I’m Screwtape, also known as Skyler. I’m an aspiring rationalist originally introduced to the community through HPMoR, and I stayed around because the writers here kept improving how I thought. I’m fond of the Rationality As A Martial Art metaphor, new mental tools to make my life better, and meeting people who are strange in ways I find familiar and comfortable. If you’re ever in the Boston area, feel free to say hi.
Starting early in 2023, I’m the ACX Meetups Czar. You might also know me from the New York City Rationalist Megameetup, editing the Animorphs: The Reckoning podfic, or being that guy at meetups with a bright bandanna who gets really excited when people bring up indie tabletop roleplaying games.
I recognize that last description might fit more than one person.
In a sense, Scott and I have the power to make decisions based on whatever kind and level of knowledge we want. I could go to Scott and say something like hey, I’ve got a bad vibe here, zero Verifiable Documented Evidence but it’s an intuition, lets permanently and publicly ban this person. Or skip going to Scott- I think I only loop him in on ~10% of conflicts I’m aware of.
How much do you trust my intuition? How much do I trust it?
I trust local ACX organizers a lot. If someone comes to me and says the local ACX organizer banned them from the local meetup, I generally nod and say yep I endorse the local organizer being able to do that.[1] Locals don’t get to ban people from other cities but they usually don’t need to.
I often do talk to people. I travel where I can[2], but I also talk by videocall to lots of people in the ACX community to expand the range. Written complaints in a feedback form that I have permission to share do make for a lovely essay example, and they do come up, but videocall talks and in-person conversations feed into this. I take notes on many of both largely as my own memory aid, usually on paper in a stack of index cards. But every piece of information is evidence, so I’ll start with (uncertain, with wide error bars) intuitions on one or two sentence entries in an application form and build from there.
Bloodlessness is somewhere between a target and a necessary side effect of the way I’m discussing and dissecting the components of handling conflict here and in a lot of posts I’ve made on the subject lately. I could write the bloody versions, but I feel those drafts show too much fury to be generally useful to others.
I have to my memory overruled the local organizer exactly once, and in hindsight I think that was a mistake; not because I later came to agree with the local organizer (though I eventually more or less did) but because I think that’s an important power to have in the hands of the person actually doing the ground level work.
Mostly not to investigate complaints, though I’ve had that as one of multiple goals once or twice.