I’m confused and skeptical that the defence of “cultiness” or other negative traits, includes referencing internal evaluations in these comments.
Setting aside how internally conducted evaluations are performative or manipulated subtly and easily by the administrators, I would expect most “highly demanding” organizations to filter and steer internal people, e.g. making sure they are “small” enough.
E.g., The people inside these organizations, who would pass the various process, would not be reliable evaluators.
For evidence, this very interview below is designed as part of the system to create the resulting culture that is problematic.
<Insert link/quote to the wildly inappropriate/aggressive/abusive interview I read about (I don’t have time to fully write this comment.)>
I’m friends with several people who went through the program, I’ve seen the evaluations, they don’t paint a picture of the program as culty. That doesn’t mean everyone enjoyed the program but I think the picture you have in mind is inaccurate. I think the program was probably slightly to moderate weird compared to programs of this type, but not culty.
I agree with your assessment that the interview process was badly handled. Asking people to belief report during an interview is a bad idea.
You’re directly employed by Leverage research, which has the more severe claims laid against it and is some sort of subsidiary or something of Pareto or vice versa[1], yes? I understand you’ve worked or been involved there in this circle for many years? 10 or so?
Given the above, it’s unclear why you think stating your personal views and your friendships, would be informative. Given the host of other choices you could make, this is unpromising to me. For example, why not release these surveys and the narratives inside of them, and we can read and form opinions about what they mean ourselves?
Furthermore, ungenerously and speculatively, I find it plausible your statements are normalizing/lampshading the issues, e.g. in the class of people above, “friendship” is negative here to me. This very thread and others like it have utility to these organizations—filtering so that people who make it to the funnel are predicably more reliable and pliant.
Now, dropping out of EA forum rhetoric: To be clear, I don’t think this is a cult with literal coolaid. Like, I don’t think you actively plot to harm others. It’s just trashy trash. This is just what happens when someone older dude (30s or 40 now) with an extremely motivated view of his ideas, and is somewhat smarter than average (therefore making them in a genius in EA/rationalist circles) creates a massive information bubble+world conquering view+sketchy hookup/sexual access to his followers. There is a large supply of these “organizations” in the Bay Area, and it’s disappointing this wasn’t put down and we have to read about it in 2022.
it’s really unclear to me what the relationship between these orgs are but in these situations, I round down usefully, e.g. Org A is sort of a “feeder” to Org B, sort of situation.
I would release the surveys from Pareto, but they are the property of CEA, not the property of Leverage Research, so I am not in a position to release them.
Unfounded rumors about Leverage were common in the EA community when I was involved, and it’s disappointing that they continue to be perpetuated. If you’d like to learn more about what Leverage was like, a bunch of information has come out that allows for a more nuanced and accurate picture. Two of the best, in my view, are Cathleen’s post and our Inquiry Report. Also, if you’re interested in what we work on today, feel free to visit our website.
I get that cults are interesting, and the story is much more exciting if Leverage was a cult of some kind. Unfortunately, as is true in so many cases, the truth of the matter is far less interesting.
Unfounded rumors about Leverage were common in the EA community when I was involved, and it’s disappointing that they continue to be perpetuated.
Most of the rumors about Leverage that I heard were along the lines of what Zoe later described (which is also largely consistent with other accounts described here and here). So I wouldn’t call those rumors “unfounded” at all. In this case at least, where there was smoke there turned out to be a fire.
Other rumors I heard were quite consistent with Leverage’s own description (pretty culty in my opinion) of why it terminated an eight year exploratory psychology program:
As our researchers sensitized themselves further, and accessed more and more of what seemed to be unconscious content, several negative effects occurred. Some of the psychological content was itself distressing, there appeared to be psychogenic effects, with individuals negatively affecting each other unintentionally through what appeared to be non-verbal communication, and conflict within the group escalated. After attempting to resolve the problems and making insufficient headway, we shut down the psychology research program and began the process of re-organizing the institute.
Re:
If you’d like to learn more about what Leverage was like, a bunch of information has come out that allows for a more nuanced and accurate picture. Two of the best, in my view, are Cathleen’s post and our Inquiry Report. Also, if you’re interested in what we work on today, feel free to visit our website.
I haven’t read Cathleen’s post, as it apparently takes several hours to read. I skimmed the Inquiry Report, enough to learn that has methodological biases that render it largely useless in my opinion (“Although we reached out to everyone from Leverage 1.0, not everyone chose to speak to us, including those who may have had the worst experiences.”)
I urge anyone who would “like to learn more about what Leverage was like” to read Zoe’s account and the other accounts I link to at the start of this comment instead of or in addition to the material Kerry suggests.
I’m confused and skeptical that the defence of “cultiness” or other negative traits, includes referencing internal evaluations in these comments.
Setting aside how internally conducted evaluations are performative or manipulated subtly and easily by the administrators, I would expect most “highly demanding” organizations to filter and steer internal people, e.g. making sure they are “small” enough.
E.g., The people inside these organizations, who would pass the various process, would not be reliable evaluators.
For evidence, this very interview below is designed as part of the system to create the resulting culture that is problematic.
<Insert link/quote to the wildly inappropriate/aggressive/abusive interview I read about (I don’t have time to fully write this comment.)>
Ok I found it, here is the interview for Pareto fellowship.
Yeah totally legit. I’m sure the participants afterwards were in a totally normal environment.
I’m friends with several people who went through the program, I’ve seen the evaluations, they don’t paint a picture of the program as culty. That doesn’t mean everyone enjoyed the program but I think the picture you have in mind is inaccurate. I think the program was probably slightly to moderate weird compared to programs of this type, but not culty.
I agree with your assessment that the interview process was badly handled. Asking people to belief report during an interview is a bad idea.
You’re directly employed by Leverage research, which has the more severe claims laid against it and is some sort of subsidiary or something of Pareto or vice versa[1], yes? I understand you’ve worked or been involved there in this circle for many years? 10 or so?
Given the above, it’s unclear why you think stating your personal views and your friendships, would be informative. Given the host of other choices you could make, this is unpromising to me. For example, why not release these surveys and the narratives inside of them, and we can read and form opinions about what they mean ourselves?
Furthermore, ungenerously and speculatively, I find it plausible your statements are normalizing/lampshading the issues, e.g. in the class of people above, “friendship” is negative here to me. This very thread and others like it have utility to these organizations—filtering so that people who make it to the funnel are predicably more reliable and pliant.
Now, dropping out of EA forum rhetoric: To be clear, I don’t think this is a cult with literal coolaid. Like, I don’t think you actively plot to harm others. It’s just trashy trash. This is just what happens when someone older dude (30s or 40 now) with an extremely motivated view of his ideas, and is somewhat smarter than average (therefore making them in a genius in EA/rationalist circles) creates a massive information bubble+world conquering view+sketchy hookup/sexual access to his followers. There is a large supply of these “organizations” in the Bay Area, and it’s disappointing this wasn’t put down and we have to read about it in 2022.
it’s really unclear to me what the relationship between these orgs are but in these situations, I round down usefully, e.g. Org A is sort of a “feeder” to Org B, sort of situation.
I would release the surveys from Pareto, but they are the property of CEA, not the property of Leverage Research, so I am not in a position to release them.
Unfounded rumors about Leverage were common in the EA community when I was involved, and it’s disappointing that they continue to be perpetuated. If you’d like to learn more about what Leverage was like, a bunch of information has come out that allows for a more nuanced and accurate picture. Two of the best, in my view, are Cathleen’s post and our Inquiry Report. Also, if you’re interested in what we work on today, feel free to visit our website.
I get that cults are interesting, and the story is much more exciting if Leverage was a cult of some kind. Unfortunately, as is true in so many cases, the truth of the matter is far less interesting.
Most of the rumors about Leverage that I heard were along the lines of what Zoe later described (which is also largely consistent with other accounts described here and here). So I wouldn’t call those rumors “unfounded” at all. In this case at least, where there was smoke there turned out to be a fire.
Other rumors I heard were quite consistent with Leverage’s own description (pretty culty in my opinion) of why it terminated an eight year exploratory psychology program:
Re:
I haven’t read Cathleen’s post, as it apparently takes several hours to read. I skimmed the Inquiry Report, enough to learn that has methodological biases that render it largely useless in my opinion (“Although we reached out to everyone from Leverage 1.0, not everyone chose to speak to us, including those who may have had the worst experiences.”)
I urge anyone who would “like to learn more about what Leverage was like” to read Zoe’s account and the other accounts I link to at the start of this comment instead of or in addition to the material Kerry suggests.