It was challenging being aware of multiple stories of harm, and feeling compelled to warn people interacting with Geoff, but not wanting to go public with surprising new claims of harm. (I did mention awareness of severe harm very understatedly in the post. I chose instead to focus on “already known” properties that I feel substantially raise the prior on the actually-observed type of harm, and to disclose in the post that my motivation in cherry-picking those statements was to support pattern-matching to a specific template of harm).
After posting, it was emotionally a bit of a drag to receive comments that complained that the information-sharing attempt was not done well enough, and comparatively few comments grateful for attempting to share what I could, as best I could, to the best of my ability at the time, although the upvote patterns felt encouraging. I was pretty much aware that that was what was going to happen. In general, “flinching in anticipation of a high criticism-to-gratitude ratio” is an overall feeling I have when I imagine posting anything on LessWrong.
I was told by friends before posting that I ought to consider the risk to myself and to my contacts of tangible real-world retribution. I don’t have any experience with credible risk of real-world retribution. It feels mind-numbing.
Meta: I haven’t felt fully comfortable describing retribution concerns, including in the post, because I haven’t been able to rule out that revealing the tactical landscape of why I’m sharing or avoiding certain details is simply more information that can be used by Geoff and associates to make life harder for people pursuing clarity. This is easier now that Zoe has written firsthand about specific retribution concerns.
Meta-meta: It doesn’t feel great to talk about all this paranoid adversarial retribution thinking, because I don’t want to contribute to the spread of paranoia and adversarial thinking. It feels contagious. Zoe describes a very paranoid atmosphere within Leverage and among those who left, and I feel that attesting to a strategically-aware disclosure pattern carries that toxic vibe into new contexts.
Since it sounds like just-upvotes might not be as strong a signal of endorsement as positive engagement...
I want to say that I really appreciate and respect that you were willing to come forward, with facts that were broadly-known in your social graph, but had been systematically excluded from most people’s models.
And you were willing to do this, in a pretty adversarial environment! You had to deal with a small invisible intellectual cold-war that ensured, almost alone, without backing down. This counts for even more.
I do have a little bit of sensitive insider information, and on the basis of that: Both your posts and Zoe’s have looked very good-faith to me.
In a lot of places, they accord with or expand on what I know. There are a few parts I was not close enough to confirm, but they have broadly looked right to me.
I also have a deep appreciation, for Zoe calling out that different corners of Leverage had very different experiences with it. Because they did! Not all time-slices or sub-groups within it experienced the same problems.
This is probably part of why it was so easy, to systematically play people’s personal experiences against each other: Since he knew the context through which Leverage was experienced, Geoff or others could systematically bias whose reports were heard.
(Although I think it will be harder in the future to engage in this kind of bullshit, now that a lot of people are aware of the pattern.)
To those who had one of the better firsthand experiences of Leverage:
I am still interested in hearing your bit! But if you are only engaging with this due to an inducement that probably includes a sampling-bias, I appreciate you including that detail.
(And I am glad to see people in this broader thread, being generally open about that detail.)
Meta-meta: It doesn’t feel great to talk about all this paranoid adversarial retribution thinking, because I don’t want to contribute to the spread of paranoia and adversarial thinking. It feels contagious. Zoe describes a very paranoid atmosphere within Leverage and among those who left, and I feel that attesting to a strategically-aware disclosure pattern carries that toxic vibe into new contexts.
I don’t have anything to add, but I just want to say I felt a pronounced pang of warmth/empathy towards you reading this part. Not sure why, something about fear/bravery/aloneless/fog-of-war.
I appreciate this invitation. I’ll re-link to some things I already said on my own stance: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kz9zMgWB5C27Pmdkh/common-knowledge-about-leverage-research-1-0?commentId=2QKKnepsMoZmmhGSe
Beyond what I laid out there:
It was challenging being aware of multiple stories of harm, and feeling compelled to warn people interacting with Geoff, but not wanting to go public with surprising new claims of harm. (I did mention awareness of severe harm very understatedly in the post. I chose instead to focus on “already known” properties that I feel substantially raise the prior on the actually-observed type of harm, and to disclose in the post that my motivation in cherry-picking those statements was to support pattern-matching to a specific template of harm).
After posting, it was emotionally a bit of a drag to receive comments that complained that the information-sharing attempt was not done well enough, and comparatively few comments grateful for attempting to share what I could, as best I could, to the best of my ability at the time, although the upvote patterns felt encouraging. I was pretty much aware that that was what was going to happen. In general, “flinching in anticipation of a high criticism-to-gratitude ratio” is an overall feeling I have when I imagine posting anything on LessWrong.
I was told by friends before posting that I ought to consider the risk to myself and to my contacts of tangible real-world retribution. I don’t have any experience with credible risk of real-world retribution. It feels mind-numbing.
Meta: I haven’t felt fully comfortable describing retribution concerns, including in the post, because I haven’t been able to rule out that revealing the tactical landscape of why I’m sharing or avoiding certain details is simply more information that can be used by Geoff and associates to make life harder for people pursuing clarity. This is easier now that Zoe has written firsthand about specific retribution concerns.
Meta-meta: It doesn’t feel great to talk about all this paranoid adversarial retribution thinking, because I don’t want to contribute to the spread of paranoia and adversarial thinking. It feels contagious. Zoe describes a very paranoid atmosphere within Leverage and among those who left, and I feel that attesting to a strategically-aware disclosure pattern carries that toxic vibe into new contexts.
Since it sounds like just-upvotes might not be as strong a signal of endorsement as positive engagement...
I want to say that I really appreciate and respect that you were willing to come forward, with facts that were broadly-known in your social graph, but had been systematically excluded from most people’s models.
And you were willing to do this, in a pretty adversarial environment! You had to deal with a small invisible intellectual cold-war that ensured, almost alone, without backing down. This counts for even more.
I do have a little bit of sensitive insider information, and on the basis of that: Both your posts and Zoe’s have looked very good-faith to me.
In a lot of places, they accord with or expand on what I know. There are a few parts I was not close enough to confirm, but they have broadly looked right to me.
I also have a deep appreciation, for Zoe calling out that different corners of Leverage had very different experiences with it. Because they did! Not all time-slices or sub-groups within it experienced the same problems.
This is probably part of why it was so easy, to systematically play people’s personal experiences against each other: Since he knew the context through which Leverage was experienced, Geoff or others could systematically bias whose reports were heard.
(Although I think it will be harder in the future to engage in this kind of bullshit, now that a lot of people are aware of the pattern.)
To those who had one of the better firsthand experiences of Leverage:
I am still interested in hearing your bit! But if you are only engaging with this due to an inducement that probably includes a sampling-bias, I appreciate you including that detail.
(And I am glad to see people in this broader thread, being generally open about that detail.)
I don’t have anything to add, but I just want to say I felt a pronounced pang of warmth/empathy towards you reading this part. Not sure why, something about fear/bravery/aloneless/fog-of-war.