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* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Leverage published The “Post-Experiences” Inquiry Report: Factors and Mistakes that Contributed to a Range of Negative Experiences on Our 2011-2019 Research Collaboration. It does not mention demons, Buddhists, neoreactionaries, or bodywork.

The emphasis on how Geoff Anders is very sorry (but not how he claimed he had solved philosophy and was about to solve psychology and by the way he could help his disciples better if they stripped and assumed the position) reminds me of Anna Salamon not-talking talking about what went wrong at CFAR 1.0.

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

“a range of negative experiences” on our EIGHT YEAR PROJECT

nobody has “a range of negative experiences” over eight years

you have “a range of negative experiences” over about a week maybe, a month tops

when you leave a job after a year you leave with “a bunch of” or “a lot of” negative experiences, minimum, and that’s EVEN IF it was more good than bad

on an EIGHT YEAR TIMELINE you have well exceeded a “range” if things went fucking BRILLIANTLY, let alone if you got within about two hairs of jonestowning your way out of the whole thing