(edit: moved to the correct reply area)
Yes, but imagine for a second that you worked at Leverage, and you're reading this thread (noting that I'd be surprised if several people from both 1.0 and 2.0 were not). Do you think that, whether they had a negative experience or a positive experience, they would feel comfortable commenting on that here?
(This is the relevant impact of the things mentioned in my previous comment.)
No. Of course not. Because the overpowering narrative in this thread, regardless of the goals or intentions of the OP, is "Leverage was/is a cult".
No one accused of being in a cu...
I'd rather not say, for the sake of my anonymity - something which is important to me because this:
However, I would also like to note that Leverage 1.0 has historically been on the receiving end of substantial levels of bullying, harassment, needless cruelty, public ridicule, and more by people who were not engaged in any legitimate epistemic activity. I do not think this is OK. I intend to call out this behavior directly when I see it. I would ask that others do so as well.
is a real concern. I've seen it firsthand - people associated with Leverage being o...
If people are being bullied, that's extremely bad, and if you see that and call it out you're doing a noble thing.
But all I've seen in this thread -- I can't comment on e.g. what happens in person in the Bay Area, since that's thousands of miles away from where I am -- is people saying negative things about Leverage Research itself and not about individuals associated with it, with the single exception of the person in charge of Leverage, who fairly credibly deserves some criticism if the negative things being said about the organization are correct.
Bullyi...
If questioning the "rationality" of the discourse is defending them, then what do you suppose you're doing?
I just don't see the goals or values of this community reflected here and it confuses me. That's why I made this account - to get clarity on what seems to me to be a total anomaly case in how the rationalist community members (at least as far as signaling goes, I guess) conduct themselves.
Because I've only seen what is classifiable as a hysteric response to this topic, the Leverage topic.
Why is this getting downvotes? It's a constructive comment containing a good idea (mediation to address concerns) and pointing at a source of transparency, which everyone here has been asking for.
I'm not a rationalist, and I'm new to actually saying anything on LW (despite lurking for 4ish years now - and yes, I made this alt today), but it seems like this would be the type of community to be more open-minded about a topic than what I'm seeing. By "what I'm seeing" I mean people are just throwing rocks and being unwilling to find any way to work with someone who's trying to address the concerns of the OP and commenters.
I didn't downvote ChristianKI's comment, but I feel like it's potentially a bit naive.
>Is there anything else you could think of that would be a credible signal that Leverage is sincere about seeking the information about harms?
In my view, the question isn't so much about whether they genuinely don't want harms to happen (esp. because harming people psychologically often isn't even good for growing the organization, not to mention the reputational risks). I feel like the sort of thing ChristianKI pointed out is just a smart PR move given what peop...
If you hover over the karma counter, you can see that the comment is sitting at -2 with 12 votes, which means that there is a significant disagreement on how to judge it, not agreement that it should go away.
(It makes some sense to oppose somewhat useful things that aren't as useful as they should be, or as safe as they should be, I think that is the reason for this reaction. And then there is the harmful urge to punish people who don't punish others, or might even dare suggest talking to them.)
You missed the part where this person was pointing out that there is Deliberately Vague Language used by the OP. Imo, this language doesn't create enough of a structure for commenters to construct an adequate dialogue about several sub-topics in this thread.
Also, what's "flagrantly indifferent" about Larissa wanting to hear out people who feel wronged?
You seem to be quite upset by all of this, why not reach out and let her know?
Let's use some common sense here, please. If - hypothetically speaking - some organization abuses people, what is the most likely consequence if the victim e-mails in confidence their PR person?
My model says, the PR person will start working on a story that protects the organization, with the advantage that the PR person can publish their version before the victim does. (There are also other options, such as threatening the victim, which wouldn't be available if the victim told their story to someone else first.)
The first person was Larissa, the second person was Kerry.
The "anonymity thing" does not fall under the first category. I'd just prefer, as I stated before, not to be targeted "in real life" for my views on this thread.
The "bullying" that I'm referring to happened/happens outside of this thread, and is in no way limited to instances of people being accused of being "in a cult".