I interacted with Leverage some over the years. I felt like they had useful theory and techniques, and was disappointed that it was difficult to get access to their knowledge. I enjoyed their parties. I did a Paradigm workshop. I knew people in Leverage to a casual degree.
What’s live for me now is that when the other recent post about Leverage was published, I was subjected to strong, repeated pressure by someone close to Geoff to have the post marked as flawed, and asked to lean on BayAreaHuman to approximately retract the post or acknowledge its flaws. (This request was made of me in my new capacity as head of LessWrong.) “I will make a fuss” is what I was told. I agreed that the post has flaws (I commented to that effect in the thread) and this made me feel the pressure wasn’t illegitimate despite being unpleasant. Now it seems to be part of a larger concerning pattern.
Further details seem pertinent, but I find myself reluctant to share them (and already apprehensive that this more muted description will have the feared effect) because I just don’t want to damage the relationship I have with the person who was pressuring me. I’m unhappy about it, but I still value that relationship. Heck, I haven’t named them. I should note that this person updated (or began reconsidering their position) after Zoe’s post and has since stopped applying any pressure on me/LessWrong.
With Geoff himself (with whom I personally have had a casual positive relationship) I feel more actual fear of being critical or in anyway taking the side against Leverage. I predict that if I do so, I’ll be placed on the list of adversaries. And something like, just based on the reaction to the Common knowledge post, Leverage is very agenty when it comes to their reputation. Or I don’t know, I don’t fear any particularly terrible retribution myself, but I loathe to make “enemies”.
I’d like to think that I’ve got lots of integrity and will say true things despite pressures and incentives otherwise, but I’m definitely not immune to them.
With Geoff himself (with whom I personally have had a casual positive relationship) I feel more actual fear of being critical or in anyway taking the side against Leverage. I predict that if I do so, I’ll be placed on the list of adversaries. And something like, just based on the reaction to the Common knowledge post, Leverage is very agenty when it comes to their reputation. Or I don’t know, I don’t fear any particularly terrible retribution myself, but I loathe to make “enemies”.
If you do make enemies in this process, in trying to help us make sense of the situation: count me among the people you can call on to help.
Brainstorming more concrete ideas: if someone makes a GoFundMe to try to offset any financial pressure/punishment Leverage-adjacent people might experience from sharing their stories, I’ll be very happy to contribute.
I’m unhappy about it, but I still value that relationship
Positive reinforcement for finding something you could say that (1) protects this sort of value at least somewhat and (2) opens the way for aggregation of the metadata, so to speak; like without your comment, and other hypothetical comments that haven’t happened yet for similar reasons, the pattern could go unnoticed.
I wonder if there’s an extractable social norm / conceptual structure here. Something like separating [the pattern which your friend was participating in] from [your friend as a whole, the person you have a relationship]. Those things aren’t separate exactly, but it feels like it should make sense to think of them separately, e.g. to want to be adversarial towards one but not the other. Like, if there’s a pattern of subtly suppressing certain information or thoughts, that’s adversarial, and we can be agnostic about the structure/location of the agency behind that pattern while still wanting to respond appropriately in the adversarial frame.
I interacted with Leverage some over the years. I felt like they had useful theory and techniques, and was disappointed that it was difficult to get access to their knowledge. I enjoyed their parties. I did a Paradigm workshop. I knew people in Leverage to a casual degree.
What’s live for me now is that when the other recent post about Leverage was published, I was subjected to strong, repeated pressure by someone close to Geoff to have the post marked as flawed, and asked to lean on BayAreaHuman to approximately retract the post or acknowledge its flaws. (This request was made of me in my new capacity as head of LessWrong.) “I will make a fuss” is what I was told. I agreed that the post has flaws (I commented to that effect in the thread) and this made me feel the pressure wasn’t illegitimate despite being unpleasant. Now it seems to be part of a larger concerning pattern.
Further details seem pertinent, but I find myself reluctant to share them (and already apprehensive that this more muted description will have the feared effect) because I just don’t want to damage the relationship I have with the person who was pressuring me. I’m unhappy about it, but I still value that relationship. Heck, I haven’t named them. I should note that this person updated (or began reconsidering their position) after Zoe’s post and has since stopped applying any pressure on me/LessWrong.
With Geoff himself (with whom I personally have had a casual positive relationship) I feel more actual fear of being critical or in anyway taking the side against Leverage. I predict that if I do so, I’ll be placed on the list of adversaries. And something like, just based on the reaction to the Common knowledge post, Leverage is very agenty when it comes to their reputation. Or I don’t know, I don’t fear any particularly terrible retribution myself, but I loathe to make “enemies”.
I’d like to think that I’ve got lots of integrity and will say true things despite pressures and incentives otherwise, but I’m definitely not immune to them.
If you do make enemies in this process, in trying to help us make sense of the situation: count me among the people you can call on to help.
Brainstorming more concrete ideas: if someone makes a GoFundMe to try to offset any financial pressure/punishment Leverage-adjacent people might experience from sharing their stories, I’ll be very happy to contribute.
Positive reinforcement for finding something you could say that (1) protects this sort of value at least somewhat and (2) opens the way for aggregation of the metadata, so to speak; like without your comment, and other hypothetical comments that haven’t happened yet for similar reasons, the pattern could go unnoticed.
I wonder if there’s an extractable social norm / conceptual structure here. Something like separating [the pattern which your friend was participating in] from [your friend as a whole, the person you have a relationship]. Those things aren’t separate exactly, but it feels like it should make sense to think of them separately, e.g. to want to be adversarial towards one but not the other. Like, if there’s a pattern of subtly suppressing certain information or thoughts, that’s adversarial, and we can be agnostic about the structure/location of the agency behind that pattern while still wanting to respond appropriately in the adversarial frame.