Geoff,

Of course you and I are pursuing many of the same goals and we have come to many shared conclusions, though our methodologies seem quite different to me, and our models of the human mind are quite different. I take myself to be an epistemic Bayesian and (last I heard) you take yourself to be an epistemic Cartesian. You say things like "Philosophically, there is no known connection between simplicity... and truth," while I take Occam's razor (aka Solomonoff's lightsaber) very seriously. My model of the human mind ignores philosophy almost completely and is instead grounded in the hundreds of messy details from current neuroscience and psychology, while your work on Connection Theory cites almost no cognitive science and instead appears to be motivated by folk psychology, philosophical considerations, and personal anecdote. I place a pretty high probability on physicalism being true (taking "physicalism" to include radical platonism), but you say here that "it follows [from physicalism] that Connection Theory, as stated, is false," but that some variations of CT may still be correct.

Why bring this up? I suspect many LWers are excited (like me) to see another organization working on (among other things) x-risk reduction and rationality training, especially one packed with LW members. But I also suspect many LWers (like me) have many concerns about your research methodology and about connection theory. I think this would be a good place for you to not just introduce yourself (and Leverage Research) but also to address some likely concerns your potential supporters may have (like I did for SI here and here).

For example:

• Is my first paragraph above accurate? Which corrections, qualifications, and additions would you like to make?
• How important is Connection Theory to what Leverage does?
• How similar are your own research assumptions and methodology to those of other Leverage researchers?

I suspect it will be more beneficial to your organization to address such concerns directly and not let them lurk unanswered for long periods of time. That is one lesson I take from my recent experiences with the Singularity Institute.

BTW, I appreciate how many public-facing documents Leverage produces to explain its ideas to others. Please keep that up.