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moridinamael comments on On Leverage Research's plan for an optimal world - Less Wrong Discussion
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On a first pass, the Leverage Research website feels like Objectivism. I say this because it is full of dubious claims about morality and psychology but which are presented as basic premises and facts. The explanations of "Connection Theory" are full of the same type of opaque reasoning and fiat statements about human nature which perhaps I am particularly sensitive to as a former Objectivist. Knowing nothing more than this first impression, I am going to make a prediction that there are Objectivist influences present here. That seems at least somewhat testable.
There are no Objectivist influences that I am aware of.
I didn't notice any Objectivist influences looking through the high-level claims on the Leverage website, but their persuasive style does remind me quite a bit of Objectivism's: lots of reasonable-sounding but not actually rigorous claims about human thinking, heavy reliance on inference, and a fairly grandiose tone in the final conclusions. I'd credit this not to direct influence but to convergent evolution. To Leverage's credit, Connection Theory does come off as considerably less smug, and the reductionism isn't as sketchy.
Now, none of this is a refutation -- I haven't gone deep enough into Leverage's claims to say anything definitive about whether or not any of this stuff actually works. Plenty of stuff that I'd consider true reminds me of Objectivism's claims, or of those of other equally pernicious ideologies. But it's definitely enough to inform my priors, and it should shed light on some potential signaling problems in the presentation.
Maybe you are not aware of them?
Your denial would be more convincing if you compared and contrasted CT ideas and objectivist ideas.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Ayn Rand's ideas on psychology.
For a given value of 'unfortunate'. :)
^Beat me to it.
Since Connection Theory is mostly Geoff Anders' work, I would be very surprised if it could have big influences he wasn't aware of (maybe if he delegated a lot of stuff to Objectivist students or something, or was heavily influenced by some Objectivist psychologist).
I'm not an expert on Objectivism, but one of Rand's principles was to always pass moral judgement.
Connection theory has much less moral judgement to it than most approaches.
It's conceivable that there's a similar intellectual style of trying to understand the world by starting with abstractions, but that's not necessarily a matter of direct influence.