“Reliable Sources: The Story of David Gerard” by TracingWoodgrains

This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public images behind the scenes.

Note: I am closer to this story than to many of my others. As always, I write aiming to provide a thorough and honest picture, but this should be read as the view of a close onlooker who has known about much within this story for years and has strong opinions about the matter, not a disinterested observer coming across something foreign and new. If you’re curious about the backstory, I encourage you to read my companion article after this one.

Introduction: Reliable Sources

Wikipedia administrator David Gerard cares a great deal about Reliable Sources. For the past half-decade, he has torn [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Introduction: Reliable Sources

(06:01) Gerard's Standards for Reliable Sources

(13:53) Who Is David Gerard?

(16:53) The Early Romantic Years

(28:00) Gerard's fling with LessWrong in the twilight of the old internet

(37:51) The bitter end

(45:26) The Vindictive Ex

(50:01) LessWrong

(01:04:17) Effective Altruism

(01:07:55) Scott Alexander

(01:16:22) Conclusion

(01:21:58) Companion article: A Young Mormon Discovers Online Rationality

The original text contained 24 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 12 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
July 10th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3XNinGkqrHn93dwhY/reliable-sources-the-story-of-david-gerard

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.