Speaking for myself, I don’t agree with any of it. From what I have read, I don’t agree that the author’s personal issues demonstrate “some amount of poison in them” outside the human norm, or in some way that would make me automatically skeptical of anything they said “entwined with soulcrafting.” And I certainly don’t agree that a reader “should be aware” of nonspecific problems that an author has which aren’t even clearly relevant to something they wrote. I would give the exact opposite advice—to try to focus on the ideas first before involving preconceptions about the author’s biases.
Really...? You think it’s not indicative of a nontrivial amount of poison, to be in a position of brokering statusful positions to young people, fly one out, suprise her with an expectation that she’ll stay in his house, and greet her with “hold on, I’m gonna masturbate”? This is… a pretty big disconnect between your mindset and mine.
I specifically think it’s well within the human norm, i.e. that most of the things I read are written by a person who has done worse things, or who would do worse things given equal power. I have done worse things, in my opinion. There’s just not a blog post about them right now.
I think that’s not a great characterization of what happened. IIRC, Owen was not the person who “flew her out” (she was flown out for an unrelated job offer), he did not “surprise her” in the relevant sense (he was asked whether he could host her by other people), and they were in-general pretty close and had talked about adjacent stuff already.
Overall, my sense is Owen did mess up with a bunch of this stuff, but I don’t think it makes sense for that to follow him around to all random blogposts he writes. In-general posts on LW are pseudonymous and mostly (though not fully) judged on their content and local validity (though of course the expertise of the author does matter). I prefer the world where Owen writes under his normal name, but my guess is if this kind of stuff gets dug up on each post he might just post under a pseudonym, which I think would be his full right, but overall seems like it makes the world worse by both of our lights.
From Owen’s post: “I’d suggested her as a candidate earlier in the application process, but was not part of their decision-making process”. “Unrelated job offer” is a bad description of that. I don’t see the claim about hosting in the post, but that would a little soften things if true.
Anyway, it’s not a random blog post! If it was a post about how many species of flowers there are or whatever, then my comment wouldn’t make sense. But it’s not random! It’s literally about acting wholesomely! His very unwholesome behavior is very relevant to a post he’s making to the forum of record about what wholesome behavior is!
The act in question happened before she arrived, not after. (I wanted to reduce the impact of attraction on my experience while she was staying there.) But in any case I was not attuned to what her experience might be, and I now agree that it was highly inappropriate for me to have shared that information.
Edit: in hindsight this seems too emotive and uncouth and I kinda don’t like how my comment is on a post on wholesomeness. Feel free to DM me a response instead if you prefer. I’m not interested in creating a scene. I legitimately was just shocked by the update I received.
Wait… wat… I’m sorry for the blunt question but,
You masterbated before she even arrived at the house? That is a monumental update that has my brain ringing. Any LW/EA space I go to where you are brought up in passing there seems to be a model of the event constructed that a huge part (in fact, the majority) of the inappropriateness was because she was in the same building when you let her know you’re just “going to the other room” etc etc.
On one level I hope I’m just in the minority and missed this for not following closely enough, but if not—I’m sorry—why the fuck was this not more clearly pointed out? It seems a huge difference to the story.
Sorry, I didn’t realise until reading your comment today that that was a prevalent reading. (Although in retrospect it makes some sense.)
I think this error is pretty related to the original errors. I had a bunch of illusion of transparency and some psychological block around possible interpretations of things I did as sex-seeking. Also at the time of the public discussion I just felt really bad and it seemed kind of appropriate that people should think badly of me (I understood that they did think badly, but not the detail of that).
By the time I’d largely worked through the psychological issues and talked further about things publicly (in my December update, or my response to the EV investigation), it seemed better to talk at a more general level about what had gone wrong, and not try to rehash the original discussion. (I was aware that I’d be able to talk about it more clearly vs where I was last year, but I don’t think it’s a super comfortable topic of conversation for anyone, and it’s not clear the extra clarity made it worth getting into it.)
Speaking for myself, I don’t agree with any of it. From what I have read, I don’t agree that the author’s personal issues demonstrate “some amount of poison in them” outside the human norm, or in some way that would make me automatically skeptical of anything they said “entwined with soulcrafting.” And I certainly don’t agree that a reader “should be aware” of nonspecific problems that an author has which aren’t even clearly relevant to something they wrote. I would give the exact opposite advice—to try to focus on the ideas first before involving preconceptions about the author’s biases.
Really...? You think it’s not indicative of a nontrivial amount of poison, to be in a position of brokering statusful positions to young people, fly one out, suprise her with an expectation that she’ll stay in his house, and greet her with “hold on, I’m gonna masturbate”? This is… a pretty big disconnect between your mindset and mine.
I specifically think it’s well within the human norm, i.e. that most of the things I read are written by a person who has done worse things, or who would do worse things given equal power. I have done worse things, in my opinion. There’s just not a blog post about them right now.
I think that’s not a great characterization of what happened. IIRC, Owen was not the person who “flew her out” (she was flown out for an unrelated job offer), he did not “surprise her” in the relevant sense (he was asked whether he could host her by other people), and they were in-general pretty close and had talked about adjacent stuff already.
Overall, my sense is Owen did mess up with a bunch of this stuff, but I don’t think it makes sense for that to follow him around to all random blogposts he writes. In-general posts on LW are pseudonymous and mostly (though not fully) judged on their content and local validity (though of course the expertise of the author does matter). I prefer the world where Owen writes under his normal name, but my guess is if this kind of stuff gets dug up on each post he might just post under a pseudonym, which I think would be his full right, but overall seems like it makes the world worse by both of our lights.
From Owen’s post: “I’d suggested her as a candidate earlier in the application process, but was not part of their decision-making process”. “Unrelated job offer” is a bad description of that. I don’t see the claim about hosting in the post, but that would a little soften things if true.
Anyway, it’s not a random blog post! If it was a post about how many species of flowers there are or whatever, then my comment wouldn’t make sense. But it’s not random! It’s literally about acting wholesomely! His very unwholesome behavior is very relevant to a post he’s making to the forum of record about what wholesome behavior is!
The act in question happened before she arrived, not after. (I wanted to reduce the impact of attraction on my experience while she was staying there.) But in any case I was not attuned to what her experience might be, and I now agree that it was highly inappropriate for me to have shared that information.
Edit: in hindsight this seems too emotive and uncouth and I kinda don’t like how my comment is on a post on wholesomeness. Feel free to DM me a response instead if you prefer. I’m not interested in creating a scene. I legitimately was just shocked by the update I received.
Wait… wat… I’m sorry for the blunt question but,
You masterbated before she even arrived at the house? That is a monumental update that has my brain ringing. Any LW/EA space I go to where you are brought up in passing there seems to be a model of the event constructed that a huge part (in fact, the majority) of the inappropriateness was because she was in the same building when you let her know you’re just “going to the other room” etc etc.
On one level I hope I’m just in the minority and missed this for not following closely enough, but if not—I’m sorry—why the fuck was this not more clearly pointed out? It seems a huge difference to the story.
Sorry, I didn’t realise until reading your comment today that that was a prevalent reading. (Although in retrospect it makes some sense.)
I think this error is pretty related to the original errors. I had a bunch of illusion of transparency and some psychological block around possible interpretations of things I did as sex-seeking. Also at the time of the public discussion I just felt really bad and it seemed kind of appropriate that people should think badly of me (I understood that they did think badly, but not the detail of that).
By the time I’d largely worked through the psychological issues and talked further about things publicly (in my December update, or my response to the EV investigation), it seemed better to talk at a more general level about what had gone wrong, and not try to rehash the original discussion. (I was aware that I’d be able to talk about it more clearly vs where I was last year, but I don’t think it’s a super comfortable topic of conversation for anyone, and it’s not clear the extra clarity made it worth getting into it.)