Elliot Temple (‘curi’) runs a discussion forum formerly known as the ‘Fallible Ideas’ (FI) forum; he has since renamed it to the ‘Critical Fallibilism’ forum. He markets it as being about reason, learning, and progress. He also ran the ‘Beginning of Infinity’ Google group and more. I used to be active in the FI forum for a few months in late 2018 and early 2019 until I ran screaming. In this article, I show why Temple is an authoritarian who has fostered an adversarial group environment including, among other things, public shaming and serious verbal abuse, with some of his associates mirroring his toxicity. For me and many others, associating with Temple has been an irreversible mistake that has been getting further entrenched ever since, as I will explain.

Even though Temple violated my and others’ privacy, I am still respecting his, so I’m not quoting a private chat where I mostly interacted with him and his associates. I may quote it if Temple or his associates retaliate, but until then, public records will suffice to prove the toxicity of Temple and his group. Of note in this context, apart from his serious violation of mine and others’ privacy and his glaring intellectual hypocrisy, are his smear tactics and defamations, of the kind that could ruin my career, so they also deserve a dedicated article. What’s below is in no way meant to be exhaustive. And, for clarity: when I reference conflicts between Temple and others, that does not mean I want to get involved. Some of those conflicts precede my former association with Temple by years anyway. I chose those examples because they are notable, and because most of them came to mind fairly easily.

Also note that I give several sensitive quotes throughout this article. They constitute important evidence of Temple’s debilitating effects on others. While all of these quotes are public already, due to their sensitive nature, I would normally double check with the authors to ensure they’re comfortable being quoted again. However, since Temple alleges that people have conspired to harass him (what he calls an ‘harassment campaign’), I made a judgment call to re-publish said quotes without any prior coordination, pace the authors. While that risks catching them off guard, they are protected against retaliation and Temple cannot claim that people have conspired in any way.

Authoritarian and adversarial group environment

As I’ve said, I mostly interacted with Temple and his associates in a private group chat. After a while, I found the atmosphere to be authoritarian and counterproductive. I say it was authoritarian because, among other reasons, Temple claimed to be the “best living philosopher.” (So then who are others to disagree with him?) I say it was counterproductive because I had the distinct impression that I was losing control over my own thoughts and learning process. Temple’s discussion style featured detour upon detour; going ever more meta; getting hung up on minor details. (This video shows how focusing on small errors, as Temple does, can be a way to control a conversation.) One often became the object of, rather than participant in, discussions. You had to endure paragraphs upon paragraphs of unbounded, unremitting, and intensely personal criticism, resulting in anxiety and exhaustion. If you didn’t like such unbounded criticism, you were labeled as just not curious enough. Similarly, Temple writes (emphasis in the original): “Putting boundaries on what you will think about is irrational.” In practice, this effectively translates to: having boundaries is irrational. And more: that it would be irrational for him not to break your boundaries. In this context, Temple writes:

I can break anyone. I can ask questions, criticize errors, and advocate for more progress until they give up and refuse to speak. No one can handle that if I really try. I can bring up enough of people’s flaws that it’s overwhelming and unwanted.

This is an adversarial attitude toward interlocutors. It’s not a ‘maybe you’re right, maybe I’m wrong, let’s learn together’ kind of attitude. Then, after he breaks people, and they can’t move on, he accuses them of being “obsessed” with him. The fact that he has a channel called ‘Friendly’ on his forum tells you something about the other channels.

Public shaming

I am only one of many people who have quit Temple’s forum in droves and bitterly regret their former association with him. His long-time associate Alan Forrester put former members, including me, on a creepy ‘List of Fallible Ideas Evaders’ – a list of 33 people “who had discussion contact with FI and then quit/evaded/lied/etc.” Temple published this list on his blog in September 2019. (After some backlash, he renamed it.) Forrester wrote that the purpose of the list was to “find patterns about what goes wrong”, ie reasons people leave. (Have neither Temple nor Forrester realized that Temple is the common denominator?) When someone requested to be removed from the list, Temple refused. When another person requested to be removed, he accused them of trying to “control [his] free speech”, but did eventually remove their email address (though not their entry as a whole).

If finding patterns about what goes wrong had really been their concern, they would have discussed this matter privately, without putting people on blast. That would have been the appropriate thing to do.

Verbal abuse

Verbal abuse is a serious problem in Temple’s forums. For example, the list of “evaders” quotes a conversation from 2015 involving Brett Hall, a teacher. The conversation was partially titled “Stop Hurting Young People, Brett”. Someone wrote to him (brackets mine):

[Y]ou teach bad ideas, from a position of authority, to vulnerable students. Fuck you.

The list conveniently leaves out who wrote this. It was Temple. When Hall said he enjoyed teaching, Temple repeated his attack:

Why would you like teaching harmful ideas to people who are relying on you to help them? You are betraying them, and like to do it. Fuck you.

In addition, Temple has repeatedly verbally abused his former mentor, physicist David Deutsch (DD). For instance, consider some of Temple’s comments from March 2014 on the transcript of a radio interview Deutsch had done in 2011. At one point, Temple accuses Deutsch of being pleased by “perceived merit” rather than “actual merit” and says:

DD you suck.

A bit further down the transcript, the radio host describes the title of Deutsch’s book, The Beginning of Infinity (BoI), as “an intuition that we may well be on the verge of quite possibly a Golden Age.” Temple writes:

[…] lol this question is so utterly wrong. we're always at the BEGINNING of infinity and the BEGINNING does not constitute a "golden age".

It wasn’t a question, but that aside, Temple disagrees with the radio host’s characterization of Deutsch’s book. Temple expects Deutsch to disagree with it, too, because “the interviewer said something strongly contrary to BoI, [and] attributed it to BoI […]”. Deutsch does disagree with it, telling the radio host “it's more than an intuition”, but begins his response with the word “Yes”. I think Deutsch said “Yes” reflexively, as in ‘I heard your question’. People commonly do this in verbal conversation. For example, philosopher Karl Popper did it, too (see this video, starting at 12:28). It’s no big deal. One has to read transcripts of verbal conversations differently than one would conversations that were had in writing to begin with. But Temple instead took this “Yes” to mean agreement with something that he thinks Deutsch should (and does) disagree with. Temple believes the appropriate response is to tell Deutsch:

WHAT THE FUCK DD, DIAF

“DIAF” stands for die in a fire.

Just to make sure I wasn’t being overly sensitive in my interpretation of this statement, I asked a therapist to evaluate it for me. They said that telling someone to die in a fire causes them to conjure up horrible images of painful demise, and that these images can have a serious, lasting effect.

Temple sent his comments not only to the discussion groups he managed, but also to Deutsch directly. The header of Temple’s email reads:

In other words, Temple made sure that Deutsch would see these horrible statements.

This isn’t even the only time Temple speaks this way with Deutsch. Two years later, he tweets at Deutsch (in full):

.@DavidDeutschOxf @SamHarrisOrg die in a fire

Temple complains in 2021 that people flagged his “die in a fire” tweet for harassment and feels harassed as a result. He also says he still “stand[s] by” the reasons for his tweet, but then doesn’t state them.

Temple portrays himself as pro-reason, pro-fallibilism. But attacking people isn’t pro-reason or pro-fallibilism. A fallibilist would say, ‘you know, maybe I shouldn’t have talked to Deutsch that way. It wasn’t nice and it wasn’t conducive to having rational discussions.’ But from what Temple has written, it doesn’t sound like he would say that.

What’s worse is that Deutsch had explicitly told Temple the effect of Temple’s communication on him. Temple has proven to be an unreliable quoter who twists words and selectively (mis)quotes people, so take the below quote with a grain of salt. Temple quotes Deutsch as having written to him:

You're entirely mistaken. I'm terrified, and will be unable to work for at least a day now. And who knows how long after that. Receiving an e-mail from you is sheer fear and revulsion before I even look at it.

Deutsch isn’t the only one on whom Temple’s correspondence has had a distressing effect. I’ve gotten minor panic attacks upon seeing Temple’s name in my inbox, and I know at least one other person who was likewise disturbed and unsettled when Temple contacted them.

I’ve read the entire article that the above quote is from. I’ve also read the article Temple links to as context. Does Temple quote his own messages, the ones that might have caused Deutsch’s distress? I’m not aware that he does – he seems to expect his readers to take his word for it. Does he ask himself what he might have done to cause said distress? Not to my knowledge. Instead, he conveniently concludes that Deutsch “is an emotional, irrational, fragile person who loses days of work over his strong feelings.” Do you see what Temple does there? He attempts to shift accountability from himself to Deutsch’s feelings. In reality, Deutsch didn’t lose days of work over his feelings but over whatever Temple had written to him.

I got to know Deutsch a bit when I worked with him for over two years to translate one of his books. He’s not emotional or fragile or irrational. Also, recall that Temple wrote that he can break anyone. That means it doesn’t even matter whether his interlocutors are fragile, irrational, whatever. If Temple can break anyone, that includes even the most resilient and rational people. He can either brag about his ‘ability’ to break anyone, or view them as fragile, but not both. Of course, he should do neither. He should take responsibility for the debilitating effect he has on people. Instead, he attributes this effect to “social crap”, which is another shift in accountability. He writes:

I don't want to take on the responsibility of keeping people socially happy (happy with the social dynamics of the conversation). I don't want that job.

And, skipping some:

I want to have ~zero responsibility for managing social dynamics and keeping [my interlocutors] socially happy and interested. And I want some substantial resilience, perseverance and willingness to engage in problem solving before giving up.

I suspect that, until Temple takes responsibility instead of shifting it to his interlocutors and, more vaguely, to “social dynamics” and others’ “feelings”, he runs the risk of saying hurtful things again because he can always disregard their hurt as just being due to “social crap” or emotional fragility.

Temple told Deutsch to “die in a fire” after Deutsch had informed him that his messages were causing severe distress. Something similar happened last year when I reached out to Temple to see if we could reconcile. When I told him that communicating with him was distressing and asked him to stop making accusations, in his very next email, he doubled down and made more accusations. Judging by both Deutsch’s and my experience, being vulnerable with Temple is a bad idea. It will backfire.

Was “die in a fire” just a metaphor?

Temple might argue that he just meant “die in a fire” metaphorically. So let’s look at how he interprets metaphorical statements about him. For example, he quotes Brett Hall as having said about him (brackets mine):

[A]ny project that one does decide to undertake will be less likely derailed or poisoned were [Temple] not involved.

Given the above quotes of Temple’s, do you think Hall makes an outrageous claim here? Let’s see how Temple interprets the word “poisoned”. He writes: “Poisoning is a violent and often murderous action.” He claims this to make the case that Hall was encouraging someone to harass Temple as part of some conspiracy – the ‘harassment campaign’ I mentioned above. The word “poisoned” was obviously just a metaphor – one cannot murder projects — but since Temple takes it literally, we will take “die in a fire” literally, too. If anyone had told others that he should die in a fire, there’s no way he wouldn’t have spun that as encouragement to harass him.

On 2020-01-29, someone named ‘Anon99’ criticizes Temple’s tone (to no avail). They receive an anonymous response defending Temple and invoking cultural relativism by accusing Anon99 of having “a negativity [sic] attitude towards diversity” (!). Anon99 had tried to explain that Temple’s tone was destructive rather than constructive. He had written to Temple, among other things: “I would guess you don't literally want David Deutsch to die in a fire (maybe you do) and you used that expression to try to emphasize your opposition to what he said.” In other words, Anon99 gave Temple the opportunity to deny wanting Deutsch to literally “die in a fire”. It’s been five years since that comment and, even though Temple did engage with Anon99, I cannot find a response by Temple denying that part. Instead, he claimed that Anon99 was “one of many false identities of a persistent harasser, doxer, spammer, IRL-threatener, financial fraudster and liar.” Also, recall Temple’s remark from about a year later that he “stand[s] by” his reasons for telling Deutsch to die in a fire.

Example of Temple breaking someone

In another thread Temple has since deleted, he again accuses people he has broken of having an “obsession” with him. He also effectively takes credit for breaking Deutsch – for messing up Deutsch’s further intellectual progression – and even manages to spin things in such a way as to make himself sound important:

DD is scared of my criticism. He can’t see me as someone who doesn’t matter who no one will listen to. In his mind, my critiques matter so much that it’s hard for him to write anything in public where I could see it and comment. LT [Lulie Tanett, a close friend of Deutsch’s] told me that this is why he basically hasn’t written anything since BoI [his latest book, from 2011]. When he tries to write, he thinks of me and what criticism I might say, and he can’t deal with it.

If this is true, Temple has deprived the world of further contributions from one of the most brilliant minds ever. Deutsch is widely considered the father of quantum computation, has contributed to the field of artificial general intelligence more than anyone else, developed important ideas around how to raise children without coercion, written great philosophy books, and much more. I want him to keep making progress in those areas, and I hope he finds the courage to write again.

Others affected

Anne B

Temple often tells people they ‘overreach’; that they should work on easier things, which he then suggests. One of the members of Fallible Ideas, Anne B, writes to the group and outlines the effect FI has had on her:

when I was younger I enjoyed feeling successful at doing things I was good at
I fear I’ll never get that feeling of being successful again now that I can see how far I am from ever succeeding at anything
maybe I could still enjoy making progress, even if it’s slow progress, but I seem unable to do that

In other words, FI has had a crippling effect on her. Skipping some, she writes:

when I ask if anyone improved significantly while they were here [in the FI group], no one answers.

And:

I remember being told that I didn’t understand stuff and should get better at reading first

(She later acknowledges that her memory could be wrong, but I know from experience it’s the kind of thing Temple would say.)

Next, she echoes one of the reasons I concluded that, as I said earlier, Temple’s group was authoritarian and that I was losing control over my learning process; that I would have to comply with Temple and accept his supposed authority at the cost of my own preferences:

I don’t feel free to only do the stuff I care about
when Elliot says that no one does X, Y and Z, and they should, I feel pressure to do X, Y and Z. there’s not enough time to do that stuff plus try to figure out what I want to do, if anything.

Anne B also writes:

I’m jealous that [others] don’t feel like they have to study grammar and reading and math first in order to do what they want to do

And:

[E]verything I do confirms to others and to myself that I can’t do anything right and will probably never get anywhere

Anne shared her vulnerability with the group. Here are some of the responses she got:

[Y]ou've refused to search for any quotes, and here again you fail to
acknowledge this as (best available theory at the moment without
searching) a misunderstanding. you instead state it as a memory as if
you reasonably believe it's an accurate memory. you should either judge
that it never happened or search, but don't continue to not search for
quotes *and* believe you were ever told that.

And:

If you don't know how to judge progress size, then stop judging some
things as only minor progress or as not being enough progress to "get
anywhere".

Anne later replies:

my impression is that when I ask questions, I often get no answer or a mean answer. this impression could be wrong
[…]
when I have tried to follow the advice I haven’t gotten good results

And:

I fear people will say no one ever said such a thing and then I’ll think I’m crazy for remembering it

Does the above exchange sound like Temple’s group is the kind of environment where people can be vulnerable, where they can learn and make progress? Anne does not receive any substantive help in that thread. A few days prior, she had expressed her “Unhappiness with FI” and stated about herself that “When [she] didn’t know about FI [she] didn’t know how much [she] suck[s] at everything”. Alarmingly, she heavily implied she might turn to “Drugs and/or alcohol” to deal with her distress. I hope she found another way to cope.

I am not aware that Temple ever encouraged Anne not to turn to drugs. However, I do see that he considered Anne’s distress an opportunity to sell her something and cover his ass in terms of liability:

@AnneB unless you actually pay for advice, i have zero responsibility for any choice you make.

Kate Sams

Or consider this exchange between Temple and another group member, Kate Sams, from around the same time (also December 2019). Temple had posted to his group, asking for feedback on how to organize a website. Sams replied:

[…] I think your plan sounds fine. I’d just error [sic] on the side of including potentially useful aspects of a topic with the main explanation of the topic in part one. If something is iffy as to whether it’s optional, I’d include it in part one.

Here’s Temple’s response:

No you wouldn’t. You’ve never written anything significant. You're telling me what to do but phrasing it as talking about what you would do, twice. And that’s not even a third of the social aggressions in your post.

Do you think Temple is being reasonable here? Sams had also written:

Broadly, I think it’s a good idea for you to structure and organize the info for people in this way rather than giving them a bunch of stuff of varying importance all mixed together.

Temple’s response to that:

You’re trying (again) to social climb, at my expense, based on your belief that I won’t fight back in the same way that Hank Rearden [a character from Atlas Shrugged] wasn’t fighting back against his family.

What you haven’t done, in the meantime, is keep your word re 8 hours a month or objectively testing your knowledge.

Dear everyone else, I suggest you analyze Kate’s post. I’d bet money that zero of you understood half of it on first or second reading. But it’s the kind of thing that’s common and important to understand so that you don’t get fooled.

Sams denied these charges.

I think the reason Temple considers Sams’ usage of “I’d” an aggression is that Temple believes he’s the greatest living philosopher, so then if someone else tells him what they would do in his shoes (never mind that it was feedback he had solicited), it sounds to him like they are challenging his self-image. In addition, I think this is another example of Temple’s close reading going sideways because he attributes the worst possible intentions: “I’d” is something people commonly and innocently say when they put themselves in others’ shoes. And the last paragraph serves as evidence of my previous claim that, in his group, one often becomes the object of, rather than participant in, discussions.

Group member Justin Mallone begins the analysis Temple requested, starting his response with:

I don’t see the same problems [Temple] sees (or I’m not sure I do, even
where I see problems) but I’m open to being wrong about this. This is
a post for my own understanding and shouldn’t be taken as
“support” of Kate or being on her “side” in any way.

Mallone is aware that mere disagreement could challenge Temple’s alleged authority and aggravate Temple, and that he might end up on Temple’s bad side. He’s seen how this goes for others. That’s why he has to phrase his disagreement so carefully. He might not be consciously aware that that’s the reason, but between the lines, he basically asks for Temple’s permission to disagree. Temple keeps his associates on a tight leash.

Once again, I have no interest in getting involved in conflicts between Temple and others. I have no dog in the fight between Temple on the one hand and Sams and Anne B on the other. Still, I think the quotes I’ve given are notable examples of the toxicity of Temple’s group, and I hope they’re both doing better now. It’s also notable that a thread from April 2019 precedes the quotes above, subject line “Evadin' Kate's Crappy Rationalizations for Not Dealing With Her Ongoing & Life-Destroying Evasion Disaster 🚑🔥🙈🔥🚔(was: Evadin' Kate Example 12)”. Example 12 is from what I understand to be a ‘series’ of posts by Mallone on Sams’ alleged ‘evasions’, that favorite objectivist derision. If someone (allegedly) evades issues and ruins their own life in the process, giving them a derisive nickname such as “Evadin' Kate” is not the way to help them.

Pattern of domination and authority

In addition to Temple’s focus on small errors, I’ve identified five instances of a wider pattern of Temple trying to assert authority and dominate discussions. The pattern involves perverting other people’s philosophies to pressure them into associating with him or at least talking about him – when that (predictably) doesn’t work, he then uses their ‘failure’ so he can recruit people to his forum. In other words, this pattern extends beyond his own groups and reaches into those of others.

First, consider Temple’s criticisms of objectivist philosopher and former associate of Ayn Rand’s, Harry Binswanger. Binswanger runs an online discussion forum called ‘The Harry Binswanger Letter’. Temple got banned from it and writes, in a piece titled ‘Harry Binswanger Refuses To Think’:

Harry Binswanger banned me – an active-minded philosopher who studies and loves Ayn Rand – from his Objectivist discussion forum.

The part “active-minded” is an implicit reference to one of Rand’s ideas (which Temple makes explicit only much further down his article, contrary to his own stance on avoiding plagiarism). An active mind (as opposed to an open one) is one that critically evaluates ideas and holds firm convictions. Rand says objectivists should have an active mind. Temple also expounds her concept of philosophical detection, quoting her:

A philosophical detective must seek to determine the truth or falsehood of an abstract system and thus discover whether he is dealing with a great achievement or an intellectual crime.

Temple accuses Binswanger of “hid[ing] the problem until the breaking point.” Remember how Temple bragged that he “can break anyone”? He broke Binswanger, then held it against him.

The conclusion of Temple’s entire article is effectively: ‘Binswanger either must talk to me, or he’s not really an objectivist but a hypocrite.’ (That’s not a literal quote – for those, I use double quotation marks.) And Temple closes his article by demanding of readers who may disagree with him that they “pursue the issue to a conclusion or don't judge it.” (Emphasis in the original.) In other words: you have to talk to Temple for as long as he wants and follow him down whatever (in my experience) convoluted, overwhelming paths he prefers, otherwise you’re not a philosophical detective and you must substitute his judgment for your own. But Rand never said you have to talk to her, or anyone in particular, to be a philosophical detective.

Second, Temple accuses another objectivist philosopher, Charles Tew, of not living up to another of Rand’s standards: that of pronouncing moral judgment. After getting banned from Tew’s Discord server and complaining “god i get banned from everything”, Temple writes: “[Tew] also refused to take Rand's advice and pronounce moral judgment on me. He won't say his reasoning at all.” The context here, from what I understand, is that Temple was trying to get Tew to talk to him. But Tew wouldn’t. So Temple quotes Rand as saying that “in no case and in no situation may one permit one’s own values to be attacked or denounced, and keep silent.” He concludes: “In Tew's opinion, i attacked or denounced Tew. Therefore, according to Rand, he must not keep silent.” (Bold emphasis mine.) He continues: “the problem i have with [other] Objectivists is they don't follow Rand.” And: “that was the theme of my condemnation of HB [Harry Binswanger] as well. i illustrated how he did not follow Philosophical Detection. his response? Silence.” (The inconsistent capitalization is in all of the original quotes.) Imagine if you could pressure people into talking to you or about you by attacking them – surely this is not what Rand had in mind.

Temple even thinks the number of his own articles and quotes of Rand confer an obligation on Tew: “I've never found a person who quotes Rand more than I do.” (Read: ‘I’m more of an objectivist than anyone else.’) Continuing: “which seems like reason enough to state moral judgment of me instead of hide it. it ought to be easy to qualify. ‘has written over 100 intellectual essays’? ok that merits a statement. ‘has quoted rand over 1000 times?’ ok that merits a statement. etc.” Temple thinks his own articles and quotes create a moral obligation on others to engage with him. That’s extra nasty because others have no control over how many articles he writes or whom he quotes. Once again, Temple effectively claims: ‘If Tew doesn’t engage with me (or, in this instance, at least talk about me), he’s not really an objectivist.’ But Tew and Binswanger have freedom of association. I cannot imagine Rand ever meant for her philosophy – a pro-liberty, pro-individual, pro-autonomy philosophy – to conflict with, let alone override, freedom of association. I’d bet money she never meant for it to be used to attack someone in order to pressure them into engaging. Temple abuses her philosophy to justify, and shift accountability for, his possessive attitude.

Of course, people will generally want to assert their freedom of association; they will predictably avoid engaging with Temple further. He can then cry hypocrisy, portray himself as superior and more rational at their expense, and recruit their followers to his forum. If he’s more rational and objectivist than even Binswanger – again, a former associate of Rand’s – then members of Binswanger’s forum should instead talk at Temple’s, right? Which, in his piece on Binswanger’s alleged irrationality, Temple indeed “advise[s]” them to do. He writes: “I advise members to find a better forum”, linking to his own.

Third, Temple doesn’t stop at objectivism. He exhibits the same pattern with Karl Popper’s philosophy called critical rationalism. A key part of this philosophy is actively seeking out criticism of one’s ideas. A fallibilist philosophy, critical rationalism says one should consider that even one’s best ideas may be mistaken. Temple is a fan of Popper’s but abuses the philosophy to create obligations for other adherents to engage with him. In his public group chat, Temple hears about podcasts from other critical rationalists, including mine, and writes:

[…] i think [those podcasts] would be a lot more interesting if those ppl were open to discussion, criticism, questions, talking about the differences in ideas

They are open to those things, just not with him, for the reasons I’ve given. He continues:

but CRists [critical rationalists] who don't want critical discussion is a contradiction

Someone points (line 691) out that those people are “not intersted [sic] in critical discussion with FI specifically” (emphasis mine). Temple again proves his possessive attitude and makes another attempt to shift accountability, expecting them to explain themselves:

and why is that? none of them explain

Temple effectively claims that you cannot be a critical rationalist unless you engage in a critical discussion with him. And if you choose not to – if you exercise your freedom of association – you have to explain yourself to him (which requires delaying your freedom of association). I am not aware that Popper ever required that, to be a proper adherent of his philosophy, one must speak to a particular person, or even respond to a specific criticism, on any particular day. (Relevant context here is that several people had left his group by that time and started their own, which Temple seemed to have a major issue with.)

Fourth, in the same article where Temple brags about his ability to break anyone, he writes about David Deutsch’s book The Beginning of Infinity (BoI; I mentioned it above in the context of the first “die in a fire” quote):

BoI is about unbounded progress, and this is very different than what people are used to.

It means any kinds of bounds – like some topic being off limits – is [sic] problematic.

A bit further down, he writes:

There are limits on what criticism people want to hear, what demons they want to face, what they want to question. Perhaps they’ll expand those limits gradually. But I, in the spirit of BoI, approach things differently. i take all criticism and questions from all comers without limiting rules and without being overwhelmed.

Once again, Temple portrays himself as super rational at the expense of others. As I’ve mentioned before, I worked with Deutsch for over two years to translate his book, so I’m intimately familiar with it. It does not say or mean that you cannot have boundaries or that, as Temple implies, you have to endure his unbounded criticism. That’s Temple’s perversion of BoI. On the contrary, knowing Deutsch a bit, I suspect he would find Temple’s possessive attitude disgusting. Temple may think he’s better than others, but people have their own interests, their own ways of structuring their minds, and they need to be in control of what they learn from whom, when, and how. Of course they “break” and rebel if someone tries to take that control away from them.

I originally got in touch with Temple because Deutsch acknowledges him in his book “for reading earlier drafts […] and suggesting many corrections and improvements […]”. I was interested in Deutsch’s ideas and so I googled Temple’s name, then saw that Temple offered paid consulting sessions, for which I hired him a few times because I wanted to understand those ideas better. He was friendly enough initially, but things went south in his group chat. I assumed Temple and Deutsch were still associating and only learned months into my correspondence with Temple that he wasn’t even in touch with Deutsch anymore, whom Temple knew I admired. I’m probably not the only person who got sucked in because of that acknowledgment, which gave Temple significant social proof. From what I understand, Deutsch wrote it before he and Temple had a falling out.

Fifth, someone named Ari Nielsen had tweeted, in reference to a parenting philosophy developed by David Deutsch and Sarah Fitz-Claridge called Taking Children Seriously (TCS):

Over the past year, I've gone full
Taking Children Seriously.

Nielsen continues the tweet, explaining his application of TCS teachings to life with his kid. Temple does not accept this and replies:

The TCS community view is that if you don't learn things at the discussion forum then you are not full TCS, and probably have lots of large misconceptions about it. Reading without criticism from TCSers is inadequate.

My guess is that Deutsch and Fitz-Claridge would disagree that Temple represents the “community view”. In any case, Temple closes his reply by linking to the FI discussion group – so, once again, he uses his pattern to recruit people to his forum: you must talk to Temple, else you’re not really an adherent of TCS. Nielsen replied, indicating that he’d delete his original tweet. Temple was incredulous: “Rather than get more engaged with TCS!?”

Five examples indicate a pattern. In all of these cases, the pattern is, again: talk to Temple or at least about him, participate in his ecosystem, else you’re not really following your own philosophy. He perverts legitimate philosophies to establish himself as an authority. When pressured to choose between autonomy and avoiding hypocrisy, people will predictably choose autonomy; he then shames them as hypocrites, effectively for nothing more than exercising their freedom of association, and their prior association with him will continue to haunt them. He blogs about such people, eg Tew, Binswanger, and the list of “evaders”, portrays himself as more rational than them, and uses his alleged superiority to recruit people to his forum. The list of evaders was particularly nasty in this regard: one should be able to exercise one’s freedom of association without any negative repercussions or fallout.

Freedom of association is a core enlightenment value, and not wanting to associate with people who try to “break” you is perfectly rational. For instance, my guess is that, contrary to Temple’s claim, Binswanger does not refuse to think. I don’t know Binswanger, but if he runs a discussion forum of his own, he must enjoy thinking – just not on others’ terms. Presumably, he figured that rejecting the contents of Temple’s statements was the only way to assert his own freedom of association, which made him look like a hypocrite. This isn’t even the only time Temple has forced people into impossible contradictions.

Unfortunately, some will not see through Temple’s pattern. For instance, some fans of Deutsch or Rand who want to understand their ideas more deeply (or, unknowingly, Temple’s perversion thereof), and vulnerable people who look to a supposed authority or need help raising their kids, say, may instead end up so broken that they forfeit their freedom of association and can thus be seduced. That almost happened to me as a fan of Deutsch.

Chain of entrenchment

There are many kinds of disagreement in social life which must be decided one way or another. The question may be one which must be settled, because failure to settle it may create new difficulties whose cumulative effects may cause an intolerable strain, such as a state of continual and intense preparation for deciding the issue.

In this section, I will show that prior associations or disagreements with Temple cause him to take consistent steps to keep people in his orbit and reengage them, even after they have decided to separate themselves from him. I haven’t been able to shake my previous association with him for the past 6+ years, and I expect that it will always follow me. Below are several examples of me trying to work things out and then paying dearly for it.

I quit Temple’s forum almost six years ago. Others cut ties with him before that. Normally, when people can’t agree, they just move on. How is it that this conflict with Temple has lasted for years and escalated to this point? I think it’s because it’s deeply entrenched. I can’t speak for the others he is in a state of conflict with – the remaining people he has accused of having conspired to harass him – but I suspect it’s similar for them. In his interactions with me over the years, I now see a ‘chain of entrenchment’ of errors, where every additional link in the chain makes all of the preceding errors, and even future errors, that much harder to correct.

As both Temple and I have stated, during discussions, he buries his interlocutor with overwhelming amounts of criticism. This alienates his interlocutor and they distance himself from him. As he writes himself, they cannot handle his criticisms and they will refuse to speak. If he breaks them badly enough, they will mentally block anything to do with Temple to protect themselves. This is the first level of entrenchment. Discussions are intense; so intense that an interlocutor will take criticism as a personal attack. This causes some big misunderstandings that are more difficult to resolve than they would be if Temple hadn’t broken his interlocutor. And if Temple ever needs anything from them down the road, they will be less inclined to cooperate. More entrenchment.

Also during discussions, Temple has an answer to everything. People reasonably infer that discussions have a foregone conclusion. So then they don’t want to discuss with him. This further entrenches existing issues.

Temple and Forrester publicly shame former interlocutors by putting them on a list of “evaders”. List-making is toxic and alienates his former interlocutors even further. The alienation crosses a threshold, cementing people’s preference not to talk to Temple at all anymore, resulting in further entrenchment of any existing errors and, again, future errors. People will not be receptive to any complaints Temple might have in the future.

In the meantime, entrenched errors grow and cause more errors, which themselves become entrenched; misunderstandings grow.

Consider this specific issue. In early 2020, Temple accused me of violating his trademark. Recall that he ran a forum called ‘Fallible Ideas’. I had started a website in the same space called ‘Fallible Fun’. I didn’t even know what a trademark was, let alone when brand names are considered to be in conflict – I chose the name because fallibility is a core part of Popper’s philosophy. Temple didn’t know but suspected that I ran ‘Fallible Fun’. He sent me a direct message on Twitter on 2020-01-19, after months of not having spoken, in full: “is this yours or do you know who made it? https://www.fallible.fun” This is known as a blind question because he provided no context. It came out of nowhere. There was not even a ‘hello’, ‘how are you?’, ‘would you mind telling me…’ Blind questions put people on the defensive; without knowing the context or intent, they think they’re being interrogated. Given that and the previous alienations, I decided not to answer. Dealing with Temple is simply too distressing.

Temple also emailed the fallible.fun domain directly; those emails ended up in my inbox. He asked who ran the site. A lawyer told me I was under no obligation to identify myself to Temple, so I didn’t. When I got a second opinion, a different lawyer suggested that Temple should pay me to change the name of my site, but I decided that wasn’t necessary and just changed it for free. (This runs counter to Temple’s harassment complaint: if I had wanted to harass him, why didn’t I charge him just to make things more difficult for him?) Temple later confirmed that I was indeed the owner of ‘Fallible Fun’ and seemed to interpret my not wanting to communicate with him as deliberately making things difficult in order to harass him (see below). That wasn’t the case at all: it’s just that, again, the previous alienations made me want to avoid him. Since he knows that his overwhelming criticisms cause people to “refuse to speak” to him, why interpret this refusal as harassment? And isn’t avoiding someone the opposite of harassment? (This isn’t an admission of trademark violation, by the way, nor was that matter ever adjudicated.)

Temple later blogged about this issue:

The first trademark violation from Four Strands was the "Fallible Fun" forum, from Dennis Hackethal, designed to compete with my Fallible Ideas forum.

It wasn’t designed to compete with his forum. It was designed to be a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology for discussions. Continuing:

[Hackethal] changed the name when I informed him of the problem, but he should have known better on his own, and he was rude instead of apologetic. Nevertheless, that problem is now solved, and I mention it only because it shows a pattern of behavior from these people, and also because it shows agreement that my trademark matters even from one of the people who had gone so far as to violate it.

This sends mixed signals. On the one hand, Temple is still annoyed with me, still holds the alleged trademark violation against me, and puts the first part in italics presumably to imply that I agreed I was in the wrong. That’s bad. I don’t recall ever voicing agreement – I just didn’t want to argue, so I changed the name. When people address an issue, interpreting that as their agreement that they were in the wrong only makes them less inclined to address issues in the future. One should be happy they addressed the issue and not argue further. On the other hand, at least he is careful to mention that the issue is resolved. As Temple knows (“I mention it only because”), that is crucial to avoid entrenchment: it informs people that Temple considers issues resolved when they do resolve them. People need to know that there can be an end to an issue.

However, in a separate post alleging harassment, he only writes:

[…] Dennis responded to a complaint that he was violating the Fallible Ideas trademark in a minimal way that didn’t even involve notifying me when he renamed his “Fallible Fun” forum or what the new name was. He was so uncooperative that he wouldn’t even say that “Fallible Fun” was his forum; I had to find out elsewhere.

Here, he puts no such disclaimer. When someone resolves an issue but Temple still portrays it as being problematic, he sends a clear signal to people that they need not bother resolving his issues in the first place. This signal further entrenches errors.

Also in the context of harassment, Temple seems to interpret a refusal to speak to him as siding with the alleged harasser. As previously quoted, he also knows that the people he managed to break refuse to speak to him because he broke them. (It’s worth noting they didn’t want to speak to him before he ever made any harassment allegations either.) But in the context of harassment, he does not seem to have considered that he himself caused people to not want to speak with him. He broke a bunch of people for, I’m guessing, about ten years or so, and, from what it sounds like, made some enemies in the process. Most of the people he broke want nothing to do with him, but one of them – a guy named ‘Andy B’, as Temple alleges – decides to fight him. To be clear, I’m not saying Temple ever deserved to be harassed. I’m saying, purely hypothetically and to play devil’s advocate, that if, as Temple claims, this guy Andy ever harassed him, Temple himself created the conditions where others were not remotely inclined to even entertain his complaints. It’s wrong for him to interpret a refusal to speak with him, or any of the entrenched errors since, as siding with Andy, let alone as encouraging harassment. It’s unreasonable to break people and then later expect their help. Temple had caused their inability to deal with him or entertain his claims in the first place. He is a crybully.

Temple invading our private space and publishing our private messages without permission entrenched these issues even further because we felt harassed. He used people’s private words against them in public, then complained about their silence, eg by claiming that “they haven’t said anything to discourage the harassment”, that “they just ghost me [Temple] and others without explanation” (as I’ve shown, he already knows why), and that nobody has made no-contact requests: “They haven’t made no contact requests either […]”. He twists words and misquotes people, too, so then he shouldn’t be surprised when they won’t talk to him.

The dishonesty with which Temple has spoken about me entrenched errors even further.

Since Temple believes that people have conspired to harass him, whenever any one of those people does anything he doesn’t like – and if he looks closely enough, he’ll find something to complain about – it reflects badly on everyone else. Guilt by association. That’s more entrenchment because he seems to make improvement depend on resolving his conflicts with all of those people ‘in bulk’: when I reached out to him last year to see if we could reconcile, he seemed to make reconciliation contingent upon my getting involved in his conflicts with others.

Or consider Binswanger once more: whatever chance there was of him continuing to think about the issues Temple had raised, Temple surely extinguished it when he publicly disparaged Binswanger.

Here’s another example of entrenchment. Among Temple’s many complaints, he once accused me of plagiarizing him in my first book. I disagree and accuse him of serious hypocrisy; read this article for context to understand the more general entrenching effects his complaint had. Specific aspects of this issue are noteworthy here, though. When I showed myself cooperative, he later twisted my words and claimed I had admitted to more plagiarism! He also monitored my Twitter account and threatened to publish a very nasty blog post about me, again accusing me of plagiarism, calling me an incompetent “jerk”, and more. He made additional threats, too. Generally speaking, threats put people on the defensive, make them less inclined to cooperate, make it harder for Temple to get what he wants. So there was even more entrenchment. He did publish his post a few days later, in April 2020. As Temple intended when he told people to “rais[e] the plagiarism issue with” me, people would ask me about it, even years later on different continents. For a long time, his article titled ‘Dennis Hackethal, Plagiarist’ was the first result when googling my name. By tarring and feathering me, his blog post ensured, and continues to ensure, that the conflict remains active in my mind and that the issue never goes away. Further entrenchment.

Over a year after his accusation, in a thread he has since deleted, Temple reads my blog and writes:

Hackethal starting to sometimes give me credit, by name, seems like an implicit admission that he was in the wrong re his plagiarized book.

In other words, he saw that I made an effort to credit him – which is the opposite of plagiarism – and then he interpreted that effort as an admission of plagiarism! The reasonable response, the response conducive to error correction, would have been to consider the credit a welcome gesture and to either not argue further or, better yet, to acknowledge the effort. He could have thought to himself: ‘Maybe Dennis didn’t mean any harm after all.’ I don’t know if there’s anything worse for error correction than to interpret people’s compliance with one’s wishes as an admission of guilt. Once again, this resulted in further entrenchment and sent a clear signal that people are better off not addressing Temple’s complaints.

As I’ve said, I disagree that I plagiarized Temple. Still, in an effort to appease and cooperate, I had made changes to my book. An anonymous commenter replies to Temple:

Another implicit admission that he was in the wrong is that the 2nd edition of his shitty book cites you by name many times.

Temple responds, saying he was not aware of a second edition. He also says, among other things:

I don’t understand why, if he was willing to change the book, he wouldn’t tell me […].

Yes he does. He can’t reasonably brag that he can “break anyone” to the point they “give up and refuse to speak” and then complain when they do indeed refuse to speak. In any case, I’ve explained it now.

Actually, there is one thing that’s worse for error correction than to interpret people’s compliance as an admission of guilt: when he announced that he would hold his plagiarism complaint over my head for the indefinite future and monitor my success to tear me back down at any point by raising the issue with people again. Read the quotes here. His announcement deeply entrenched this part of the conflict and has forced me to respond because I need something to direct people to whenever he brings it up.

There are more things Temple has done that entrench the conflict, but you get the idea. Temple is (or at least postures as) a Popperian. He knows that entrenchment is bad. He surely shares Deutsch’s thoughts on how important it is to avoid entrenchment. Yet Temple consistently causes further entrenchment over years. I consider this even more evidence of his intellectual hypocrisy. I’ve always thought his pleas to be left alone didn’t make any sense because I felt the same: I wanted him to leave me alone. But we’re both stuck with the entrenchment, and see each other as a proxy for the entrenchment, so I guess it does make sense.

By definition, entrenched errors are difficult to correct. They also attract more errors, so I expect this conflict to either simmer on indefinitely or escalate. I don’t want either but I don’t know how to untie this infinitely twisted knot. I think both Temple and I are stuck, as is presumably everyone else he’s in conflict with. The first thing that might help is for him to take down his many nasty blog posts about people and work on communicating in a way that isn’t distressing. He should take responsibility and not blame social dynamics for the devastating effects of his communication style. After some more years pass and people recover enough, they might eventually be willing to talk to him to reconcile. But I suspect that I was the only one of those people who was ever going to be willing to talk to him at all; he ended that opportunity when he ignored my suggestion to do mediation. Instead, he made many distressing accusations (again, after I specifically asked him not to) and then stopped talking to me. My lawyers gave him another opportunity to reconcile by signing a mutual non-disparagement agreement. That agreement would have deemed the issues resolved without him admitting to any wrongdoing, but he declined that, too.

Basically, the conflict is too entrenched to ever be resolved; I expect to be dealing with this for years to come. Bad entrenchment is like the face hugger from Alien – if you pull on it, it just tightens its grip around your neck. Learn from my mistakes. I wish I had known all this when I first reached out to Temple – I would have never gotten in touch with him. But he had the social proof through Deutsch, and I didn’t know. As a result, the past six years have brought a significant emotional, mental, and financial cost. If he doesn’t know you exist, I envy you.