I am one of the people who has known this for a while and avoided talking about it so as not to make doxxing su3 too easy for anybody malicious. But since now it’s out and people are starting to attack Shea and call him petty for even worrying about it, fine, let me explain why I’m upset.

1. Often su’s lies and sock puppets have the effect of making him seem more credible, or making him seem like somebody it’s important to take seriously. For example, when he argued that allowing MIRI in AI risk spheres would turn people away from EA, a lot of people pointed out that he wasn’t interested in effective altruism anyway and should butt out of other people’s problems. Then one of his sock puppets said that he was an EA who attended EA conferences but was so disgusted by the focus on MIRI that he would never attend another conference again. This gave false credibility to his narrative of MIRI driving away real EAs.

2. Likewise, a sock puppet described how he attended MIRI’s talks and thought that they sounded money-grubbing. He talked about how at the EA conference, he couldn’t get anyone to talk about pandemics or global warming because they were all obsessed with AI risk. None of these stories were true. These sorts of things aren’t just using a pseudonym for self-protection, they’re making up evidence to support a position.

3. Similarly, the times nostalgebraist mentions where su3 comes up with suspiciously many expert friends who agree with him in a suspiciously short time are used to create the illusion of a consensus for su3’s position. For example, one time he said that one of MIRI’s research papers was unimportant, and he knew this because he ran it by a bunch of math PhD and computer science PhD friends and they all agreed it was unimportant. If these friends are in fact made up, that’s an important thing to know.

4. Similarly, he used a sock puppet claiming to have a Math PhD in to criticize MIRI’s math papers, and to talk about how they sound to someone in the field. He is not, in fact, in the field.

5. Su3su2u1 hasn’t just made a couple of pseudonyms here and there. He has a pattern of really consistent weird lying. For example, on another site not related to the rationalistsphere, he’s said that he was a liberal arts professor at a small school but was denied tenure due to something he wrote on a blog. As far as I can tell none of this is true.

6. Related: I asked for help with a legal issue in Michigan, and one of his sock puppets gave me advice based on a story of the time he had to hire an attorney in Michigan. The real su3su2u1 doesn’t live anywhere near Michigan and although it’s possible he did in the past, that’s not listed on the otherwise pretty complete social media sites of his I’ve found, and based on everything else it seems more likely this story is made up. This pisses me off because it’s basically giving me fake legal advice on something it’s important for me to get right. It also supports the whole pattern-of-lying thing - if you want to use pseudonyms to hide your identity, fine, but don’t tell me you know things about Michigan law when you don’t!

7. When confronted about all these things, he made up even more lies to deny all of them, including in ways that hurt other people’s reputation. For example, Alyssa called him out on her own blog about one of his alternate accounts, su3 denied it, various su3 sock puppets piled on Alyssa, and eventually everyone agreed Alyssa was just paranoid and trying to character assassinate a MIRI opponent. Note that even after this, Alyssa didn’t reveal any of this evidence or confront su3, proving her to be a much better person than I am.

8. Likewise, before admitting to being Frink, he made an unconvincing denial, saying that Frink was some friends from work using his computer. Or something. I can’t tell for sure because he’s since deleted that Tumblr post. I checked the timestamps for Frink’s posting on SSC any many of them were after midnight, ie not working hours.

As far as I can tell, this is not just using a pseudonym to prevent doxxing, it’s a consistent pattern of making anecdotes as evidence for his position, claiming expertise in various fields which he doesn’t have when it’s convenient to his arguments, and lying about weird things that don’t even matter a bunch of times just for the heck of it.

Since su3’s argument style relies a lot on personal anecdote, I think it’s important to let people know that they can’t trust his personal anecdotes or those of his sock puppets.

I’m avoiding providing links here, once again to make su3su2u1 harder to doxx, but if someone challenges me I can give links privately or something, and if su himself challenges me and gives permission I can give them publicly.

I agree that real!su3su2u1 does have a physics PhD and is a very smart person, and that the parts of his argument that don’t depend on personal anecdote are often very enlightening and on point.

