I think that you believe, as I do, that there were some high-level structural similarities between the dynamics at MIRI/CFAR and at Leverage, and also what happened at Leverage was an order of magnitude worse than what happened at MIRI/CFAR.
Leverage_2018-2019 sounds considerably worse than Leverage 2013-2016.
My current guess is that if you took a random secular American to be your judge, or a random LWer, and you let them watch the life of a randomly chosen member of the Leverage psychology team from 2018-2019 (which I’m told is the worst part) and also of a randomly chosen staff member at either MIRI or CFAR, they would be at least 10x more horrified by the experience of the one in the Leverage psychology team.
I somehow don’t know how to say in my own person “was an order of magnitude worse”, but I can say the above. The reason I don’t know how to say “was an order of magnitude worse” is because it honestly looks to me (as to Jessica in the OP) like many places are pretty bad for many people, in the sense of degrading their souls via deceptions, manipulations, and other ethical violations. I’m not sure if this view of mine will sound over-the-top/dismissable or we-all-already-know-that/dismissible, or something else, but I have in mind such things as:
It seems to me that many many kids enter school with a desire to learn and an ability to trust their own mind, and leave school with a weird kind of “make sure you don’t get it wrong” that inhibits trying and doing. Some of this is normal aging, but my best guess is that an important chunk is more like cultural damage.
Many teenagers can do philosophy, stretch, try to think about the world. Most of the same folks at 30 or 40 can’t, outside of the ~one specific disciplines in which they’re a professional. They don’t let themselves.
Lots of upper middle class adults hardly know how to have conversations, of the “talk from the person inside who is actually home, asking what they want to know instead of staying safe, hitting new unpredictable thoughts/conversations” sense. This is a change from childhood. Again, this is probably partly aging, but I suspect cultural damage, and I’ve been told a couple times (including by folks who have no contact with Vassar or anyone else in this community) that this is less true for working class folks than for upper middle class folks, which if true is evidence for it being partly cultural damage though I should check this better.
Some staff IMO initially expect that folks at CFAR or Google or the FDA or wherever will be trying to do something real, and then come to later relate to it more like belief-in-belief, and to lots of other things too, with language coming to seem more like a mechanism for coordinating our belief-in-beliefs, and less like light with which one can talk and reason. And with things in general coming to seem kind of remote and as though you can’t really hope for anything real.
Anyhow. This essay wants to be larger than I’m willing to make this comment-reply before sleeping, so I’ll just keep doing it poorly/briefly, and hope to have more conversation later not necessarily under Jessica’s OP. But my best guess is that both CFAR of most of the last ten years, and the average workplace, are:
a) On the one hand, quite a bit less overtly hellish than the Leverage psychology teams of 2018-2019; but nevertheless maybe full of secret bits of despair and giving-up-on bits of our birthrights, in ways that are mostly not consciously noticed;
b) More than 1/10th as damaging to most employees’ basic human capacities, compared to Leverage_2018-2019.
Why do I think b? Partly because of my observations on what happens to people in the broader world (including control groups of folks who do their own thing among good people and end up fine, but I might be rigging my data and playing “no true scottsmen” games to get rid of the rest, and misconstruing natural aging or something). And partly because I chatted with several people in the past week who spent time at Leverage, and they all seemed like they had intact souls, to me, although my soul-ometer is not necessarily that accurate etc.
But, anyhow, I agree that most people would see what you’re saying, I’m just seeing something else and I care about it and I’m sorry if I said it in a confusing/misleading way but it is actually pretty hard to talk about.
These claims seem rather extreme and unsupported to me:
“Lots of upper middle class adults hardly know how to have conversations...”
“the average workplace [is] more than 1/10th as damaging to most employees’ basic human capacities, compared to Leverage_2018-2019.”
I suggest if you write a toplevel post, you search for evidence for/against them.
Elaborating a bit on my reasons for skepticism:
It seems like for the past 10+ years, you’ve been mostly interacting with people in CFAR-adjacent contexts. I’m not sure what your source of knowledge is on “average” upper middle class adults/workplaces. My personal experience is normal people are comfortable having non-superficial conversations if you convince them you aren’t weird first, and normal workplaces are pretty much fine. (I might be overselecting on smaller companies where people have a sense of humor.)
A specific concrete piece of evidence: Joe Rogan has one of the world’s most popular podcasts, and the episodes I’ve heard very much seem to me like they’re “hitting new unpredictable thoughts”. Rogan is notorious for talking to guests about DMT, for instance.
The two observations seems a bit inconsistent, if you’ll grant that working class people generally have worse working conditions than upper middle class people—you’d expect them to experience more workplace abuse and therefore have more trauma. (In which context would an abusive boss be more likely to get called out successfully: a tech company or a restaurant?)
I’ve noticed a pattern where people like Vassar will make extreme claims without much supporting evidence and people will respond with “wow, what an interesting guy” instead of asking for evidence. I’m trying to push back against that.
I can imagine you’d be tempted to rationalize that whatever pathological stuff is/was present at CFAR is also common in the general population / organizations in general.
RE: “Lots of upper middle class adults hardly know how to have conversations...”
I will let Anna speak for herself, but I have evidence of my own to bring… maybe not directly about the thing she’s saying but nearby things.
I have noticed friends who jumped up to upper middle class status due to suddenly coming into a lot of wealth (prob from crypto stuff). I noticed that their conversations got worse (from my POV).
In particular: They were more self-preoccupied. They discussed more banal things. They spent a lot of time optimizing things that mostly seemed trivial to me (like what to have for dinner). When I brought up more worldly topics of conversation, someone expressed a kind of “wow I haven’t thought about the world in such a long time, it’d be nice to think about the world more.” Their tone was a tad wistful and they looked at me like they could learn something from me, but also they weren’t going to try very hard and we both knew it. I felt like they were in a wealth/class bubble that insulated them from many of the world’s problems and suffering. It seemed like they’d lost touch with their real questions and deep inner longings. I don’t think this was as true of them before, but maybe I wasn’t paying sufficient attention before, I dunno.
It’s like their life path switched from ‘seeking’ to ‘maintaining’. They walked far enough, and they picked a nice spot, and now that’s where they at.
I used to work in tech. My coworkers were REALLY preoccupied with trivial things like Pokemon Go, sports, video games, what to eat/drink, new toys and gadgets, how to make more money, Marvel movies, career advancement. Almost to the point of obsession. It was like an adult playground atmosphere… pretty fun, pretty pleasant, and pretty banal. Our job was great. The people were great. The money was great. And I personally had to get the f out of there.
This isn’t to say that they aren’t capable of having ‘real conversations’ about the world at times. But on the day-to-day level, I sensed an overwhelming force trying to keep them from looking at what the world is actually like, the part they’re playing in it, what really matters, etc. It felt like a dream world.
They also tended to have an alcohol or drug ‘habit’ or ‘hobby’ of some kind. Pot or alcohol; take your pick.
My more NY-flavored / finance-or-marketing-or-whatever-flavored friends like to drink, own nice watches, wear nice suits, have nice apartments, etc. Different flavor from the West Coast tech scene, but the same thing going on. They appear happy, happier than before. But also… eh. Their preoccupations again seem not-very-alive and have an artificial smell. They seem a bit blocked from having interesting and life-changing thoughts.
I don’t really judge the people I am talking about. I am sad about the situation but don’t feel like they’re doing something wrong.
I think the upper middle class capitalist dream is not all it is cracked up to be, and I would encourage people to try it out if they want to… but also to get over it once they’re done trying it? It’s nice for a while, and I like my friends having nice things and having money and stuff. But I don’t think it’s very character-building or teaching them new things or answering their most important questions. I also don’t like the way it insulates people from noticing how much death, suffering, and injustice there is going on.
Oh yeah they also spent a lot of time trying to have the right or correct opinions. So they would certainly talk about ‘the world’ but mostly for the sake of having “right opinions” about it. Not so that they could necessarily, like, have insights into it or feel connected to what was happening. It was a game with not very high or real stakes for them. They tended to rehash the SAME arguments over and over with each other.
This all sounds super fascinating to me, but perhaps a new post would be better for this.
My current best guess is that some people are “intrinsically” interested in the world, and for others the interest is only “instrumental”. The intrinsically interested are learning things about the real world because it is fascinating and because it is real. The instrumentally interested are only learning about things they assume might be necessary for satisfying their material needs. Throwing lots of money at them will remove chains from the former, but will turn off the engine for the latter.
For me another shocking thing about people in tech is how few of them are actually interested in the tech. Again, seems to be this intrinsical/instrumental distinction. The former group studies Haskell or design patterns or whatever. The latter group is only interested in things that can currently increase their salary, and even there they are mostly looking for shortcuts. Twenty years ago, programmers were considered nerdy. These days, programmers who care about e.g. clean code are considered too nerdy by most programmers.
I also don’t like the way it insulates people from noticing how much death, suffering, and injustice there is going on.
I often communicate with people outside my bubble, so my personal wealth does not isolate me from hearing about their suffering. If I won a lottery, I would probably spend more time helping people, because that’s the type of thing I sometimes do, and I would now have more free time for that. I would expect this to be even stronger for any effective altruist.
(There is a voice in my head telling me that this all might be a fundamental attribution error, that I am assuming fixed underlying personality traits that only get better expressed as people get rich, and underestimate the effect of the environment, such as peer pressure of other rich people.)
Your next comment (people for whom having “right opinions” is super important) sounds to me like managers. Having an opinion different from other managers is a liability; it signals that you are either not flexible enough or can’t see what your superiors want you to think.
Bit of a nitpick, but FYI I think you’re using “worldly” here in almost the opposite of the way it’s usually used. It seems like you mean “weighty” or “philosophical” or something to do with the big questions in life. Whereas traditionally, the term means:
of or concerned with material values or ordinary life rather than a spiritual existence
On that definition I’d say it was your friends who wanted to talk about worldly stuff, while you wanted to push the conversation in a non-worldly direction! (As I understand, the meaning originally comes from contrasting “the world” and the church.)
Oh, hmmmmm. Sorry for lack of clarity. I don’t remember exactly what the topic I brought up was. I just know it wasn’t very ‘local’. Could have been philosophical / deep. Could have been geopolitical / global / big picture.
I used to think the ability to have deep conversations is an indicator of how “alive” a person is, but now I think that view is wrong. It’s better to look at what the person has done and is doing. Surprisingly there’s little correlation: I often come across people who are very measured in conversation, but turn out to have amazing skills and do amazing things.
Assuming that language is about coordination instead of object level world modeling, why should we be surprised that there’s little correlation between these two very different things?
Because object level world modeling is vastly easier and more unconstrained when you can draw on the sight of other minds, so a live world-modeler who can’t talk to people has something going wrong (whether in them or in the environment).
Leverage_2018-2019 sounds considerably worse than Leverage 2013-2016.
My current guess is that if you took a random secular American to be your judge, or a random LWer, and you let them watch the life of a randomly chosen member of the Leverage psychology team from 2018-2019 (which I’m told is the worst part) and also of a randomly chosen staff member at either MIRI or CFAR, they would be at least 10x more horrified by the experience of the one in the Leverage psychology team.
I somehow don’t know how to say in my own person “was an order of magnitude worse”, but I can say the above. The reason I don’t know how to say “was an order of magnitude worse” is because it honestly looks to me (as to Jessica in the OP) like many places are pretty bad for many people, in the sense of degrading their souls via deceptions, manipulations, and other ethical violations. I’m not sure if this view of mine will sound over-the-top/dismissable or we-all-already-know-that/dismissible, or something else, but I have in mind such things as:
It seems to me that many many kids enter school with a desire to learn and an ability to trust their own mind, and leave school with a weird kind of “make sure you don’t get it wrong” that inhibits trying and doing. Some of this is normal aging, but my best guess is that an important chunk is more like cultural damage.
Many teenagers can do philosophy, stretch, try to think about the world. Most of the same folks at 30 or 40 can’t, outside of the ~one specific disciplines in which they’re a professional. They don’t let themselves.
Lots of upper middle class adults hardly know how to have conversations, of the “talk from the person inside who is actually home, asking what they want to know instead of staying safe, hitting new unpredictable thoughts/conversations” sense. This is a change from childhood. Again, this is probably partly aging, but I suspect cultural damage, and I’ve been told a couple times (including by folks who have no contact with Vassar or anyone else in this community) that this is less true for working class folks than for upper middle class folks, which if true is evidence for it being partly cultural damage though I should check this better.
Some staff IMO initially expect that folks at CFAR or Google or the FDA or wherever will be trying to do something real, and then come to later relate to it more like belief-in-belief, and to lots of other things too, with language coming to seem more like a mechanism for coordinating our belief-in-beliefs, and less like light with which one can talk and reason. And with things in general coming to seem kind of remote and as though you can’t really hope for anything real.
Anyhow. This essay wants to be larger than I’m willing to make this comment-reply before sleeping, so I’ll just keep doing it poorly/briefly, and hope to have more conversation later not necessarily under Jessica’s OP. But my best guess is that both CFAR of most of the last ten years, and the average workplace, are:
a) On the one hand, quite a bit less overtly hellish than the Leverage psychology teams of 2018-2019; but nevertheless maybe full of secret bits of despair and giving-up-on bits of our birthrights, in ways that are mostly not consciously noticed; b) More than 1/10th as damaging to most employees’ basic human capacities, compared to Leverage_2018-2019.
Why do I think b? Partly because of my observations on what happens to people in the broader world (including control groups of folks who do their own thing among good people and end up fine, but I might be rigging my data and playing “no true scottsmen” games to get rid of the rest, and misconstruing natural aging or something). And partly because I chatted with several people in the past week who spent time at Leverage, and they all seemed like they had intact souls, to me, although my soul-ometer is not necessarily that accurate etc.
But, anyhow, I agree that most people would see what you’re saying, I’m just seeing something else and I care about it and I’m sorry if I said it in a confusing/misleading way but it is actually pretty hard to talk about.
Epistemic status of all this: scratchwork, alas.
These claims seem rather extreme and unsupported to me:
“Lots of upper middle class adults hardly know how to have conversations...”
“the average workplace [is] more than 1/10th as damaging to most employees’ basic human capacities, compared to Leverage_2018-2019.”
I suggest if you write a toplevel post, you search for evidence for/against them.
Elaborating a bit on my reasons for skepticism:
It seems like for the past 10+ years, you’ve been mostly interacting with people in CFAR-adjacent contexts. I’m not sure what your source of knowledge is on “average” upper middle class adults/workplaces. My personal experience is normal people are comfortable having non-superficial conversations if you convince them you aren’t weird first, and normal workplaces are pretty much fine. (I might be overselecting on smaller companies where people have a sense of humor.)
A specific concrete piece of evidence: Joe Rogan has one of the world’s most popular podcasts, and the episodes I’ve heard very much seem to me like they’re “hitting new unpredictable thoughts”. Rogan is notorious for talking to guests about DMT, for instance.
The two observations seems a bit inconsistent, if you’ll grant that working class people generally have worse working conditions than upper middle class people—you’d expect them to experience more workplace abuse and therefore have more trauma. (In which context would an abusive boss be more likely to get called out successfully: a tech company or a restaurant?)
I’ve noticed a pattern where people like Vassar will make extreme claims without much supporting evidence and people will respond with “wow, what an interesting guy” instead of asking for evidence. I’m trying to push back against that.
I can imagine you’d be tempted to rationalize that whatever pathological stuff is/was present at CFAR is also common in the general population / organizations in general.
RE: “Lots of upper middle class adults hardly know how to have conversations...”
I will let Anna speak for herself, but I have evidence of my own to bring… maybe not directly about the thing she’s saying but nearby things.
I have noticed friends who jumped up to upper middle class status due to suddenly coming into a lot of wealth (prob from crypto stuff). I noticed that their conversations got worse (from my POV).
In particular: They were more self-preoccupied. They discussed more banal things. They spent a lot of time optimizing things that mostly seemed trivial to me (like what to have for dinner). When I brought up more worldly topics of conversation, someone expressed a kind of “wow I haven’t thought about the world in such a long time, it’d be nice to think about the world more.” Their tone was a tad wistful and they looked at me like they could learn something from me, but also they weren’t going to try very hard and we both knew it. I felt like they were in a wealth/class bubble that insulated them from many of the world’s problems and suffering. It seemed like they’d lost touch with their real questions and deep inner longings. I don’t think this was as true of them before, but maybe I wasn’t paying sufficient attention before, I dunno.
It’s like their life path switched from ‘seeking’ to ‘maintaining’. They walked far enough, and they picked a nice spot, and now that’s where they at.
I used to work in tech. My coworkers were REALLY preoccupied with trivial things like Pokemon Go, sports, video games, what to eat/drink, new toys and gadgets, how to make more money, Marvel movies, career advancement. Almost to the point of obsession. It was like an adult playground atmosphere… pretty fun, pretty pleasant, and pretty banal. Our job was great. The people were great. The money was great. And I personally had to get the f out of there.
This isn’t to say that they aren’t capable of having ‘real conversations’ about the world at times. But on the day-to-day level, I sensed an overwhelming force trying to keep them from looking at what the world is actually like, the part they’re playing in it, what really matters, etc. It felt like a dream world.
They also tended to have an alcohol or drug ‘habit’ or ‘hobby’ of some kind. Pot or alcohol; take your pick.
My more NY-flavored / finance-or-marketing-or-whatever-flavored friends like to drink, own nice watches, wear nice suits, have nice apartments, etc. Different flavor from the West Coast tech scene, but the same thing going on. They appear happy, happier than before. But also… eh. Their preoccupations again seem not-very-alive and have an artificial smell. They seem a bit blocked from having interesting and life-changing thoughts.
I don’t really judge the people I am talking about. I am sad about the situation but don’t feel like they’re doing something wrong.
I think the upper middle class capitalist dream is not all it is cracked up to be, and I would encourage people to try it out if they want to… but also to get over it once they’re done trying it? It’s nice for a while, and I like my friends having nice things and having money and stuff. But I don’t think it’s very character-building or teaching them new things or answering their most important questions. I also don’t like the way it insulates people from noticing how much death, suffering, and injustice there is going on.
Oh yeah they also spent a lot of time trying to have the right or correct opinions. So they would certainly talk about ‘the world’ but mostly for the sake of having “right opinions” about it. Not so that they could necessarily, like, have insights into it or feel connected to what was happening. It was a game with not very high or real stakes for them. They tended to rehash the SAME arguments over and over with each other.
This all sounds super fascinating to me, but perhaps a new post would be better for this.
My current best guess is that some people are “intrinsically” interested in the world, and for others the interest is only “instrumental”. The intrinsically interested are learning things about the real world because it is fascinating and because it is real. The instrumentally interested are only learning about things they assume might be necessary for satisfying their material needs. Throwing lots of money at them will remove chains from the former, but will turn off the engine for the latter.
For me another shocking thing about people in tech is how few of them are actually interested in the tech. Again, seems to be this intrinsical/instrumental distinction. The former group studies Haskell or design patterns or whatever. The latter group is only interested in things that can currently increase their salary, and even there they are mostly looking for shortcuts. Twenty years ago, programmers were considered nerdy. These days, programmers who care about e.g. clean code are considered too nerdy by most programmers.
I often communicate with people outside my bubble, so my personal wealth does not isolate me from hearing about their suffering. If I won a lottery, I would probably spend more time helping people, because that’s the type of thing I sometimes do, and I would now have more free time for that. I would expect this to be even stronger for any effective altruist.
(There is a voice in my head telling me that this all might be a fundamental attribution error, that I am assuming fixed underlying personality traits that only get better expressed as people get rich, and underestimate the effect of the environment, such as peer pressure of other rich people.)
Your next comment (people for whom having “right opinions” is super important) sounds to me like managers. Having an opinion different from other managers is a liability; it signals that you are either not flexible enough or can’t see what your superiors want you to think.
Bit of a nitpick, but FYI I think you’re using “worldly” here in almost the opposite of the way it’s usually used. It seems like you mean “weighty” or “philosophical” or something to do with the big questions in life. Whereas traditionally, the term means:
On that definition I’d say it was your friends who wanted to talk about worldly stuff, while you wanted to push the conversation in a non-worldly direction! (As I understand, the meaning originally comes from contrasting “the world” and the church.)
Oh, hmmmmm. Sorry for lack of clarity. I don’t remember exactly what the topic I brought up was. I just know it wasn’t very ‘local’. Could have been philosophical / deep. Could have been geopolitical / global / big picture.
A couple books suggesting that white collar workplaces are more traumatic than blue collar ones are Moral Mazes (cited by Jessica) and Bullshit Jobs.
I used to think the ability to have deep conversations is an indicator of how “alive” a person is, but now I think that view is wrong. It’s better to look at what the person has done and is doing. Surprisingly there’s little correlation: I often come across people who are very measured in conversation, but turn out to have amazing skills and do amazing things.
Assuming that language is about coordination instead of object level world modeling, why should we be surprised that there’s little correlation between these two very different things?
Because object level world modeling is vastly easier and more unconstrained when you can draw on the sight of other minds, so a live world-modeler who can’t talk to people has something going wrong (whether in them or in the environment).