this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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The Oblivious Inside Story Of Leverage Research 1.0 (lydialaurenson.substack.com)
submitted 3 months 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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[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

An official statement by a Leverage staffer back in 2021 defended the organization like this:

our Executive Director (Geoff Anders) had three long-term consensual relationships with women employed by Leverage Research or affiliated organizations during their history. Managing the potential for abuses by those in positions of power is very important to us. If anyone is aware of harms or abuses that have taken place involving staff at Leverage Research, please email me, in confidence, at (email deleted)

Laurenson's story that "at the beginning of April 2018, one person Geoff was involved with, who was also his employee, found out that he’d gotten into a secret romance with another colleague he practiced bodywork with." does not sound like great consent.

Many Leveragers believed Geoff’s decisions about who received organizational resources were affected by his romantic choices, for example.

Yuh think?

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 0 points 3 months ago

Look, if our founder was abusing his power and influence over the organization to manipulate his underlings into sexual relationships and/or reward those who agreed to such, would he really have done it three times?