Posts

Comments

Comment by jjaksic on Sam Altman's sister, Annie Altman, claims Sam has severely abused her · 2023-11-19T03:20:26.734Z · LW · GW

the amount of disorders Annie has is itself a red flag to me

Are a person's mental disorders (especially ones that started in early childhood) the person's own fault, or are they possibly a consequence of trauma or abuse? If you abuse someone as a child, they are very likely to develop some mental disorders (the greater the abuse, the more severe and long-lasting they're likely to be). Is it then fair to say, "This person's claims of abuse have no merit, just look at their mental disorders" (as in, a "crazy person's" claims should not be believed)?

Comment by jjaksic on Sam Altman's sister, Annie Altman, claims Sam has severely abused her · 2023-11-19T02:35:52.375Z · LW · GW

What direct evidence can someone provide to prove that they were abused as a child? (Note that most 4-year-olds know nothing about sex or sexual abuse, leave alone how to respond to it; nor would they be able to record it.)

In Annie's case there's a good amount of circumstantial evidence, e.g. suicidal thoughts, anxiety and depression at a very young age, which are PTSD symptoms typical for victims of childhood sexual abuse. Beyond this, I can't imagine what other evidence she could possibly provide, even if it happened 100%.

My son was abused by a preschool teacher when he was 3 (not sexually, but verbally and physically). Once he told us that the teacher hit him and described how. We called his classmate's parents, and his classmate described what happened in the exact same way; then he shut his ears (as if trying to block the memory of my son crying) and said that he's afraid to talk about it. Both kids were terrified of going back to school, and my son had major PTSD and anxerty for over a year. We immediately reported abuse to all levels of the school administration, the county school licensing board, and the police. The teacher denied it and the school didn't have cameras. The final conclusion of the process was that "there's no evidence", which to the school was as good as "it didn't happen". The teacher continues to teach there to this day. 2 years later our son still remembers that teacher as being generally awful, but he seems to have suppressed the memory of this specific incident, because it was too painful.

If it's impossible to prove child abuse even when two parents (who know it happened, are supportive and know what they're doing) start the process immediately and go through all available channels, what chance does a 4-year-old have whose caregivers are either unaware or not supportive? What chance does a person have if they remember or realize what had happened after 20 years?

If you personally were abused as a child, how would you prove it?

Similarly with shadowbanning. It's not something that you can prove unless you somehow have access to social media service backends, or to correspondence between conspirators. Yes, it's very difficult to pull off for almost anyone, but Sam Altman definitely would had the clout required to pull it off. I do think it's odd that almost nobody so far has picked up this story, not even tabloids, if her posts have indeed been out there for this many years.

Your post reads like "she's full of sh*t". For sure you cannot confidently claim that. At most what you can say is that claims of this nature are often difficult to prove.