More specifically, do you mean that people-in-the-know are not willing to report it or that there is some active silencing or [discouragement of those who would like to bring attention to it] going on?
There was one community alert about Zizians 2y ago here. Before that, there was a discussion of Jessica Taylor’s situation being downstream from Vassar’s influence but as far as I remember Scott Alexander eventually retracted his claims about this.
In any case, I think this kind of stuff deserves a top-level alert post, like the one about Ziz.
but as far as I remember Scott Alexander eventually retracted his claims about this.
Scott’s comment is here. To me it seems like the retraction only concerns the claim that Vassar was a central figure to all that happened, as opposed to using his method on a few people who later used the method on others without Vassar’s personal involvement.
I looked into this and got some useful information. Enough people asked me to keep their comments semi-confidential that I’m not going to post everything publicly, but if someone has a reason to want to know more, they can email me. I haven’t paid any attention to this situation since early 2022 and can’t speak to anything that’s happened since then.
My overall impression is that the vague stereotype everyone has is accurate—Michael is pretty culty, has a circle of followers who do a lot of psychedelics and discuss things about trauma in altered states, and many of those people have had pretty bad psychotic breaks.
But I wasn’t able to find any direct causal link between Michael and the psychotic breaks—people in this group sometimes had breaks before encountering him, or after knowing him for long enough that it didn’t seem triggered by meeting him, or triggered by obvious life events. I think there’s more reverse causation (mentally fragile people who are interested in psychedelics join, or get targeted for recruitment into, his group) than direct causation (he convinces people to take psychedelics and drives them insane), though I do think there’s a little minor direct causation in a few cases.
I retraced the same argument about Olivia that people are having here—yes, she likes manipulating people and claiming that she’s driven them insane (it’s unclear how effective she actually is or whether she just takes credit, but I would still avoid her), she briefly hung out with Michael in 2017 and often says that Michael inspired her to do this, but Michael denies continued affiliation with her, and she hasn’t been part of his inner circle of followers since the late 2010s (if she ever was). The few conversation logs I got failed to really back up any continuing connection between them, and I think she’s more likely doing it on her own and sort of piggybacking on his reputation.
I continue to recommend that everybody just stay away from this entire scene and group of people.
Why do you think there are cover-ups?
More specifically, do you mean that people-in-the-know are not willing to report it or that there is some active silencing or [discouragement of those who would like to bring attention to it] going on?
There was one community alert about Zizians 2y ago here. Before that, there was a discussion of Jessica Taylor’s situation being downstream from Vassar’s influence but as far as I remember Scott Alexander eventually retracted his claims about this.
In any case, I think this kind of stuff deserves a top-level alert post, like the one about Ziz.
Scott’s comment is here. To me it seems like the retraction only concerns the claim that Vassar was a central figure to all that happened, as opposed to using his method on a few people who later used the method on others without Vassar’s personal involvement.
I looked into this and got some useful information. Enough people asked me to keep their comments semi-confidential that I’m not going to post everything publicly, but if someone has a reason to want to know more, they can email me. I haven’t paid any attention to this situation since early 2022 and can’t speak to anything that’s happened since then.
My overall impression is that the vague stereotype everyone has is accurate—Michael is pretty culty, has a circle of followers who do a lot of psychedelics and discuss things about trauma in altered states, and many of those people have had pretty bad psychotic breaks.
But I wasn’t able to find any direct causal link between Michael and the psychotic breaks—people in this group sometimes had breaks before encountering him, or after knowing him for long enough that it didn’t seem triggered by meeting him, or triggered by obvious life events. I think there’s more reverse causation (mentally fragile people who are interested in psychedelics join, or get targeted for recruitment into, his group) than direct causation (he convinces people to take psychedelics and drives them insane), though I do think there’s a little minor direct causation in a few cases.
I retraced the same argument about Olivia that people are having here—yes, she likes manipulating people and claiming that she’s driven them insane (it’s unclear how effective she actually is or whether she just takes credit, but I would still avoid her), she briefly hung out with Michael in 2017 and often says that Michael inspired her to do this, but Michael denies continued affiliation with her, and she hasn’t been part of his inner circle of followers since the late 2010s (if she ever was). The few conversation logs I got failed to really back up any continuing connection between them, and I think she’s more likely doing it on her own and sort of piggybacking on his reputation.
I continue to recommend that everybody just stay away from this entire scene and group of people.
Some discussion of coverups can be found at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupational-infohazards.