Eric Bruylant is a controversial choice for an emeritus admin, I realize. First I want to point out that I thought this through and concluded that this is an *ONLINE* group, where Eric can't physically touch you. He does not have an abusive personality IMO, but he did have a psychotic episode which resulted in violent behavior that even Eric does not agree with. He now takes an anti-psychotic, so I don't expect it to happen again. I consulted a doctor prior to this and was told that 1/3 people who have a psychotic episode will never have another one. The majority, around 2/3 of people who've had a psychotic episode will live a normal life after that.

The story as I know it:

Eric had a psychotic episode which I personally witnessed in PM on Facebook. I thought he was just being weird, and perhaps due to my openness level, I try too hard to listen to weird ideas... but in hindsight, there were some pretty darned good reasons to think he was having a psychotic episode. This psychotic episode resulted in him being arrested for assault / attempted murder. If he is convicted, that will be the persecution of a mentally ill person at best.

At worst, he may have been non-consensually drugged by someone as a cover-up. :O

It's hard to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg in this case. Did Eric and I end up having a discussion about whether Michael Arc (formerly Vassar) poisoned him because Eric was psychotic at the time, or was Eric psychotic at the time because Michael Arc slipped him drugs?

I had just explained to Eric why I think Arc is probably a nasty person, including some evidence I found online and some analysis I applied to Arc's bizarre style of communication, which I think is telling. Right before his incident, Eric had just realize that the risk factors on Arc were too high, and Arc had noticed Eric's change of heart. Eric was afraid of what Arc might do.

Maybe that's just coincidence.

Someone told me a bunch of other people had been having psychotic episodes in Arc's circle.

Maybe that's coincidence, too.

To be completely transparent *I have no idea how to evaluate this possibility*. Unfortunately, I just don't have enough information to make a decision either way.

I won't just ignore this possibility though and there's a reason for that. It just so happens that Arc is quite possibly the nastiest rationalist I've ever heard of, if he can even be called a rationalist. I'll explain.

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About Michael Arc:

If you want evidence, check out his article "Sex, Nerds and Entitlement" on Overcoming Bias. It's under his old name, Vassar. He changed his name when he married apparently. He thinks what works on women is "entitlement" and further describes the method as something that may cause women to feel physically threatened if they refuse!

He doesn't even have the responsibility to restrict this extreme statement to "masochistic women" or "submissive women" or "some women". He was writing an article about how to treat *women*, period.

This isn't just a weird idea. It is a verifiably false weird idea.

Research shows that 12% of people who are raped attempt suicide!!!! Doing things that have a chance of making women feel physically threatened in order to get them to have sex with you is not how you treat women!!!

He provides no citations or support of any kind for this idea. No, his speculation is not support, not even if he calls it "evolutionary psychology" or tries to excuse it by calling himself out for speculating.

Further, there's plenty of evidence that rape myths - like the idea that you're supposed to do stuff which may make people feel physically threatened - are a risk factor for rape. If this were any topic other than sex, there would be outrage at the level of epistemic insanity Michael Arc displayed in that article.

For some reason, there is a double standard in the rationalist community about sexual violence. There shouldn't be. Everything written about sex, sexual violence and women should be held to our usual standards.

Further, extraordinary claims, such as claims that could promote a life-threatening level of harm, *and* include a sweeping generalization, *and* have a ton of evidence against them, should be considered extraordinary claims and held to a *much higher* standard of evidence.

Based on Michael Arc's penchant for vaguery, which he has not done anything to solve in almost TEN YEARS of hanging out with rationalists, I think it is more accurate to think of Arc as an imposter than a rationalist.

There are a lot of good applications for being very clear. You can help people understand reality better. You can even help yourself understand reality better. What are the applications for vaguery? Confusion. That's about all.

What is the point of confusing people?

I don't know but in "The Art of War", I read that the art of confusion is a key part of winning battles. Arc's vaguery raises the section of hairs on the back of my neck that activates along with my heuristics for con artists.

Additionally, I've been told by multiple people that Arc is widely regarded as a dangerous and/or abusive person. I've heard nasty stories. Multiple people have spoken against him. If there's anyone we should carefully evaluate for dark triad, it's Arc.

The stories I've heard include Arc getting people to take drugs, misrepresenting what the drugs will do, and taking advantage of drugged people.

Although I have no reason to believe Arc drugged Eric, given what I know of Arc, I can't rule it out either.

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But *why* Eric though?

I can think of no one better to support the rights of mentally ill people than Eric. He has personally experienced one of the worst cases of persecution for mental illness of anyone I've ever met. He may one day advocate for somebody important, some beautiful mind we can't see, and with a deeper level of insight than any of us ever could.

Coincidentally, Eric is *also* one of the very best people-rationalists I have ever met.

He's in the top five best people rationalists I know. If I took more time evaluating I might decide he is in the top two. If he does have a brain difference, he has a beautiful mind, himself!

If he does have some brain difference, maybe this is part of why he is so brilliant.

Rationality needs beautiful minds, too!

He is my real life John Nash friend.

If he was drugged, Eric has seen the nastiness of the dark triad up close and personal. He's probably less naive than most of us now that he's had to consider this possibility.

It's important to have someone around who has seen a glimpse of what dark triad is like. His bias is almost definitely lower now, even if Arc did nothing to him. Eric might one day pick up on something we don't.

Eric can't hurt you here. He isn't physically present.

He will just share interesting ideas which might be weird, but are the earnest ideas of a people-rationalist. If he has another episode, the admins can just remove him until he recovers and then put him back later when he recovers. There's a chance this will get interesting, but if you're not in person with him, there's not much he can do to you.

If he tries something abstract or political which is inaccurate or destructive, well, the world already knows he had one psychotic episode. You can suggest people make an informed decision about in-person contact. There are news articles to cite. You can show them this post from me. It's not a secret that he became violent once due to some kind of brain related disturbance.

Don't hang out with Eric in person if you don't want to. I'm not asking anyone to do that. Here I am warning you. Not because I think he's dangerous. I would hang out with him. But if you might want a lower probability, or you don't care that he's a beautiful mind, here is your warning. Put your probabilities where you will.

Why did you admin him, though?

They made John Nash a professor and allowed him to stay an emeritus professor later.

What I'm trying to accomplish is like that.

Eric probably shouldn't be an active admin because there's a small chance he'll have a psychotic episode and delete all the other admins. I'm putting this probability at 1/1000 or less, but that's still a good reason not to have Eric as an *active* admin.

I admin'd Eric hoping it would make a notification so he could have a title of some kind. It did make a notification. Then I removed admin, hoping it would make a second notificaiton. Instead, the first notification went away.

That's too bad because it makes it harder to say "Eric is my metaphorical emeritus professor." but I did my best to give him some kind of title.

What I'm really hoping for is that you guys let Eric remain in the online group even if you don't want to hang out with him in person, and that at least some of you will give some of Eric's weird ideas consideration.