I wanted to note that I think this comment both a) raises a good point (should Leverage pay restitution to people that were hurt by it? Why and how much?) and b) does so in a way that I think is hostile and assumes way more buy-in than it has (or would need to get support for its proposal).
First, I think most observers are still in “figuring out what’s happened” mode. Was what happened with Zoe unusually bad or typical, predictable or a surprise? I think it makes sense to hear more stories before jumping to judgment, because the underlying issue isn’t that urgent and the more context, the wiser a decision we can make.
Second, I think a series of leading questions asked to specific people in public looks more like norm enforcement than it does like curious information-gathering, and I think the natural response is suspicion and defensiveness. [I think we should go past the defensiveness and steelman.]
Third, I do think that it makes sense for people to make things right with money when possible; I think that this should be proportional to damages done and expectations of care, rather than just ‘who has the money.’ Suppose, pulling these numbers out of a hat, the total damage done to Leverage employees (as estimated by them) was $1M and the total value of Geoff’s tokens are $10M; the presumption that the tokens should all go to the victims (i.e. that the value of his tokens is equal to the amount of damage done) seems about as detached from reality to me as the assumption that the correct amount of restitution is 0. On a related note, some large amount of the Leverage experience appears to have been self-experimentation; I think the amount we should expect Geoff to be responsible should take into account how much responsibility the participants thought they were taking for themselves (while not just assuming that they were making an informed call and their initial estimate should be our final one).
In retrospect, I apologize for the strident tone and questions in my original comment. I am personally worried about further harm, in uses of money or power by Anders, and from Zoe’s post it seems like there were a handful to many more people hurt. If money or tokens are possibly causally downstream of harm, restitution might reduce further harm and address harm that’s already taken place. The community is doing ongoing information gathering, though, and my personal rush to judgement isn’t keeping in pace with that. I’ll leave my above comment as is, since it’s already received a constructive reply.
Suppose, pulling these numbers out of a hat, the total damage done to Leverage employees (as estimated by them) was $1M and the total value of Geoff’s tokens are $10M; the presumption that the tokens should all go to the victims (i.e. that the value of his tokens is equal to the amount of damage done) seems about as detached from reality to me as the assumption that the correct amount of restitution is 0.
The counter argument would be:
Suppose we do not think it should be profitable to start a cult and get rich. If we enforce the norm “if we find out you started a cult and got rich off it, you only get to be 90% rich instead of 100% rich”, well, that is not very powerful. Maybe the rest should go to actually-effective charity or something.
That said, a norm where we say “you don’t get to be rich anymore” is sort of moot when ultimately Geoff has all the Leverage 🥁💥
I wanted to note that I think this comment both a) raises a good point (should Leverage pay restitution to people that were hurt by it? Why and how much?) and b) does so in a way that I think is hostile and assumes way more buy-in than it has (or would need to get support for its proposal).
First, I think most observers are still in “figuring out what’s happened” mode. Was what happened with Zoe unusually bad or typical, predictable or a surprise? I think it makes sense to hear more stories before jumping to judgment, because the underlying issue isn’t that urgent and the more context, the wiser a decision we can make.
Second, I think a series of leading questions asked to specific people in public looks more like norm enforcement than it does like curious information-gathering, and I think the natural response is suspicion and defensiveness. [I think we should go past the defensiveness and steelman.]
Third, I do think that it makes sense for people to make things right with money when possible; I think that this should be proportional to damages done and expectations of care, rather than just ‘who has the money.’ Suppose, pulling these numbers out of a hat, the total damage done to Leverage employees (as estimated by them) was $1M and the total value of Geoff’s tokens are $10M; the presumption that the tokens should all go to the victims (i.e. that the value of his tokens is equal to the amount of damage done) seems about as detached from reality to me as the assumption that the correct amount of restitution is 0. On a related note, some large amount of the Leverage experience appears to have been self-experimentation; I think the amount we should expect Geoff to be responsible should take into account how much responsibility the participants thought they were taking for themselves (while not just assuming that they were making an informed call and their initial estimate should be our final one).
In retrospect, I apologize for the strident tone and questions in my original comment. I am personally worried about further harm, in uses of money or power by Anders, and from Zoe’s post it seems like there were a handful to many more people hurt. If money or tokens are possibly causally downstream of harm, restitution might reduce further harm and address harm that’s already taken place. The community is doing ongoing information gathering, though, and my personal rush to judgement isn’t keeping in pace with that. I’ll leave my above comment as is, since it’s already received a constructive reply.
I appreciate you addressing Vaniver’s concerns about your comment.
The counter argument would be:
Suppose we do not think it should be profitable to start a cult and get rich. If we enforce the norm “if we find out you started a cult and got rich off it, you only get to be 90% rich instead of 100% rich”, well, that is not very powerful. Maybe the rest should go to actually-effective charity or something.
That said, a norm where we say “you don’t get to be rich anymore” is sort of moot when ultimately Geoff has all the Leverage 🥁💥