QC@QiaochuYuan
i would really prefer to never have to talk about this again in public but here goes. i was heavily involved with brent dill for a substantial chunk of 2018, when he was embedded in the bay area rationality community. based on those experiences i never want to get involved with him ever again and i highly recommend none of you ever do so either. please note that this is the strongest condemnation i have ever written publicly about anybody
brent dill is basically a cult leader, and the thing he constantly does is basically attempt to start or take over cults. when he is talking to you he is constantly attempting to probe you for any psychological weaknesses he can take advantage of in order to convert you into one of his supporters. most people find him repellent but he is good at finding vulnerable people this will work on
when this is happening to you, from the inside it feels like finally you've found someone who's saying things that make sense, that matter, who's bravely pointing out the elephants in the room nobody else is willing to, who is being unfairly persecuted by the popular monkeys, who's showing you all the social rot and promising in so many words that maybe, just maybe, you and him can fix it together, because you get it, right? you're not like the others. you see the truth. you're so special. or whatever. he will tailor different versions of this pitch to different people based on what he's figured out about you. the pitch includes, among other things, a sophisticated defense against any attempts to warn you about him, which look like confirmation of his persecution thesis
(importantly, i'm not saying the stuff he points out is wrong, that is itself part of the trap. he pointed out a lot of things about the rationality community that were true in some sense and were part of the reason we - black lotus - were drawn to him instead. cult leaders always work like this. there is always at least a kernel of real value mixed in with the poison and demons, but it is as far as i can tell literally never worth it)
getting out from under brent's manipulation and control was one of the most destabilizing experiences of my entire life and one i have spent years recovering from. the whole time i thought i was making my own choices and seeing things clearly - that i was built different - and i was essentially having my mind taken over in ways i had no idea were possible in the real world and that, if present-me were to describe them to before-i-experienced-them me, i would flat out not have believed. if you've never experienced anything like this you are blessed. i had to reconstruct my entire understanding of myself and the world from scratch because i had lost trust in everything in a very deep and fundamental way; in particular i had to reconstruct my entire understanding of good and evil because i had lost trust in my ability to discern whether anything at all was good or evil
if you are the sort of person who brent has decided is worth targeting, you are not prepared to deal with somebody who's put literally all of their skill points into manipulation. in the next tweet i will link some resources that might or might not be helpful. may god have mercy on our souls
