Resources spent
- Leverage Research has now existed for over 7.5 years1
- Since 2011, it has consumed over 100 person-years of human capital.
- From 2012-16, Leverage Research spent $2.02 million, and the associated Institute for Philosophical Research spent $310k.23
Outputs
Some of the larger outputs of Leverage Research include:
- Work on Connection Theory: although this does not include the initial creation of the theory itself, which was done by Geoff Anders prior to founding Leverage Research
- Contributions to productivity of altruists via the application of psychological theories including Connection Theory
- Intellectual contributions to the effective altruism community: including early work on cause prioritisation and risks to the movement.
- Intellectual contributions to the rationality community: including CFAR’s class on goal factoring
- The EA Summits in 2013-14: The EA summit is a precursor to EA Global, which is being revived in 2018
Its website also has seven blog posts.4
Recruitment Transparency
- Leverage Research previous organized the Pareto Fellowship in collaboration with another effective altruism organization. According to one attendee, Leverage staff were secretly discussing attendees using an individual Slack channel for each.
- Leverage Research has provided psychology consulting services using Connection Theory, leading it to obtain mind-maps of a substantial fraction of its prospective staff and donors, based on reports from prospective staff and donors.
- The leadership of Leverage Research have on multiple occasions overstated their rate of staff growth by more than double, in personal conversation.
- Leverage Research sends staff to effective altruism organizations to recruit specific lists of people from the effective altruism community, as is apparent from discussions with and observation of Leverage Research staff at these events.
- Leverage Research has spread negative information about organisations and leaders that would compete for EA talent.
General Transparency
- The website of Leverage Research has been excluded from the Wayback Machine5
- Leverage Research has had a strategy of using multiple organizations to tailor conversations to the topics of interest to different donors.
- Leverage Research had longstanding plans to replace Leverage Research with one or more new organizations if the reputational costs of the name Leverage Research ever become too severe. A substantial number of staff of Paradigm Academy were previously staff of Leverage Research.
General Remarks
Readers are encouraged to add additional facts known about Leverage Research in the comments section, especially where these can be supported by citation, or direct conversational evidence.
Citations
1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/969wcdD3weuCscvoJ/introducing-leverage-research
2. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/453989386
3. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/452740006
4. http://leverageresearch.org/blog
5. https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://leverageresearch.org/
Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "recruits people?" I.e., do you mean they recruit people to attend the workshops, or to join the organizational staff.
In this comment I laid out the threat to EA as a cohesive community itself for those within to like the worst detractors of EA and adjacent communities to level blanket accusations of an organization of being a cult. Also, that comment was only able to provide mention of a handful of people describing Leverage like a cult, admitting they could not recall any specific details. I already explained that that report doesn't not qualify as a fact, nor even an anecdote, but hearsay, especially since further details aren't being provided.
I'm disinclined to take seriously more hearsay of a mysterious impression of Leverage as cultish given the poor faith in which my other interlocutor was acting in. Since none of the former interns or staff this hearsay of Leverage being like a cult are coming forward to corroborate what features of a cult from the linked Lifehacker article Leverage shares, I'm unconvinced your or the other reports of Leverage as being like a cult aren't being taken out of context from the individuals you originally heard them from, nor that this post and the comments aren't a deliberate attempt to do nothing but tarnish Leverage.
Paradigm Academy was incubated by Leverage Research, as many organizations in and around EA are by others (e.g., MIRI incubated CFAR; CEA incubated ACE, etc.). As far as I can tell now, like with those other organizations, Paradigm and Leverage should be viewed as two distinct organizations. So that itself is not a fact about Leverage, which I also went over in this comment.
As I stated in that comment as well, there is a double standard at play here. EA Global each year is organized by the CEA. They aren't even the only organization in EA with the letters "EA" in their name, nor are they exclusively considered among EA organizations able to wield the EA brand. And yet despite all this nobody objects on priors to the CEA as a single organization branding these events each year. As we shouldn't. Of course, none of this necessary to invalidate the point you're trying to make. Julia Wise as the Community Liaison for the CEA has already clarified the CEA themselves support the Summit.
So the EA Summit has already been legitimized by multiple EA organizations as a genuine EA event, including the one which is seen as the default legitimate representation for the whole movement.
As above, that the EA Summit wasn't coordinated by more than one organization means nothing. There are already EA retreat- and conference-like events organized by local university groups and national foundations all over the world, which have gone well, such as the Czech EA Retreat in 2017. So the idea EA should be so centralized only registered non-profits with some given caliber of prestige in the EA movement, or those they approve, can organize events to be viewed as legitimate by the community is unfounded. Not even the CEA wants that centralized. Nobody does. So whatever point you're trying to prove about the EA Summit using facts about Leverage Research is still invalid.
For what it's worth, while no other organizations are officially participating, here are some effective altruists who will be speaking at the EA Summit, and the organizations they're associated with. This is sufficient to warrant a correct identification that those organizations are in spirit welcome and included at EAG. So the same standard should apply to the EA Summit.
Ben Pace, Ray Arnold and Oliver Habryka: LessWrong isn't an organization, but it's played a formative role in EA, and with LW's new codebase being the kernel of for the next version of the EA Forum, Ben and Oliver as admins and architects of the new LW are as important representatives of this online community as any in EA's history.
Rob Mather is the ED of the AMF. AMF isn't typically regarded as an "EA organization" because they're not a metacharity in need of dependence directly on the EA movement. But that Givewell's top-recommended charity since EA began, which continues to receive more donations from effective altruists than any other, to not been given consideration would be senseless.
Sarah Spikes runs the Berkeley REACH.
Holly Morgan is a staffer for the EA London organization.
In reviewing these speakers, and seeing so many from LEAN and Rethink Charity, with Kerry Vaughan being a director for individual outreach at CEA, I see what the EA Summit is trying to do. They're trying to have as speakers at the event to rally local EA group organizers from around the world to more coordinated action and spirited projects. Which is exactly what the organizers of the EA Summit have been saying the whole time. This is also why as an organizer for rationality and EA projects in Vancouver, Canada, trying to develop a project to scale both here and cities everywhere a system for organizing local groups to do direct work; and as a very involved volunteer online community organizer in EA, I was invited to attend the EA Summit. It's also why one the event organizers consulted with me before they announced the EA Summit how they thought it should be presented in the EA community.
This isn't counterevidence to be skeptical of Leverage. This is evidence counter to the thesis the EA Summit is nothing but a launchpad for Leverage's rebranding within the EA community as "Paradigm Academy," being advanced in these facts about Leverage Research. No logical evidence has been presented that the tenuous links between Leverage and the organization of the 2018 EA Summit entails the negative reputation Leverage has acquired over the years should be transferred onto the upcoming Summit.
See Geoff's reply to me above: Paradigm and Leverage will at some point be separate, but right now they're closely related (both under Geoff etc). I don't think viewing them as separate organizations, where learning something about Leverage should not much affect you... (read more)