I appreciate hearing clearly what you’d prefer to engage with.
I also feel that this response doesn’t adequately acknowledge how tactically adversarial this context is, and how hard it is to navigate people’s desire for privacy.
( … which makes me feel sad, discouraged, and frustrated. It comes across as “why didn’t you just say X”, when there are in fact strong reasons why I couldn’t “just” say X.)
By “tactically adversarial”, I mean that Geoff has an incredibly strong incentive to suppress clarity, and make life harder for people contributing to clarity. Zoe’s post goes into more detail about specific fears.
By “desire for privacy”, I mean I can’t publicly lay out a legible map of where I got information from, or even make claims that are specific enough that they could’ve only come from one person, because the first-hand sources do not want to be identifiable.
Unlike former members, Pareto fellows, workshop attendees, and other similar commenters here, I did not personally experience anything first-hand that is “truly mine to share”.
It was very difficult for me to create a document that I felt comfortable making public, without feeling I was compromising the identity of any primary source. I had to stick to statements that were so generic and “commonly known” that they could not be traced back to any one person without that person’s express permission.
I agree it’s really hard to engage with such statements. In general it’s really hard to make epistemic headway in an environment in which people fear serious personal repercussions and direct retribution for contributing to clarity.
I, too, find the whole epistemic situation frustrating. Frustration was my personal motivation for creating this document; namely that people I spoke to, who were interacting with Geoff in the present day, were totally unaware of any yellow flags at all around Geoff whatsoever.
My hope is that inch by inch, step by step, more and more truth and clarity can come out, as more and more people become comfortable sharing their personal experience.
I’m very sorry. Despite trying to closely follow this thread, I missed your reply until now.
I also feel that this response doesn’t adequately acknowledge how tactically adversarial this context is, and how hard it is to navigate people’s desire for privacy.
You’re right, it doesn’t. I wasn’t that aware or thinking about those elements as much as I could have been. Sorry for that.
It was very difficult for me to create a document that I felt comfortable making public...
It makes sense now that this is the document you ended up writing. I do appreciate you went to the effort to write up a critical document to bring important concerns. It is valuable and important that people do so.
My hope is that inch by inch, step by step, more and more truth and clarity can come out, as more and more people become comfortable sharing their personal experience.
Hear, hear.
--
If you’ll forgive me suggesting again what you should have written, I’m thinking the adversarial context might have been it. If I had read that you were aware of a number of severe harms that weren’t publicly known, but that you couldn’t say anything more specific because of fears of retribution and the need to protect privacy–that would have been a large and important update to me regarding Leverage. And it might have got a conversation going into the situation to figure out whether and what information was being suppressed.
Thanks, this all helps. At the time, I felt that writing this with the meta-disclosures you’re describing would’ve been a tactical error. But I’ll think on this more; I appreciate the input, it lands better this time.
I did write both “I know former members who feel severely harmed” and “I don’t want to become known as someone saying things this organization might find unflattering”. But those are both very, very understated, and purposefully de-emphasized.
I appreciate hearing clearly what you’d prefer to engage with.
I also feel that this response doesn’t adequately acknowledge how tactically adversarial this context is, and how hard it is to navigate people’s desire for privacy.
( … which makes me feel sad, discouraged, and frustrated. It comes across as “why didn’t you just say X”, when there are in fact strong reasons why I couldn’t “just” say X.)
By “tactically adversarial”, I mean that Geoff has an incredibly strong incentive to suppress clarity, and make life harder for people contributing to clarity. Zoe’s post goes into more detail about specific fears.
By “desire for privacy”, I mean I can’t publicly lay out a legible map of where I got information from, or even make claims that are specific enough that they could’ve only come from one person, because the first-hand sources do not want to be identifiable.
Unlike former members, Pareto fellows, workshop attendees, and other similar commenters here, I did not personally experience anything first-hand that is “truly mine to share”.
It was very difficult for me to create a document that I felt comfortable making public, without feeling I was compromising the identity of any primary source. I had to stick to statements that were so generic and “commonly known” that they could not be traced back to any one person without that person’s express permission.
I agree it’s really hard to engage with such statements. In general it’s really hard to make epistemic headway in an environment in which people fear serious personal repercussions and direct retribution for contributing to clarity.
I, too, find the whole epistemic situation frustrating. Frustration was my personal motivation for creating this document; namely that people I spoke to, who were interacting with Geoff in the present day, were totally unaware of any yellow flags at all around Geoff whatsoever.
My hope is that inch by inch, step by step, more and more truth and clarity can come out, as more and more people become comfortable sharing their personal experience.
I’m very sorry. Despite trying to closely follow this thread, I missed your reply until now.
You’re right, it doesn’t. I wasn’t that aware or thinking about those elements as much as I could have been. Sorry for that.
It makes sense now that this is the document you ended up writing. I do appreciate you went to the effort to write up a critical document to bring important concerns. It is valuable and important that people do so.
Hear, hear.
--
If you’ll forgive me suggesting again what you should have written, I’m thinking the adversarial context might have been it. If I had read that you were aware of a number of severe harms that weren’t publicly known, but that you couldn’t say anything more specific because of fears of retribution and the need to protect privacy–that would have been a large and important update to me regarding Leverage. And it might have got a conversation going into the situation to figure out whether and what information was being suppressed.
But it’s easier to say that in hindsight.
Thanks, this all helps. At the time, I felt that writing this with the meta-disclosures you’re describing would’ve been a tactical error. But I’ll think on this more; I appreciate the input, it lands better this time.
I did write both “I know former members who feel severely harmed” and “I don’t want to become known as someone saying things this organization might find unflattering”. But those are both very, very understated, and purposefully de-emphasized.