Edit: I mostly retract this comment. I skimmed and didn’t read the post carefully (something one should never do before leaving a negative comment) and interpreted it as “Leverage wasn’t perfect, but it is worth trying to make Leverage 2.0 work or have similar projects with small changes”. On rereading, I see that Jeff’s emphasis is more on analyzing and quantifying the failure modes than on salvaging the idea.
That said, I just want to point out that (at least as far as I understand it), there is a significant collection of people within and around EA who think that Leverage is a uniquely awful organization which suffered a multilevel failure extremely reminiscent of your run-of-the mill cult (not just for those who left it, but also for many people who are still in it), which soft-core threatens members to avoid negative publicity, exerts psychological control on members in ways that seem scary and evil. This is context that I think some people reading the sterilized publicity around Leverage will lack.
There are many directions from which people could approach Leverage 1.0, but the one that I’m most interested in is lessons for people considering attempting similar things in the future.
I think there’s a really clear lesson here: don’t.
I’ll elaborate: Leverage was a multilevel failure. A fundamentally dishonest and charismatic leader. A group of people very convinced that their particular chain of flimsy inferences led them to some higher truth that gave them advantages over everyone else. A frenzied sense of secrecy and importance. Ultimately, psychological harm and abuse.
It is very clearly a negative example, and if someone is genuinely trying to gain some positive insight into a project from “things they did right” (or noticeably imitate techniques from that project), that would make me significantly less likely to think of them as being on the right track.
There are examples of better “secret projects”—the Manhattan project as well as other high-security government organizations, various secret revolutionary groups like the early US revolutionaries, the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad, even various pro-social masonic orders. Having as one’s go-to example of something to emulate an organization that significantly crossed the line into cult territory (or at least into Aleister Crowley level grandiosity around a bad actor) would indicate to me a potential enlarged sense of self-importance, an emphasis on deference and exclusivity (“being on our team”) instead of competence and accountability, and a lack of emphasis on appropriate levels of humility and self-regulation.
To be clear, I believe in decoupling and don’t think it’s wrong to learn from bad actors. But with such a deeply rotten track record, and so many decent organizations that are better than it along all parameters, Leverage is perhaps the clearest example of a situation where people should just “say oops” and stop looking for ways to gain any value from it (other than as a cautionary tale) that I have heard of in the EA/LW community.
I intended this a bit more broadly than you seem to have interpreted it; I’m trying to include exploratory research groups in general.
gain any value from it (other than as a cautionary tale)
That is essentially what this post is: looking in detail at one specific way I think things went wrong, and thinking about how to avoid this in the future.
I expect tradeoffs around how much you should prioritize external communication will continue to be a major issue for research groups!
Fair enough. I admit that I skimmed the post quickly, for which I apologize, and part of this was certainly a knee-jerk reaction to even considering Leverage as a serious intellectual project rather than a total failure as such, which is not entirely fair. But I think maybe a version of this post I would significantly prefer would first explain your interest in Leverage specifically: that while they are a particularly egregious failure of the closed-research genre, it’s interesting to understand exactly how they failed and how the idea of a fast, less-than-fully transparent think tank can be salvaged. It does bother me that you don’t try to look for other examples of organizations that do some part of this more effectively, and I have trouble believing that they don’t exist. It reads a bit like an analysis of nation-building that focuses specifically on the mistakes and complexities of North Korea without trying to compare it to other less awful entities.
That said, I just want to point out that (at least as far as I understand it), there is a significant collection of people within and around EA who think that Leverage is a uniquely awful organization which suffered a multilevel failure extremely reminiscent of your run-of-the mill cult (not just for those who left it, but also for many people who are still in it), which soft-core threatens members to avoid negative publicity, exerts psychological control on members in ways that seem scary and evil. This is context that I think some people reading the sterilized publicity around Leverage will lack.
I can’t comment on whether rumors like this still persist in the EA community, but to the degree that they do, I think there is now a substantial amount of available information that allows for a more nuanced picture of the organization and the people involved.
Two of the best, in my view, are Cathleen’s post and our Inquiry Report. Both posts are quite lengthy, but as you seem passionate about this topic, they may nevertheless be worth reading.
I think it’s fair to say that the majority of people involved in Leverage would strongly disagree with your characterization of the organization. As someone who works at Leverage and was friends with many of the people involved previously, I can say that your characterization strongly mismatches my experience.
Edit: I mostly retract this comment. I skimmed and didn’t read the post carefully (something one should never do before leaving a negative comment) and interpreted it as “Leverage wasn’t perfect, but it is worth trying to make Leverage 2.0 work or have similar projects with small changes”. On rereading, I see that Jeff’s emphasis is more on analyzing and quantifying the failure modes than on salvaging the idea.
That said, I just want to point out that (at least as far as I understand it), there is a significant collection of people within and around EA who think that Leverage is a uniquely awful organization which suffered a multilevel failure extremely reminiscent of your run-of-the mill cult (not just for those who left it, but also for many people who are still in it), which soft-core threatens members to avoid negative publicity, exerts psychological control on members in ways that seem scary and evil. This is context that I think some people reading the sterilized publicity around Leverage will lack.
I think there’s a really clear lesson here: don’t.I’ll elaborate: Leverage was a multilevel failure. A fundamentally dishonest and charismatic leader. A group of people very convinced that their particular chain of flimsy inferences led them to some higher truth that gave them advantages over everyone else. A frenzied sense of secrecy and importance. Ultimately, psychological harm and abuse.It is very clearly a negative example, and if someone is genuinely trying to gain some positive insight into a project from “things they did right” (or noticeably imitate techniques from that project), that would make me significantly less likely to think of them as being on the right track.There are examples of better “secret projects”—the Manhattan project as well as other high-security government organizations, various secret revolutionary groups like the early US revolutionaries, the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad, even various pro-social masonic orders. Having as one’s go-to example of something to emulate an organization that significantly crossed the line into cult territory (or at least into Aleister Crowley level grandiosity around a bad actor) would indicate to me a potential enlarged sense of self-importance, an emphasis on deference and exclusivity (“being on our team”) instead of competence and accountability, and a lack of emphasis on appropriate levels of humility and self-regulation.To be clear, I believe in decoupling and don’t think it’s wrong to learn from bad actors. But with such a deeply rotten track record, and so many decent organizations that are better than it along all parameters, Leverage is perhaps the clearest example of a situation where people should just “say oops” and stop looking for ways to gain any value from it (other than as a cautionary tale) that I have heard of in the EA/LW community.I intended this a bit more broadly than you seem to have interpreted it; I’m trying to include exploratory research groups in general.
That is essentially what this post is: looking in detail at one specific way I think things went wrong, and thinking about how to avoid this in the future.
I expect tradeoffs around how much you should prioritize external communication will continue to be a major issue for research groups!
Fair enough. I admit that I skimmed the post quickly, for which I apologize, and part of this was certainly a knee-jerk reaction to even considering Leverage as a serious intellectual project rather than a total failure as such, which is not entirely fair. But I think maybe a version of this post I would significantly prefer would first explain your interest in Leverage specifically: that while they are a particularly egregious failure of the closed-research genre, it’s interesting to understand exactly how they failed and how the idea of a fast, less-than-fully transparent think tank can be salvaged. It does bother me that you don’t try to look for other examples of organizations that do some part of this more effectively, and I have trouble believing that they don’t exist. It reads a bit like an analysis of nation-building that focuses specifically on the mistakes and complexities of North Korea without trying to compare it to other less awful entities.
Note that Leverage 2.0 is a thing, and seems to be taking a very different approach towards the history of science, with regular public write-ups: https://www.leverageresearch.org/history-of-science
It seems like you’re misreading Jeff’s post. Perhaps deliberately. I will prefer it if people on this forum do this less.
Certainly not deliberately. I’ll try to read it more carefully and update my comment
Thanks. I’ve retracted my comment since I think it’s too harsh. <3
Thanks! But I see your point
I can’t comment on whether rumors like this still persist in the EA community, but to the degree that they do, I think there is now a substantial amount of available information that allows for a more nuanced picture of the organization and the people involved.
Two of the best, in my view, are Cathleen’s post and our Inquiry Report. Both posts are quite lengthy, but as you seem passionate about this topic, they may nevertheless be worth reading.
I think it’s fair to say that the majority of people involved in Leverage would strongly disagree with your characterization of the organization. As someone who works at Leverage and was friends with many of the people involved previously, I can say that your characterization strongly mismatches my experience.