Re: Joi

How did Joi react? :)
More generally, I would be curious to learn how you think that other people perceive you, and how much they can glimpse behind your curtain.

In the last three years, I have developed a lot more self-awareness,
not least thanks to you. (It does not mean that I now perfectly
understand how others see me, but that I notice that my self model and
the perspective of others, and the more importantly, my model of how
others model me, have serious discrepancies.)

• Joscha

joi laughed . and I believe a sincere laugh. . but .. Karyna told me that i had left my shoes on. . in a japanese house. . so . difficult to know
I dont spend much time thinking about how people perceive me. I try to maintain my own compass. I dont admit an age or power difference in my intereactions . In the past if i did things in order to satisfy someones perceptions ( within bounds) . I often ended with an unintended result. ex. I recently met very smart college student . very cute. . I told her I would help her getting grants. she was insulted . and when pressed said she couldnt be bought. Joscha. . both you and I have lived the consequences of not being aware of others motivations. perceptions etc . so I am happy to explore your views. I rarely get insulted. so if you would like to give me some of yours , feel free. -- your funding is intact :) . no matter what

Dear Jeffrey,

Here are some reflections. Of course I can only extrapolate over the things I get to hear and rationalize over the distribution, and I am not actively trying to solicit opinions about you.

People reflect in the categories they know, so when they discuss you, they will end up putting you in categories that fit into their world view. (Which of course is also true for myself, I cannot know my blind spots, but at least I am aware that I have no idea what it is like to grow up as an upper middle class Jewish boy in NYC.)

The first sentence of your Wikipedia entry introduces you as a sex offender, which due to contemporary America's fascinating difficulty of dealing with all things sex related establishes a strong prior on you being a pariah. It is also pretty much the only thing that people outside of your circles know you for. Their null hypothesis will tend to be that you combine the apparently suspicious trait of being wealthy with the apparently horrible trait of being too much interested in too young girls.

This is a very strange contrast, because there are probably very few contemporary individuals that have had the same curiosity for and influence on instigating foundational research across fields as you did.

Once people get to know you in person and are interested in you, they tend to either compartementalize the topic (as a somehow difficult to accept aspect of an important friend), or treat it as somehow interestingly dark and edgy. It seemed to never have been met with outright approval, and very rarely not been an issue at all, even when it is balanced against your sharp, original and interesting mind. I have heard two people call you a savant, and you appear to be somewhat inscrutable and mysterious, to which the apparent darkness adds. Some highly moralistic Jewish intellectuals seem to see you as part of the block, but a black sheep, with relationships maintained because you are loyal and reliable, but despite grave moral objections.

The smart college student may not have had enough life experience to not sort people into good and evil, and may have difficulty to assume that you could be anything but dangerous and corrupted by darkness. While she might be happy to accept any amount of nepotism from a female benefactor as laudable mentorship and empowering feminism, accepting your support would have meant to join into the corruption of the darkest imaginable notions of patriarchy. Trivers was faced with a similar sentiment when he defended you publicly (even though it was to the tune of "well he did wrong and served a bit of time, not as much as we mortals would have, but still, and you should forgive him now"), and Krauss (who in public internet discussions maintained that you did nothing wrong, and took heavy flak for it). The general public does not seem to be able to understand how morality is constructed (which of course would defeat the evolutionary and social purpose of morality to keep the public in check), so they won't be able to see straight.

If people are able to think outside of moralistic terms, they may simply mark you down as an ephebophile but are bound to notice a few quirks.

First of all, why did you let yourself get caught? In the German jurisdiction (and likely not just there) you may have not faced the same risks, and you are good at calculating risks. Multiply the risk of a relationship to a girl getting sour or highjacked by an enemy by a sufficiently large number of girls, and doom is almost certain. A power trip? What does that recklessness mean for your relationships to others? Or is it simply due to having grown up in a different time and culture, and having not noticed how the culture has changed?

This relates to the second quirk: publicly showing off relationships to very young women. While rich nerds continue to have concubines, it is either done discreetly, or framed as polyamory. Surrounding oneself with multiple young women while maintaining a power differential is apparently only seen as acceptable for teenage rockstars or rappers in their twenties, i.e. today's public norms do not allow for a large age difference (while a woman with younger men will probably be seen as feminist and empowered, which of course rarely happens). Showing that off is seen almost universally as crass (ie in bad taste). The people that have a friendly relationship to you are bound to interpret that as a costly signal, since they usually cannot imagine that you are not aware of the norms and the price you pay (unless you are aware of what is really going on and let them in on your deeper reasons). If a mature woman complains about your assistants, she is not going to refer to their youth and beauty which she will see as competition. Instead, she refers to her culturally/morally entrenched distaste with the arrangement. (Stephen Wolfram had the same objection, and initially saw that as a reason to not meet up with you.)

The third interesting observation is that your relationships to young women appear not to be on equal footing but dominant-submissive, with little apparent regard for hurt feelings. While you are brutally honest and direct with men, too, you don't come across as reveling in the power difference when interacting with men, or making an example of their intellectual and personal limitations in front of others.

It is as if you are attracted to women (as long as they are not too womanly), but you don't like them very much. While individual women gain your respect, it seems to be much harder for them than for men, and it is as if they are inherently less trustworthy.

The strange thing about these quirks is that it appears that you are acting against your own interest with them. While I might tend to be too trusting with women (this trust is rarely violated though), you seem to be mismodeling them as intrinsically dangerous. (Obviously, you are at much greater risk of exploitation by women than me, of course. In many women I wake somewhat motherly instincts.) The people that can only work with the media/wikipedia narrative fall into two groups: if they don't notice you are acting against your own interest, they will consider you evil. If they notice that you apparently harm yourself, they should assume that something terrible happened to you in your childhood that got you twisted.

The latter is also probably the only plausible path to possible redemption in the eyes of the circles of the US intelligentsia. The easiest explanation for your unusual choice of partners and the nature of your public relationships to them is obviously childhood abuse. If most of these people suspected that you suffered something unspeakable at the hands of an adult female caregiver, and it just took you decades to work through it (understanding that someone likely abused her, so she turned against you etc.), they would be able to feel that they understand you, and many more would feel acceptance. Some people might even realize that you paid a much higher price than your purported victims. On the other hand, while such a story could probably be planted, I cannot imagine what that would mean for you and your relationship to yourself.

In all these matters, the truth might be elusive and ultimately irrelevant, except inasmuch as it concerns personal pain. What people see of you is that you are effective, reliable, ruthless, provocative, twisted, sometimes utterly crass, unconventional, likely not vain, and completely unafraid. You incentivize the people in our shared circle extremely well for cooperation, by being generous, loyal, curious, intellectually interesting and benevolent. But to regain your place as a socially accepted cultural force you cannot present an image as an unrepentant and unevolving connoisseur of immature girls.

No matter what the causal mechanisms and personal preferences are, the price that such relationships have for the public image in 2017 is very high. (The notable philosopher Colin McGinn lost his tenure and chances of future employment over a harmless crush on a grad student, and MIT's famous Walter Levin lost all his social capital due to an entendre to an online course participant.) Even the enlightened parts of society that are accepting of all kinds of consensual relationships are uncomfortable with power differentials in erotic relationships. They mean that in the eyes of the public, you lose plausible deniability with respect to the true backgrounds of the accusations against you.

On a personal level: I cannot say how grateful I am for your unwavering support. I have gone through a pretty bad year (nothing like what happened to you, of course). If there is ever anything I can do to help you, please let me know.

With kind regards,

Joscha