I also agree that intuitively it seems healthy to mostly be focused on object-level stuff. Maybe it’s something to do with getting more direct feedback from reality.
What was the “feedback from reality” that Leverage folks got on their psychological and self-improvement skills? I mean, those were the areas they considered themselves to be experts at; where they believed their techniques were so superior that publishing them would be a potential x-risk.
Reading Cathleen’s article… despite her admiration for Geoff, trying to sping things in positive light, and even shifting the blame on the rationalist community for not being more supportive… the actual data she provides, they really don’t seem to support Leverage’s self-image.
At least my impression is of a group of kids, most of them incapable of tying their own shoes, despite years of continuous self-improvement using secret techniques developed by their philosopher-king. And their psychological research culminated in “intention research”, which apparently made everyone in the group hostile to everyone else, resulting in the entire group falling apart. Like… if this is the best you can do, then maybe this is time to admit that you are utterly incompetent in everything beyond fundraising.
I think a lot of it might have to do with the non-linear way cleanup needs to scale with the number of people. If you have 10x people living in a space, they are probably creating around 10x as much of a mess. And because there are 10x people there are 10x people experiencing the messes. So with the broken glass example, you probably have 10x broken glasses per time period and 10x people wandering about risking to find a small glass shard you missed. So cleaning up a broken glass in a 40-persons household needs to be way more thorough than in a 4 persons household.
(It’s also why using glassware near your personal pool is fine while using glassware near a public pool tends to be prohibited.)
I also agree that intuitively it seems healthy to mostly be focused on object-level stuff. Maybe it’s something to do with getting more direct feedback from reality.
What was the “feedback from reality” that Leverage folks got on their psychological and self-improvement skills? I mean, those were the areas they considered themselves to be experts at; where they believed their techniques were so superior that publishing them would be a potential x-risk.
Reading Cathleen’s article… despite her admiration for Geoff, trying to sping things in positive light, and even shifting the blame on the rationalist community for not being more supportive… the actual data she provides, they really don’t seem to support Leverage’s self-image.
At least my impression is of a group of kids, most of them incapable of tying their own shoes, despite years of continuous self-improvement using secret techniques developed by their philosopher-king. And their psychological research culminated in “intention research”, which apparently made everyone in the group hostile to everyone else, resulting in the entire group falling apart. Like… if this is the best you can do, then maybe this is time to admit that you are utterly incompetent in everything beyond fundraising.
There’s no reason to make an insult like that.
How about, “incapable of cleaning up after dropping a glass”?
(Not trying to be mean; I was very surprised to read that this was the kind of thing they relied on Cathleen for)
I think a lot of it might have to do with the non-linear way cleanup needs to scale with the number of people. If you have 10x people living in a space, they are probably creating around 10x as much of a mess. And because there are 10x people there are 10x people experiencing the messes. So with the broken glass example, you probably have 10x broken glasses per time period and 10x people wandering about risking to find a small glass shard you missed. So cleaning up a broken glass in a 40-persons household needs to be way more thorough than in a 4 persons household.
(It’s also why using glassware near your personal pool is fine while using glassware near a public pool tends to be prohibited.)