Perhaps Try a Little Therapy, As a Treat?

[-]ketura1y7158

So here's something I want to observe about this defense, and others like it you've done. You take offense at a statement like "klob does [negative thing]", and you call it a lie, but when it comes to addressing the specific events that [negative thing] is being used to describe, you don't actually refute the events.

Instead you hold up a list of [positive trait]s and go "how can I [negative thing] when I so clearly have [positive trait]??" as if it's impossible to do two things at once.

Take the lovebombing claim. This is at least partially traced to the event, recorded in chat, of you trying to give a present to Duncan's daughter. Did you offer gifts at a time following negative interaction? Then you lovebombed.

Take the stalking claim. This is at least partially traced to informing Duncan that you had found his physical address and performed a background check, and at least partially to your own posted GPS screenshot of searching for a friend's address. Did you track and record the location of the home of people who did not explicitly give that information to you? Then you were stalking them.

Everything else in this document is a distraction, presenting a heap of [positive trait]s attempting to drown out the existence of the [negative thing]s you have done. If you do not address those specific [negative thing]s and perhaps explain how they are not accurately described as "lovebombing" or "stalking" or whatnot, then this is just so much static.

Do not bother responding unless you do so with an explanation of how those specific events are not accurately described.

[+]segfault1y-10-2

[+]segfault1y-10-10

[-]mortgenson1y*6223

As someone who knows you IRL, I was somewhat hoping that you could put this behind you man :/

I ctrl + f'd for "adnonymous" or anything related to the email threat you sent Duncan at 5 AM. Unsurprisingly it went unaddressed in this post as well as the other explainers. I feel like you're not getting it, people are scared of you due to the way you are acting. I've internally debated leaving this comment as a message multiple times in your inbox but did not want to get put on blast on your social media.

There's nothing in this post that justifies that action, nor the doxxing. I've read through the FB messenger conversation and at no point did I come away thinking you were in the right here. You say that Duncan doesn't know you. Duncan doesn't need to know you to be scared of you.

And for the record, I am not a member of the rationalist community nor did I know who Duncan was before this whole thing started. I found it through your own posts on social media, and went through feelings of confusion, shock, and then a growing sense of horror as I read through everything. I have no personal stakes in the outcome of these events beyond hoping that things can improve.

Please take your own advice at the end of this post, print copies of the messages, then take them to a trusted therapist or neutral third party to have them make a judgment call. I understand that this has been very isolating, but that can be repaired.

Best of luck.

[-]segfault1y00

Sus.

[+]segfault1y-15-1

[-]Ruby1y3740

At this point it seems hardly to add anything to write it explicitly, since I think observers are reaching the same conclusion without help, but I would be utterly horrified to be targeted by Caleb Ditchfield in the way that seems Duncan has been.

It strikes me as an inadequacy of our civilization that someone can perpetuate harms like this and not be stopped. To the extent I have any power to prevent harms like this, e.g. my ~vote on whether Caleb is allowed in communal spaces, I do vote to remove him for the benefit of others.

It is a very sad situation. It seems that Caleb is just very ill, and the worst kind of ill where there's massive denial and he'll fight all efforts to persuade him to get help. I hope that writing this comment, not really changing anything, at least pushes in the right direction.

[-]Vaniver1y*3422

I don’t think Duncan knows what “a boundary” is.

General Semantics has a neat technology, where they can split out different words that normally land on top of each other. If boundary_duncan is different from boundary_segfault, we can just make each of the words more specific, and not have to worry about whether or not they're the same.

I've read thru your explainer of boundary_segfault, and I don't see how Duncan's behavior is mismatched. It's a limit that he set for himself that defines how he interacts with himself, others, and his environment. My guess is that the disagreement here is that under boundary_segfault, describing you as having "poor boundaries" is saying that your limits are poorly set. (Duncan may very well believe this! Tho the claim that you set them for yourself makes judging the limits more questionable. )

That said, "poor boundaries" is sometimes used to describe a poor understanding or respect of other people's boundaries. It seems to me like you are not correctly predicting how Duncan (or other people in your life!) will react to your messages and behavior, in a way that aligns with you not accurately predicting their boundaries (or predicting them accurately, and then deciding to violate them anyway).

This isn’t something that I do. This is something that I have done

I don't understand this combination of sentences. Isn't he describing the same observations you're describing?

There is a point here that he's describing it as a tendency you have, instead of an action that happened. But it sure seems like you agree that it's an action that happened, and I think he's licensed to believe that it might happen again. As inferences go, this doesn't seem like an outlandish one to make.

The friends who know me well know that I am a safe person. Those who have spent even a day around me know this, too!

The comments here seem to suggest otherwise.

You talk about consent as being important to you; let's leave aside questions of sexual consent and focus just on the questions: did Duncan consent to these interactions? Did Duncan ask you to leave him alone? Did you leave him alone?

[-]nosowic6971y226

I don't know you at all and I'm sort of peripheral to the community, but I read the whole thing and I want to point out that the defense you wrote, for yourself, makes it sound like you really need help. Lots of people here are telling you to take all of this to therapy. Taking a bunch of stuff to therapy is never a bad idea! The opportunity cost is a few wasted hours, and the upsides can be huge.

[-]trevor1y166

Actions like these leave scars on entire communities.

Do you have any idea how fortunate you were to have so many people in your life who explicitly tell you "don't do things like this"? The world around you has been made so profoundly, profoundly conducive to healing you.

When someone is this persistent in thinking of reasons to be aggressive AND reasons to not evaluate the world around them, it's scary and disturbing. I understand that humans aren't very causally upstream of their decisions, but this is the case for everyone, and situations like these go a long way towards causing people like Duncan and Eliezer to fear meeting their fans.

I'm greatful that looking at this case has helped me formalize a concept of oppositional drive, a variable representing the unconscious drive to oppose other humans with justifications layered on top based on intelligence (a separate variable). Children diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant disorder is the DSM-5's way of mitigating the harm when a child has an unusually strong oppositional drive for their age, but that's because the DSM puts binary categorizations on traits that are actually better represented as variables that in most people are so low as to not be noticed (and some people are in the middle, unusually extreme cases get all the attention, this was covered in this section of Social Dark Matter which was roughly 100% of my inspiration).

Opposition is... a rather dangerous thing for any living being to do, especially if your brain conceals/obfuscates the tendency/drive whenever it emerges, so even most people in the orangey area probably disagree with having this trait upon reflection and would typically press a button to place themselves more towards the yellow. This is derived from the fundamental logic of trust (which in humans must be built as a complex project that revolves around calibration).

[-]mortgenson1y66

I completely agree with the first 3 graphs.

I somewhat disagree with the oppositional drive theory that you've described here, if only for the fact that I do not believe that klob thinks he has done anything wrong here. Having read through the messenger messages he posted as evidence, I can only conclude that he genuinely believes that the messages are exculpatory and not indicative of the behaviors he is accused of.

klob, I do want to emphsize:

It pains me so much that they have not done the same with me.

This is them doing the same, and saying you need help.

[+]segfault1y-5-1

[+]segfault1y-8-5

[-]jimrandomh1y1514

The first time you came to my attention was in May. I had posted something about how Facebook's notification system works. You cold-messaged me to say you had gotten duplicate notifications from Facebook, and you thought this meant that your phone was hacked. Prior to this, I don't recall us having ever interacted or having heard you mentioned. During that conversation, you came across to me as paranoid-delusional. You mentioned Duncan's name once, and I didn't think anything of it at the time.

Less than a week later, someone (not mentioned or participating in this thread) messaged me to say that you were having a psychotic episode, and since we were Facebook friends maybe I could check up on you? I said I didn't really know you, so wasn't able to do that.

Months later, Duncan reported that you were harrassing him. Some time after that (when it hadn't stopped), he wrote up a doc. It looks like at some point you formed an obsession about Duncan, reacted negatively to him blocking you, and started escalating. (Duncan has a reputation for blocking a lot of people. I have made the joke that his MtG card says "~ can block any number of creatures".)

But, here's the thing: Duncan's testimony is not the only (or even main) reason why you look like a dangerous person to me. There are subtle cues about the shape of your mental illness strewn through most of what you write, including the public stuff. People are going to react to that by protecting themselves.

I hope that you recover, mental-health-wise. But hanging around this community is not going to help you do that. If anything, I expect lingering here to exacerbate your problems. Both because you're surrounded by burn bridges, and also because the local memeplex has a reputation for having worsened people's mental illness in other, unrelated cases.

[-]brokenbellcurve1y117

I am examining what you have written. While I would like to take more time to digest everything, something jumped out at me -

Caleb Ditchfield (“kryptoklob” or “klob”) is frequently full-blown manic

You're not my doctor, as far as I know you're not even a doctor, and making this claim is paramount to, or perhaps actually libel.

You need to retract this claim, Duncan.

[I am not manic, Duncan’s never met me in person, and has no basis to make this claim. I have a doctor that I see regularly, who prescribes me medication for the only condition I have, which is adult ADHD. I’m happy to talk about this stuff - I think it’s important that we normalize talking about mental health stuff, so I do it with my friends and I’ll probably make a blog post about it in the future.]

The objection to what he has stated or claimed (that you are manic) seems to be based in your implied understanding that “manic” is equivalent to diagnosing someone with bipolar disorder, and that because you assert you have not been diagnosed with a “mental illness”, this is libelous. I would like to challenge this basis.

“Manic”, or being affected by mania is a symptom of a variety of conditions or circumstances. While commonly associated with bipolar disorder, being manic does not mean that one has bipolar disorder or a psychiatric disorder.

However, out of these other potential causes, I feel the need to point out that mania can be initiated by amphetamine use without any preexisting psychiatric disorder. Given that you follow up your claim that (paraphrasing for brevity) “It is libelous to claim I am manic” (surrounded with language that implies a belief that manic is equivalent with bipolar and that one cannot be manic without being bipolar) with (again paraphrased for brevity) “I am prescribed and am taking ADHD medication” (which one can reasonably assume is Adderall given the other content of your post mentioning taking it, which can absolutely trigger mania in some individuals), a reader may prove skeptical of your claims.

Given the state of a given individual (yourself) recounting “many people are calling me manic,” some (at least seemingly) independently of one another, a vehement denial that this individual is manic, an immediate declaration that they are taking prescription medication that can cause mania, a mention of being involuntarily committed (admittedly with limited details provided by you at all so I cannot assign significant weight to this. Perhaps the medical report/discharge papers would be reasonable evidence from which to operate.), and the context that this individual’s family at one point made a significant effort to separate this individual from this exact medication, we are left with several conclusions to make.

Probabilistically, there is either a conspiracy across your support structure (friends and family), strangers, and medical professionals operating in concert to gaslight you into thinking you’re acting rather unusual OR something is influencing your perceptions that warrants approaching it with a more open mind than you may have previously been operating with.

[-]brokenbellcurve1y96

After reading the whole thing, I feel I need additional context from klob around this whole post befoire engaging further. My apologies if this is rather overdefined, I just wish to be thorough.

Do you feel that what you have provided in this post and in hyperlinked resources is sufficient for someone unfamiliar with this entire situation to understand your side of things? You make multiple mentions of wishing that people/your friends would allow you the opportunity to provide your side.
1. If you do not believe that what you have provided is adequate, please document and provide "your side" such that it is sufficiently adequate accordingly.
If you do believe that this is adequate for a 3rd party to understand your side of things, then can we then agree that any conclusions reached by a 3rd party, regardless of whether you agree with them, were reached with sufficient available information (regardless of the logic/models employed), i.e. you agree that the defense of "they did not get my side" will not be used, and instead any defense provided will be based on addressing the logic and models that act upon the inputs/evidence you have provided?
What is your intention/expectation with this post? What do you consider to be a "win-state" for yourself? Is it just for people to believe your claims? Is it to get 3rd party input on this situation? Is it for this Duncan individual to apologize? Is the expectation that you won't be challenged on your claims and that this would just be a de facto blog post? Help me to understand what you're expecting here.
Are you willing to engage with the notion that individuals' conclusions can be simultaneously logically reasonable given the available information while being factually incorrect?
1. If an individual walks down the street, turns a corner, witnesses a person pull out what appears to be a handgun, point it at someone, a gunshot rings out, blood flies, and the other person falls to the ground screaming, it is very reasonable and even rational for them to immediately flee and call 911, claiming that there has been a murder attempt. If it turns out that they actually stumbled upon a movie set with all cameras and production staff on the roof and actually witnessed the climax of the screenplay, that may mean the individual in question is completely incorrect in their conclusion that there was a murder. However, that does not mean that the individual's logic or mental model was unsound or irrational.
2. I am not going to engage on what the absolute truth is because, as you yourself will probably agree, I cannot know what is going on inside your head. For the sake of discussion and within the context of this discussion, I am even willing to take you at your word that "klob has no psychiatric issues". However, you seem to very strongly challenge others' perceptions of your behavior with the defense that their conclusions (which inherently are about your internal mental state and are inherently unable to be known with certainty) are incorrect. Let me preface by saying that the following is a hyperbolic metaphor that is intended to be demonstrative and is not intended to be descriptive of your own behavior - A well-respected lawyer abruptly begins eating small rocks to the extent of having some health issues and negatively affecting their personal and professional relationships. Many people notice this and are concerned. Given this profile, it would be very reasonable to assume that something has caused this individual to develop pica, a mental health disorder characterized by compulsively swallowing non-food items. The truth is, this lawyer does not have pica. They are of sound mind and are actively choosing to do these things. They 100% could absolutely choose to stop at any time, for real. I will not speculate as to their motivation because it's irrelevant to this metaphor. However, one would expect that a lawyer could empathize with any concerned friends or family and say "while I (internally) know that your assessment is incorrect, it is not an unreasonable conclusion to reach given the evidence you have." If it was important to convince them that this lawyer did not have pica, then this lawyer could take steps to support this claim outside of "I don't have pica (eats a rock)" or "I have not been formally diagnosed with pica by a healthcare professional (eats a rock)".
Are you ultimately open to having your perceptions challenged or changed by new perspectives or evidence?
1. If not, I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for your post.

[-]dusty3461y97

You have the sharing permissions on the link labelled "this document. Right here. This is the important link to click in this blog post" set to private, so nobody else can read that document.

[-]dusty3461y50

The document was made public, but the role for people with the link is set to "Viewer", and viewers of documents can't see comments. The only way to let everyone see the comments on a document is to give everyone the "Commenter" role.

[-]segfault1y51

Access fixed - anyone with the link should now be able to both see comments & comment, too. Thanks for informing me.

[-]segfault1y10

Someone's resolving comments that they shouldn't be. I have to revoke permissions. This is so annoying. Got a better idea?

[-]Callmesalticidae1y41

It would take a bit more work, but inserting your comments and giving them particular formatting (e.g. fully indented as a single block + red color) would probably do the trick.

[-]segfault1y11

I'll hopefully get to this later tonight. Thanks 🙏

[-]THE SPONGE3mo70

Hey, a brief update for anyone who wasn't paying attention. since he posted this, segfault (aka caleb ditchfield) managed to rack up 5+ restraining orders, a knife charge, aggrevated stalking charges, and more.

If Caleb has attempted to reach out to you, please consider not responding for your safety until he is well again. It seems he has been making phone calls and sending letters to various people in this community.

He currently sits in jail awaiting sentencing, for revenge porn. He is likely to receive at least a full year plus a substantial probation period - although he's looking at up to 6 years.

Once that process is finished, he has more charges in another county that he's likely to be found guilty for (given the evidence), as well as another state.

This is what happens when an infallible belief in your own mental capacity is combined with heavy drug usage. Please stay safe out there.