The Inside Story Of Leverage Research 1.0
lydialaurenson.substack.com
Between 2011-2019, Leverage Research explored the deep psychology of Effective Altruism and Silicon Valley, then suddenly dissolved among rumors of "demons." What happened?

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The Inside story of Leverage Research

This should be interesting, it’s about an organisation in the EA milieu that even other EAs though might be a bit too culty. Don’t know who the writer Lydia Laurenson is, but she does come off as a bit of a cult enthusiast herself, and is probably more than a bit rationalist adjacent.

edit: The companion piece about the background of why she wrote it is quite a ride, if only for the biographical tidbits: she is indeed very cult adjacent, she had a spiritual experience and now believes in capital G god, she got engaged to an unnamed far-right writer but they broke up when she got pregnant.

Also the Leverage article was contracted to appear in the New York Magazine but she pulled the story because of uh declining trust in the field of journalism, but then she goes on to imply that the real problem was that the article was shaping up as a bit too pro-Leverage:

I pulled the story once I started feeling like it simply wouldn’t be possible for me to publish a version with NYMag that didn’t carry a subtle hostility towards Leverage, not to mention affiliated communities in Silicon Valley — and, more importantly to me, hostility towards a core spiritual sensibility that I see in both myself and in the people the story describes.

edit edit: Why can’t these people ever be normal: Why I Was Part Of The Neoreactionary or Dissident Right Movement In 2020

edit edit edit: Jesus fucking christ she’s Curtis Yarvin’s baby momma.

edit x 4: Index of the read along posts, part titles are from the original:

  • Architeuthis@awful.systemsOPEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    What it boils down is that it was an actual honest to god cult that was getting tons of EA money to develop a self help system that would turn people into Elon Musks (their go-to example for an apex human). They also came up with a stablecoin and a cryptofash magazine that are both still around, and did a lot of behind the scenes work for EA at large, like getting the ball rolling with organising EA conferences around the world.

    I think the reason all these exposés are so tiresome to read is because they tend to focus on the boring cult stuff instead of the bonkers rationalist lore (like how Leverage people were trying to cast HPMOR spells on each other), or the long shadow it casts on our current cultural moment due to its deep influence in the EA/rat subculture, like how Amodei though not a member seemed to be a regular there, Grimes is a contributor to Palladium, ex-levs have launched elite coaching companies that presumably implement lev-tech and so on.

    Additionally, in true rationalist fashion nobody was punished and nothing was learned, so the people responsible are still around, still getting Thiel money to do much of the same stuff with probably the same issues, just keeping a lower profile this time.

    edit: this is much shorter https://www.todayintabs.com/p/over-leveraged thanks @nfultz@awful.systems

    • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      I love this bit on “did they use goat’s blood in a silver chalice? Rookie mistake, my teacher used a brazen chalice and he was only carried off by demons once.”

      Because Leveragers believed in the great potential of psychological change, naturally it became important to access seemingly cordoned-off areas of the psyche, to explore or to reprogram them. A student of other psychological and spiritual models might call mental space Leveragers now sought to understand “the unconscious,” or “the Abyss.” If more Leveragers had been following certain spiritual teachers or methods, they might have learned ideas about containment, such as “perimeters” — or “protection” practices, ranging from prayers to ritual cleansings. But, as many a serious practitioner could tell you, it’s hard to say whether any of that would have been truly protective, in the end.

      • Architeuthis@awful.systemsOPEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        the great potential of psychological change

        Which is a euphemism for success in brainwashing.

        Also, having dismissed the entirety of psychology and psychiatry as unscientific, they naturally landed ass first on Jung and Dion Fortune as major points of reference.

        • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
          3·
          6 hours ago

          Everything from the eugenics to the Social Darwinism to the ritual magick to the Jung to the goldbug economics is reviving ideas from the 1880s-1920s. If academics gave them up 50 or 100 years ago, that just proves that mainstream wisdom can’t be trusted!