The most directly ‘damning’ thing, as far as I can tell, is Geoff pressuring people to sign NDAs.
I received an email from a Paradigm board member on behalf of Paradigm and Leverage that aims to provide some additional clarity on the information-sharing situation here. Since the email specifies that it can be shared, I’ve uploaded it to my Google Drive (with some names and email addresses redacted). You can view it here.
[Disclosure: I work at Leverage, but did not work at Leverage during Leverage 1.0. I’m sharing this email in a personal rather than a professional capacity.]
I believe this is public information if I look for your 990s, but could you or someone list the Board members of Leverage / Paradigm, including changes over time?
I don’t know how realistic this worry is, but I’m a bit worried about scenarios like:
A signatory doesn’t share important-to-share info because they interpret the lnformation Arrangement doc (even with the added comments) as too constraining.
My sense is that there’s still a lot of ambiguity about exactly how to interpret parts of the agreement? And although the doc says it “is meant to be based on norms of good behavior in society” I don’t see a clause explicitly allowing people’s personal consciences to supersede the agreement. (I might just have missed it.)
Or: A signatory doesn’t share important-to-share info because they see the original agreement as binding, not the new “clarifications and perspective today” comments.
(I don’t know how scrupulous ex-Leveragers are about sticking to signed informal agreements, but if the agreement has moral force, I could imagine some people going ‘the author can’t arbitrarily reinterpret the agreement post facto, when the agreement didn’t specify that you have this power’.
Indeed, signing a document with binding moral force seems pretty risky to me if the author has lots of leeway to later reinterpret what parts of the agreement mean. But maybe I’m misunderstanding the social context or ethical orientation of the Leveragers—I might be reading the agreement way more strictly than anyone construed it at the time.)
Is there any reason not to just say something like ‘to the extent we have the power to void this agreement, the whole agreement is now void’? People could then still listen to their consciences, and your recommendations, about what to do next; but I’d be less worried anyone feels constrained by having signed the thing. I don’t know the late-Leverage-1.0 people well, but I currently have more faith in y’alls moral judgment than in your moral-judgment-constrained-by-this-verbal-commitment.
The main reason I could imagine it being bad to say ‘this is void now’ is if there’s an ex-Leverager you think is super irresponsible, but who you convinced to sign the agreement—someone who you’d expect to make terrible reckless decisions if they weren’t bound by the thing.
But in that case I’d still think it makes sense to void the agreement for the people who are basically sensible and well-intentioned, which is hopefully just about everyone.
I don’t see a clause explicitly allowing people’s personal consciences to supersede the agreement. (I might just have missed it.)
It seems to me “this is not a legal agreement” is basically such a clause.
The main reason I could imagine it being bad to say ‘this is void now’ is if there’s an ex-Leverager you think is super irresponsible, but who you convinced to sign the agreement—someone who you’d expect to make terrible reckless decisions if they weren’t bound by the thing.
It seems that at the end of Leverage 1.0 groups were in conflict. There’s a strong interest in that conflict not playing out in a way where different people publish private information of each other and then retaliate in kind.
It might very well be that plenty of the ex-Leverages don’t speak out because they are afraid that private information about them will be openly published in retaliation if they do.
Or: A signatory doesn’t share important-to-share info because they see the original agreement as binding, not the new “clarifications and perspective today” comments.
Given that there’s a section of (10) Expected lessening it seems strange to me to see the original agreement as infinitely binding.
• Expect that the overall need for share restrictions will diminish, and that as a result we will wind down share restrictions over time, while still maintaining protection of sensitive information and people’s privacy
• If anyone concludes in the future that stronger information management is required, they should make efforts to educate others themselves, and should expect that that might be covered by some future arrangement, not this one
[...] The most important thing we want to clarify is that as far as we are concerned, at least, individuals should feel free to share their experiences or criticise Geoff or the organisations.
[… T]his document was never legally binding, was only signed by just over half of you, and almost none of you are current employees, so you are under no obligation to follow this document or the clarified interpretation here. [...]
I’m really happy to see this! Though I was momentarily confused by the “so” here—why would there be less moral obligation to uphold an agreement, just because the agreement isn’t legally binding, some other people involved didn’t sign it, and the signatory has switched jobs? Were those stipulated as things that would void the agreement?
My current interpretation is that Matt’s trying to say something more like ‘We never took this agreement super seriously and didn’t expect you to take it super seriously either, given the wording; we just wanted it as a temporary band-aid in the immediate aftermath of Leverage 1.0 dissolving, to avoid anyone taking hasty action while tensions were still high. Here’s a bunch of indirect signs that the agreement is no big deal and doesn’t have moral force years later in a very different context: (blah).’ It’s Bayesian evidence that the agreement is no big deal, not a deductive proof that the agreement is ~void. Is that right?
I received an email from a Paradigm board member on behalf of Paradigm and Leverage that aims to provide some additional clarity on the information-sharing situation here. Since the email specifies that it can be shared, I’ve uploaded it to my Google Drive (with some names and email addresses redacted). You can view it here.
The email also links to the text of the information-sharing agreement in question with some additional annotations.
[Disclosure: I work at Leverage, but did not work at Leverage during Leverage 1.0. I’m sharing this email in a personal rather than a professional capacity.]
I do applaud explicitely clarifying that people are free to share their own experiences.
Thanks for sharing this. !
I believe this is public information if I look for your 990s, but could you or someone list the Board members of Leverage / Paradigm, including changes over time?
I don’t know how realistic this worry is, but I’m a bit worried about scenarios like:
A signatory doesn’t share important-to-share info because they interpret the lnformation Arrangement doc (even with the added comments) as too constraining.
My sense is that there’s still a lot of ambiguity about exactly how to interpret parts of the agreement? And although the doc says it “is meant to be based on norms of good behavior in society” I don’t see a clause explicitly allowing people’s personal consciences to supersede the agreement. (I might just have missed it.)
Or: A signatory doesn’t share important-to-share info because they see the original agreement as binding, not the new “clarifications and perspective today” comments.
(I don’t know how scrupulous ex-Leveragers are about sticking to signed informal agreements, but if the agreement has moral force, I could imagine some people going ‘the author can’t arbitrarily reinterpret the agreement post facto, when the agreement didn’t specify that you have this power’.
Indeed, signing a document with binding moral force seems pretty risky to me if the author has lots of leeway to later reinterpret what parts of the agreement mean. But maybe I’m misunderstanding the social context or ethical orientation of the Leveragers—I might be reading the agreement way more strictly than anyone construed it at the time.)
Is there any reason not to just say something like ‘to the extent we have the power to void this agreement, the whole agreement is now void’? People could then still listen to their consciences, and your recommendations, about what to do next; but I’d be less worried anyone feels constrained by having signed the thing. I don’t know the late-Leverage-1.0 people well, but I currently have more faith in y’alls moral judgment than in your moral-judgment-constrained-by-this-verbal-commitment.
The main reason I could imagine it being bad to say ‘this is void now’ is if there’s an ex-Leverager you think is super irresponsible, but who you convinced to sign the agreement—someone who you’d expect to make terrible reckless decisions if they weren’t bound by the thing.
But in that case I’d still think it makes sense to void the agreement for the people who are basically sensible and well-intentioned, which is hopefully just about everyone.
It seems to me “this is not a legal agreement” is basically such a clause.
It seems that at the end of Leverage 1.0 groups were in conflict. There’s a strong interest in that conflict not playing out in a way where different people publish private information of each other and then retaliate in kind.
It might very well be that plenty of the ex-Leverages don’t speak out because they are afraid that private information about them will be openly published in retaliation if they do.
Given that there’s a section of (10) Expected lessening it seems strange to me to see the original agreement as infinitely binding.
I’m really happy to see this! Though I was momentarily confused by the “so” here—why would there be less moral obligation to uphold an agreement, just because the agreement isn’t legally binding, some other people involved didn’t sign it, and the signatory has switched jobs? Were those stipulated as things that would void the agreement?
My current interpretation is that Matt’s trying to say something more like ‘We never took this agreement super seriously and didn’t expect you to take it super seriously either, given the wording; we just wanted it as a temporary band-aid in the immediate aftermath of Leverage 1.0 dissolving, to avoid anyone taking hasty action while tensions were still high. Here’s a bunch of indirect signs that the agreement is no big deal and doesn’t have moral force years later in a very different context: (blah).’ It’s Bayesian evidence that the agreement is no big deal, not a deductive proof that the agreement is ~void. Is that right?