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Gleb_Tsipursky comments on Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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In the last few days, a few people have newly joined LW, posting only in a welcome thread and in articles about Gleb_Tsipursky's "Intentional Insights" work. Their comments have been very enthusiastic about II.
Now here's the thing. Intentional Insights is based in the US. Everyone on its leadership team (I think) and advisory board is in the US. Most of its activity, so far as I can see, is focused on promoting ... whatever exactly II promotes ... in US-based media like the Huffington Post. But it just happens that two of these people are a brother and sister (I think) from Nigeria, and a chap from the Philippines. The last person I recall turning up on LW and gushing about how great II is and how wonderful GT's articles are was also from the Philippines. Isn't that odd?
(For the avoidance of doubt, of course there's nothing in any way wrong about being from Nigeria or the Philippines. I'm just asking: isn't this a rather improbable sequence of events?)
Now, Gleb has an answer, sort of:
It's not clear what range of organizations Gleb is referring to, but the specific one he names (AAI) is indeed an international organization -- but I don't see any sign that it's more active in (say) Nigeria than in the US. And none of these II fans who have turned up on Less Wrong has said anything about hearing of either LW or II through any other organization.
I think there is another obvious explanation, which is that these people are being paid to publicize II, and that the reason why the II-fans we see on LW come disproportionately from developing countries is that it's much cheaper to buy publicity from people in developing countries than from people in, say, the US or Western Europe.
Am I too paranoid?
... Oh, look. Twitter feed of LW user Sarginlove. The description on the Twitter account says "works for Intentional Insight". Take a look at Sarginlove's comments and tell me this isn't a deliberate attempt to look like someone not affiliated with II who's just seen their material and been impressed by it.
I don't know quite what Gleb is actually trying to do with II, but I think this goes beyond "weird and creepy" (the usual complaint on LW hitherto, I think) to "actively deceptive".
Upvoted, I appreciate the concern, and thanks for expressing it! Some other folks might have noticed this and been concerned without expressing it openly, so it's good to get this out into the open.
Intentional Insights has an international reach and aim. While we are based in the US, less than a third of our traffic comes from there, and the next three highest venues are India, Philippines, and Pakistan. We write regularly for internationally-oriented venues. We have plenty of volunteers who are from those places as well, and I encourage them regularly to join Less Wrong after they have engaged sufficiently with InIn content.
Most are currently lurkers, but as I have seen positive changes coming with the LW 2.0 transformation, I encouraged a number to be active contributors to the site. So some have responded, and naturally talked about how they found LW. I'm sad, but unsurprised, to see this met with some suspicion.
Sargin in particular volunteers at Intentional Insights for about 25 hours, and gets paid as a virtual assistant to help manage our social media for about 15 hours. He decided to volunteer so much of his time because of his desire to improve his thinking and grow more rational. He's been improving through InIn content, and so I am encouraging him to engage with LW. Don't discourage him please, he's a newbie here.
However, he made a mistake by not explicitly acknowledging that he works at InIn as well as volunteers at it. It's important to be explicit about stuff like this - his praise for InIn content should be taken with a grain of salt, just like praise from CFAR staff for CFAR content should be taken with a grain of salt. Otherwise, there is an appearance of impropriety. I added a comment to his welcome thread to make that clear.
Thanks for raising this issue, gjm, appreciate it!
EDIT: Edited with a comment I made on Sargin's welcome thread.
Would you like to comment on Beatrice Sargin (his sister, I think) and Alex Wenceslao? Does either of those people receive any compensation from Intentional Insights?
(I'm curious. What does a person do for 25 hours a week when "volunteering at Intentional Insights"?)
Upvoted, thanks for letting me know they didn't indicate it as well. I should have realized that if Sargin didn't say that, others might not either. Both of them volunteer most of their time, and get paid part of their time.
I'll make sure any future people who both volunteer and get paid at InIn make that clear. It's important to be transparent about these things and ensure no appearance of impropriety.
Separately, I talked to Eliot, and he suggested it would be good to hold off on getting newbies engaged with Less Wrong until the LW 2.0 newbie sub is set up, so I'll hold off on doing that except for people who already signed up with accounts.
Now, on to your question. They work on a variety of tasks, such as website management, image creation, managing social media channels such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. Here's an image of the organizational Trello showing some of the things that they do (Trello is a platform to organize teams together). We also have a couple more who do other stuff, such as Youtube editing, Pinterest, etc.
EDIT: Edited to add image.
Looks like you forgot to do it with JohnC2015, who has just appeared and is singing from the same hymnsheet as all the others: hi, I'm a newbie from the Philippines who has just happened to come across all this stuff, and wow, Gleb Tsipursky is awesome!
Any bets on whether JohnC2015 is also paid by Intentional Insights to promote them? I'm sure we wouldn't want any appearance of impropriety.
Ah, planning fallacy. If you're not surprised by the negative turn of event, you could have possibly anticipated it and corrected.
Fair enough! I told all InIn participants to indicate their association with Intentional Insights, but I should have been more specific with those who are paid by Intentional Insights for stuff they do to acknowledge this in their welcome threads.