Note: I was previously CEO of CEA, but stepped down from that role about 9 months ago.
I’ve long been confused about the reputation Leverage has in the EA community. After hearing lots of conflicting reports, both extremely positive and negative, I decided to investigate a little myself. As a result, I’ve had multiple conversations with Geoff, and attended a training weekend run by Paradigm. I can understand why many people get a poor impression, and question the validity of their early stage research. I think that in the past, Leverage has done a poor job communicating their mission, and relationship to the EA movement. I’d like to see Leverage continue to improve transparency, and am pleased with Geoff’s comments below.
Despite some initial hesitation, I found the Paradigm training I attended surprisingly useful, perhaps even more so than the CFAR workshop I attended. The workshop was competently run, and content was delivered in a polished fashion. I didn’t go in expecting the content to be scientifically rigorous, most self improvement content isn’t. It was fun, engaging, and useful enough to justify the time spent.
Paradigm is now running the EA summit. I know Mindy and Peter, some of the key organisers, through their long standing contributions to EA. They were both involved in running a successful student group, and Peter worked at CEA, helping us to organise EAG 2015. I believe that Mindy and Peter are dedicated EAs, who decided to organise this event because they would really like to see more focus on movement building in the EA community.
I’ve been wanting to see new and more movement building focused activities in EA. CEA can’t do it all alone, and I generally support people in the EA community attempting ambitious movement building projects. Given this, and my positive experience attending an event put on by Paradigm, I decided to provide some funding for the EA Summit personally.
I don’t think that Leverage, Paradigm or related projects are good use of EA time or money, but I do think the level of hostility towards them I’ve seen in this community is unwarranted, and I’d like to see us do better.
I don’t think that Leverage, Paradigm or related projects are good use of EA time or money
Found this surprising given the positive valence of the rest of the comment. Could you expand a little on why you don’t think Leverage et al. are a good use of time/money?
I think their approach is highly speculative, even if you were to agree with their overall plan. I think Leverage has contributed to EA in the past, and I expect them to continue doing so, but this alone isn’t enough to make them a better donation target than orgs like CEA or 80K.
I’m glad they exist, and hope they continue to exist, I just don’t think Leverage or Paradigm are the most effective things I could be doing with my money or time. I feel similarly about CFAR. Supporting movement building and long-termism is already meta enough for me.
Interesting. I don’t usually conflate “good use” with “most effective use.”
Seems like “not a good use” means something like “this project shouldn’t be associated with EA.”
Whereas “not the most effective use” means something like “this project isn’t my best-guess about how to do good, but it’s okay to be associated with EA.”
Perhaps this is just semantics, but I’m genuinely not sure which sense you intend.
By this what I expect Tara means is in reference to the fact Leverage Research has historically solicited all their funding from major private donors such as Peter Thiel as of a few years ago, and in the intervening years, I assume other philanthropists. Leverage both associates with EA, and appreciate what EA as a movement has done to see Leverage, just as what Leverage has done to help build up EA is appreciated, as others have expressed in the other comments on the original post.
Due to, as Geoff Anders pointed out in his own comment response, that Leverage works in the same spirit of EA but with higher-variance than the EA movement has been, as an organization Leverage works on projects other EA organizations while signaling that their stark difference from the rest of EA is non-threatening by not soliciting donations from the EA community at large. When I met Geoff Anders in person in 2014, he explained to me this is the case for Leverage’s profile within EA, and this is part of the rationale Leverage also uses to privately court funding for their operations. As of 2014, the donor in question was Peter Thiel, who I’m presuming provided enough funding at the time for Leverage, they weren’t in need to seek other donors. Since then, I haven’t in direct communication with Geoff nor Leverage. So I don’t know who, Peter Thiel or who else, is funding Leverage Research. But between my own impressions, and the anecdata provided in this thread, I presume Leverage continues to privately secure all the funding they need while occasionally partnering with EA(-adjacent) organizations on projects related to startups and the long-term future, as they have in the past.
Before Paradigm was officially a distinct organization from Leverage, as Leverage was incubating Paradigm at the time, they received their funding from the same source. I’m aware for their clients who aren’t effective altruists, Paradigm charges for some of their workshops, and does consultancy for for-profit startups and their founders in the Bay Area. This is a source of income for Paradigm I understand they use for their other projects, including providing free or discounted workshops to effective altruists. Between these things, I assume Paradigm doesn’t intend for the indefinite future to publicly solicit funding from the EA community at large, either.
I assume this is what Tara meant by Leverage, Paradigm and related project not being a good use of EA money. This reaffirms the impression that Leverage doesn’t seek donations from individual effective altruists, not in an attempt to deceive the community in any way, but to signal respect for the epistemic differences between Leverage and the EA movement at large, while collaboration between Leverage and EA organizations continues.
I don’t know what Tara means by Leverage, Paradigm or related projects not being a good use of EA time. I’m assuming she is reaffirming the public impression Leverage their executive director, Geoff Anders, provided in his own comment response to the original post. That is, while individual effective altruists who staff Leverage or Paradigm are in their free time working for the organizations (similar to how Google famously provides their software engineers with 10% free time to develop projects as they see fit, resulting in products like Gmail), effective altruists who don’t independent of their association with EA consider Leverage in the range of effectiveness as the charities EAs typically donate to should not presume Leverage promises or solicits to use EA time and money on EA lines. This is consistent with much the same Geoff mentioned in his own comment.
I’ve long been confused about the reputation Leverage has in the EA community. After hearing lots of conflicting reports, both extremely positive and negative, I decided to investigate a little myself. As a result, I’ve had multiple conversations with Geoff, and attended a training weekend run by Paradigm. I can understand why many people get a poor impression, and question the validity of their early stage research. I think that in the past, Leverage has done a poor job communicating their mission, and relationship to the EA movement. I’d like to see Leverage continue to improve transparency, and am pleased with Geoff’s comments below.
As someone whose experience as an outsider from Leverage, who has not done paid for any EA organizations in the past, is similar to Tara’s, I can corroborate her impression. I’ve not been in the Bay Area or had a volunteer or personal association with any EA organizations located there since 2014. Thus, my own investigation was from afar, following the spread-out info on Leverage available online, including past posts regarding Leverage on LW and the EA Forum, and online conversations with former staff, interns and visitors to Leverage Research. The impression I got from what is probably a very different data-set than Tara’s is virtually identical. Thus, I endorse as a robust yet fair characterization of Leverage Research.
Despite some initial hesitation, I found the Paradigm training I attended surprisingly useful, perhaps even more so than the CFAR workshop I attended. The workshop was competently run, and content was delivered in a polished fashion. I didn’t go in expecting the content to be scientifically rigorous, most self improvement content isn’t. It was fun, engaging, and useful enough to justify the time spent.
I’ve also heard from several CFAR workshop alumni myself they found the Paradigm training they received more useful than the CFAR workshop they attended as well. A couple of them also noted their surprise at this impression, given their trepidation knowing Paradigm sprouted from Leverage, what with their past reputation. A confounding factor in these anecdotes would be the CFAR workshops my friends and acquaintances had attended were from a few years ago, in which time those same people revisiting CFAR, and more recent CFAR workshop alumni, remark how different and superior to their earlier workshops CFAR’s more recent ones have been. Nonetheless, the impression I’ve received is nearly unanimous positive experiences at Paradigm workshops from attendees part of the EA movement, competitive in quality with CFAR workshops, which has years of troubleshooting and experience on Paradigm.
I’ve been wanting to see new and more movement building focused activities in EA. CEA can’t do it all alone, and I generally support people in the EA community attempting ambitious movement building projects. Given this, and my positive experience attending an event put on by Paradigm, I decided to provide some funding for the EA Summit personally.
I want to clarify the CEA has not been alone in movement-building activities, and the CEA itself has ongoing associations with the Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN) and the Effective Altruism Foundation out of the German-speaking EA world on movement-building activities. Paradigm Academy’s staff, in seeking to kickstart grassroots movement-building efforts in EA, are aware of this, as LEAN is a participating organization in EA as well. Additionally, while Charity Science (CS) has typically been and has streamlined their focus on direct global poverty interventions, their initial incubation and association with Rethink Charity and LEAN, as well as their recent foray into cause-neutral effective charity incubation, could arguably qualify them as focused on EA movement-building as well.
This is my conjecture based on where it seems CS is headed. I haven’t asked them, and I recommend anyone curious ask CS themselves if they identify movement-building as part of their current activities in EA. I bring this up as relevant because CS is also officially participating in the EA Summit.
Also, Tara, thanks for providing funding for this event :)
Note: I was previously CEO of CEA, but stepped down from that role about 9 months ago.
I’ve long been confused about the reputation Leverage has in the EA community. After hearing lots of conflicting reports, both extremely positive and negative, I decided to investigate a little myself. As a result, I’ve had multiple conversations with Geoff, and attended a training weekend run by Paradigm. I can understand why many people get a poor impression, and question the validity of their early stage research. I think that in the past, Leverage has done a poor job communicating their mission, and relationship to the EA movement. I’d like to see Leverage continue to improve transparency, and am pleased with Geoff’s comments below.
Despite some initial hesitation, I found the Paradigm training I attended surprisingly useful, perhaps even more so than the CFAR workshop I attended. The workshop was competently run, and content was delivered in a polished fashion. I didn’t go in expecting the content to be scientifically rigorous, most self improvement content isn’t. It was fun, engaging, and useful enough to justify the time spent.
Paradigm is now running the EA summit. I know Mindy and Peter, some of the key organisers, through their long standing contributions to EA. They were both involved in running a successful student group, and Peter worked at CEA, helping us to organise EAG 2015. I believe that Mindy and Peter are dedicated EAs, who decided to organise this event because they would really like to see more focus on movement building in the EA community.
I’ve been wanting to see new and more movement building focused activities in EA. CEA can’t do it all alone, and I generally support people in the EA community attempting ambitious movement building projects. Given this, and my positive experience attending an event put on by Paradigm, I decided to provide some funding for the EA Summit personally.
I don’t think that Leverage, Paradigm or related projects are good use of EA time or money, but I do think the level of hostility towards them I’ve seen in this community is unwarranted, and I’d like to see us do better.
Found this surprising given the positive valence of the rest of the comment. Could you expand a little on why you don’t think Leverage et al. are a good use of time/money?
I think their approach is highly speculative, even if you were to agree with their overall plan. I think Leverage has contributed to EA in the past, and I expect them to continue doing so, but this alone isn’t enough to make them a better donation target than orgs like CEA or 80K.
I’m glad they exist, and hope they continue to exist, I just don’t think Leverage or Paradigm are the most effective things I could be doing with my money or time. I feel similarly about CFAR. Supporting movement building and long-termism is already meta enough for me.
Interesting. I don’t usually conflate “good use” with “most effective use.”
Seems like “not a good use” means something like “this project shouldn’t be associated with EA.”
Whereas “not the most effective use” means something like “this project isn’t my best-guess about how to do good, but it’s okay to be associated with EA.”
Perhaps this is just semantics, but I’m genuinely not sure which sense you intend.
By this what I expect Tara means is in reference to the fact Leverage Research has historically solicited all their funding from major private donors such as Peter Thiel as of a few years ago, and in the intervening years, I assume other philanthropists. Leverage both associates with EA, and appreciate what EA as a movement has done to see Leverage, just as what Leverage has done to help build up EA is appreciated, as others have expressed in the other comments on the original post.
Due to, as Geoff Anders pointed out in his own comment response, that Leverage works in the same spirit of EA but with higher-variance than the EA movement has been, as an organization Leverage works on projects other EA organizations while signaling that their stark difference from the rest of EA is non-threatening by not soliciting donations from the EA community at large. When I met Geoff Anders in person in 2014, he explained to me this is the case for Leverage’s profile within EA, and this is part of the rationale Leverage also uses to privately court funding for their operations. As of 2014, the donor in question was Peter Thiel, who I’m presuming provided enough funding at the time for Leverage, they weren’t in need to seek other donors. Since then, I haven’t in direct communication with Geoff nor Leverage. So I don’t know who, Peter Thiel or who else, is funding Leverage Research. But between my own impressions, and the anecdata provided in this thread, I presume Leverage continues to privately secure all the funding they need while occasionally partnering with EA(-adjacent) organizations on projects related to startups and the long-term future, as they have in the past.
Before Paradigm was officially a distinct organization from Leverage, as Leverage was incubating Paradigm at the time, they received their funding from the same source. I’m aware for their clients who aren’t effective altruists, Paradigm charges for some of their workshops, and does consultancy for for-profit startups and their founders in the Bay Area. This is a source of income for Paradigm I understand they use for their other projects, including providing free or discounted workshops to effective altruists. Between these things, I assume Paradigm doesn’t intend for the indefinite future to publicly solicit funding from the EA community at large, either.
I assume this is what Tara meant by Leverage, Paradigm and related project not being a good use of EA money. This reaffirms the impression that Leverage doesn’t seek donations from individual effective altruists, not in an attempt to deceive the community in any way, but to signal respect for the epistemic differences between Leverage and the EA movement at large, while collaboration between Leverage and EA organizations continues.
I don’t know what Tara means by Leverage, Paradigm or related projects not being a good use of EA time. I’m assuming she is reaffirming the public impression Leverage their executive director, Geoff Anders, provided in his own comment response to the original post. That is, while individual effective altruists who staff Leverage or Paradigm are in their free time working for the organizations (similar to how Google famously provides their software engineers with 10% free time to develop projects as they see fit, resulting in products like Gmail), effective altruists who don’t independent of their association with EA consider Leverage in the range of effectiveness as the charities EAs typically donate to should not presume Leverage promises or solicits to use EA time and money on EA lines. This is consistent with much the same Geoff mentioned in his own comment.
As someone whose experience as an outsider from Leverage, who has not done paid for any EA organizations in the past, is similar to Tara’s, I can corroborate her impression. I’ve not been in the Bay Area or had a volunteer or personal association with any EA organizations located there since 2014. Thus, my own investigation was from afar, following the spread-out info on Leverage available online, including past posts regarding Leverage on LW and the EA Forum, and online conversations with former staff, interns and visitors to Leverage Research. The impression I got from what is probably a very different data-set than Tara’s is virtually identical. Thus, I endorse as a robust yet fair characterization of Leverage Research.
I’ve also heard from several CFAR workshop alumni myself they found the Paradigm training they received more useful than the CFAR workshop they attended as well. A couple of them also noted their surprise at this impression, given their trepidation knowing Paradigm sprouted from Leverage, what with their past reputation. A confounding factor in these anecdotes would be the CFAR workshops my friends and acquaintances had attended were from a few years ago, in which time those same people revisiting CFAR, and more recent CFAR workshop alumni, remark how different and superior to their earlier workshops CFAR’s more recent ones have been. Nonetheless, the impression I’ve received is nearly unanimous positive experiences at Paradigm workshops from attendees part of the EA movement, competitive in quality with CFAR workshops, which has years of troubleshooting and experience on Paradigm.
I want to clarify the CEA has not been alone in movement-building activities, and the CEA itself has ongoing associations with the Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN) and the Effective Altruism Foundation out of the German-speaking EA world on movement-building activities. Paradigm Academy’s staff, in seeking to kickstart grassroots movement-building efforts in EA, are aware of this, as LEAN is a participating organization in EA as well. Additionally, while Charity Science (CS) has typically been and has streamlined their focus on direct global poverty interventions, their initial incubation and association with Rethink Charity and LEAN, as well as their recent foray into cause-neutral effective charity incubation, could arguably qualify them as focused on EA movement-building as well.
This is my conjecture based on where it seems CS is headed. I haven’t asked them, and I recommend anyone curious ask CS themselves if they identify movement-building as part of their current activities in EA. I bring this up as relevant because CS is also officially participating in the EA Summit.
Also, Tara, thanks for providing funding for this event :)