Evrart Claire: A Case Study in Anti-Epistemology

This man nearly tricked me.

*Evrart Claire*, leader of the Dockworkers Union in Martinaise from the videogame *Disco Elysium*.

I acknowledge that he is a fictional character, but he nearly tricked me all the same.

Evrart is the leader of the 2,000-person Workers' Union of Martinaise; they are on strike as part of a conflict with Wild Pines, the multi-billion dollar logistics company that employs the dockworkers. During the strike, a lynching has occurred, and you play the homicide detective leading the investigation.

In my conversations with Evrart Claire during my play through of the game, I had a strong hunch that I was being played by Evrart, but no legible proof, leaving me feeling helpless to defend myself in a way I have felt many times before. I’m dissatisfied and somewhat alarmed by this, so in this post I'm going to look into his dialogue, figure out how he did that, and figure out how I can be better defended against it for the rest of my life.

(Spoiler warning in this footnote.^[1])

What's Wrong with Evrart Claire?

I have written about the rationalist vice of assuming good faith, which I think I have grown out of a lot since my youth, but am still subject to; Evrart Claire is squarely taking advantage of this. He constantly presents himself well, and all his bad behavior is covered in plausibly-deniability. You can never quite prove him to be a liar and a cheat, he's always got excuses and counter-narratives, and insists he's the good guy in all of this.

On LessWrong we sometimes refer to this as though it were a whole school of practice, namely “anti-epistemology”, of how to obfuscate the truth and misdirect people, as though it had rigorous rules on how to do so, that are the inversion of good epistemic practices and rules for systematically forming accurate beliefs. Claire is the character in Disco Elysium who wields anti-epistemology with the most skill and effectiveness, and is also one of the most powerful characters because of it.

Claire's character is not supposed to be subtle. The most violent and racist hooligans in the town work for him; he constantly asks you to do sketchy stuff for him before he'll give you information pertinent to your investigation; he keeps trying to give you money without saying why; and he's rumored to have made his rival union leader disappear before the election. These are all behaviors much more probable under the hypothesis that his behavior is corrupt and his character rotten.

Yet what stands out to me about his trickery are his communication patterns, that make it harder for you (or anyone else) to learn the truth or understand what is going on.

There are many tricks that Evrart uses to gain power and make people behave badly. There's a common trick named the foot-in-the-door technique, where you get someone to agree to a small ask on the way to getting them to make a big ask. Evrart uses this, first asking you to do something slightly shady for him, and then increasingly asking you to do more shady things. There are certainly things like that going on that one could list, but my focus here is going to be on questions of information flows and how he causes people around him to have an inaccurate map of the territory.

Together, let's read some of the dialogue between you and Evrart. In future posts I’ll summarize his patterns , clarify his heuristics, and outline some possible antidotes to his trickery. But in this essay I simply want to get to grips with what he says and does.

This is where Evrart Claire sits. All of his dialogue below is spoken from this chair.

Maintaining Plausible Deniability

Here’s one of your character’s first interactions with him, when you intend to interview him about the murder.

There's a lot to unpack here already. I hope you agree with my basic read of this which is that he's asking you to do something (slightly shady) for him before he'll help you. There's a tit for tat element here. But what's he doing epistemically? I expect that's also clear to many, but I will nonetheless spell it out.

First, Evrart carefully presents a plausible innocent narrative about his actions and motives.
The story he presents is that he would like to help you with your case, but he is so emotional and distracted by something else, and you're in a position to help him with that. This isn't my read of the actual agreement that is taking place, which is a more corrupt tit-for-tat, but it is an account of things that you can tell third parties that doesn't sound bad.
Second, Evrart refuses to acknowledge any alternative illicit narrative.
When you ask “Why don’t you just open [this door] yourself?” he replies “Harry, I’m a very busy man and, more importantly, I don’t have that extraordinary physique you do.” Which is giving you a logically consistent reason, but is not a likely reason —he has over 2,000 people in his union and many staff who report to him that could do this for him.
When Kim goes on to explicitly bring up the hypothesis that Evrart wants this in order to signal that the police work for him, he doesn't even address the hypothesis Kim raises, he simply repeats his improbable narrative “I repeat, I’m a very, *very* busy man, Mr. Kitsuragi, and therefore I must occasionally enlist… outside help.”

Evrart is offering you tit-for-tat, where you help him out and then he'll help you out. But, insofar as this happens, he does this in a way that is very illegible to other people, and doesn't remove all possibility of doubt about the trade you're making. He never says what is being agreed, it was not written anywhere, and everything he says is logically consistent with his innocent narrative. Some of the standard tools used for people to check what agreements he made (e.g. "What did he explicitly say?" and "Did he give you a non-corrupt reason for why he wanted it?") have been carefully routed around.

All Narrative, No Facts, Avoids Details

Next, here’s some dialogue between you and Joyce Messier, a powerful lady who represents the board of Wild Pines.

Now here's a different scene, where you are talking to Evrart about the same matter.

First, he gives you essentially no evidence other than a contrary narrative.

Second, he dismisses getting the details right.

Both of these seem to me like tools of anti-epistemology, and the latter especially strong.

Let’s look at another example of avoiding details. At this point in the game you've been on a side-quest looking into some rumors about something shady happening in his organization. He implicitly asked you to do one thing, but you've done the opposite.

Evrart seems to encourage people working for him to not let him know what’s going on. After you explain that you did something that probably is against his interests, he emphasizes that the details are below his pay grade, he doesn’t know about them, and he trusts you to sort it out.

Avoiding knowing what's going on looks to me like another trick of anti-epistemology, to distance himself from crimes.

It makes it easier for him to perform “being forthcoming about all he knows”. It regularly allows him to appear honest and open about giving you all the information that he has, because he genuinely doesn’t know what happened.
Avoiding looking into shady business, and encouraging your people not to tell you about it, is also a great way to allow people to get away with shady business that helps you out without you being directly culpable and without you being able to give it up. When the people who do the dirty work know the boss doesn't want to hear about it and isn't going to come asking questions, they can get on with wrong actions in peace.

Emphasize Loyalty and Trust

In the following bit of dialogue, you’ve just told Evrart about a key piece of evidence that contradicts what he says his men told him. (I’ve redacted the detail to avoid a major spoiler.)

As before, he avoids the details and probably does not know them. I think it’s especially interesting that, when he is on the back foot, he does not address the possibility that he may have knowingly misled you or be responsible for the situation in any way, and instead (performatively, in my opinion) reinforces his positive relationship with you.

Here's a different scene where he does that again.

It seems to me that Evrart Claire treats hypotheses of his own bad behavior or untrustworthiness like a Popperian Scientist treats theories other than their favorite theory. Evrart's theory is that he's a good person with good intentions, and he'll keep holding that it's the only theory that fits the facts unless you can falsify that narrative, not merely provide Bayesian evidence against it. He will act and speak in accordance with that narrative and reprimand you for considering alternatives in the absence of proof – a kind of proof which is very rare to get in the social world (especially in the presence of active anti-epistemology and stemmed information flows).

A hypothesis many would naturally consider in the above quote is that Evrart Claire is hiding information from you. But Evrart does not acknowledge this theory and will resist unless you have proof. The truth is that I cannot prove this is what’s happening. I am confident that bad behavior on his part is a natural hypothesis going on but I cannot prove it, and I know this means he will not even allow it to be a part of the conversation, and this is frustrating. I think his avoidance of such a hypothesis is adversarial, and to instead say that he has complete confidence in you to be doing good work attempts to put him on your side and deflect any further questioning.

(I detest this.)

Here’s one more time he reinforces his trust and good relationship with you, with an internal note from your inner encyclopedia that I find amusing.

Disco Elysium Part #10 - 21:45-23:17: Big Boss Man — Evrart Claire making you sit in a small and uncomfortable chair.

Inverting Basic Principles

If you accept Evrart’s request to open someone’s door, you are later given the opportunity to lie to him about whether you did it. Here is how that little interaction goes down.

A slight caricature of me would be more likely to say “What are friends for if not for getting true information and feedback from them?”. I myself have been known to send out surveys about myself to dozens of my friends in order to get honest feedback! So I find this amusing as a direct reversal of good epistemic norms in friendship.

And look how he smooths over your relationship immediately afterwards! It seems to me like he doesn’t actually feel personally hurt by you lying to him, and that much if not all of the loyal friendship he speaks of between the two of you is utterly performative.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut Switch Impressions - Port Investigations — Evrart Claire possibly blackmailing you to do some work for him.

Performing Emotions

Here’s the last stretch of dialogue in this essay.

First, I will point to Evrart’s principle of encouraging “positive emotion” when you think of him, which seems to really disregard the idea that emotions should track reality, and makes me think of his character as almost entirely performative. Then, once again, he insists on leaning on your loyal friendship in order to get out of discussing the matter.

But it was the section of dialogue about transparency that befuddled me for the longest time of anything he says – because it isn't true. It later turns out he is absolutely in a massive conflict with Joyce, so he's lying to say otherwise. And he definitely doesn't want her to know his full plans, so it's false for him to say the org is totally transparent.

Why would he say this? What does he have to gain by emphasizing something so far away from reality? Wouldn't he be found out by something so blatant? How could this be a reasonable thing to say? Is there a perspective from which he is being transparent?

I really was trying to make sense of what perspective would produce these words, but eventually it struck me: he's saying it because it would be good for him if you believed it, and he thinks he can get away with saying it without you catching him out.

That is the sort of adversarial epistemic optimization happening here. If a bunch of sentences would be good for him to say, he will say them. These are not being checked against any world model for something resembling accuracy. There is no good-faith perspective from which this is a reasonable thing for him to say.

I was being too charitable. He is blatantly and forthrightly lying.

So what are his key tools of trickery? I'll give my answer to that question in the next post...

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Spoiler Warning
There are over 80 characters and 1,000,000 words of dialogue in Disco Elysium. I'm going to be quoting a lot of dialogue with one character in particular. I don’t think reading it spoils your experience of the game, it’s such a rich world and there’s tons of important plot points I don’t give away, but it does contain 5-10 minor plot points that are surprises or mysteries.
It is one of the top 10 games I have ever played, and I have successfully encouraged many of my friends to play it. If you want to play the game unspoilered, but you want to read about anti-epistemology, you can just wait and read the subsequent posts in this sequence, which focus on the principles rather than these characters. Though I think it really helps to have the dialogue and details of this particular character in-mind, so come back after you've played it!
^{^}
Kim Kitsuragi is your cop partner.
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Note here that Claire doesn't answer the question.
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Once again, he doesn't answer the question.
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This is an instance of one of your mind's attributes talking to you internally. "Drama" is good at helping you lie and detect others' lies.
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I have removed the text as it unnecessarily spoils an interesting plot point that isn't relevant to this post.
^{^}
Yes, "Encyclopedia" is another of your mind's internal attributes, that works to "Call upon all your knowledge. Produce fascinating trivia."

	"I want to talk about the hanging." –You
	"Oh, of course. That's your main thing here. That's why you're in Martinaise." He nods. "I know everything that goes on around here and I would love to discuss it with you." –Evrart Claire
	"I mean, it's no secret that the lynching is connected to the strike -- so much to talk about! Honestly, it's been weighing on me so heavily. I understand -- you need to interview me..." –Evrart Claire
	"I sense there's a but." –You
	"...but there's a thing that's been keeping me up at night. I want to talk about the hanging. I mean... if we could just calmly talk, exchange information, we could blow this thing wide open!" –Evrart Claire
	"Yes, let's blow it open." –You
	"But I can't think straight with this thing weighing on me..." He slaps himself on the forehead. "You're a police officer, aren't you? I have a crazy idea. You guys are basically door-opening machines. Incredibly talented at opening doors." –Evrart Claire
	"Kim, is that true? Are we door-opening machines?" –You
	"I'm not sure I understand." He looks to the Union boss. "If you're asking us to break down someone's door, it's not going to happen." –Kim Kitsuragi^[2]
	"Come now. I just need you to go open a little door for me -- and leave it unlocked. A simple thing. Absolutely nothing shady about it." –Evrart Claire
	“Why don’t you just open it yourself?” –You
	“Harry, I’m a very busy man and, more importantly, I don’t have that extraordinary physique you do.” He slams his fists together. “You look like you could run around all day!” –Evrart Claire
	“You want to send someone a message that the police are working for you.” –Kim Kitsuragi
	“I repeat, I’m a very, very busy man, Mr. Kitsuragi, and therefore I must occasionally enlist… outside help.”^[3] He turns back to you. “So what will it be, Harry?” –Evrart Claire
	“Whose door is it?” –You
	“Oh, no one’s. It’s just a weasel. A weasel lives there. Nothing for you to worry about.”^[4] –Evrart Claire
	“What do you mean by a ‘weasel’?” –You
	“A loud blabbering weasel. When weasels feel no one is watching, they start acting foolishly…” He removes his glasses and rubs his nose. –Evrart Claire
	“I bet you don’t even know anything about the hanging.” –You
	“Harry, my dear friend.” He sinks deeper into the chair. “I am what people call a local big wig. I know everything that goes on in Martinaise.” –Evrart Claire
	“Damnit, fine, I’ll look into it, we need to talk about that murder.” (Accept the task.) –You
	“Fantastic, my friend! Just let me know when it’s done and we can take our friendship to the next level.” He flicks his fingers. –Evrart Claire

	"One more thing -- you said something happened in the elections?" –You
	"I'm glad you asked. There was a woman -- the previous forewoman of the Union. She disappeared." –Joyce Messier
	"Disappeared?" –Kim Kitsuragi
	"Yes. On the last day of the local chapter elections her daughter phoned in and said she wasn't running anymore -- or coming to work. Ever. End of story." –Joyce Messier
	"Eerie." –You
	"Downright haunting if you ask me. The Wild Pines suspected foul play, but what could they do? It was a Union matter." –Joyce Messier
	"The point of the presentation is -- these kinds of things happen around the Claires. Watch out when you're dealing with him." –Joyce Messier
	"Thank you for your concern, ma'am. We'll be just fine." –Kim Kitsuragi

	"Joyce said the previous Union leader vanished under suspicious circumstances." –You
	"Vanished?! Harry, the woman left her casserole in the oven and couldn't make it here in time for the voting." –Evrart Claire
	"'Oh, did I leave my casserole on? Better go home and check. The election can wait!'" The man frowns, disapprovingly. "When she got back the whole thing was over." –Evrart Claire
	Wait... there was no mention of a casserole from Joyce. –Drama^[5]
	"Funny, Joyce didn't mention any casserole." –You
	"Harry, Harry, Harry!" He flicks his fingers. "Do not fixate on this little matter. Maybe it was a rabbit stew... or a hair dryer, or an iron. The point is, her heart wasn't in it. Mine was." –Evrart Claire
	That much is true. His heart truly is in it. Though you wouldn't think so by looking at him. –Inland Empire
	This particular brand of humour he has... it makes for a fine distraction. –Conceptualization
	If it's spilled blood you're looking for then there certainly isn't any in his expression, or demeanor now. –Empathy

	"Now please, let's get back to the good stuff, the police stuff, Harry! I just see myself as one of you guys. Think of me as a sergeant or something." He smiles broadly. "Let's crack this, Harry." –Evrart Claire
	[Presents a new piece of evidence, something that suggests Evrart wasn’t entirely forthcoming with you]^[6] –You
	"[repeats it]?!" He grabs his head with both hands. "You guys are just light-years ahead of me." –Evrart Claire
	"I have so much confidence in the ability of your organization. I'm relieved you're doing this and leaving me to do what I do best -- helping people. With the power of politics." –Evrart Claire

	(Lie.) “I opened the door to your weasel’s den.” –You
	“Are you shitting me Harry? Did you not really open the door and are now just telling me you did?” His lively eyes are mapping your face. “You’re a wild one, Harry!” –Evrart Claire
	“You’re right, I was just testing you.” –You
	“Of course, Harry!” He exclaims. “What are friends for if not for measuring the falsehood one can pass in the disguise of truth.” –Evrart Claire

LESSWRONG
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