I appreciate this invitation. I’ll re-link to some things I already said on my own stance: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kz9zMgWB5C27Pmdkh/common-knowledge-about-leverage-research-1-0?commentId=2QKKnepsMoZmmhGSe
Beyond what I laid out there:
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It was challenging being aware of multiple stories of harm, and feeling compelled to warn people interacting with Geoff, but not wanting to go public with surprising new claims of harm. (I did mention awareness of severe harm very understatedly in the post. I chose instead to focus on “already known” properties that I feel substantially raise the prior on the actually-observed type of harm, and to disclose in the post that my motivation in cherry-picking those statements was to support pattern-matching to a specific template of harm).
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After posting, it was emotionally a bit of a drag to receive comments that complained that the information-sharing attempt was not done well enough, and comparatively few comments grateful for attempting to share what I could, as best I could, to the best of my ability at the time, although the upvote patterns felt encouraging. I was pretty much aware that that was what was going to happen. In general, “flinching in anticipation of a high criticism-to-gratitude ratio” is an overall feeling I have when I imagine posting anything on LessWrong.
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I was told by friends before posting that I ought to consider the risk to myself and to my contacts of tangible real-world retribution. I don’t have any experience with credible risk of real-world retribution. It feels mind-numbing.
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Meta: I haven’t felt fully comfortable describing retribution concerns, including in the post, because I haven’t been able to rule out that revealing the tactical landscape of why I’m sharing or avoiding certain details is simply more information that can be used by Geoff and associates to make life harder for people pursuing clarity. This is easier now that Zoe has written firsthand about specific retribution concerns.
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Meta-meta: It doesn’t feel great to talk about all this paranoid adversarial retribution thinking, because I don’t want to contribute to the spread of paranoia and adversarial thinking. It feels contagious. Zoe describes a very paranoid atmosphere within Leverage and among those who left, and I feel that attesting to a strategically-aware disclosure pattern carries that toxic vibe into new contexts.
Here is an example:
Zoe’s report says of the information-sharing agreement “I am the only person from Leverage who did not sign this, according to Geoff who asked me at least three times to do so, mentioning each time that everyone else had (which read to me like an attempt to pressure me into signing).”
I have spoken to another Leverage member who was asked to sign, and did not.
The email from Matt Fallshaw says the document “was only signed by just over half of you”. Note the recipients list includes people (such as Kerry Vaughan) who were probably never asked to sign because they were not present, but I would believe that such people are in the minority; so this isn’t strict confirmation, but just increased likelihood, that Geoff was lying to Zoe.
This is lying to someone within the project. I would subjectively anticipate higher willingness to lie to people outside the project, but I don’t have anything tangible I can point to about that.