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 :)
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 :)