I was in charge of the EAO team when two members of my team initially conceptualized Pareto, but mid-way through EAO merged into the rest of CEA , and Will was in charge. Will was responsible for fundraising for Pareto, and he signed off on having it at the 454 building (where many of Leverage’s staff were located).
The interview process seems to have been the most problematic part of Pareto and was presumably designed by your team members who ran the project. Who should have nipped that in the bud? If Will didn’t take over until mid-way, would that have been your responsibility? Are you aware of any accountability for anyone involved in the creation or oversight of the interview process?
When Will signed off on having Pareto at the Leverage building, was he aware participants wouldn’t be informed about this?
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Pareto was overall culty or anything like that. I’ve seen the post-program evaluations, and they seem to have been pretty good overall, with high ratings given to much of the content taught by Leverage and Paradigm staff.
Were fellows anonymous when submitting their evaluations and confident that their evaluations could not be traced back to them? I imagine they’d have been reluctant to criticize the program (and by extension highly influential EAs involved including yourself) if they could not be completely confident in their anonymity. I’d also note that the fellows likely had very high thresholds for cultyness given that they weren’t turned off by the interview process.
I imagine the fellowship itself was less culty than the interview process (a pretty low bar). As to how culty it was, I’d say that depends to some degree on how culty one thinks Leverage was at the time since Barnes also noted: “Several fellows ended up working for Leverage afterwards; the whole thing felt like a bit of a recruiting drive.”
Zoe’s account (and other accounts described here and here) certainly make Leverage sound quite culty. That would be consistent with my own interactions with Leverage (admittedly quite limited); I remember coming out of those interactions feeling like I’d never encountered a community that (in my subjective opinion based on limited data) emitted such strong culty vibes, and that nothing come particularly close.
Also, many of the Pareto Fellows went on to do important work in and around the EA community.
I don’t doubt at all that many Pareto Fellows went on to do great work. Given the caliber and background of the people who participated, it would be weird if they didn’t. But I’m not aware of any evidence that Pareto positively contributed to their impact.
For the record, while I’m highly critical of the Pareto Fellowship as a program, those criticisms do not extend to the Fellows themselves.
The interview process seems to have been the most problematic part of Pareto and was presumably designed by your team members who ran the project. Who should have nipped that in the bud? If Will didn’t take over until mid-way, would that have been your responsibility? Are you aware of any accountability for anyone involved in the creation or oversight of the interview process?
When Will signed off on having Pareto at the Leverage building, was he aware participants wouldn’t be informed about this?
Were fellows anonymous when submitting their evaluations and confident that their evaluations could not be traced back to them? I imagine they’d have been reluctant to criticize the program (and by extension highly influential EAs involved including yourself) if they could not be completely confident in their anonymity. I’d also note that the fellows likely had very high thresholds for cultyness given that they weren’t turned off by the interview process.
Since CEA never shared the program evaluations (nor published its own evaluation despite commitments to do so), I feel like the most credible publicly available assessment is Beth Barnes’ (one of the Fellows) observation that “I think most fellows felt that it was really useful in various ways but also weird and sketchy and maybe harmful in various other ways.”
I imagine the fellowship itself was less culty than the interview process (a pretty low bar). As to how culty it was, I’d say that depends to some degree on how culty one thinks Leverage was at the time since Barnes also noted: “Several fellows ended up working for Leverage afterwards; the whole thing felt like a bit of a recruiting drive.”
Zoe’s account (and other accounts described here and here) certainly make Leverage sound quite culty. That would be consistent with my own interactions with Leverage (admittedly quite limited); I remember coming out of those interactions feeling like I’d never encountered a community that (in my subjective opinion based on limited data) emitted such strong culty vibes, and that nothing come particularly close.
I don’t doubt at all that many Pareto Fellows went on to do great work. Given the caliber and background of the people who participated, it would be weird if they didn’t. But I’m not aware of any evidence that Pareto positively contributed to their impact.
For the record, while I’m highly critical of the Pareto Fellowship as a program, those criticisms do not extend to the Fellows themselves.