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The Oblivious Inside Story Of Leverage Research 1.0 (lydialaurenson.substack.com)
submitted 1 month ago by Architeuthis@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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Copied from the stubsack:

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.

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[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

slovenian

yeah he's a Bismarck Analysis/Palladium guy now lmao

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 0 points 1 month ago

Palladium

According to the article the whole thing was a Leverage project:

Politically, Leverage has punched above its weight, though liberal Leveragers may wince to think of it. While at Leverage, two neoreactionary employees named Wolf Tivy and Jonah Bennett co-founded a magazine called Palladium. Their parties have drawn Peter Thiel, the musician Grimes, and other luminaries from the “tech right” or “New Right.” Samo is now Editor-in-Chief of Palladium; he also runs a research and analysis firm called Bismarck, and published “Great Founder Theory” on his website in 2020.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 0 points 1 month ago

Burja has always had remarkably bad vibes, but it knocks my estimation of him completely into the basement to learn that he was so involved with a shitshow like Leverage. I suspect that daddy Peter and the Twitter/Hacker News crossover crowd is what's propping up Palladium, but I believe we discussed it here when even the HN crowd laughed off Burja's bro Wolf Tivy.