The Nonlinear Library LW - Jobs, Relationships, and Other Cults by Ruby
Mar 14, 2024
50:13
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Jobs, Relationships, and Other Cults, published by Ruby on March 14, 2024 on LessWrong.
For years I (Elizabeth) have been trying to write out my grant unified theory of [good/bad/high-variance/high-investment] [jobs/relationships/religions/social groups]. In this dialogue me (Elizabeth) and Ruby throw a bunch of component models back and forth and get all the way to better defining the question.
About a year ago someone published Common Knowledge About Leverage Research, which IIRC had some information that was concerning but not devastating. You showed me a draft of a reply you wrote to that post, that pointed out lots of similar things Lightcone/LessWrong did and how, yeah, they could look bad, but they could also be part of a fine trade-off. Before you could publish that, an ex-employee of Leverage published a much more damning account.
This feels to me like it encapsulates part of a larger system of trade-offs. Accomplishing big things sometimes requires weirdness, and sometimes sacrifice, but places telling you "well we're weird and high sacrifice but it's worth it" are usually covering something up. But they're also not wrong that certain extremely useful things can't get done within standard 9-5 norms. Which makes me think that improving social tech to make the trade-offs clearer and better implemented would be valuable.
Which makes me think that improving social tech to make the trade-offs clearer and better implemented would be valuable.
Seems right.
I don't remember the details of all the exchanges with the initial Leverage accusations. Not sure if it was me or someone else who'd drafted the list of things that sounded equally bad, though I do remember something like that. My current vague recollection was feeling kind of mindkilled on the topic.
There was external pressure regarding the anonymous post, maybe others internally were calling it bad and I felt I had to agree? I suppose there's the topic of handling accusations and surfacing info, but that's a somewhat different topic.
I think it's possible to make Lightcone/LessWrong sound bad but also I feel like there are meaningful differences between Lightcone and Leverage or Nonlinear. It'd be interesting to me figure out the diagnostic questions which get at that.
One differentiating guess is that while Lightcone is a high commitment org that generally asks a for a piece of your soul [1], and if you're around there's pressure to give more, my felt feeling is we will not make it "hard to get off the train". I could imagine if that the org did decide we were moving to the Bahamas, we might have offered six-months severance to whoever didn't want to join, or something like that.
There have been asks that Oli was very reluctant to make of the team (getting into community politics stuff) because that felt beyond scope of what people signed up for. Things like that meant although there were large asks, I haven't felt trapped by them even if I've felt socially pressured.
Sorry, just rambling some on my own initial thoughts. Happy to focus on helping you articulate points from your blog posts that you'd most like to get out. Thoughts on the tradeoffs you'd most like to get out there?
(One last stray thought: I do think there are lots of ways regular 9-5 jobs end up being absolutely awful for people without even trying to do ambitious or weird things, and Lightcone is bad in some of those ways, and generally I think they're a different term in the equation worth giving thought to and separating out.)
[1] Although actually the last few months have felt particular un-soul-asky relative to my five years with the team.
I think it's possible to make Lightcone/LessWrong sound bad but also I feel like there are meaningful differences between Lightcone and Leverage or Nonlinear. It'd be interesting to me figure out the d...
For years I (Elizabeth) have been trying to write out my grant unified theory of [good/bad/high-variance/high-investment] [jobs/relationships/religions/social groups]. In this dialogue me (Elizabeth) and Ruby throw a bunch of component models back and forth and get all the way to better defining the question.
About a year ago someone published Common Knowledge About Leverage Research, which IIRC had some information that was concerning but not devastating. You showed me a draft of a reply you wrote to that post, that pointed out lots of similar things Lightcone/LessWrong did and how, yeah, they could look bad, but they could also be part of a fine trade-off. Before you could publish that, an ex-employee of Leverage published a much more damning account.
This feels to me like it encapsulates part of a larger system of trade-offs. Accomplishing big things sometimes requires weirdness, and sometimes sacrifice, but places telling you "well we're weird and high sacrifice but it's worth it" are usually covering something up. But they're also not wrong that certain extremely useful things can't get done within standard 9-5 norms. Which makes me think that improving social tech to make the trade-offs clearer and better implemented would be valuable.
Which makes me think that improving social tech to make the trade-offs clearer and better implemented would be valuable.
Seems right.
I don't remember the details of all the exchanges with the initial Leverage accusations. Not sure if it was me or someone else who'd drafted the list of things that sounded equally bad, though I do remember something like that. My current vague recollection was feeling kind of mindkilled on the topic.
There was external pressure regarding the anonymous post, maybe others internally were calling it bad and I felt I had to agree? I suppose there's the topic of handling accusations and surfacing info, but that's a somewhat different topic.
I think it's possible to make Lightcone/LessWrong sound bad but also I feel like there are meaningful differences between Lightcone and Leverage or Nonlinear. It'd be interesting to me figure out the diagnostic questions which get at that.
One differentiating guess is that while Lightcone is a high commitment org that generally asks a for a piece of your soul [1], and if you're around there's pressure to give more, my felt feeling is we will not make it "hard to get off the train". I could imagine if that the org did decide we were moving to the Bahamas, we might have offered six-months severance to whoever didn't want to join, or something like that.
There have been asks that Oli was very reluctant to make of the team (getting into community politics stuff) because that felt beyond scope of what people signed up for. Things like that meant although there were large asks, I haven't felt trapped by them even if I've felt socially pressured.
Sorry, just rambling some on my own initial thoughts. Happy to focus on helping you articulate points from your blog posts that you'd most like to get out. Thoughts on the tradeoffs you'd most like to get out there?
(One last stray thought: I do think there are lots of ways regular 9-5 jobs end up being absolutely awful for people without even trying to do ambitious or weird things, and Lightcone is bad in some of those ways, and generally I think they're a different term in the equation worth giving thought to and separating out.)
[1] Although actually the last few months have felt particular un-soul-asky relative to my five years with the team.
I think it's possible to make Lightcone/LessWrong sound bad but also I feel like there are meaningful differences between Lightcone and Leverage or Nonlinear. It'd be interesting to me figure out the d...