I am making an obvious point that how we treat people who make allegations in one case will affect people’s comfort in another case.
I am not sure what I would conclude if in fact Zoe was glad that Jessica was recieving a negative response, but it would be surprising and interesting, and counter-evidence towards ^
I really doubt that Zoe takes great comfort in seeing other people getting strung up after making allegations.
First, I’m annoyed at the timing of this. The community still seems in the middle of sensemaking around Leverage, and figuring out what to do about it, and this post feels like it pulls the spotlight away.
Yeesh. I don’t think we should police victims’ timing. That seems really evil to me. We should be super skeptical of any attempts to tell people to shut up about their allegations, and “your timing is very insensitive to the real victims” really does not pass the smell test for me.
its a thumbsup emoji on mac OS. 👍
Which thing are you claiming here?
I’m claiming that CFAR representatives did in fact notice bad things happening, and that the continuation of bad things happening was not for lack of noticing. I think that you are pretty familiar with this view.
I don’t wish to be and don’t think I should be one of the main people trying to safeguard victims’ rights; I don’t think I have needed eyes/skill for it. (Separately, I am not putting in the time and effort required to safeguard a community of many hundreds,
I want to point out what is in my mind a clear difference between taking a major role as a safeguard, and failing people who trust you and when the accused confesses to you. You can dispute whether that happened but it’s not as though I am asking you to be held liable for all harms.
I can also paste them in here I guess, although it’s rather personal/detailed stuff about Robert to have on the full-on public googleable internet so maybe I’ll ask his thoughts/preferences first
If you think this guy raped people (with 80% credence or whatever) then you should probably warn people about him (in a public googleable way). If you don’t think so then you can just say so. Basically, it seems like your willingness to publish this stuff should mostly just depend on how harmful you think this person was.
I’m personally not aware of anything you did with respect to Robert that demonstrates intolerance for serious harms. Allowing somebody to continue to be an organizer for something after they confess to rape qualifies as tolerance of serious harms to me.
Of course my comment here seems litigious—I am not really trying to litigate.
In very plain terms: It has been alleged that CFAR leadership knew that Brent and Robert were committing serious harms and at the very least tolerated it. I take these allegations seriously. Anyone who takes these allegations seriously would obviously be troubled by it being taken for granted that community leaders do not even notice harms taking place.
Thanks for this articulate and vulnerable writeup. I do think we might all agree that the experience you are describing seems like a very good description of what somebody in a cult would go through while facing information that would trigger disillusionment.
I am not asserting you are in a cult, maybe I should use more delicate language, but in context I would like to point out this (to me) obvious parallel.
I have thought about this UOC post and it has grown on me.
The fact is that I believe Zoe and I believe her experience is not some sort of anomaly. But I am happy to advocate for her just on principle.
Geoff has much more resources and much at stake. Zoe just has (IMO) the truth and bravery and little to gain but peace. Justice for Geoff just doesn’t need my assistance, but justice for Zoe might.
So I am happy to blindly ally with Zoe and any other victims. And yes I would like others to do the same, and broadcast that we will fight for them. Otherwise they are entering a potentially shitty looking fight with little to gain against somebody with everything to lose.
I don’t demand that no mediation take place, but if I want to plant my flag, that’s my business. It’s not like I am doing anything dishonest in the course of my advocacy.
And to be completely frank, as an advocate for the victims, I don’t really want AnnaSalomon to be one of the major mediators here. I don’t think she’s got a good track record with CFAR stuff at all—I have mentioned Robert Lecnik a few times already.
I think Kelsey’s post is right—mediators need to seem impartial. For me, Anna can’t serve this role. I couldn’t say how representative I am.
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 am sad that you have deleted your original comment because it was my favorite comment in this whole page! Your updated version, by comparison, is much worse (no offense).
Look, I think once you are trying to express the idea “I think you should pay millions of dollars to the people you have very badly harmed”, you should not be so concerned about whether you are doing so in a “hostile” way. I hope we can all appreciate the comedy in this even if you think neutrality is ultimately better.
I agree that your new version is more norm-conformant, but I am curious if you think it is an equally thought-provoking / persuasive / useful presentation of the ideas.
I also think that your new version is inadequate for leaving out the important context that Reserve probably made a lot of money.
while the actual representatives of EA/rationalist community probably don’t even notice that this happens
I think it matters a lot whether this is true, and there is widely known evidence that it isn’t true. For example Brent Dill and (if you are willing to believe victims) Robert Lecnik.
Your post is well said and I am also very worried about EA/rat spaces as a fruitful space for predatory actors.
You can start seeking truth, and pivot to advocate, as UOC says.
The entire thesis of the post is that you want a mixture of advocacy and mediation in the community. So if your proposal is that we all mediate, and then pivot to advocacy, I think that is not at all what UOC says.
Not that I super endorse the prescription / dichotomy that the post makes to begin with.
Thanks. Your comments and mayleaf’s do mean a lot to me. Also, I was surprised by negative reaction to that comment and didn’t really expect it to come off as admonishment or pressure. Love 2 cheerlead \o/
I might suggest creating another post (so as to not interfere too much with this one) detailing what you believe to be the case so that we can discuss and figure out any systematic issues.
Look uhhh I believe at the very least the most basic claims about how Anna handled Robert Lecnik.
I would be quite surprised if the people I would call leaders knew of things that were as severe as Zoe’s account and “did nothing”. I care a lot whether that’s true.
👍 (non sarcastic)
The information in Zoe’s Medium post was significant news to me and others I’ve spoken to.
That’s a good thing to assert.
It seems preeeetty likely that some leaders in the community knew more or less what was up. I want people to care about whether that is true or not.
To do that investigation and postmortem, we can’t skip to sentencing
I get this sentiment, but at the same time I think it’s good to be clear about what is at stake. It’s easy for me to interpret comments like “Reminder that Leverage 1.0 is defunct and it seems very unlikely that the same things are going on with Leverage 2.0” as essentially claiming that, while post-mortems are useful, the situation is behind us.
Simply put, if I were a victim, I would want to speak up for the sake of accountability, not shared examination and learning. If I spoke up and found that everyone agreed the behavior was bad, but we all learned from it and are ready ot move on, I would be pretty upset by that. And my understanding is that this is how the community’s leaders have handled other episodes of abuse (based on 0 private information, only public / second hand information).
But I am coming into this with a lot of assumptions as an outsider. If these assumptions don’t resonate with any people who are closer to the situation then I apologize. Regardless sorry for stirring shit up with not much concrete to say.
I have no private information to share. I think there is an obvious difference between asking powerful people in the community to stand up for the truth, and asking some rando commentator to de-anonymize.
That’s my context. However I agree that my contributions haven’t been very high EV in that I’m very far on the outside of a delicate situation and throwing my weight around. So I won’t keep trying to intervene / subtextually post.
Re: @Ruby on my brusqueness
LW/EA has more “world saving” orgs than just Leverage. Implicit to “world saving” orgs, IMO, is that we should tolerate some impropriety for the greater good. Or that we should handle things quietly in order to not damage the greater mission.
I think that our “world saving” orgs ask a lot of trust from the broader community—MIRI is a very clear example. I’m not really trying to condemn secrecy I am just pointing out that trust is asked of us.
I recognize that this is inflammatory but I don’t see a reason to beat around the bush:
Leverage really seems like a cult. It seems like an unsafe institution doing harmful things. I am not sure how much this stuff about Leverage is really news to people involved in our other “world saving” orgs. I think probably not much. I don’t want “world saving” orgs to have solidarity. If you want my trust you have to sell out the cult leaders, the rapists, etcetera, regardless of whether it might damage your “world saving” mission. I’m not confident that that’s occurring.
Let’s stand up for the truth regardless of threats from Geoff/Leverage, and let’s stand up for the truth regardless of the mob.
I feel like it’s going to be really hard to say anything without people pigeonholing me into belonging to some group that is trying to rewrite the rationality social and political landscape some way.
Let’s stand up for the truth! Maintaining some aura of neutrality or impartiality at the expense of the truth would be IMO quite obviously bad.
I myself have access to some sensitive and somewhat confidential information, and am struggling with navigating exactly which parts are OK to share and which ones are not.
I think that it is seen as not very normative on LW to say “I know things, confidential things I will not share, and because of that I have a very [bad/good] impression of this person or group”. But IMO its important to surface. Vouching is an important social process.
I also sort of don’t expect that much goal divergence on the accountability steps that very-optimistically come after those steps, either, basically because integrity and visible trustworthiness serve most good goals in the long run, and vengeance or temporarily-overextended-trust serves little.
To clarify: goal divergence between whom? Geoff and Zoe? Zoe and me? Me and you?
I hope that other people, when considering whether to come forward with allegations, do not worry about timing or pulling the spotlight away from other victims. Even if they think their allegations might be stupid or low quality (which is in fact a very common fear among victims).