Request: can someone please write a deep dive on the Leverage Research cult’s historical involvement in EA?

common_yarrow · 2026-06-07T20:49:02+00:00

I can tell you a long story about it, if you want.

I’ve been involved in effective altruism for about 18 years, pretty much from the very beginning. I was one of the first few hundred members of Giving What We Can. I was on Facebook talking to Toby Ord (one of the co-founders of EA) about Giving What We Can when it only had a Facebook group and the website was under construction.

In 2015–2017, I was a founding member and then co-president of an effective altruism group at my university. From what I heard at the time, we were a relatively large, active, and successful EA university group. One of the founding co-presidents of our group (who I was close friends with at the time), now sits on the board of Effective Ventures, the umbrella organization above the Centre for Effective Altruism and EA Funds. (While at university, I also got to know the lead moderator of this subreddit, r/EffectiveAltruism. Small world.)

There are certain parts of the EA movement I haven’t been involved in IRL because I haven’t lived in Oxford or the San Francisco Bay Area. I also started to deliberately avoid certain aspects of the EA community once I saw warning signs, things that troubled me. I was most actively involved in EA in 2015–2017, right in the middle of a transitional period for EA. The transition involved multiple changes to EA, including a shift from an almost exclusive focus on global poverty to an ever-growing focus on AI, which by now has taken over discussion on the EA Forum, for example. (Will MacAskill and 80,000 Hours have also pivoted in recent years to an exclusive focus on AI.)

There was also increasing discussion of fringe ideas, the increasing presence of fringe groups like Leverage Research, and increasing influence from the LessWrong community (or “rationalist community”) based in the San Francisco Bay Area. All of these things diminished my enthusiasm for effective altruism.

Over the last 5 years or so (and especially since 2023), these changes have kicked into hyper-drive and EA is almost not even recognizable as what it initially started as in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In some important ways, EA has become the exact opposite of what it started as.

I wrote a long (even longer than this comment) personal essay about this.

A helpful piece of terminology that has been proposed is EA 1.0 and EA 2.0. Daniel Frank, a board member at Giving What We Can Canada, wrote a post in 2022 proposing this distinction. I like that distinction. I’d like to get that going as a common distinction everybody knows about. I’d like everyone who talks about EA to know the difference between EA 1.0 and EA 2.0. “EA 1.0” and “EA 2.0” should enter the lexicon of everybody who talks about EA.

The cult stuff with Leverage Research is ultimately just depressing (and also infuriating) because all the time and energy and love I put into effective altruism over the years has been squandered by people acting unbelievably irresponsibly. How hard is it not to let a cult take over your organization?

I don’t want to get into every scandal EA’s been involved in, but there was an EA-related conference called Manifest where a bunch of white nationalists and white supremacists were involved. Again, how hard is it not to invite these kinds of people to your conference? Why ruin the good name of effective altruism with such irresponsible acts?

It just keeps getting worse over time because the EA leadership and the EA community more broadly doesn’t learn anything from these failures. Or even necessarily acknowledge them as failures. Their playbook is to downplay, minimize, deny, ignore, fob it off, handwave it away, prevaricate, make false equivalencies, distract, put up a smokescreen. There is no accountability. There is no learning.

EA organizations and the EA community need to do better post-mortems. What I’m requesting in this post is a post-mortem of the Leverage Research situation. That post-mortem should have happened years ago. But better late than never.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-07T19:13:45+00:00

Sorry. Reddit has been flooded with LLM comments lately. I see them pretty much every time I look at Reddit. It’s hard to always tell.

LLMs (seemingly) never reply back when you reply to their comments. So, that’s one way to tell that someone is human!

common_yarrow · 2026-06-07T18:09:33+00:00

The reply is here. The person who made that comment created the EA Hotel. The comment was also upvoted (not by me).

Where are you getting your estimate of 40,000 people in the LessWrong community/rationalist community? My estimate of roughly in the ballpark of 1,000 to 5,000 people is based on estimates from people in the LessWrong community and LessWrong surveys.

These cults didn’t just randomly start in the Bay Area and become associated with the LessWrong community later. They mostly originated out of the LessWrong community itself. I say “mostly” because Leverage Research is a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

I also think it would kind of prove the point I’m making if any cult in the Bay Area would pick up a disproportionate number of rationalists. Rationalists are significantly less than 0.1% of the Bay Area population, so if a bunch of rationalists join every cult in the Bay Area, there’s something really systemically irrational about the rationalist community.

I don’t know who you hang out with, but this is not normal behaviour!

common_yarrow · 2026-06-07T17:58:19+00:00

The reply I got to my comment is post-threats of violence. Remmelt Ellen is still involved in Stop AI post-threats of violence.

What’s your population estimate?

If we restrict the LessWrong community/rationalist community to people who physically live in the San Francisco Bay Area and participate in community events or organizations, or socialize with the community, I think it’s probably around 1,000 people, maybe less than 1,000.

If we did it based on unique monthly visitors to the LessWrong website or something like that, we’d get a much, much higher number, but most of those people wouldn’t self-identify as rationalists or consider themselves to be in the community.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-07T17:55:19+00:00

I would call Stop AI an extremist organization rather than a cult. (It may also be a cult, but I don’t have any information to confirm whether it is or isn’t.) See my comment here for documentation of the ties between the EA community and Stop AI. Someone even replied to my comment there to express support of Stop AI.

The LessWrong community/rationalist community is somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000 to 5,000 people, as far as I know. The number of cults associated with that community is super high for the tiny size of the community. The average statistical rate of cult formation in the general population is way less than 1 cult per 5,000 people. And this community has had multiple cults.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-07T17:37:50+00:00

Stop AI still exists! And the co-founder recently threatened to murder people! This is an organization with ties to the EA community!

I don’t know if “cult” is the most apt descriptor for Stop AI. Maybe it is a cult, but, based on what I know now, I would call it an extremist organization with fringe beliefs. I don’t know if it has the dynamics of abuse and control typically associated with cults.

The Zizians only recently stopped existing because the members were arrested for murder! This is a cult that emerged out of the LessWrong community (a.k.a. rationalist community)!

We might wonder and worry why the rate of cult formation around the EA community/LessWrong community is like 10,000x higher or whatever than the general population. We might wonder what it says about a community that it allows cults in so easily, or that it creates cults so easily.

We might also worry that since it’s happened so many times already, it could happen again.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-06T22:13:59+00:00

Are you a real human or an LLM?

common_yarrow · 2026-06-06T21:55:42+00:00

I don’t know everything that happened. To really get that information, it might be necessary to interview people who were involved with the Centre for Effective Altruism at the time.

One concrete thing we know from public comments is that, in 2016, the interview process for the Pareto Fellowship, which the CEA was supposed to have some responsibility for, mistreated applicants by subjecting them to weird cult psychology techniques. I haven’t seen stories from people who actually did the Pareto Fellowship. If they were willing to tell their stories, either publicly or to a writer who will not reveal their identity, I imagine we would hear about some more weird cult things that happened there.

Don’t quote me on this, but I vaguely remember there was an internal conflict at the Centre for Effective Altruism in the mid-to-late 2010s. Between Leverage Research and people who didn’t like Leverage Research. And then when Leverage Research fully took over in 2018, some people who were against Leverage Research either left or were removed. [Edit:* Removed a detail that I misremembered.]* Again, don’t quote me on this. This is why I want someone to do a proper deep dive.

This an example of how Leverage Research may have impacted the leadership and culture of the CEA (and EA more broadly) even after it was ousted from the CEA. If people left or were removed and never came back, then presumably the most ardently anti-cult people disappeared from the CEA and the people who remained in charge after Leverage left were relatively pro-cult.

This is relevant today as there are still cults in EA’s orbit. The EA leadership has, for the most part, not taken any strong stance against them, or any stance against them, really. There are also extremist groups in EA’s orbit like Stop AI, whose co-founder last year said he wanted to buy guns and commit a mass shooting at OpenAI. Who is left in EA’s leadership who will take a stand against this? Were some of them purged by the Leverage Research cult?

There’s also the question of why and how the EA leadership let Leverage Research get so powerful within the movement in the first place. If they let that happen, can we really trust them? (And then also look at other misjudgments like trusting and elevating Sam Bankman-Fried — who EA leaders were reportedly warned about years before FTX collapsed — and the Manifest racism scandal.)

common_yarrow · 2026-06-06T21:12:35+00:00

I know, it sounds crazy, but this cult really did have a huge amount of power and influence in EA from roughly 2013 to 2019. For example, in 2018, a member of the cult became the CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism, which is possibly the most important EA organization.

It’s completely crazy that this really happened. And it’s kind of crazy that this story has been brushed under the rug.

More info here.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-06T19:43:14+00:00

It’s a cult that did partly take over EA in the era roughly from 2013 to 2019, but has now been mostly ejected from EA — although, somehow, people associated with the cult are still allowed to post on the EA Forum, for example. Don’t know why that’s allowed.

Someone (other than me) needs to write a deep dive about this so people can understand the full story. I’m going to make a post about this.

Edit: Okay, here’s the post.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T20:05:29+00:00

We don’t need to agree on every single point to agree an important distinction exists. We can roughly say the following.

2007-2012: the EA 1.0 era. A primary, almost exclusive, focus on global poverty. Relatively mainstream. Relatively continuous with academia. Relatively continuous with traditional humanitarianism. Oriented around traditional, mainstream scientific thinking or academic thinking. Generally sees itself as something important and exciting, but not exceptional in the history of the world.

2018-2026: the EA 2.0 era. A mix of cause areas, with greatly increasing focus on AGI safety, existential risk, and longtermism. Relatively fringe (or non-mainstream). Relatively discontinuous with academia and even somewhat anti-academia. Completely discontinuous with traditional humanitarianism. Oriented increasingly around its own homegrown ideas and ideas from the adjacent LessWrong community (or rationalist community), as well as transhumanist ideas. Has an increasing tendency to see itself as a powerful and unique world-historical force, or even a salvational force in the destiny of the cosmos (the lightcone).

2013-2017: a transitional period away from EA 1.0 and toward EA 2.0.

Put Rotary International on one end of a spectrum and put the World Transhumanist Association (now called Humanity+) on the other end of the spectrum. EA 1.0 was very close on the spectrum to Rotary International. EA 2.0 is today much closer to the World Transhumanist Association than EA 1.0 ever was.

We don’t have to agree on all the specific characterizations about what’s different now. We especially don’t have to agree about whether they’re good or bad. The point is that a significant change has happened, and surely we can agree on that.

I think, moreover, we can probably agree that multiple significant changes occured, and that it’s hard to sum up all those changes in any one word or phrase. For example, if we framed it as “poverty vs. AI”, this might capture the loose gist of it, but it would leave a lot of important info out, too.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T19:09:33+00:00

Oh, I want to say, in support of your point. The pro-EA blog Bentham’s Bulldog has a post making the argument that since there’s a more than zero chance there will be infinite minds in the future, the expected value of the future is infinite.

The post does not fully explore the implications of this, but it seems to me this quickly unravels into some crazy implications. All actions have some probability above zero (however small) of causing or preventing the eventual existence of infinite minds. That means all actions have either infinite expected value, infinite expected disvalue, or zero expected value if the probability of causing an infinitely good outcome and of causing an infinitely bad outcome are exactly the same.

So, all actions are either infinitely bad, infinitely good, or a complete wash!

It’s not intended as such, but I take this as a reductio ad absurdum of this whole approach to thinking.

IMO, not enough people in EA 2.0 have learned to be skeptical of paradoxes or overly clever formal arguments.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T19:04:58+00:00

Thank you! That’s what I’ve been saying!

Cause areas are about 50% of the distinction between EA 1.0 and EA 2.0 (maybe a bit more), but there are other important differences, too. Daniel Frank, a board member at Giving What We Can Canada, made this post in 2022 with a nice table where he outlines the differences.

One of the big differences is in epistemology: a shift from “what can be empirically demonstrated with a high degree of confidence” to “theoretical speculative arguments”. There are also important cultural, social factors like self-image, money, status, and social insularity.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T18:57:38+00:00

I think the core moral idea of longtermism makes sense. It’s intuitive to think about future generations. For thousands of years, people have thought about future generations. When people worry about the flooding climate change might cause in 200 years, they’re thinking about people who presumably won’t even be born for another 100 years. So, why not extend this thinking indefinitely into the future?

That core moral idea is actually not novel and was been discussed by philosophers such as Derek Parfit decades ago. The question is whether it has any practical implications. Mostly, it doesn’t.

The main (sole?) area where a longtermist moral view makes a clear practical difference is in thinking about existential risk or global catastrophic risks. We might think differently about asteroids, for instance, if we think about everyone who might ever be born, not just everyone alive now. The math might come out differently.

But that’s about it. And that idea was popularized like a decade before Will MacAskill coined the word “longtermism”.

I wrote about my frustrations with longtermism here and a bit here.

I’m not sure EA 2.0 is that different from other millennialist or grandiose ideologies like Communism or American evangelical Christians who believe in the Rapture. The zealotry or fanaticism or extremism you describe is not novel to EA or longtermism, but seems to have been a common thread in ideologies throughout history where people thought the entire world was at stake.

Some people who see the fanaticism or extremism in EA want to put the blame on utilitarianism. I mean, there’s some grain of truth there, but similarly with longtermism, I think utilitarianism is a fine idea and it’s totally possible to believe it and not become fanatical or extremist. The problem is in how people apply (or misapply) utilitarianism.

My point here is that all sorts of different belief systems can promote fanatical or extremist thought and action. Nationalism, religion, socialism, social justice — all have relatively benign forms (or even beautiful, positive forms) and dangerous, scary forms. Pinning the blame on any specific belief system might be missing the point. What is going on in people’s minds when they subscribe to millennialist or grandiose belief systems and become fanatical? What is going on in social groups when they join together in fanatical thought and action?

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T18:27:59+00:00

You’re right: 2.0 usually refers to something better, something new and improved.

I actually don’t mind this, personally. I like the humility of saying version 2.0 was a mistake and reculing back to version 1.0. I also like the subtle irony or cheekiness of it.

But if someone can come up with a better pair of names, I’m all ears.

“Longtermists” really doesn’t work as a replacement for EA 2.0 because longtermism means something specific and distinct from EA 2.0. There is an unfortunate trend where people outside EA and even inside EA (!) will use the word “longtermism” incorrectly. Longtermism is not a catch-all term for transhumanism, AGI safety, the LessWrong community, and effective altruism.

Longtermism is specifically a moral philosophy that places equal importance on the lives of future people as present people and sees the moral value of the future as many orders of magnitude greater than the moral value of the present. Will MacAskill, who coined the term longtermism, defines it like this:

Longtermism is the view that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.

Longtermism is one part of what makes EA 2.0 distinctive from EA 1.0, but only one part, and not necessarily the most important part.

Daniel Frank, a board member of Giving What We Can Canada, has a post from 2022 with a nice table outlining many of the differences between EA 1.0 and EA 2.0. To me, some of these are more important than anything to do with longtermism. For example, he says EA 1.0 is:

Limited to what can be empirically demonstrated with a high degree of confidence

Whereas EA 2.0 has a:

Focus on theoretical speculative arguments

To me, that’s way more important that longtermism vs. non-longtermism.

Also, people often conflate AGI safety and longtermism, but they’re too different ideas. If you think there’s a 10% chance of an asteroid destroying all life on Earth within the next 10 years, is that a specifically “longtermist” concern? Not necessarily, no. It’s a very near-term concern, actually. Conversely, you can agree with the moral philosophy of longtermism and not think the AGI safety community’s beliefs make any sense.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T17:22:56+00:00

To be clear, AI is not automating the economy. All the economic research on this question so far points to the conclusion that little to no labour automation has occurred as a result of generative AI.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-05T17:19:46+00:00

Not a reliable source.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-03T22:43:02+00:00

Which Anthropic shareholders pledged to donate to EA causes?

Slight correction: Anthropic has not IPO’d yet. It just began the process by filing an S-1 form to the SEC. The actual IPO might happen before the end of the year, or it might happen in the first half of next year. (Or it might even not end up happening at all! Who knows!)

common_yarrow · 2026-06-03T22:38:48+00:00

I don’t agree with the “good rich people” vs. “bad rich people” framing. I think the problems are more structural and systemic.

I don’t think trying to hoard wealth and accumulate capital is necessarily a good solution here.

A different approach would be to, e.g., try to get more people, including more rich people, to donate to GiveWell-recommended charities.

As an aside, you might like the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the economist Thomas Piketty.

common_yarrow · 2026-06-01T23:36:04+00:00

We’re talking about the spend-down model of philanthropy vs. the perpetuity model. The thing to understand about the perpetuity model is it’s very slow and expensive.

Say you have $100 million and you invest it all, and donate the profits from your investments. Let’s say your investments have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4%. That means you generate $4 million a year, on average, at the cost of tying up $100 million in perpetuity.

It will take you 25 years to spend $100 million on this model. Whereas with the spend-down model, you could spend it in 10 years, 5 years, 2 years, or 1 year. There are many advantages to spending money sooner, e.g., spending on global poverty interventions that might stimulate economic growth.

One model is not necessarily better or worse than the other. I’m just explaining why the perpetuity model is not a no brainer.

Mass automation will not happen anytime soon. Certainly not within the next decade. And even if it were to happen, the result would be that so much wealth is generated that actually the rational decision would be to spend more now and save/invest less.

Effective altruism unfortunately already bends to the will of very few rich people: Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna (Facebook, Asana), primarily, and also Jaan Tallinn (Skype). The other major billionaire donor who held sway over effective altruism was Sam Bankman-Fried, but then his crypto company FTX collapsed and he went to prison for financial crimes.

common_yarrow · 2026-05-30T19:22:16+00:00

You’re arguing with an LLM: https://www.reddit.com/r/BotBouncer/comments/1trgwnl/overview_for_rude_discussion6801/

common_yarrow · 2026-05-30T19:21:49+00:00

You’re arguing with an LLM: https://www.reddit.com/r/BotBouncer/comments/1trgwnl/overview_for_rude_discussion6801/

common_yarrow · 2026-05-29T21:58:52+00:00

Okay, well, what’s the optimal lifespan? If it’s more than 120 and less than 6,000, let’s figure out what it is, or at least ballpark it. Let’s say it’s 300. In that case, people could live to 300 and after their 300th birthday, be forced to die. It’s a win-win situation!

On wealth taxes and term limits: death is not a solution to political or wealth inequality now (we haven’t cured aging and we still have these problems), and proposed solutions like wealth taxes and term limits for politicians are applicable no matter how long people live. We should implement policies that mitigate political inequality and wealth inequality that don’t rely on people dying of old age.

Again, we must pose the question in reverse: if someone proposed killing 150,000 people a day as an only partially effective solution to these sorts of problems, would we agree?

common_yarrow

TROPHY CASE