I was interviewed by Peter Buckley and Tyler Alterman when I applied for the Pareto fellowship. It was one of the strangest, most uncomfortable experiences I’ve had over several years of being involved in EA. I’m posting this from notes I took right after the call, so I am confident that I remember this accurately.
The first question asked about what I would do if Peter Singer presented me with a great argument for doing an effective thing that’s socially unacceptable. The argument was left as an unspecified black box.
Next, for about 25 minutes, they taught me the technique of “belief reporting”. (See some information here and here). They made me try it out live on the call, for example by making me do “sentence completion”. This made me feel extremely uncomfortable. It seemed like unscientific, crackpot psychology. It was the sort of thing you’d expect from a New Age group or Scientology.
In the second part of the interview (30 minutes?), I was asked to verbalise what my system one believes will happen in the future of humanity. They asked me to just speak freely without thinking, even if it sounds incoherent. Again it felt extremely cultish. I expected this to last max 5 minutes and to form the basis for a subsequent discussion. But they let me ramble on for what felt like an eternity, and there were zero follow up questions. The interview ended immediately.
The experience left me feeling humiliated and manipulated.
I had an interview with them under the same circumstances and also had the belief reporting trial. (I forget if I had the Peter Singer question.) I can confirm that it was supremely disconcerting.
At the very least, it’s insensitive—they were asking for a huge amount of vulnerability and trust in a situation where we both knew I was trying to impress them in a professional context. I sort of understand why that exercise might have seemed like a good idea, but I really hope nobody does this in interviews anymore.
People generally have good reasons for following instructions during fellowship interviews. It’s not unusual to hide your discomfort in a situation with that kind of power imbalance.
The only reason you perceive it as power imbalance is because you treat it as such. You can say you feel uncomfortable if you feel uncomfortable.
Will you do anything they ask of you during an interview? No.
And this is answered with me considering what belief reporting and sentence completion are. Feeling hurt and humiliated from such experience is mind-boggling to me. I can only understand this as someone feeling incapable of expressing their discomfort.
It’s fine to hide your discomfort, but don’t reflect that on the techniques themselves (especially if they were trying to TEACH you something).
Power imbalances are not just all in my head. When you do not have money, and someone with money asks you to do humiliating things to get money, sometimes you do them, even though you don’t want to.
I have no dealings with Leverage and literally no stake in this conversation. But there is definitely a power imbalance between people offering money and people who need money to live.
I was interviewed by Peter Buckley and Tyler Alterman when I applied for the Pareto fellowship. It was one of the strangest, most uncomfortable experiences I’ve had over several years of being involved in EA. I’m posting this from notes I took right after the call, so I am confident that I remember this accurately.
The first question asked about what I would do if Peter Singer presented me with a great argument for doing an effective thing that’s socially unacceptable. The argument was left as an unspecified black box.
Next, for about 25 minutes, they taught me the technique of “belief reporting”. (See some information here and here). They made me try it out live on the call, for example by making me do “sentence completion”. This made me feel extremely uncomfortable. It seemed like unscientific, crackpot psychology. It was the sort of thing you’d expect from a New Age group or Scientology.
In the second part of the interview (30 minutes?), I was asked to verbalise what my system one believes will happen in the future of humanity. They asked me to just speak freely without thinking, even if it sounds incoherent. Again it felt extremely cultish. I expected this to last max 5 minutes and to form the basis for a subsequent discussion. But they let me ramble on for what felt like an eternity, and there were zero follow up questions. The interview ended immediately.
The experience left me feeling humiliated and manipulated.
I had an interview with them under the same circumstances and also had the belief reporting trial. (I forget if I had the Peter Singer question.) I can confirm that it was supremely disconcerting.
At the very least, it’s insensitive—they were asking for a huge amount of vulnerability and trust in a situation where we both knew I was trying to impress them in a professional context. I sort of understand why that exercise might have seemed like a good idea, but I really hope nobody does this in interviews anymore.
You could have always told them you felt uncomfortable, and stopped.
The problem is not belief reporting — the problem is your unwillingness to express your discomfort.
“It felt extremely cultish” is not useful. Belief reporting, on the other hand, is very, very useful if you can get over your sensitivities.
People generally have good reasons for following instructions during fellowship interviews. It’s not unusual to hide your discomfort in a situation with that kind of power imbalance.
(same person as avindroth)
The only reason you perceive it as power imbalance is because you treat it as such. You can say you feel uncomfortable if you feel uncomfortable.
Will you do anything they ask of you during an interview? No.
And this is answered with me considering what belief reporting and sentence completion are. Feeling hurt and humiliated from such experience is mind-boggling to me. I can only understand this as someone feeling incapable of expressing their discomfort.
It’s fine to hide your discomfort, but don’t reflect that on the techniques themselves (especially if they were trying to TEACH you something).
Power imbalances are not just all in my head. When you do not have money, and someone with money asks you to do humiliating things to get money, sometimes you do them, even though you don’t want to.
I have no dealings with Leverage and literally no stake in this conversation. But there is definitely a power imbalance between people offering money and people who need money to live.