I didn’t downvote ChristianKI’s comment, but I feel like it’s potentially a bit naive.
>Is there anything else you could think of that would be a credible signal that Leverage is sincere about seeking the information about harms?
In my view, the question isn’t so much about whether they genuinely don’t want harms to happen (esp. because harming people psychologically often isn’t even good for growing the organization, not to mention the reputational risks). I feel like the sort of thing ChristianKI pointed out is just a smart PR move given what people already think about Leverage, and, conditional on the assumption that Leverage is concerned about their reputation in EA, it says nothing about genuine intentions.
Instead, what I’d be curious to know is whether they have the integrity to be proactively transparent about past mistakes, radically changed course when it comes to potentially harmful practices, and refrain from using any potentially harmful practices in cases where it might be advantageous on a Machiavellian-consequentialist assessment. To ascertain those things, one needs to go beyond looking at stated intentions. “Person/organization says nice-sounding thing, so they seem genuinely concerned about nice aims, therefore stop being so negative” is a really low bar and probably leads to massive over-updating in people who are prone to being too charitable.
I feel like the sort of thing ChristianKI pointed out is just a smart PR move given what people already think about Leverage, and, conditional on the assumption that Leverage is concerned about their reputation in EA, it says nothing about genuine intentions.
I didn’t argue that it says something about good intentions. My main argument is that it’s useful to cooperate with Leverage on releasing their techniques with the safety warnings that are warrented given past problems instead of not doing that which increases the chances that people will use the techniques in a way that messes them up.
I do consider belief reporting to be a very valuable invention and I think that it’s plausible that this is true for more of what leverage produced. I do see that a technique like belief reporting allows for doing scientific experiments that weren’t possible before.
Information gathered from the experiments already run can quite plausible help other people from encoutering harm when integrated in the starter kit that they develop.
Instead, what I’d be curious to know is whether they have the integrity to be proactively transparent about past mistakes, radically changed course when it comes to potentially harmful practices, and refrain from using any potentially harmful practices in cases where it might be advantageous on a Machiavellian-consequentialist assessment.
I think skepticism about nice words without difficult-to-fake evidence is warranted, but I also think some of this evidence is already available.
For example, I think it’s relatively easy to verify that Leverage is a radically different organization today. The costly investments we’ve made in history of science research provide the clearest example as does the fact that we’re no longer pursuing any new psychological research.
I think the fact that it is now a four person remote organization doing mostly research on science as opposed to an often-live-in organization with dozens of employees doing intimate psychological experiments as well as following various research paths tells me that you are essentially a different organization and the only commonalities are the name and the fact that Geoff is still the leader.
I didn’t downvote ChristianKI’s comment, but I feel like it’s potentially a bit naive.
>Is there anything else you could think of that would be a credible signal that Leverage is sincere about seeking the information about harms?
In my view, the question isn’t so much about whether they genuinely don’t want harms to happen (esp. because harming people psychologically often isn’t even good for growing the organization, not to mention the reputational risks). I feel like the sort of thing ChristianKI pointed out is just a smart PR move given what people already think about Leverage, and, conditional on the assumption that Leverage is concerned about their reputation in EA, it says nothing about genuine intentions.
Instead, what I’d be curious to know is whether they have the integrity to be proactively transparent about past mistakes, radically changed course when it comes to potentially harmful practices, and refrain from using any potentially harmful practices in cases where it might be advantageous on a Machiavellian-consequentialist assessment. To ascertain those things, one needs to go beyond looking at stated intentions. “Person/organization says nice-sounding thing, so they seem genuinely concerned about nice aims, therefore stop being so negative” is a really low bar and probably leads to massive over-updating in people who are prone to being too charitable.
I didn’t argue that it says something about good intentions. My main argument is that it’s useful to cooperate with Leverage on releasing their techniques with the safety warnings that are warrented given past problems instead of not doing that which increases the chances that people will use the techniques in a way that messes them up.
I do consider belief reporting to be a very valuable invention and I think that it’s plausible that this is true for more of what leverage produced. I do see that a technique like belief reporting allows for doing scientific experiments that weren’t possible before.
Information gathered from the experiments already run can quite plausible help other people from encoutering harm when integrated in the starter kit that they develop.
I think skepticism about nice words without difficult-to-fake evidence is warranted, but I also think some of this evidence is already available.
For example, I think it’s relatively easy to verify that Leverage is a radically different organization today. The costly investments we’ve made in history of science research provide the clearest example as does the fact that we’re no longer pursuing any new psychological research.
I think the fact that it is now a four person remote organization doing mostly research on science as opposed to an often-live-in organization with dozens of employees doing intimate psychological experiments as well as following various research paths tells me that you are essentially a different organization and the only commonalities are the name and the fact that Geoff is still the leader.