Perhaps it's because of the strong overlap with LessWrong and Leverage's description of themselves as an organisation adopting an explicitly rationalist approach: see the intro post by lukeprog from early 2012.

(in fact, LW is the only place I have ever heard of Leverage and Connection Theory)

Why are people paying attention to it?

Are they? I almost forgot it exists.

I don't remember much about it, by my impression was that it more or less says this:

1) People do things they believe do contribute to their goals. Of course their models can be wrong.

2) Leave a line of retreat. If someone does/believes X because according to their model it is the only/best way to a goal G they care about, before you start convicing them to abandon X, first show them there are alternative ways to reach G. Then they will not fight for X so hard.

It doesn't seem to me so crazy. Just overhyped, without the corresponding extraordinary evidence. And overestimating the strategic behavior of humans.

So, this "Connection Theory" looks like run-of-the-mill crackpottery. Why are people paying attention to it?

From the post:

“I don’t feel confident assigning less than a 1% chance that it’s correct — and if it works, it would be super valuable. Therefore it’s very high EV!”