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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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I have no idea if the allegations are accurate, but one can argue that her turning down offers of financial assistance and a home from him and their mom actually makes them more credible. One possible reason to refuse help is that the people offering it disgust you and you do not want to ever feel obligated to them in any way.

Here's a discussion about the allegations from a sympathetic source. At the time of reading it, and currently, I think it's far more likely that it's all the confabulation of a deeply disturbed individual rather than anything credible.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman-s-sister-annie-altman-claims-sam-has-severely

(Jokingly) "{Sam's 'nuclear backpack'} may also hold our Dad and Grandma’s trusts {which} him {Sam} and my birth mother are still withholding from me, knowing I started sex work for survival because of being sick and broke with a millionaire “brother”"

And

Note: when Annie says "go no contact", she's referring to the decision she made to refuse Sam Altman's offer to buy her a house (an offer which she Annie feels was not borne of graciousness but rather as a desire to exact greater control over and suppression of Annie (who had begun to speak out against Sam on the Internet)) and thus avoid contact with her family, a decision she upheld even when (according to her) she was dealing with extreme sickness, mental illness / anguish, shadowbanning, and poverty.

On the topic of shadowbanning:

"{I experienced} Shadowbanning across all platforms except onlyfans and pornhub. Also had 6 months of hacking into almost all my accounts and wifi when I first started the podcast"

Bruh

Altman might be a well-connected millionaire geek, but I think it's far more likely that a person with known mental illnesses claiming he's been fucking with her wifi for ages is probably just delusional. At least until we have proof that he unleashed their internal AGI or something stupid along those lines.

I agree, it sounds like schizophrenia-type delusions of persecution. Her turning down financial assistance is still odd though, but I am not sure to what extent mental illnesses affect people's ability to make those kinds of "you should obviously almost certainly take the money" decisions.

Her reading of the intentions behind offering her financial assistance/housing may still be correct; from the family's side this would just be "we'll buy her a house so we can keep tabs and make her go and get a proper career rather than whoring herself out online", which she might find unacceptably intrusive. Compare to anecdotes about homeless people who would rather risk dying of exposure than accept a shelter spot because the shelters are intolerant of drug consumption. I've also heard from Asian-American acquaintances whose life plans were too messy/unstable for their parents' liking that the parents would start pestering them with offers of buying them a house or apartment near where they (the parents) live and/or setting them up with a desk job at some company/office run by family friends, which said acquaintances would read as a transparent bid for greater control calculated to catch them in a moment of weakness.

A lot? That's certainly my opinion on it, even if I struggle to dig up concrete evidence, I doubt anyone's done a study on the topic.