:22 PM on January 3, 2021 | #19344 | reply | quote

Here's what DD had said:

https://twitter.com/DavidDeutschOxf/status/760071665304887304

Pretty nasty, false, and detached from reality. Flaming Trump without argument (and, unlike my tweet, DD also didn't provide his arguments elsewhere and also would not provide them if asked) and betraying his former values. (Not very effective) social climbing/pandering. He sacrificed so much for so little. He's never gotten anywhere by being an establishment-leftist suck up. He got his social status by a combination of 1) accomplishments/merit; plus 2) not being too offensive (the mainstream didn't notice TCS much, and he didn't talk about his libertarian ideas in his books or speeches). He could have supported Trump privately, said nothing publicly, and focused on more physics or philosophy accomplishments. That would have been more effective social climbing than what he did.


curi at 12:54 PM on January 3, 2021 | #19346 | reply | quote

I clicked "Remove" to unlock my Twitter account. Lame but convenient and I don't think it particularly matters. The next screen said something kinda like: Thanks for addressing this issue. Your account is unlocked. Click here to access it again. Please review the Twitter Rules so you can follow them in the future.

I forgot to screenshot it.


curi at 12:57 PM on January 3, 2021 | #19347 | reply | quote

Turned off DDoS protection today (it causes some problems). Site is still under attack. Too busy to deal with this atm. Turned it back on.


curi at 1:25 AM on January 4, 2021 | #19360 | reply | quote

I disabled DDoS protection again. I'm not being DDoSed at the moment. Last time it took hours before they resumed. I won't be surprised if it starts again soon. Here's some data on the attack:

The monthly graph uses requests/day:

The large increases are the two recent DDoSes.

The last 24 hours graph uses requests/hour:

The large increase is the second DDoS.


curi at 6:09 PM on January 4, 2021 | #19364 | reply | quote

#19364 DDoSing is a serious crime which people spend years in prison for.


curi at 6:17 PM on January 4, 2021 | #19365 | reply | quote


curi at 6:46 PM on January 4, 2021 | #19367 | reply | quote

"fouxdefafa" trolled the FI Basecamp today with bad faith comments and by vandalizing other people's task lists. Simultaneously, "chris p" trolled curi.us at https://curi.us/2394-focusing-your-attention-discussion#9


curi at 6:13 PM on March 5, 2021 | #20110 | reply | quote

i'm here for you

fifty shades of grey, call 311. hello again diane. nobody answered. someone will be there shortly.


chris p. at 7:00 PM on March 5, 2021 | #20111 | reply | quote

Could anyone please contact DD, LT or any other CritRat leaders and get any kind of response from them to the ongoing harassment that they continue to encourage? I'd really prefer communication over alternatives.


curi at 11:23 AM on March 9, 2021 | #20135 | reply | quote

Anyone know when he removed that account?


curi at 2:26 PM on March 10, 2021 | #20138 | reply | quote

Anonymous at 1:20 PM on March 11, 2021 | #20149 | reply | quote

AmativeAndy account is gone now too


Anonymous at 1:39 PM on March 12, 2021 | #20160 | reply | quote

[12:31 PM] curi: plz email DD and ask him to disown andy and request his followers stop harassing me. i want EVERY subscriber to do this. it's very important. i don't want to fight back publicly nor continue being a victim. @everyone i want his side to at least offer some statement of their position on the matter. if he ghosts 10+ ppl it'd at least help clarify how unreasonable he's being. plz let me know when you email him and again like a week later if no reply. this is VERY IMPORTANT. i'd write it for you or give guidance except i don't want to tell ppl what to say so they're all different. but see http://curi.us/2382-andy-b-harassment-continues if u haven't already

[12:31 PM] curi: DD's email is at teh bottom of this page: http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/about-me/

[12:32 PM] curi: DD's followers have DDOSed and stalked me, written many hundreds of harassing messages, threatened someone with IRL harm, and more.

[12:33 PM] curi: the connection btwn the harassment and DD is pretty direct. DD -> his close associates -> direct ongoing public interaction with the worst criminal.

[12:34 PM] curi: please, seriously, send an email. try to help.

[12:36 PM] curi: (and plz only send one email each. you can also contact some of his associates, which would be great, but is less important. and plz do not harass any of them. the goal here is to get them to respond to the matter and deescalate things and get a truce, not to fight with them.)

[12:37 PM] curi: I will appreciate whoever helps.


curi at 1:50 PM on March 12, 2021 | #20161 | reply | quote

FYI chris p is the same guy who harassed and DOSed curi.us a couple months ago. the harassment included posting the full text of 2 long wikipedia articles. it seems likely that it's Andy given he's apparently monitoring this thread, deleting or renaming his twitter and trying to hide right now, etc. (plus likely given the style, andy's history, the alternative possible suspects, etc.)


curi at 1:53 PM on March 12, 2021 | #20162 | reply | quote

#20161 I don't think I should write to DD at the moment. I haven't paid much attention to the issue and I don't know enough to put something in writing to DD that I'd be fully persuaded of.

However, I gather from Elliot's request that this is an important and time-sensitive issue. This place is important to me, so I think it's my responsibility to know enough about the issue to understand what the right thing for me to do is and to explain my decision.

Maybe I should have done this sooner, but something I could still do is:

1. Start a project to learn enough about this issue

2. Suspend my usual daily FI projects (e.g., Super Mario Bros., reading *Capitalism*)

3. Spend at least 30 minutes per day on the new project until one of the following occurs:

- two weeks have passed

- I write to DD

- I successfully explain here why I shouldn't write to DD

4. Resume my usual daily FI projects

I currently plan to do the above, starting tomorrow.


Alisa at 6:23 PM on March 12, 2021 | #20163 | reply | quote

#20163 Correction: I’ll do the new project for a week, not two weeks. If I haven’t figured out what I want to know after a week, I’ll try to figure out whether I should continue with the project in some form.


Alisa at 8:52 PM on March 12, 2021 | #20164 | reply | quote

#20160 Andy B's new twitter name:

https://twitter.com/Epistemicide

Some of his recent tweets show who he's talking with:

(Retweeting DD shows that DD is not even blocking Andy.)


Anonymous at 4:36 PM on March 14, 2021 | #20167 | reply | quote

https://twitter.com/Epistemicide/with_replies

Scott's engagement with Andy goes on and on. Scott is attempting to be a founder and leader in the community. He knows who I am and what Andy did. https://twitter.com/Epistemicide/status/1356016308073222147

DD is directly and publicly associating with these people, like Bruce, who like, defend Andy and help Andy. (Multiple people reported Andy's harassment to Bruce because Bruce was a group moderator, but Bruce kept Andy at the group, made excuses for him, defended him, and ignored all the evidence before switching to the new strategy of ghosting everyone who has a problem with Andy.)


Anonymous at 4:50 PM on March 14, 2021 | #20169 | reply | quote

#20163 Alisa, which part are you unsure about?


Anonymous at 5:21 PM on March 14, 2021 | #20170 | reply | quote

#20170 The things that I am unclear about are changing as I learn. When I started my project to learn more about this issue, I was unclear on:

- the evidence against “Andy B”

- what the FI shadow community was and who its members were

- the kind and degree of encouragement that “Andy B” received from the shadow community

Reading http://curi.us/2287-andy-b-harassment-and-four-strands cleared those up for me. If “Andy B”’s associates in the FI shadow community were reasonable people, then the evidence provided in that article would be more than enough to warrant a response from them explaining, e.g., (a) why the evidence is wrong or (b) why it’s right but they still continue to associate with “Andy B”.

The most important thing that I’m currently unclear on is the kind or degree of responsibility that DD has for “Andy B”’s actions and the actions of the shadow community.

A side issue that I’m unclear about is about what “hate” and “hatred” are and why they’re bad.


Alisa at 6:24 PM on March 14, 2021 | #20171 | reply | quote

Lulie is still doing public, friendly interactions with Andy B, as of 10 days ago.

https://twitter.com/metaLulie/status/1367976083023396870

https://archive.ph/kqAag


curi at 5:27 PM on March 15, 2021 | #20186 | reply | quote

#20171 I’m still trying to figure out what kind of responsibility DD has in all of this. I’ve been trying to think of similar cases, but I haven’t come up with anything great. Pointers welcome.

I think I could write something to the Four Strands people who associate with “Andy B”, but not (yet) to DD. I don’t know where to go from here. I think I understand the verifiable facts of the matter, but not the stuff that depends on states of mind like “hatred”. I wonder if I’d have to understand that stuff in order to know whether or not I should write something to DD, either directly or as an open letter,


Alisa at 7:03 PM on March 15, 2021 | #20190 | reply | quote

#20190 Did you read curi's new diagram? You aren't quoting anything curi said and analyzing or responding to it. That's one thing you could do next.


Anonymous at 7:19 PM on March 15, 2021 | #20191 | reply | quote

#20191 https://curi.us/files/david-deutsch-hate-group.pdf :

> David won’t even ask his friends, colleagues, and fans to stop harassing.

(All quoted text below is from the png above.)

DD's "friends" and "colleagues" aren't labeled as such on the diagram. Maybe they fall under DD's "Direct Associates", who *are* labeled on the diagram. If so, then, as far as I can tell from the diagram, none of DD's "Direct Associates" are accused of harassing. So why would DD ask them to stop? But Elliot wrote "David won't *even* ask" (emphasis mine) which I think means that it's expected that DD *would* ask them. So I think I'm missing something.

I guess that what I'm missing has to do with my lack of understanding of what makes a comment "hateful" and/or about what constitutes "harassing". For example, I don't know what a "hate group" is. For another example, I wouldn't be able to confidently judge for myself, e.g., whether a comment is hateful or whether particular hateful comments constitute harassing.

If "Hateful comments about Elliot" or being "Publicly friendly with "Andy B"" constitute harassing, then that would explain why we would expect DD to ask his friends and colleagues to stop harassing.

One thing I could do is start a sub-project to learn more about hate and harassment and how they apply to this issue.


Alisa at 5:46 PM on March 16, 2021 | #20202 | reply | quote

#20202 I wrote:

> All quoted text below is from the png above.

Correction: from the *pdf* above.


Alisa at 5:46 PM on March 16, 2021 | #20203 | reply | quote

#20203 One other mistake: "hate group" isn't a quote from the pdf. It should be capitalized ("Hate Group"), and it's from the article that featured the pdf, not the pdf itself: http://curi.us/2408-david-deutschs-hate-group


Alisa at 5:48 PM on March 16, 2021 | #20204 | reply | quote

#20202 I searched Bing for "hate group".

The 1st result is the Wikipedia entry for "hate group", which begins:

> A hate group is a social group that ...

What's a "social group"? Wikipedia defines it like this:

> In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Other theorists disagree however, and are wary of definitions which stress the importance of interdependence or objective similarity. Instead, researchers within the social identity tradition generally define it as "a group is defined in terms of those who identify themselves as members of the group." Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties. For example, a society can be viewed as a large social group.

So one definition of a social group is a group of people who:

1. collectively have a sense of unity

2. interact with each other

3. share similar characteristics

Another definition is like the first definition except that it omits characteristics 2 and 3. Ok. I think I get the idea.

Back to the 1st Bing result (the Wikipedia entry for "hate group"):

> A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other designated sector of society.

The categories that a hate group can target seem to align with current left-wing politics and U.S. law, except for the last one: "any other designated sector of society". If I consider the definition without those categories, then a hate group could simply be *a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards a group of people*.

Ok. So what's "hatred"? Wikipedia has a definition:

> Hatred is an angry or resentful emotional response to certain people or ideas.

> Hatred is often associated with feelings of anger, disgust and a disposition towards the source of hostility.

I don't think I understand anger. If someone said I was angry, I doubt that I would be able discuss the matter confidently.

Let's see what Wikipedia says about "anger":

> Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat.

I didn't realize "wrath" and "rage" were synonyms for anger. Let's look at the definition of "anger" in Webster's 1913:

> A strong passion or emotion of displeasure or antagonism, excited by a real or supposed injury or insult to one's self or others, or by the intent to do such injury.

> Syn. -- Resentment; wrath; rage; fury; passion; ire gall; choler; indignation; displeasure; vexation; grudge; spleen. -- Anger, Indignation, Resentment, Wrath, Ire, Rage, Fury. Anger is a feeling of keen displeasure (usually with a desire to punish) for what we regard as wrong toward ourselves or others. It may be excessive or misplaced, but is not necessarily criminal. Indignation is a generous outburst of anger in view of things which are indigna, or unworthy to be done, involving what is mean, cruel, flagitious, etc., in character or conduct. Resentment is often a moody feeling, leading one to brood over his supposed personal wrongs with a deep and lasting anger. See Resentment. Wrath and ire (the last poetical) express the feelings of one who is bitterly provoked. Rage is a vehement ebullition of anger; and fury is an excess of rage, amounting almost to madness. Warmth of constitution often gives rise to anger; a high sense of honor creates indignation at crime; a man of quick sensibilities is apt to cherish resentment; the wrath and ire of men are often connected with a haughty and vindictive spirit; rage and fury are distempers of the soul to be regarded only with abhorrence.

There's a lot there. So anger is a kind of *strong passion or emotion*... I'll pick this one up later.

Before I stop for the day, I'll look up some sentences in Atlas Shrugged involving the one of good guys and "hate". Dagny says this:

> "I hate it! I hate the doom you're all waiting for, the giving up, and that senseless question that always sounds like a cry for help. I'm sick of hearing pleas for John Galt. I'm going to fight him."

Dagny thinks the following at the opening of the John Galt Line:

> She felt no anger toward anyone on earth. The things she had endured had now receded into some outer fog, like pain that still exists, but has no power to hurt. Those things could not stand in the face of this moment's reality, the meaning of this day was as brilliantly, violently clear as the splashes of sun on the silver of the engine, all men had to perceive it now, no one could doubt it and she had no one to hate.

Dagny says this to Rearden:

> "But think how often we've heard people complain that billboards ruin the appearance of the countryside. Well, there's the unruined countryside for them to admire." She added, "They're the people I hate."


Alisa at 8:25 PM on March 17, 2021 | #20210 | reply | quote

#20210 I realize that Wikipedia is unreliable for lots of things. I'm not going to trust it. I'm just going to use it as one of many starting points.


Alisa at 8:26 PM on March 17, 2021 | #20211 | reply | quote

#20210 Webster's 1913 says that "anger" is:

> A strong passion or emotion ...

IIRC, Rand says an emotion is kinda like the result of a lightning calculation that sums up your thoughts on a topic. So anger is one of those calculations.

What is a passion, though? Webster's 1913 says:

> When any feeling or emotion completely masters the mind, we call it a passion; as, a passion for music, dress, etc.; especially is anger (when thus extreme) called passion. The mind, in such cases, is considered as having lost its self- control, and become the passive instrument of the feeling in question.

So a passion is an emotion that is commonly regarded as having taken over your mind. Webster's 1913 said anger is a "strong passion or emotion". It seems like a passion is already a strong emotion, so it would have made more sense to say that anger is *a passion or strong emotion*. But whether or not I'm right about that, I think I get the overall idea. Anger is a strong emotion. We wouldn't use the word for an extremely mild feeling. That would be maybe irritation or annoyance.

Considering a few more words of the Webster's 1913 definition, anger is (emphasis mine):

> A strong passion or emotion *of displeasure or antagonism*...

From skimming the Webster's 1913 definitions of displease, displeasure, and antagonism, I gather that displeasure is sort of the opposite of pleasure and antagonism is sort of like being opposed to something or someone.

Considering a few *more* words of the definition, anger is (emphasis mine):

> A strong passion or emotion of displeasure or antagonism, *excited by a real or supposed injury or insult to one's self or others, or by the intent to do such injury*.

So anger is a response to an actual or intended injury or insult. Injury is a kind of harm, and people routinely treat verbal insults as if they were harmful. There's even a rhyme to remind or persuade children that insults are harmless: *sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me*. Insults can harm one's social status.

I will think of anger as, roughly, an emotional response to an actual or intended injury. The *intended* part is relevant because if someone plans to hurt me, I may get angry at him, even if he doesn't carry out his plan.

I was also thinking of how parents get mad at their kids. Does that fall under injury and/or insult? Like if the kid stays up later than the parent wants, the parent may get mad. The kid didn't hurt the parent. Is staying up late an insult?

I think it's more like people get mad when people who they think are supposed to obey them don't do as they're told. Or maybe the disobedience is regarded as an insult to the dignity of the person giving the orders.

So anyway, anger is an emotion of strong displeasure and opposition towards one who injures or intends to injure. It seems like, to be angry, you have to believe the person doing the injuring is in the wrong. If you thought the injury was justified, maybe you wouldn't be angry.


Alisa at 11:04 PM on March 18, 2021 | #20216 | reply | quote

#20216 I think I kind of roughly get "anger". Back to the Wikipedia entry for "hatred":

> Hatred is an angry or resentful emotional response to certain people or ideas.

I think the object of anger has to be something that is commonly regarded as sentient, like a person, an animal, or maybe an AI. I searched the web for "angry at my shoes" and the top hits were about dogs, which implies to me that people don't get angry at shoes. I also don't think people would be angry at an idea, such as "capitalism". However, people could *hate* an idea. The object of hatred doesn't have to be sentient. Hatred is more general than anger in that sense.

I searched the web for articles on anger vs hatred. The best one I found is called Aristotle on Hate And Anger (Nov 14, 2018):

> Another interesting difference between these two emotions, at least for Aristotle, is that there is actually more passion involved on the surface in anger, and less exhibited in hatred. As Aristotle mentions in the Politics, while anger and hatred often tend to produce the same kind of actions — hostile, in some way aggressive, damaging — angry people feel pain, are more empassioned, and don’t really think things through. The person who hates can be more calm, reasoned, even calculating. They simply desire that the other — because of who or what they are, what kind of person they have been decided to be — not exist, or that evil befalls them.

The article also says that hatred isn't necessarily bad, at least according to Aristotle, who says that it's virtuous to hate "thieves and informers".

That article was one of the most informative things I found on hatred vs anger, so I looked up the author. His name is Gregory B. Sadler. I found ReasonIO, which is one of his sites. It says:

> Greg Sadler and Andi Sciacca founded ReasonIO to *put philosophy into practice*.

> We take resources from complex and often difficult philosophical texts and thinkers, and make them accessible to non-philosophers. We transform ideas into useful tools for application, reflection, decision-making, and action.

The services ReasonIO offers include:

> Philosophical Consulting for Organizations

> Philosophical Counseling and Coaching

> Tutorial Services

Sadler sells a course on Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics* for $170.

I thought Sadler's name sounded vaguely familiar, so I searched Bing for [gregory sadler ayn rand] and found lots of hits, including this video: Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness | How Should A Rational Egoist Behave | Philosophy Core Concepts.

–––––––––––––

Today is March 19, the 7th day of my week-long project to learn more about the "Andy B" harassment issue and how it relates to DD (my first day was March 13). I'm still making progress, but I'm planning to end it. It seems like there's a lot more to learn here and I don't have a good sense for how long it'll take me to learn enough to understand whether I should write to DD. Also, I enjoy my usual FI projects like Super Mario Bros. more.

I started this project because this place is important to me and because I got the impression that writing to DD was important. If people think I'm making a mistake by stopping this project, I'm willing to discuss it further.


Alisa at 6:38 PM on March 19, 2021 | #20220 | reply | quote

#20220 I think you are going too much on a tangent and should focus on the prime bottlenecks that you have re writing to DD or not, if the issue is important to you.


Anonymous at 4:17 AM on March 20, 2021 | #20223 | reply | quote

#20223 Your suggestion to focus on bottlenecks instead of tangents seems like a hint that I am not already doing that. What are my bottlenecks here, and what are the tangents I've been focusing on?

If you meant that learning and writing about Sadler's work was "focus[ing]" on a tangent, then I disagree. I spent 45 minutes yesterday on the hatred & harassment sub-project of my main project to learn more about the DD/"Andy B" issue, and looking up Sadler's work took only a few minutes of that. I included it in my write-up because I thought some people might find it interesting.

If you meant that learning about hatred was a tangent, then that seems plausible. In #20202, I myself raised the question of whether I could understand whether to write to DD or not without understanding:

> what makes a comment "hateful" and/or about what constitutes "harassing".

My intuition was that I *would* have to understand those things, so (again, in #20202), I proposed a sub-project to learn more about them. At the time, no one said that was a bad idea or that it was a tangent.

You qualified your suggestion with "if the issue is important to you".

The issue was important enough for me to start a project to learn more about it and work on that project for 30+ minutes daily for a week during an unusually busy time for me because curi wrote (in #20161):

> plz email DD and ask him to disown andy and request his followers stop harassing me... this is VERY IMPORTANT... please, seriously, send an email.

Is it, right now, important enough for me to continue doing that? No. But I could learn things that could change my mind.

Elliot said that writing to DD was "VERY IMPORTANT", but how important would it be for someone in my specific situation?


Alisa at 8:46 AM on March 20, 2021 | #20224 | reply | quote

#20224

> > plz email DD and ask him to disown andy and request his followers stop harassing me... this is VERY IMPORTANT... please, seriously, send an email.

Are you aware that project is done? People already emailed DD and DD replied to someone. I announced this (e.g. on FI list and Discord) and thought you saw it and would be able to understand it. My request to email him was withdrawn. You can still email him as your own choice, but I'm not actively requesting it.

A good email to DD now would be different than before. Instead of asking for any response at all to the matter, it'd e.g. say what was inadequate about DD's prior response.

> At the time, no one said that was a bad idea or that it was a tangent.

Why did you say this? What do you think it means? What expectations do you have about getting negative replies to your errors here?

PS #20223 wasn't me.


curi at 12:33 PM on March 20, 2021 | #20226 | reply | quote

In #20226, curi wrote:

> Are you aware that project is done?

No, I wasn't.

> People already emailed DD and DD replied to someone. I announced this (e.g. on FI list and Discord) and thought you saw it and would be able to understand it. My request to email him was withdrawn.

I saw that people emailed DD and that he replied, but I didn't understand from that that the project was done or that your request to email DD was withdrawn. I also read the "fi" and "subscribers" Discord channel logs since March 11 and didn't see anything that I understood as meaning either of those two things.

> You can still email him as your own choice, but I'm not actively requesting it.

Ok. Good to know.


Alisa at 4:36 PM on March 20, 2021 | #20228 | reply | quote

curi wrote above:

> the goal here is to get them to respond to the matter [...]


Anonymous at 4:42 PM on March 20, 2021 | #20229 | reply | quote

#20229 My reading of #20161 is that curi gave a combined goal consisting of multiple sub-goals (each connected with "and"):

> the goal here is to get them to respond to the matter and deescalate things and get a truce


Alisa at 4:45 PM on March 20, 2021 | #20230 | reply | quote

Anonymous at 4:52 PM on March 20, 2021 | #20231 | reply | quote

Anonymous at 7:16 PM on April 21, 2021 | #20420 | reply | quote

Likely new Andy account, twitter and blog created early April 2021:

https://twitter.com/SeekingApatheia

https://seeking-apatheia.blogspot.com


Anonymous at 7:40 PM on April 21, 2021 | #20421 | reply | quote

#20421 i misread. twitter says it was created april 2010.

pretty sure it's andy tho. > 5 pieces of evidence.


Anonymous at 7:45 PM on April 21, 2021 | #20422 | reply | quote

andy's main twitter account was created april 2010. he renamed it and deleted almost all his tweets.


Anonymous at 7:47 PM on April 21, 2021 | #20423 | reply | quote

Want to discuss this? Join my forum.

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