Just a note that this is by Geoff Anders from Leverage Research, an organization historically plagued with some controversy in the level of psychological experimentation it is willing to perform on its members:
Hi, this is the official Leverage Hacker News account. Some clarification on the research that took place:
During the relevant period, researchers were permitted substantial freedom in determining what experiments to run and hypotheses to explore. Researchers also participated in experiments as they saw fit. This was voluntary, not all members participated in psychological research, and promotions and salaries were not tied to participation.
One should imagine a purposefully unstructured environment with 30+ people trying to figure out how the mind worked and which self-improvement modalities worked best, rather than subjects at a clinic being experimented on. Our researchers explored tons of hypotheses and we think that was great.
There are difficult questions about balancing people’s freedom to experiment with their own minds with safety in experimentation, including in an institutional context, and that’s something we think there should be more public discussion about.
leverage_inst|2 years ago
During the relevant period, researchers were permitted substantial freedom in determining what experiments to run and hypotheses to explore. Researchers also participated in experiments as they saw fit. This was voluntary, not all members participated in psychological research, and promotions and salaries were not tied to participation.
One should imagine a purposefully unstructured environment with 30+ people trying to figure out how the mind worked and which self-improvement modalities worked best, rather than subjects at a clinic being experimented on. Our researchers explored tons of hypotheses and we think that was great.
There are difficult questions about balancing people’s freedom to experiment with their own minds with safety in experimentation, including in an institutional context, and that’s something we think there should be more public discussion about.
(For people interested in the linked account, we did an inquiry on that topic. The report is available here: https://www.leverageresearch.org/_files/ugd/51c82b_c477a6576...)
thrwjud|2 years ago
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