Comment by KittenInABox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KittenInABox | Hacker News Reader

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That defense pose is really strange, and in some aspects really disgusting.

"In order to orient you"? "Laura references an email I wrote - inadvisedly, for sure, and which I unreservedly regret - to her when she was 17"?

Even if this is the watered-down, best-light scenario, this is very weird.

And then tries to use Laura's words against her- she previously dismisses it as an honest mistake and then changes her mind when presented with apparent new evidence. And somehow portrays this as them being deceived.

Why would anyone try to trick two women into making allegations that a guy is a creep? They fully well know that these allegations will blow up their careers and are very likely to be unsuccessful in influencing Aubrey de Grey's career long term. If one wanted to smear Aubrey de Grey, she-said-he-said creepiness is one of the least effective ways to do it because a wide swath of the population aren't bothered enough to affect someone's career over it-- the only reason consequences are newsworthy is because they're so uncommon.

Celine Halioua isn't "anonymous", she's a successful aging researcher and her complaints are if anything, even more damning for Aubrey and the SENS folks: https://www.celinehh.com/aubrey

I think what he's suggesting is that "at first, she was fine with it, but then somebody convinced her not to be fine with it" or some such thing. Which may have some debatable merit, depending on the circumstances... except that she was a minor. Any kind of defense or explanation goes out the window when you're that kind of creep.

That weirds me out, because it implies that she's not her own woman who can take new evidence (Celine's complaint) and go "wait a second, that thing years ago that he did to me was actually also shitty and unacceptable".

I think that is a complex and worthy thing to debate as it addresses many different points; agency, regret, information, intent, consent.

I think the law deals with similar concerns by not basing a judgement on how someone feels, but rather on actions and agreements. Did they lie, cheat, steal, deceive, coerce, manipulate, intimidate, threaten, abuse, etc in context of some agreement or lack thereof. But that's just the law; obviously there is an entire world of morality/ethics that exists outside the law with different considerations.

I'm just saying, he hit on a minor, and he doesn't appear to be a moron, so screw this guy.

> somebody convinced her not to be fine with it

Shouldn't be an issue. Like, if your act was so marginal that a friend saying "no seriously, that sounds like creeping to me" can tip the balance from okay to not okay, maybe you shouldn't be doing that.

> Why would anyone try to trick two women into making allegations that a guy is a creep? They fully well know that these allegations will blow up their careers and are very likely to be unsuccessful in influencing Aubrey de Grey's career long term.

The person or people that would be tricking other people in this scenario into coming forward wouldn't necessarily have a career blown up, just the people they tricked.

I think the implication he's going for is "I had two, and just two somewhat sketchy interactions in the past, and neither were all that bad, and then those people were convinced there there were a lot more that happened they didn't know about, and so felt compelled to step forward with their experiences to help others, even though those additional experiences never happened."

On the one hand, I can see a possibility where that's possible, and this wasn't even premeditated to this extend, and it was just someone on the board badmouthing him and implying stuff, and it traveled between people and got out of hand, but on the other had, that seems pretty unlikely. You'd think someone willing to publicly speak about their experiences like this that might expect backlash would be more careful than to do so without making very sure to investigate a bit more, so the "it's really just you two and wasn't great, but not all that bad" defense isn't really a strong one, at least not if any other evidence comes forth. If none comes forth, that will be interesting (but at the same time we'll all have moved on and will likely associate Aubrey de Grey with this even if he's later somewhat vindicated in some way).

> "Why would anyone try to trick two women into making allegations that a guy is a creep? They fully well know that these allegations will blow up their careers and are very likely to be unsuccessful in influencing Aubrey de Grey's career long term."

From the look of the Twitter feed of one of the accusers, it doesn't look to be doing anything but promoting them and putting them up as brave, etc.

people can be weird, a french artist, medium-to-high profile told he was approached by vulture journalists to give them sensational stuff to say

it's not impossible that people try to rise the temperature on old events shed in today's light

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