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 who were part of the Leverage 1.0 ecosystem about their experiences, especially before we release some of our... (read more)
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 ideological work cultures in the past myself. When everyone involved cares deeply about something, it... (read more)
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 Leverage Research, Geoff Anders". I am in a committed, long-term, monogamous relationship with Kerry... (read more)
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 concerned about the potential negative consequences of the potential misuse of knowledge garnered from research. These concerns... (read 654 more words →)
As many LessWrong readers may have seen there was recently this post ostensibly aimed at creating common knowledge about Leverage Research.
While Leverage Research is no longer actively involved in the Rationality community, from the comments and upvotes it seems that there is both continued interest in Leverage Research within the Rationality community and a substantial lack of information—even about our more recent work—and context about our history. This post, along with my reply to the recent post, aims to correct some of that.
As relevant background, my name is Larissa Hesketh-Rowe. I work as the Public Engagement Specialist at Leverage Research and am posting on the organization’s behalf.
I’ve worked at Leverage Research since... (read 2444 more words →)
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 they might find useful, given the differences in information and context. As a result of this conversation, we concluded it might be useful to figure... (read more)