You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Geoff_Anders comments on On Leverage Research's plan for an optimal world - Less Wrong Discussion

25 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 10 January 2012 09:49AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (87)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Geoff_Anders 10 January 2012 04:46:27PM 0 points [-]

There are no Objectivist influences that I am aware of.

Comment author: Nornagest 10 January 2012 07:52:27PM *  4 points [-]

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.

Comment author: shminux 10 January 2012 05:04:23PM 2 points [-]

Maybe you are not aware of them?

Your denial would be more convincing if you compared and contrasted CT ideas and objectivist ideas.

Comment author: Geoff_Anders 10 January 2012 05:10:22PM 3 points [-]

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Ayn Rand's ideas on psychology.

Comment author: wedrifid 10 January 2012 05:11:43PM 8 points [-]

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Ayn Rand's ideas on psychology.

For a given value of 'unfortunate'. :)

Comment author: Curiouskid 11 January 2012 10:19:52PM 0 points [-]

^Beat me to it.

Comment author: Emile 10 January 2012 05:16:37PM *  1 point [-]

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).