Geoff is answering chat questions at the moment (at least until 11 AM PT) so if you have any questions you should consider joining.
Update from Leverage Research: a reminder about our AMA & other ways to get updates
For anyone in this thread who still has questions about Leverage Research, I just wanted to remind you about the AMA we are running at our virtual office tomorrow (Saturday, October 2, at 12 PM PT).
The event is open to anyone interested in our work and is designed to allow people to ask questions about our history, current work, and future plans. See this comment for further details.
Beyond that, we're currently exploring different ways to ensure we hear from people...
Reminder: AMA and Open Virtual Office with Leverage Research on Saturday, October 2, 12 PM PT.
Just a quick reminder that anyone interested in learning more about Leverage Research's history, current work, and future plans can join us in our virtual office tomorrow (Saturday, October 2nd) at 12 PM PT for AMA with me and our Executive Director Geoff Anders.
For more info and to get the link to join the event, join the Facebook event, fill in this Google Form or follow us on Twitter.
Hi Freyja,
I just wanted to reply to this to let you know that it is totally plausible to me that some people who were involved in Leverage 1.0 or any affiliated organizations might have had pretty bad experiences, especially towards the end. I haven't heard any specific cases personally, but by all accounts, there were some pretty intense group dynamics and I can very much imagine that could have been quite harmful to people. I’m not saying this is the same and I don’t want to speak for anyone else’s experience, but I’ve been involved in intense ideologica...
I am not sure whether it is still necessary for me to reply to this given that the post has been heavily downvoted and the original poster of the "common knowledge facts" about Leverage has edited their post to note that they regret their mention of Geoff's dating history in the thread as it has taken people clearly off in the wrong direction.
Just in case anyone is reading this without the relevant context and has any doubts:
No. I am not in, nor have I ever been in, anything remotely resembling "a non-platonic relationship with the Executive Director of Le...
Hi BayAreaHuman,
I just posted an update on behalf of Leverage Research to LessWrong along with an invite to an AMA with Leverage Research next weekend, as it seems from the comments that there isn’t a lot of common knowledge about our current work or other aspects of our history. I encourage people to read this for additional context, and I hope the OP will be able to update this post to incorporate some of that.
I also want to briefly address some of the items raised here.
Information management policies
Leverage Research has for a long time been...
One of the negative consequences of our information policy, as we have learned, is the way it made some regular interactions with people outside of the relevant information circles more difficult than intended.
Is Leverage willing to grant a blanket exemption from the NDAs which people evidently signed, to rectify the potential ongoing harms of not having information available? If not, can you share the text of the NDAs?
If anyone is aware of harms or abuses that have taken place involving staff at Leverage Research, please email me, in confidence, at larissa@leverageresearch.org or larissa.e.rowe@gmail.com.
I would suggest that anything in this vein should be reported to Julia Wise, as I believe she is a designated person for reporting concerns about community health, harmful behaviours, abuse, etc. She is unaffiliated with Leverage, and is a trained social worker.
These concerns are widely shared for research in the hard sciences (e.g., nuclear physics), but are valid as well for the social sciences.
Social science infohazards are not a thing because they must be implemented by an organization to work and organizations leak like a sieve. Even nuclear secrets leak. This demand for secrecy is an blatant excuse used to obstruct oversight and to prevent peer review. What you're doing is the opposite of science.
If anyone is aware of harms or abuses that have taken place involving staff at Leverage Research, please email me, in confidence, at larissa@leverageresearch.org.
Bullshit. This is not how you prevent abuse of power. This is how you cover it up.
Hi Larissa -
Dangers and harms from psychological practices
Please consider that the people who most experienced harms from psychological practices at Leverage may not feel comfortable emailing that information to you. Given what they experienced, they might reasonably expect the organization to use any provided information primarily for its own reputational defense, and to discredit the harmed parties.
Dating policies
Thank you for the clarity here.
Charting/debugging was always optional
This is not my understanding. My impression is that a strong e...
Thanks for sharing this. If anyone is interested in more on this sort of topic, I (on behalf of Leverage Research) am currently in the very early stages of experimenting with sharing thoughts that come out of our research and interesting articles we find on social media. I'd expect people here to potentially have useful feedback and thoughts on the kinds of topics we end up thinking about. For example, I was recently looking at the role of thought experiments in science.
Leverage Research Facebook
Leverage Research Twitter
I can confirm that this document is legitimate as I've seen a more recent version of the same checklist.
Leverage Research is planning to review and revise its information management policy, as soon as we have time.
Relatedly, a LessWrong user recently reached out to us directly for information about our information management policies and agreements. During the conversation, it became clear that it was difficult for them, as someone seeking information, to formulate which questions to ask and difficult for us as an organization to determine what answers the... (read more)