I have some replies to Nate's reply. 

Overview:

• I’m not asking anyone to modify their personality at all. I mainly wish I had been warned about what was in store for me when I joined MIRI, and I want such warnings to be a visible part of Nate's reputation.
• I feel some pressure to match Nate's conciliatory tone, but something feels incongruous about it. I'm concerned that people will read Nate's calm, kindly replies and come away with the wrong idea of how he presented himself at MIRI.
• I find Nate’s additional context to be, well…missing some important context. See below...

More context and recollections

It’s true that I didn’t report directly to Nate, and there could be a reasonable expectation that I refrain from bothering him without at least talking to my manager first. My memory is that this was a practical emergence, and not an explicit rule. Regardless, it seemed that Nate was sort of having it both ways, because he did in fact sometimes directly ask me questions (while quite angry), for example why we had ordered lunch from a restaurant he didn’t like, or where the soy sauce was. I now have to wonder what would have happened if I had refused to answer those angrily posed questions on the grounds that I didn’t report directly to him. My guess is that I probably would have lost the job shortly thereafter (and been happier for having held my boundaries--such a story would have been the labor market functioning even more efficiently).

I told the story about how he got very angry when I didn’t inflate his tires properly and one went flat during his commute. He added mitigating context claiming that he was rushed and sweaty having just replaced the tire, and then felt his own (implicit) boundaries violated by my approach.

Well, my memory is that I had his tire professionally replaced. Maybe I misremember that detail. But I am quite sure I took his bike to the shop for some kind of repair in the immediate wake of the flat tire. After that, I messaged him to let him know the repairs were finished and his bike was back on the office bike rack, ready to use. It wasn’t necessary to send him that message, but I wanted to do the small professional courtesy as a gesture of respect and de-escalation. I regret that, because he didn’t reply at all.

In the next day or so, we ended up taking the elevator at the same time. We stood in cold silence. I got no signal that he felt anything other than annoyance and disregard. I would have accepted an apology or just some kind of thawing, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk initiating another conversation he didn’t want. When he says he has no recollection of wanting me to quit (as opposed to improve), I feel frustrated because I think this will give people a distorted mental image of what his outward demeanor was like.
 

Alternate timelines that I would have preferred

Nate says he feels trapped: 

I have a sense that there's some sort of trap for people with my emotional makeup here. If you stay and try to express yourself despite experiencing strong feelings of frustration, you're "almost yelling". If you leave because you're feeling a bunch of frustration and people say they don't like talking to you while you're feeling a bunch of frustration, you're "storming out".

Perhaps I'm missing some obvious third alternative here, that can be practically run while experiencing a bunch of frustration or exasperation. (If you know of one, I'd love to hear it.)

Here are six alternatives, ranked by my preference. I personally think none of them seem impossible and all of them are reasonable to expect from an agentic, cooperative EA leader. Each scenario is meant to be imagined independently of the others.

1. In 2014 Nate writes his blog and crafts his public image in such a way that by the time I am recruited to work for MIRI, I have gotten a full and realistic sense of his emotional build, and quickly decline the job offer from MIRI (or at least bargain for modifications to the job description). This probably would have required placing several prominent disclaimers throughout the blog, as well as changing the tone and implication of many of the posts. Nate accepts the reputational costs that this modified narrative requires.
2. MIRI makes sure their ops recruitment checklist includes giving explicit warnings about Nate’s emotions, and I quickly decline the job offer with no hard feelings. This one seems the most realistic to me.
3. Nate firms up the organizational separation. Before having any angry outbursts, it is made highly explicit that I should not bring up e.g. bike tire questions with Nate, and furthermore that Nate should not e.g. ask me to explain perceived lunch errors. Those things are to be resolved with my manager first if possible. I am warned that he may not be able to calmly tolerate violations of these boundaries. It is acknowledged that this is kind of weird, but MIRI is a weird org trying to save the world.
   1. If he had done this, I probably would have felt uneasy, still lost some respect for him, and told some friends about it. I probably still would have wanted to quit, and felt some mild skepticism toward the org ever after. But I would have felt much better about it, and I wouldn’t feel the need now to warn people that Nate was given unadvertised exemptions from social norms.
4. During the bike pump incident, Nate incurs an extra 30 seconds of wasted time, and hopefully no permanent emotional damage, in order to pad the angry interruption (“Learn!”) with a few extra syllables. Not even especially polite syllables, just enough to signal that he knows about and complies with the shared burden of emotional regulation. Something like, “Okay, I’m going cut you off right there–all I’m going to say is that I’m really unhappy and can’t deal with this right now. You should talk about this with your manager.”
5. Not long after the bike pump incident, Nate and I end up taking the elevator at the same time. He takes the opportunity to give at least a perfunctory apology and explain why he snapped. I get the sense that he genuinely regrets not establishing boundaries sooner. I also get the sense that he does not actively want me to quit (presuming that is actually true).
6. Nate doesn’t initiate any apologies, but he does send some kind of signal that things won’t go wrong if I ever try to bring it up again. He does not continue signaling a hair trigger while walking around the office. When I message him to let him know that the bike is back, he replies with something at least as cordial as “ok good to know”.
    

So I don't think there's any reasonable sense in which Nate was "trapped".

What I want right now

I’m not especially bidding for him to change his emotional habits. In fact, I don’t really want much of anything from Nate himself.

When I called up my former trainee the other day, I did not say, “I’m sorry Nate was angry and toxic to you.” Rather, I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t make absolutely sure you knew what you were getting into. I’m sorry for not giving you the thorough disclaimer that I wish someone had given me.”

What I do really want is for Nate’s reputation to catch up to his behavior. I think this is already happening to some extent, and the community is appropriately deducting some prestige and bargaining power.

Some people I respect have already told me that they now think significantly differently about Nate, which I think is right and proper, as well as being some relief to me personally.
 

Looking Forward

• I hope that if there is any more that ought to be revealed, that it is. I hope that bright-eyed young people entering the scene will be warned about him as thoroughly as I was warned about Eliezer (or more). I also hope that Nate does not suffer any unfair or unreasonable consequences[1]–I admit that I would feel some momentary satisfaction from that sort of thing, but it wouldn’t be worth diluting the valid complaints. Humans have an intrinsic drive for scapegoating, or so I have heard, and that’s the kind of overindulgence that is not affordable in the fight for the future.
• I look forward to less often hearing Nate’s persona invoked, with no caveats, as an exemplar of agency and self-understanding. He has some notable virtues, and has done things worthy of commendation, but I hope that the halo effect [? · GW] around him substantially diminishes.
• This risks derailment, but I hope that some new AI notkilleveryoneism researchers manage to loosen Nate’s monopoly on his niche at MIRI. By that I mean that it would be cool if, by some miracle, Eliezer found enough energy that he could invest some of it in a few final, dignified hail-mary apprenticeships. Instead of hearing that Eliezer and Nate said something, I hope I get to hear that The Cool New Eliezer-Approved AI notkilleveryoneism Team said something. I'm not holding my breath but that's my hope.
• I have some skepticism toward all of Nate’s self-reports, including the ones about his recent improvements. I am generally pessimistic about adults changing very much, especially when they are in their thirties or older. But...if Nate beats the odds in a hard-to-fake way, I will be duly surprised and impressed.

More miscellaneous notes

(Misc but still important)

• I feel some pressure right now to match Nate’s conciliatory tone–pressure to realize that Nate was just a cooperative guy all along who honestly wanted the best and fell short of his own values. I also feel an opposite desire to shout, “No! He’s predictably performing gentleness now that he’s at a disadvantage! Onlookers will overweight this and walk away with the wrong overall impression!!!” I endorse voicing that feeling. I find Nate’s replies here just a bit too slippery, and I urge people to treat this as an occasion where actions speak louder than words. Questioning people’s motives is often considered bad form, so I will simply say that I believe that Nate is not outright lying about his thoughts or feelings, but also that Sarah Constantin’s Player vs Character model [LW · GW] is weighing on my mind.
• I want it to be known that during Nate's outbursts, I was unsure about where his actual limits were. I obviously never worried that he would, like, punch me or something, since that’s quite illegal. But let me put it this way: If Rob had started shouting at me, I would have been utterly shocked, whereas if Nate had done that, I would have been merely surprised. Regardless of what Nate claims about his internal states, I think it’s not a coincidence [LW · GW] that my uncertainty about potential escalation was so large, and that I was stressed into doing more emotional labor than I signed on for. To say that differently: I think it’s not a coincidence that his actions reliably gave him the benefits of brinkmanship. I find it entirely plausible that if Nate's incentives had been different, then his emotional impulses would have adapted. But again, I would have been fine with just being forewarned during recruitment.
• There were other highly regarded researchers at MIRI whose lunch orders I messed up, and who are not known for empathy or people skills, but who reliably managed to express mild disappointment instead of hangry hostility.
• Nate said:
  "My recollection of the thought that ran through my mind when you were like 'Well I couldn't figure out how to use a bike pump' was that this was some sideways attempt at begging pardon, without actually saying 'oops' first, nor trying the obvious-to-me steps like 'watch a youtube video' or 'ask your manager if he knows how to inflate a bike tire'[...]"
  • Nate has a point here--it's entirely plausible that the particular bike-related anger could have been resolved on my end the way he suggests. But I also find it entirely plausible that the difficulty could have persisted even after some googling and YouTubing, and I have to wonder what would have happened in that case. If I had managed to say the word "YouTube" early enough in that interaction, would Nate have let me finish my sentence? Well, that's possible, and there are other possibilities too. So maybe Nate feels like he was tracking things cleanly enough that no one would trigger his rage unless they definitely had a serious lapse in their responsibilities (which is what most people think of themselves). But personally I still doubt that. 
  • "[...] the entire hypothesized time-save of somebody else inflating bike tires is wiped out by me having to give tutorials on it." This seems like an overstatement and I want to defend my common sense. I continue to think that the trouble I was having with the pressure-checking might possibly have been entirely solved by having me come watch him do it once.
  • The quotation, "Well, I couldn't figure out how to use a bike pump" is a misrepresentation of what happened, and I'm disappointed to find myself defending against it. I had owned and maintained multiple bikes without running into this problem. Different equipment sometimes has subtleties. I still don't know what was going wrong, and indeed it might have been a silly error on my part, but I claim that I was not as stupid, incompetent, or lazy as Nate makes me sound here. 
• It’s very dramatic, but I have to say I understand why TurnTrout said he would burn 10% of his liquidity [LW(p) · GW(p)] in exchange for never having a certain conversation with Nate. My own experiences with angry Nate were weirdly unsettling. Again, I’ve endured objectively harsher treatment from superiors and customers in previous jobs, but those didn’t feel as bad. I think the difference had something to do with everyone I respected praising him, nuancing away his flaws, leaving me wondering what the hell was going on.
• Alex Turner (TurnTrout) is my friend, we regularly talk and hang out and get food. In real life I think Alex frequently shows more pro-sociality and self-control than I do. When I think of Alex taking that kind of psychic damage from Nate, I feel…just…intolerably scandalized, and need to do deliberate mental tricks to shake it off. (EDIT: I no longer feel intolerably scandalized. That's because I have since had multiple, separate, surprisingly heated and frustrating in-person arguments with Alex, of a sort that never happen with my other friends. It's still entirely plausible that Nate spontaneously lost his temper at Alex with very little provocation, but I now have some decent credence that Alex significantly contributed to the escalation. I feel obligated to add this minor change here, out of fairness to Nate and respect for truthseeking. My overall stance remains unchanged: Nate has a history of especially bad anger management, multiple friends of mine have been on the receiving end of it, his years of public image-crafting and blogging about his own self-understanding flagrantly omitted it, and while it's not a crime to have anger problems, it's definitely good that MIRI adopted a policy of specifically warning new recruits about it.)

Some positivity

• I’m really happy overall with the replies I received from everyone. I expected to encounter a lot more resistance and skepticism, and I wouldn’t have blamed people for it. I have no regrets about anything I wrote. Without identifying anyone, let me say I’m also happy with what people have told me in private. It’s quite nice to have it confirmed that I’m not crazy and that I’ve helped make things better. And to those of you who have taken decisive actions: I honestly consider you to be heroes.
• Even though it comes quite late, I’m glad to hear that there is some kind of effort being made to give people the warning I wish I had received. It’s maybe also good that Nate stopped being the executive director.
• I sat on my complaints for 5+ years. But then last week, Alex Turner said the bravest public and true thing about Nate I had yet seen: that people are failing to enforce norms on him. Shortly thereafter, I overheard some people I respect having an actually nuanced conversation about it, not just the spurious, unbalanced “nuance” that had been protecting the status quo for years. Alex’s lonely dissent and the reverberations it caused inspired me to break my silence. Hero.
• My experiences elsewhere in the ecosystem have been much better. I’ve been at my current job for over 18 months, and have witnessed none of the problems that Nate had while I was at MIRI. My coworkers clearly put in the effort every day to cooperate, and I feel good about the future of the org.

Some Links

Here are some links that have affected how I think about human affairs in general, especially interpersonal drama. If anyone finds my takes here to be too cynical, then these links will at least show where I picked up a lot of that cynicism. (However, I also fully agree with the cynical about cynicism [LW · GW] post.)

Corrupted Hardware [? · GW]

Player vs Character [LW · GW]

Algorithmic Intent [LW · GW]

[1] It was pointed out to me that no one hopes for unfair or unreasonable consequences, so my words here are vague. Yeah okay. People can debate what's fair and reasonable, and I may join the debate or not.

 Oct 11 & 12 EDITS: Restructured some sentences, swapped out some words, and added a whole bullet point to the Misc section.
Oct 3, 2024: Updated the final misc note to include the possibility that Turntrout was significantly at fault.

I do have some general sense here that those aren't emotionally realistic options for people with my emotional makeup.

Here's my take: From the inside, Nate feels like he is incapable of not becoming very frustrated, even angry. In a sense this is true. But this state of affairs is in fact a consequence of Nate not being subject to the same rules as everybody else.

I think I know what it's like, to an extent — I've had anger issues since I was born, and despite speaking openly about it to many people, I've never met anyone who's been able to really understand the feeling of being overwhelmed with rage (especially not as an adult). That feeling can be very hard to control. 

However, I am constantly aware that having an angry outburst is massively socially unacceptable, to the point where if I let such things happen regularly I would lose my job / my standing in the community / all my friends / everyone close to me. This creates an extremely strong incentive for me to self-regulate at least my outward reactions, even when it's really hard. But because Nate is so high-status, he is allowed to make such outbursts without being faced with losing his job, his standing in the community, or his friends. This means he is insufficiently incentivized to self-regulate, and thus has been unable to learn.

I think it's cool that you're engaging with criticism and acknowledging the harm that happened as a result of your struggles.

And, to cut to the painful part, that's about the only positive thing that I (random person on the internet) have to say about what you just wrote.

In particular, you sound (and sorry if I'm making any wrong assumption here) extremely unwilling to entertain the idea that you were wrong, or that any potential improvement might need to come from you.

You say:

For whatever it's worth: I don't recall wanting you to quit (as opposed to improve).

But you don't seem to consider the idea that maybe you were more in a position to improve than he was.

I don't want to be overly harsh or judgmental. You (eventually) apologize and acknowledge your responsibility in employees having a shitty time, and it's easy for an internet stranger to over-analyze everything you said.

But. I do feel confident that you're expressing a lack of curiosity here. You're assuming that there's nothing you possibly have done to make Kurt's experience better, and while you're open to hearing if anyone presents you with a third option, you don't seem to think seeking out a third option is a problem you should actively solve.

My recollection of the thought that ran through my mind when you were like "Well I couldn't figure out how to use a bike pump" was that this was some sideways attempt at begging pardon, without actually saying "oops" first, nor trying the obvious-to-me steps like "watch a youtube video" or "ask your manager if he knows how to inflate a bike tire", nor noticing that the entire hypothesized time-save of somebody else inflating bike tires is wiped out by me having to give tutorials on it.

Like, here... You get that you're not really engaging with what Kurt is/was saying, right?

Kurt's point is that your pump seemed harder to use than other bike pumps. If the issue is on the object level, valid answers could be asking what types of bike pumps he's used to and where the discrepancy could come from, suggesting he buy a new pump, or if you're feeling especially curious asking that he bring his own pump to work so you can compare the two; or maybe the issue could come not from the pump but from the tires, in which case you could consider changing them, etc.

If the issue is on the meta level and that you don't want to spend time on these problems, a valid answer could be saying "Okay, what do you need to solve this problem without my input?". Then it could be a discussion about discretionary budget, about the amount of initiative you expect him to have with his job, about asking why he didn't feel comfortable making these buying decisions right away, etc.

Your only takeaway from this issue was "he was wrong and he could have obviously solved it watching a 5 minutes youtube tutorial, what would have been the most efficient way to communicate to him that he was wrong?". At no point in this reply are you considering (out loud, at least) that hypothesis "maybe I was wrong and I missed something".

Like, I get having a hot temper and saying things you regret because you don't see any other answers in the moment. But part of the process is to communicate despite a hot temper is to be willing to admit you were wrong.

Perhaps I'm missing some obvious third alternative here, that can be practically run while experiencing a bunch of frustration or exasperation. (If you know of one, I'd love to hear it.)

The best life-hack I have is "Don't be afraid to come back and restart the discussion once you feel less frustration or exasperation".

Long-term, I'd recommend looking into Non-Violent Communication, if you haven't already. There's a lot of cruft in there, but in my experience the core insights work: express vulnerability, focus on communicating you needs and how you feel about things, avoid assigning blame, make negotiable requests, and go from there.

So for the bike tire thing the NVC version would be something like "I need to spend my time efficiently and not have to worry about logistics; when you tell me you're having problems with the pump I feel stressed because I feel like I'm spending time I should spend on more important things. I need you to find a system where you can solve these problems without my input. What do you need to make that happen?"

Perhaps I'm missing some obvious third alternative here, that can be practically run while experiencing a bunch of frustration or exasperation. (If you know of one, I'd love to hear it.)

One alternative could be to regulate your emotions so you don't feel as intense frustration from a given epistemic position? I think this is what most people do.

I suspect that lines like this are giving people the impression that you [Nate] don't think there are (realistic) things that you can improve, or that you've "given up". 

I do have some general sense here that those aren't emotionally realistic options for people with my emotional makeup.

I have a sense that there's some sort of trap for people with my emotional makeup here. If you stay and try to express yourself despite experiencing strong feelings of frustration, you're "almost yelling". If you leave because you're feeling a bunch of frustration and people say they don't like talking to you while you're feeling a bunch of frustration, you're "storming out".

My understanding is that your perspective is something like "I feel like I recognize that there's stuff I can do to improve, and I've tried to put a lot of energy into finding those improvements, and I'm pretty open to others suggesting specific things I could do. But a lot of things that other people think would be easy fixes actually don't work or don't work for someone with my emotional makeup (e.g., because they're super costly or because I don't end up being able to implement them well.)

Like, my guess is that some people are like "wait what, why is it costly or infeasible for you to just gently tell someone that you don't have time/energy for a conversation and politely tell them to talk to their manager?"

And then their reaction is "oh, Nate must not care or must not be trying." (Which, to be clear, I find to be a reasonable hypothesis. Or at least the continuous version, which is something like "hm, maybe Nate doesn't care enough or isn't trying as much as I think the community should expect people in his position to try" or something.)

And then your reaction is "gosh, I am trying, but people seem to systematically underestimate how costly/infeasible a lot of their suggestions are."

I'm not really sure what to do about this, other than "maybe if this is acknowledged, it'll lead to more a more constructive dialogue between you and those who want you or expect you to change."

How do you/MIRI communicate about working with you now?

This is a generally constructive comment. One bit left me confused, and I wonder if you can unpack what it means?

I am subtracting karma from everyone who gave Nate points for writing a long introspective gdoc. You guys should've assumed that it would be a steep misfire.

What was the misfire? (I mean literally what does 'it' stand for in this sentence?) Also, what kind of points and karma are we talking about, presumably metaphorical?

So if some boss often drove his employees to tears, as long as he was pretty insightful, you don't think that the employees should be able to know before taking the job? Surely that's not your position. But then what is? 

I wanted to add a perspective to the conversation that I didn't see mentioned, moreso than advocating a very thought out position. I have conflicting intuitions, and the territory seems messy! 

On the one hand, it does seem to me like there should be some kind of "heads up about intensity". It's real bad to create hidden slippery slopes along the intensity scale. It's real bad to first make people dependent on you (by, say, paying most of their salary in yet-to-be-vested equity, making them work long enough that they can't explore external opportunities and maintain outside friends, ...) and then shifting into a potentially abusive stance (heavily frame controlling, demoralising, etc). It is when these kinds of pressures are applied that I think things move into unacceptable territory. (And my suggested community response would probably be something like "Sandbox culprit in ways where they're able to remain highly productive while doing less damage, give people accurate indications about their style (conveying this might actually fall on someone else than the culprit to do -- that division of labor might just be our only way to get all the good stuff here!), and avoid giving people inaccurate impressions or being a wide-eyed feeder school."

For comparison, when I imagine pursuing a career in investment banking, it seems like I'd be opting into a shark tank. I'm just kind of accepting there'll be some real abusive folks around, following the $$$, and I'll be betting on my ability to navigate that without losing myself in the process. Being part of a healthy community means somehow having people around me who can help me see these things. I do think there are some young undergrads who naively will believe the faceless Goldman ads. I feel like Taleb would have a word for them -- the "sucker" or the "Intellectual Yet Idiot". They'll get hurt, and this is bad, and the recruiting ads that led them into this are immoral. 

(From that perspective, I'm pretty into my straw version of military ads, which is more like "You'll have the worst time of your life and be tested to your limits. You're too weak for this. But you'll gain glory. Sign up here.")

On the other hand, I also have the intuition that requesting of individual researchers that they signpost and warn about their unusual communication style seems to be locating the onus of this in the wrong location... and I kind of just don't expect it to work, empirically? I feel like the getting-a-job-at-MIRI pipeline should somehow make it clear to people what level of f*ckery is about to happen to them, insofar as it is. I currently don't know whose responsibility I think that is (and I'm shipping this comment in a confused state, rather than not shipping it at all). 

Regarding my own experience: I would destroy 10% of my liquidity to erase from my life that conversation and its emotional effects. 

I don't think it's reasonable to expect Nate to have predicted that I in particular would be hurt so much. But in fact, being unexpectedly and nonconsensually mean and aggressive and hurtful has heavy negative tails. 

And so statistically, this level of harm is totally predictable, both on priors and based off of past experience which I know Nate has. 

(For completeness, I want to note that I've talked with a range of former/current MIRI employees, and a non-trivial fraction did have basically fine interactions with Nate.)

not insult your reasoning skills

More detail here seems like it could be good. What form did the insult take? Other relevant context?

Engaging with people in ways such that they often feel heard/seen/understood

This is not a reasonable norm. In some circumstances (including, it sounds like, some of the conversations under discussion) meeting this standard would require a large amount of additional effort, not related to the ostensible reason for talking in the first place.

Engaging with people in ways such that they rarely feel dismissed/disrespected

Again, a pretty unreasonable norm. For some topics, such as "is what you're doing actually making progress towards that thing you've arranged your life (including social context) around making progress on?", it's very easy for people to feel this way, even if they are being told true, useful, relevant things.

Something fuzzy that lots of people would call "kindness" or "typical levels of warmth"

Ditto, though significantly less strongly; I do think there's ways to do this that stay honest and on-mission without too much tradeoff.

In academia, for instance, I think there are plenty of conversations in which two researchers (a) disagree a ton, (b) think the other person's work is hopeless or confused in deep ways, (c) honestly express the nature of their disagreement, but (d) do so in a way where people generally feel respected/valued when talking to them.

My model says that this requires them to still be hopeful about local communication progress, and happens when they disagree but already share a lot of frames and concepts and background knowledge. I, at least, find it much harder when I don't expect the communciation attempt to make progress, or have positive effect.

("Then why have the conversation at all?" I mostly don't! But sometimes I mispredict how much hope I'll have, or try out some new idea that doesn't work, or get badgered into it.)

Some specific norms that I think Nate might not be adhering to:

• Engaging with people in ways such that they often feel heard/seen/understood
• Engaging with people in ways such that they rarely feel dismissed/disrespected
• Something fuzzy that lots of people would call "kindness" or "typical levels of warmth"

These sound more to me like personality traits (that members of the local culture generally consider virtuous) than communication norms.

On my model, communciation norms are much lover-level than this. Basics of rationalist discourse [LW · GW] seem closer; archaic politeness norms ("always refuse food thrice before accepting") are an example of even lower-level stuff.

My model, speaking roughly and summarizing a bunch, says that the lowest-level stuff (atop a background of liberal-ish internet culture and basic rationalist discourse) isn't pinned down on account of cultural diversity, so we substitute with meta-norms, which (as best I understand them) include things like "if your convo-partner requests a particular conversation-style, either try it out or voice objections or suggest alternatives" and "if things aren't working, retreat to a protected meta discussion and build a shared understanding of the issue and cooperatively address it".

I acknowledge that this can be pretty difficult to do on the fly, especially if emotions are riding high. (And I think we have cultural diversity around whether emotions are ever supposed to ride high, and if so, under what circumstances.) On my model of local norms, this sort of thing gets filed under "yep, communicating in the modern world can be rocky; if something goes wrong then you go meta and try to figure out the causes and do something differently next time". (Which often doesn't work! In which case you iterate, while also shifting your conversational attention elsewhere.)

To be clear, I buy a claim of the form "gosh, you (Nate) seem to run on a relatively rarer native emotional protocol, for this neck of the woods". My model is that local norms are sufficiently flexible to continue "and we resolve that by experimentation and occasional meta".

And for the record, I'm pretty happy to litigate specific interactions. When it comes to low-level norms, I think there are a bunch of conversational moves that others think are benign that I see as jabs (and which I often endorse jabbing back against, depending on the ongoing conversation style), and a bunch of conversational moves that I see as benign that others take as jabs, and I'm both (a) happy to explicate the things that felt to me like jabs; (b) happy to learn what other people took as jabs; and (c) happy to try alternative communication styles where we're jabbing each other less. Where this openness-to-meta-and-trying-alternative-things seems like the key local meta-norm, at least in my understanding of local culture.

But I think some people possess the skill of "being able to communicate harsh truths accurately in ways where people still find the interaction kind, graceful, respectful, and constructive." And my understanding is that's what people like TurnTrout are wishing for.

This is a thing, but I'm guessing that what you have in mind involves a lot more than you're crediting of not actually trying for the crux of the conversation. As just one example, you can be "more respectful" by making fewer "sweeping claims" such as "you are making such and such error in reasoning throughout this discussion / topic / whatever". But that's a pretty important thing to be able to say, if you're trying to get to real cruxes and address despair and so on.

But I think some people possess the skill of "being able to communicate harsh truths accurately in ways where people still find the interaction kind, graceful, respectful, and constructive." And my understanding is that's what people like TurnTrout are wishing for.

Kinda. I'm advocating less for the skill of "be graceful and respectful and constructive" and instead looking at the lower bar of "don't be overtly rude and aggressive without consent; employ (something within 2 standard deviations of) standard professional courtesy; else social consequences." I want to be clear that I'm not wishing for some kind of subtle mastery, here. 

On the facts: I'm pretty sure I took Vivek aside and gave a big list of reasons why I thought working with me might suck, and listed that there are cases where I get real frustrated as one of them. (Not sure whether you count him as "recent".)

My recollection is that he probed a little and was like "I'm not too worried about that" and didn't probe further. My recollection is also that he was correct in this; the issues I had working with Vivek's team were not based in the same failure mode I had with you; I don't recall instances of me getting frustrated and bulldozey (though I suppose I could have forgotten them).

(Perhaps that's an important point? I could imagine being significantly more worried about my behavior here if you thought that most of my convos with Vivek's team were like most of my convos with you. I think if an onlooker was describing my convo with you they'd be like "Nate was visibly flustered, visibly frustrated, had a raised voice, and was being mean in various of his replies." I think if an onlooker was describing my convos with Vivek's team they'd be like "he seemed sad and pained, was talking quietly and as if choosing the right words was a struggle, and would often talk about seemingly-unrelated subjects or talk in annoying parables, while giving off a sense that he didn't really expect any of this to work". I think that both can suck! And both are related by a common root of "Nate conversed while having strong emotions". But, on the object level, I think I was in fact avoiding the errors I made in conversation with you, in conversation with them.)

As to the issue of not passing on my "working with Nate can suck" notes, I think there are a handful of things going on here, including the context here [LW(p) · GW(p)] and, more relevantly, the fact that sharing notes just didn't seem to do all that much in practice.

I could say more about that; the short version is that I think "have the conversation while they're standing, and I'm lying on the floor and wearing a funny hat" seems to work empirically better, and...

hmm, I think part of the issue here is that I was thinking like "sharing warnings and notes is a hypothesis, to test among other hypotheses like lying on the floor and wearing a funny hat; I'll try various hypotheses out and keep doing what seems to work", whereas (I suspect) you're more like "regardless of what makes the conversations go visibly better, you are obligated to issue warnings, as is an important part of emotionally-bracing your conversation partners; this is socially important if it doesn't seem to change the conversation outcomes".

I think I'd be more compelled by this argument if I was having ongoing issues with bulldozing (in the sense of the convo we had), as opposed to my current issue where some people report distress when I talk with them while having emotions like despair/hoplessness.

I think I'd also be more compelled by this argument if I was more sold on warnings being the sort of thing that works in practice.

Like... (to take a recent example) if I'm walking by a whiteboard in rosegarden inn, and two people are like "hey Nate can you weigh in on this object-level question", I don't... really believe that saying "first, be warned that talking techincal things with me can leave you exposed to unshielded negative-valence emotions (frustration, despair, ...), which some people find pretty crappy; do you still want me to weigh in?" actually does much. I am skeptical that people say "nope" to that in practice.

I suppose that perhaps what it does is make people feel better if, in fact, it happens? And maybe I'll try it a bit and see? But I don't want to sound like I'm promising to do such a thing reliably even as it starts to feel useless to me, as opposed to experimenting and gravitating towards things that seem to work better like "offer to lie on the floor while wearing a funny hat if I notice things getting heated".

EDIT: Also, clarification that the “bulldozing” incident did not primarily consist of “state non-obvious takes in an obvious tone, and decline to elaborate.”

What did it consist of? Have you described it somewhere?

even send us a guide on communicating with him

Woah! That's like 10x more effort than I expect >90% of difficult-to-communicate-with people will go through. 

Kudos to Nate for that.

I think I became most aware in December 2022, during our first set of in-person meetings. Vivek and Thomas Kwa had had more interaction with Nate before this and so might have known before me. I have some memory of things being a bit difficult before the December meetings, but I might have chalked this up to not being in-person, I don't fully remember. 
It was after these meetings that we got the communication guide etc. 
Jeremy joined in May 2023, after the earlier members of the team knew about communication stuff and so I think we were able to tell him about various difficulties we'd had.