I've become very suspicious of any fan of The Beginning of Infinity (BoI), who says it's great, but who has not read The Fabric of Reality (FoR). I've seen a repeated pattern where people who haven't read FoR are shallow fans of BoI who don't know much about Critical Rationalism (CR). Overall, BoI is more popular than FoR, but is attracting worse fans than FoR did. Anyone who has read both and likes BoI way more is also highly suspicious and likely didn't understand much from either book. I don't think "BoI is way better than FoR" is a reasonable opinion. Anyone who goes around recommending BoI, but who recommends FoR much less or not at all, is probably a bad thinker.

Also, Deutsch's books should be read visually (which makes it a lot easier to catch more details, take your time and only advance to the next paragraph when you're ready, reread things, etc.). Be very suspicious of the understanding of anyone who's read them only as audio books. (Deutsch is irresponsibly selling audio books with no warning that understanding his ideas from an audio book is unrealistic. It's an unsuitable format for a first reading of his difficult, wordy books that contain many long, convoluted sentences. Audio books are fine for a casual second reading to review the book a bit while knowing you're missing a lot. They're also fine for a blind person who is very experienced with audio books, listens at a much slower speed than they usually listen to books at, and regularly rewinds to hear parts again. But a sighted person who starts with the audio book is almost certainly fooling themselves rather than actually understanding much.)

BoI is doing a much better job than FoR of attracting social climbers who talk about the book as a way of bragging. BoI is more popular, and it's a bit easier than FoR to read in a shallow way and think you liked it without learning much. BoI also has more things that can be used as slogans or sound bites.

If you haven't read either book, FoR should be read before BoI. I strongly recommend reading them in the order they were written. FoR does a better job of introducing and explaining CR ideas for new readers. FoR also does a much better job at introducing the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Deutsch put his most important things to say in his first book and didn't repeat them all in his second book (which would be fine, except that he doesn't tell anyone to read the books in order).

FoR is a deeper book with more technical details. It goes into more depth on some specific topics rather than focusing as much as BoI on being of general interest. It is a popular science book meant for the general reader, but some sections are less useful for most readers. In particular, the two chapters (11 and 12) about the physics of time can be skipped. The last chapter (14), about the end of the universe, is also skippable, especially the omega point discussion.

FoR talks about four strands, CR, evolution, quantum physics and computation. The key chapters in FoR to learn about CR and evolution are 1, 3-4 and 7-8. The CR and evolution strands are the more useful and easier to understand for almost everyone.

But if you're trying to learn about philosophy, I don't recommend starting with Deutsch's books. I used to recommend them more, but most people find them too difficult to learn anything substantial from, especially as a starting place. Most people who like them, and think they're learning something, didn't actually understand much.

Some good places to start learning are my Critical Fallibilism website and Eli Goldratt's books (especially The Goal, It's Not Luck, and The Choice). After that, you'd have a better chance to actually learn from FoR, though I'd recommend first reading chapters 1 and 2 of Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand and reading Understanding Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff (which talks about how to learn a philosophy).

Also, if you don't already read books regularly, you may be more successful by first getting into reading and then trying to read FoR later when reading a book is already a common, easy and enjoyable activity for you. Many people should start by trying to form a habit of reading regularly, and enjoying it, using fun books like novels. I like Robert Heinlein best for sci-fi (start with his juveniles) and Brandon Sanderson for fantasy. My reading recommendations in the previous paragraph are much easier to read than Deutsch's books, and might actually work for newer readers, though they're significantly harder reading than Harry Potter. Also, you may want to start getting into reading more with audio books or text to speech, and that's fine and works well for many people, but at some point you should transition to also getting comfortable with visual reading, which you'll need for reading authors like Deutsch or Popper.

This is part of a series of posts explaining the harassment against me from David Deutsch and his fans and associates. It talks about his TCS co-founder lying about me in a similar way to his lie.

---

Sarah Fitz-Claridge (SFC) (formerly named Sarah Lawrence) is David Deutsch’s (DD) co-founder for Taking Children Seriously, their education and parenting philosophy that builds on Critical Rationalism and classical liberalism. They are longterm, close associates. After they’d known each other for roughly five years, SFC moved from London to a new home in Oxford in order to live roughly a mile away from DD. SFC has been actively promoting TCS and naming DD as her co-founder recently, e.g. last month she gave an online talk about TCS which DD attended.

In 2009, SFC banned me from a public TCS email discussion group. Lulie Tanett (LT) asked SFC to make it a ban on sending posts, but to still allow me to receive the emails. It didn’t matter much because I could easily get a friend (like LT) to set up automatic forwarding for all the emails.

SFC replied to LT to refuse and she also lied about me:

No, he [Elliot Temple] has so grossly violated the many requests of him that I do not want him to even read it. It is such a joke for him to suggest that no common preference was attempted when he himself has walked all over everything we have asked of him -- you know -- little things like not posting stuff from the tcs list to other forums without the consent of those quoted, not cross posting, etc. he is AWFUL! So far from concerned about consent that it is shocking that he pretends to give a shit about consent!

The lie here is that I “violated […] many requests”, and in particular that I violated requests not to cross post or not to quote public emails at other forums. SFC never made those requests. Here is my response (from 2009) to LT, who forwarded me SFC’s email. The first two nested quotes (the ones with a black line on the left) are written by LT.

Incidentally, is any of this remotely true? Is it flat-out lies, or did you have reasons for not doing what she said?

She didn't make those requests. She's lying or she remembers her silent wants as requests.

I'd like to know in what way she's wrong.

She didn't request that I don't cross post, or don't copy stuff to other lists.

I checked my inboxes for Sarah emails. I found 44. The majority are friendly. Back in 04 she said some things which weren't a clear request but could be interpreted as a request not to "cause unnecessary work for the moderators" by, I think (it doesn't really say), posting meta discussion. It also had a threat to ban me, which I'd forgotten.

In 03 she made an actual request not to post meta discussion on the TCS website.

She made a request about me only posting anonymously somewhere else. Which I did.

She requested permission to post my stuff to the TCS website several times.

Here's a quote of Sarah from aug 06 after she was here IRL:

I just wanted to hear what you were going to say, and felt like forcefully telling people to shut the fuck up and listen to you -- it was driving me nuts!

I did find a request I made to Sarah:

please don't post edited versions of [my] emails on the public forums anymore.

Note that LT was aware that SFC is liar, and was already considering that it could be flat-out lies before I commented.

I had been cross-posting regularly since 2002. SFC, DD and other TCS moderators knew that, personally received many of my cross-posted emails and saw that they were cross-posted, and never objected. I don’t think cross-posting replies to public messages is bad, plus they didn’t request that I stop. Suddenly, after I’d been doing it routinely for seven years, SFC apparently decided it was a big deal and lied about it in a private email to a friend of mine (but still didn’t say anything to me about it). Fortunately, in this case, the friend showed SFC’s lie to me and allowed me to defend myself.

This lie is notable because it’s so similar to DD’s recent lie about me. DD and his co-founder behave similarly. In DD’s lie, he falsely claimed that I had violated several no contact requests. In 2009, I dealt with Sarah’s lie by going through 44 emails and reviewing the facts. Recently, I dealt with DD’s lie by going through more records than that (DD and I talked a lot more than SFC and I did) and posting the facts.

SFC’s lie is also notable because she has held onto a hateful grudge for over a decade. She has a leadership role in the community that is harassing me and she’s currently following Andy B (the worst harasser) on Twitter. Note that I only started writing about the problem and defending myself in 2020. I tried leaving SFC alone for many years but she won’t move on. I’ve actually barely interacted with her since 2006. (Two examples: In 2015 – six years after the 2009 issue – she still actively hated me and was involved in joking about murdering me (source: LT). And in 2021, a few days ago, her husband wrote multiple friendly tweets with Andy B.).

Context

As further context for this, and for my relationships with DD and LT generally, I’ll tell more of the story about me being banned from this group. Here’s what happened next:

DD and LT sympathized with me and we formed a plan to deal with SFC’s attempt to suppress my TCS posts. We planned that I would continue writing TCS posts as usual, but I would send them to LT, who would post them under her name. DD approved of this plan and didn’t want me banned but was too busy to confront SFC about it (DD was near the end of writing his book, The Beginning of Infinity). The explicit approval of a TCS founder is one of the reasons I was willing to circumvent the ban. I normally don’t ban evade, but I respected DD’s judgment. I thought that if a TCS founder wanted me to keep posting to a TCS group that he’s involved with, then it was reasonable to do it. (Do you think DD’s approval could also be relevant to Andy’s ban evasions at my sites? I think Andy believes he has DD’s approval to harass me, and that that substantially encourages him. Andy believes he’s standing up for a great intellectual, DD, against an evil enemy. I think DD knows this and has intentionally chosen to never once say one word discouraging or delegitimizing the harassment because he actually does approve of it.)

One of the results of the plan was that SFC was thrilled to see LT writing more TCS posts and praised her about it.

This is DD’s first email to me about the ban, from 2009-07-28:

I can't imagine why [SFC banned you]. Probably one of the posts I just skimmed, and missed where you advocated puppy-blending.

Have no time to do stuff.

Nowadays I can't think 'Ban' without thinking Ki-Moon. And I have no idea what justifies him either.

Hope that helps.

-- D

Talking about blending puppies was a recurring joke from the pro-Iraq-war blogs that DD liked. DD is sympathetic and unable to imagine any reasonable reason to ban me, and is mocking SFC. Ban Ki-moon was a South Korean politician; in that paragraph, DD is saying that he has no idea what justifies my ban, and mocking SFC a second time.

LT wrote about the ban (this is the precursor to SFC lying to LT, above):

That sucks. I've emailed her asking for the posting-only ban. I'm sorry she did this.

[…]

It's disgusting. She's insane. This makes me want to boycott her/her-related TCS stuff, but I think that will do more harm than good. If there's any way I can make things better -- for you or TCS, tell me. I'm still playing with the idea of asking one more time for the TCS site, or influencing her decisions about it (like, by suggesting things to change and offering to change it for free, or something).

(After years of not working on TCS, SFC had promised to give control of the TCS site to LT, but then broke that promise while still leaving the TCS site inactive.)

When LT and I discussed what to do about the situation, LT called me the “best poster” and expressed her belief that SFC was destroying TCS:

If she wants to exclude the best poster […]

Or is the fact she's destroying TCS more important? If so, shouldn't we make a separate TCS site of our own?

In IMs, I asked DD if he thought ghostwriting TCS posts to be sent by LT was a good idea:

22:09:18 oxfordphysicist: I see no problem. Oh, maybe there'll be some friction if Sarah finds out.
22:09:27 curidotus: yes. heh.
22:09:43 curidotus: presumably she will ban lulie from the tcs list.
22:10:12 oxfordphysicist: Or let you back on.
22:10:19 curidotus: umm. yeah right. lol

DD not only saw “no problem” with it, he thought SFC might unban me if she found out (he’s naive or unrealistic sometimes).

Another Similar Story

Years before this story, there was another incident where Sarah didn’t communicate a request. Here’s the context:

• As a general policy, the TCS moderators sent emails letting you know when they rejected a post and giving a short reason.
• The moderators were sometimes aggressive and frequently inconsistent, and the rules were unclear, so many people had posts rejected. That was common.
• Email was less reliable back then, so there was a policy: If your email didn’t show up after a few days, and you didn’t receive a message from a moderator, then resend it. Similarly, in a 2003 announcement saying a few days of emails had been lost due to a technical glitch and that people should resend their posts, SFC said “Posts should never disappear into the ether.”

So one time my email didn’t show up and I resent it. I believe I’d successfully done that several times previously. After a few days, my email didn’t show up again, and still no moderator had said anything to me, so I resent it a second time. SFC then got angry with me for spamming the list and wasting the moderators’ time with an email they didn’t want to approve. From memory, she still didn’t say anything to me, but I started hearing some unclear, negative things indirectly because I talked with lots of the TCS community members.

I found out later, from Alan Forrester (another TCS moderator), what happened. SFC had come up with a new policy to save moderator time by not sending rejection notes to me when moderators rejected my emails (that new policy was directed only at me personally). My posts would just silently not appear with no reason given. But SFC never told me this policy. In my understanding, she also failed to tell the moderators that she hadn’t informed me, so they assumed I knew and assumed that I was resending posts to cause trouble, rather than resending because I thought there was a computer glitch and I was trying to follow SFC’s post-resending policy.

So the moderators thought I was spamming the TCS list with rejected posts to get some kind of revenge – and Sarah encouraged that with anger at me and gossip about me. But I was actually making a good faith effort to follow the list rules plus anything that a moderator told me.

SFC didn’t communicate about what she wanted. That’s an ongoing pattern with her. As soon as I actually knew what was going on, I stopped resending posts that didn’t show up. When I knew what she wanted and what her policy was, I went along with it. But before I found out, it was confusing, and my innocent actions bothered the moderators who incorrectly believed I was being intentionally disobedient by twice resending a post they’d rejected.

SFC seems unable to understand that I don’t know what she’s thinking. She thought I was purposefully violating her policies that no one had told me. And she tricked other people into thinking that, too. I don’t think she was even fully aware that she was misleading people to have false, negative beliefs about me. I don’t think she ever realized her mistake or explained to the moderators what had happened in order to undo some of the damage to my reputation that she’d done. But being irresponsible and not thinking much about what’s going on, or about the consequences of her actions, doesn’t absolve her of responsibility.

Conclusion

SFC is part of the group of people who hate me, gossip about me, and encourage harassment of me. She’s a leader who has been doing it for over ten years. She has been caught lying. I knew about this problem but let it go and didn’t expose her; I didn’t realize what sort of harassment campaign it would grow into. DD co-founded TCS with her and lied about me in a similar way (after he switched from especially liking me to especially disliking me without any clear explanation about why). It’s part of a pattern. These people repeatedly lie and also confuse unstated wants (in their head) with stated requests (in external reality). They’re caught up in their emotions and bad at communicating, which explains a lot of what’s going on today. It also helps explain why my articles about the facts of the harassment problem have been unable to fix things.

I've found, over and over, that issues I'm thinking about were already covered in Ayn Rand's books, particularly Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Rand knew so much about people, social dynamics and morality.

Lately, I've been thinking about the harassment against me and my community. One of the things I've been surprised by is how the CritRats, like David Deutsch and Lulie Tanett, can be OK with having a serious criminal, Andy B, in their community.

In The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Gail Wynand says to Howard Roark (my emphasis):

“I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it to themselves. Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By instinct. There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him and that’s the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. Look back at your own life, Howard, and at the people you’ve met. They know. They’re afraid. You’re a reproach.”

That makes sense. Andy B is like a parasite. He has nothing to do on his own, independently. He's not a creator. Besides Deutsch, the other CritRats are like that too. They don't create. They don't think independently. They put up a public pretense at being intellectuals, but it's all a fake show they put on for others. I think most of them know it and feel bad about their inability to be productive; certainly Lulie does. So they have a major spiritual similarity to Andy B. Deutsch is second-handed too, but unlike the rest of them he has also accomplished things as a creator.

This tree documents the state of the debate for Objectivism. Click the image to expand. The PDF has clickable links to sources (everything underlined) and selectable text.

The goal of the tree is not perfection, nor to comprehensively document every argument anyone ever made. It’s to cover important issues (as I see them) in an organized way and thereby enable someone to learn from me and/or critically engage with my position.

This tree documents the state of the debate for Critical Rationalism. Click the image to expand. The PDF has clickable links to sources (everything underlined) and selectable text.

The goal of the tree is not perfection, nor to comprehensively document every argument anyone ever made. It’s to cover important issues (as I see them) in an organized way and thereby enable someone to learn from me and/or critically engage with my position.

Update: Typo: In "I’ve discussed with my Critical Rationalists.", the "my" should read "many".

This tree documents the state of the debate for Austrian Economics. Click the image to expand. The PDF has clickable links to sources (everything underlined) and selectable text.

The goal of the tree is not perfection, nor to comprehensively document every argument anyone ever made. It’s to cover important issues (as I see them) in an organized way and thereby enable someone to learn from me and/or critically engage with my position.

This is part of a series of posts explaining the ongoing harassment against me from David Deutsch and his associates and fans. To provide background information, I’m sharing some of the most negative things DD ever said to me, which I think reveal some irrationality on his part and reveal some ways that he doesn’t follow his own philosophy principles.

---

This is an email David Deutsch (DD) sent me on 2011-09-30 (the nested quotes, displayed indented with a black line to the left, were written by me):

you've shown disinterest in explaining these topics for months if not years. e.g. WRT the tcs archives. and lately (several years) have not in general pursued conversations to a conclusion (like deduction, hard to vary, qualia, value of mises, gold standard, burke, tcs archives). so i'd be concerned about the short term strategy lasting a long time.

In regard to hard-to-vary and qualia, the discussions have paused because we have not managed to crystallise a clear statement of what the disagreement is. Both disagreements are rooted in subtle and interesting differences in world view, such that whenever we have gone into details we find agreement, yet stepping back to the overall issue we find strong disagreement. This is a commonplace occurrence among philosophically-minded people. Philosophy is hard. Making progress would require further discoveries, which there is no guarantee of making. I expect there are important things in there to be discovered (by both of us) but it is a fatal mistake to allow an unsolved problem to become a black hole absorbing all one's time and attention, paralysing progress on other problems. This is what you are blaming me for not doing.

The other issues have stalled for a less benign reason. It is that you have developed a repertoire of argumentative tactics which, when applied (you do not always apply them), effectively prevent you from being persuaded of anything. With each particular item on which this has happened (including deduction, Mises, gold standard), I have stopped when I have run out of ideas for how to present the relevant idea to you in a way that gets round the tactics. Just tactics. Nothing to do with content, and I say this independently of whether I'm right or wrong on the issues. These are all issues on which neither of us has any axe to grind anyway.

Currently you are insisting on a reinterpretation of (what seems to me) the plain meaning of a Godwin passage, in order to deny that Godwin expected that in future people would give away most of their wealth. This is a debate that I haven't yet given up on, but the next step, if I pursue it, will require me to explain how you're misinterpreting the word 'if', and I can already think of half a dozen ways you will find to avoid the implication, and I'm guessing you'll succeed in constructing an effective baffle, so I'll have been wasting my time.

And now, in addition to the above-mentioned patterns of argument, your tactics have escalated to include accusing me of fabricating quotes, and having a variety of other personal failings on account of not dropping, and in the TCS-archive case sacrificing, everything else in order to solve things for you.

please advise.

I can't advise on that because I don't know the answer. As for the other things you asked about, I have some ideas about what you should do in order to achieve success and happiness, but it's rather pointless to address those while you consider yourself to have grievances.

I replied:

you've shown disinterest in explaining these topics for months if not years. e.g. WRT the tcs archives. and lately (several years) have not in general pursued conversations to a conclusion (like deduction, hard to vary, qualia, value of mises, gold standard, burke, tcs archives). so i'd be concerned about the short term strategy lasting a long time.

In regard to hard-to-vary and qualia, the discussions have paused because we have not managed to crystallise a clear statement of what the disagreement is.

i disagree.

Both disagreements are rooted in subtle and interesting differences in world view, such that whenever we have gone into details we find agreement, yet stepping back to the overall issue we find strong disagreement. This is a commonplace occurrence among philosophically-minded people. Philosophy is hard. Making progress would require further discoveries, which there is no guarantee of making.

i don't think this is it. i will explain why if you want.

I expect there are important things in there to be discovered (by both of us) but it is a fatal mistake to allow an unsolved problem to become a black hole absorbing all one's time and attention, paralysing progress on other problems. This is what you are blaming me for not doing.

i do not think i am blaming you.

it's not even clear to me what you think was blaming, or why. i made some factually oriented statements which, based on your reply (including below), i think you agree with. i said you had shown disinterest and you gave two reasons for disinterest.

The other issues have stalled for a less benign reason. It is that you have developed a repertoire of argumentative tactics which, when applied (you do not always apply them), effectively prevent you from being persuaded of anything. With each particular item on which this has happened (including deduction, Mises, gold standard), I have stopped when I have run out of ideas for how to present the relevant idea to you in a way that gets round the tactics. Just tactics. Nothing to do with content, and I say this independently of whether I'm right or wrong on the issues. These are all issues on which neither of us has any axe to grind anyway.

so, you have adopted a negative meta/psychological view of me, and that is why you dropped those topics without explanation.

thank you for clarifying that.

but what can we do about it?

i think your description (reminiscent of claims made by kolya, about you as well as me) is false. would you like to hear why?

you think it's true. would you like to persuade me of it?

if neither, then what do you think should happen?

Currently you are insisting on a reinterpretation of (what seems to me) the plain meaning of a Godwin passage, in order to deny that Godwin expected that in future people would give away most of their wealth.

changing a key word of your claim (share -> give away) seems like a mistake to me.

This is a debate that I haven't yet given up on, but the next step, if I pursue it, will require me to explain how you're misinterpreting the word 'if', and I can already think of half a dozen ways you will find to avoid the implication, and I'm guessing you'll succeed in constructing an effective baffle, so I'll have been wasting my time.

so, it's the meta/psychological view governing your interaction again.

i don't see why you would debate the "if" part. i said that if one reads on then he finds that the "if" clause is godwin's view, and i accepted it as his view. so, all you could accomplish is to convince me the shorter quote is compelling in isolation. doing so would not have any direct relevance to the discussion.

I said that equalization can be achieved in more than one way, not necessarily by sharing. Why doesn't your intended reply focus on this main point i made?

And now, in addition to the above-mentioned patterns of argument, your tactics have escalated to include accusing me of fabricating quotes,

I did not make that accusation.

this came up previously (w/ your wording "made stuff up"). i explained that you had misinterpreted my meaning. you didn't ask for clarification or debate anything, but now you have repeated this claim as before, seemingly disregarding my reply. why?

and having a variety of other personal failings on account of not dropping, and in the TCS-archive case sacrificing, everything else in order to solve things for you.

i don't understand your seeming strategy here of interpreting criticism -- offered in confusion more than anything else -- as unpleasant accusations.

please advise.

I can't advise on that because I don't know the answer. As for the other things you asked about, I have some ideas about what you should do in order to achieve success and happiness, but it's rather pointless to address those while you consider yourself to have grievances.

what grievances? i do not have grievances.

I think my response email covers a lot of the issues well. I’ll comment further on something I think is particularly important.

This was the end of the conversation; DD didn’t reply to my email. His choice not to reply conflicts with his philosophy that says problems are soluble and advocates common preference finding. For context, keep in mind that we had been friends for ten years and that DD has written thousands of emails to me. The issue wasn’t the time it’d take to write a reply. The issue was that DD was in the process of ending our friendship and his email above gives some info about how and why he did that.

DD was unwilling to discuss any approaches to problem solving regarding the negative meta/psychological view of me that he’d formed. Further, he’d never given me an example. He’d apparently formed negative, undiscussed opinions, for years, and hidden that from me. He disliked some things I said, regarded them as irrational tactics, but never told me even one, so I had no way to stop doing the things he disliked, change my mind or improve. Nor was there any way to correct him if he were mistaken. I still, today, don’t know which things I said that he thinks were irrational tactics, let alone any arguments explaining how my statements were irrational tactics. I’d understand more if he stopped discussing when he though someone was being irrational, but he kept having lots of discussions with me for years while hiding relevant information from me.

If your approach to debate is to decide that the other person is irrational and give up on debate – and to refuse to discuss what the other person did wrong with any examples or arguments – then you are irrational and you are closed to debate. (This is an idea DD taught me, and which he’s repeatedly advocated in writing.)

DD wasn’t taking his fallibility seriously. In his email, he said that he might be mistaken about the object level disagreements, but didn’t acknowledge that he could be mistaken about his meta claims (that I’m irrational and that some of my statements were irrational tactics). DD doesn’t seem to view meta claims as ideas he has which may be false. He treats meta ideas as a special category that shouldn’t be discussed, and that viewpoint prevents error correction of his meta ideas. (DD repeatedly, and in writing, advocated not having meta discussion. That is an idea he said, not my speculation.)

So DD forms off-topic, meta, psychological views of people (his dislike for meta discussion doesn’t prevent him from thinking it and attaching importance to those thoughts). Then he refuses to explain or discuss them, but still assumes they’re true and acts on them. He won’t have meta discussion (sometimes). But he will have meta ideas and let them control and ruin the object level discussion, and then just give up on the object level discussion with no attempt at problem solving because he doesn’t want to critically discuss his unargued beliefs about other people being irrational, having bad psychology, etc. This is a way of destroying the means of correcting errors, not a way of making unbounded progress by truth-seeking.

There were plenty of other times that DD did engage in meta discussion with me. He isn’t consistent about it and never explained a delineation between good or acceptable meta and bad meta. Trying to avoid meta discussions was a recurring theme with DD and also an (inconsistent) moderation policy on TCS list, but he never acknowledged that he wasn’t really against all meta discussion. If he’d acknowledged that, he’d have had to make some statement about which meta discussion he had a problem with and why that sub-category is different and bad, but he didn’t have a good answer to that (I brought it up several times).

This particular comment from DD’s email is particularly notable:

I have stopped when I have run out of ideas for how to present the relevant idea to you in a way that gets round the tactics

Not only did DD never say that he thought any particular statement was a tactic or point out anything wrong with it, he also stopped discussing when he ran out of ideas for how to persuade me. He viewed discussion in terms of coming up with ways to change my mind. But he didn’t take seriously that I might be right about some of the topics. He dropped topics until he had ideas for new arguments, but wasn’t open to listening to my arguments. He didn’t come up with ideas for how to be persuaded and continue discussions when he had some of those. He approached discussion in a one-sided way that didn’t leave scope for him to learn. At least that’s according to his own statement – though actually in practice he sometimes did better than that. He did sometimes listen to me rationally, learn things from me, accept my arguments and change his mind, etc.

You may wish to forgive DD for assuming he’s right because he’s way smarter than most people. That attitude contradicts his philosophy and there’s another problem with it. He had thousands of hours of discussions with me and told me that he respected my intelligence and considered me one of the smartest people he’d ever talked with. He hid his condescending, one-sided, biased approach to discussion from me for ten years of discussions (or maybe he was better in earlier discussions and changed at some point without telling me – I don’t know). He communicated to me that he was taking me seriously. He asked for, and got, huge amounts of my time. That context is nothing like having a short chat with a fan that he doesn’t know. Assuming you’re right briefly with a low social status stranger is problematic, especially given DD’s fallibilist philosophy, but at least that would be conventional arrogance. DD’s condescension to someone after being close intellectual associates for a decade, and very strongly praising their thinking, learning and rationality is worse than that. It indicates that DD assumes he’s right when dealing with everyone – he’s just a poor fallibilist. Or maybe he just assumes he’s right when an issue comes up that he’s biased or emotional about, and it isn’t about the other person or what they say.

In conclusion, DD is irrational and doesn’t live up to the philosophy he advocates. He was dishonest with me for a long time, and the stuff he was hiding built up to major problems which were finally, belatedly revealed in a few harsh incidents like the email above, and then he stopped talking with me. He didn't want to solve problems as we went along and communicate openly about them, nor solve them later either, and he misled me about that for a decade. All this helps explain how his bad and irrational behavior regarding the harassment campaign could be possible.

This is part of a series of posts explaining the harassment against me which has been going on for years. The harassment is coming from David Deutsch (DD) and his community. This post provides info about DD’s motives and the historical context. I’ve tried to address the problem privately but they’ve refused to attempt any private problem solving.

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This complete chat log between me (curi) and David Deutsch (oxfordphysicist) spans 4 minutes on the afternoon of 2011-10-04 (bold highlighting added now):

curi:
hiiiiiiiiii

curi:
szasz :D

oxfordphysicist:
You're entirely mistaken. I'm terrified, and will be unable to work for at least a day now. And who knows how long after that. Receiving an e-mail from you is sheer fear and revulsion before I even look at it.

curi:
i think you're mistaken and i do not want to do anything without coming to some resolution

curi:
i am attempting to follow my understanding of tcs methods. you aren't following them. perhaps we disagree about what tcs says to do.

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This is the most negative thing DD ever said to me. It struck me as totally out of character. In retrospect, given how his character seems totally changed today, I think he may have been hiding his character from me for years. I think, originally, he may have been trying to hide his flaws in a noble, honorable way to shield me from them and let me interact with the best parts of himself. That’s the kind of thing he advocates parents do for their children, and he acted like a father-figure to me in some (but not other) ways.

For context, “You're entirely mistaken.” refers to some emails we’d exchanged that day about the TCS archives. He meant that my claims about the TCS archives, in those emails, were mistaken. I explained the TCS archives conflict here.

The message was a surprise to me. You can see the friendly tone of my messages beforehand. DD didn’t gradually lead up to it. He held some things in and then let them out abruptly like this.

DD still talked with me a lot after this, repeatedly initiated contact, and never said something similar again later.

This is by far the closest DD ever came to making a no contact request (which is notable because he lied about me breaking several of those that he never made). At the time, I took this as probably being a no contact request even though it was phrased as providing information rather than making an explicit request.

Note: Based on our personal history, DD knew how to make explicit requests to me, and knew that I would see that this logically wasn’t one. This may sound unreasonably pedantic, but DD and I were both like that, and literalness was a standard part of our communications. DD had actually set up this dynamic himself: He’d told me repeatedly that if he wanted something he would ask, and that I shouldn’t try to guess what he wanted and act on those guesses. He convinced me that it was better for him if I just listened to direct requests and avoided trying to guess other ways to accommodate him. He also had me use lots of explicit requests with him, which he could then say yes or no to at his option. I think I got over 50% ‘yes’ answers, but lots of ‘no’ answers too, which is unusual – in most relationships people try to avoid asking for stuff without being over 90% confident they’ll get a ‘yes’ answer. That’s how DD wanted our relationship to work (it benefited him if I asked 5 short things that I’m not confident he’ll say ‘yes’ to, and got only 1 ‘yes’, because he didn’t want to miss out on that opportunity and giving a few quick negative answers is a cheap price to pay in effort if no one gets their feelings hurt, plus even a declined request can be interesting and worthwhile to read).

Since I thought it was probably a no contact request, I stopped contacting DD. This prevented me from attempting to discuss and solve some of our problems, or doing common preference finding, as I wanted to. But I was trying to respect DD’s wishes.

What happened next?

DD kept emailing me privately, like normal (less frequently, especially since I never replied or started any discussions anymore, but he was initiating contact and emailing me stuff instead of trying to avoid contact). He acted kinda like he’d never sent the message about fear and revulsion. He didn’t act like he’d issued a no contact request. His actions were compatible with nothing having happened and us being too busy converse like normal.

In total, after the message about fear and revulsion, DD sent me 81 personal emails (plus other emails on discussion groups). Many were friendly emails that were purely optional. He had no reason to send them other than wanting to have a conversation with me. E.g. he did not have to, but did, have a long email conversation with me about schizophrenia.

After 52 days of not responding to any of DD’s emails or discussing the problem in any way, and waiting, and him not acknowledging what happened, I became concerned that I was being cold to him and ignoring him. I worried that my coldness could confuse or hurt him, especially since he hadn’t literally requested that I stop sending emails. I was also concerned since he hadn’t suggested any plan to fix anything and didn’t seem to be initiating any problem solving, and didn’t appear to intend to do problem solving later (since he was just going on with normal communications). I decided to clarify. I sent him a short email on 2012-11-25:

Do you still want me not to send you emails? Should I wait more? I'm unclear on what to do and realize that waiting could itself be taken negatively (as cold, distant).

I think 7.5 weeks was a long time to wait with someone I’d been talking with for years, often daily (in our total relationship, DD sent me roughly 4,000 private emails and spent thousands of hours chatting and engaging with me; I’ve estimated that the total amount of words he wrote to me is more than ten times the length of his book, The Fabric of Reality). That shows how much I was trying to respect his wishes. And it turned out that I was right to send the email. DD didn’t complain about it or treat it as a violation of a request.

DD’s response to my clarification request did not acknowledge ever wanting me not to send him emails, or ever sending the IM from 52 days earlier. He didn’t respond directly at all or answer my questions, but instead reinitiated conversation and invited me to try to persuade him of something by email. So we moved on and had more email discussions. He never suggested that he’d made a no contact request that I should be following. He sent 81 emails after the negative IM because he was still having contact with me. DD’s rate of sending me emails reached near zero in late 2012, around a year after his worrying IM. He stopped sending more emails without any announcement. I gave him a lot of space and tried not to push him about it, and was disappointed when he didn’t come around over time. I also realized that the opportunity to discuss the issues more had been missed (as I think DD wanted).

I now interpret DD’s harsh IM as asking me to back off temporarily, for an unspecified amount of time. And I backed off more than long enough, so that was that. He was alerting me to a problem and wanted some space, which I gave him.

I was still concerned after this incident and was more careful about sending DD anything. Some of the underlying problems were still there. But I don’t think it was ever actually a no contact request, just a serious complaint meant to raise a problem. Even if it had been a no contact request, DD retracted it by not reiterating it, by talking about something else when I asked for clarification of whether it was OK to contact him, by sending me 81 more emails, by acting like he never said it, by being friendly with me after it, and by never complaining that I was doing something wrong by emailing him again. So, to the best of my knowledge, I didn’t violate DD’s wishes about that specific matter.

One of the lessons here is that DD is an emotional, irrational, fragile person who loses days of work over his strong feelings. And he has strong feelings about things he hasn’t read – so his feelings do not depend on the merits of the arguments being made or how reasonable they are. That’s important context that helps explain his involvement in harassment against me.