Based Camp - Leverage： My Ties to a Silicon Valley Cult

00:00:00.000 You then have somebody who is supposed to constantly be watching over you who is allowed to have sex with you because that often happens.

00:00:06.300 She mentions it in pieces that people who were other people's direct subordinates, so you needed to meet with them.

00:00:11.820 You needed to do these life counseling things where they would debug you, and you could get fired if you didn't please them, and you would lose a home and a source of income and have a big blink spot on your resume.

00:00:23.480 You think that didn't create an intrinsic pressure to have sex with them?

00:00:27.380 Well, when you put it that way.

00:00:30.360 The thing that I find interesting about leverage, about the only thing I find interesting, is the novel business model.

00:00:38.440 They're a very novel business model for a cult, but the novel business model itself was sort of cheesing the Silicon Valley environment of that time period.

00:00:47.360 Everybody has the intentionality of being a good person.

00:00:52.000 How good you intend to be has no correlation with how good you are.

00:00:58.660 How good you are is dependent on your understanding of reality. 0.95

00:01:05.200 Oh, and that's a really good example of this because we don't just have to shit all over mysticism.

00:01:10.780 Would you like to know more?

00:01:11.840 So Malcolm, since you were a wee lad, you had always wanted to start a cult and run it, and it's so sad that you have not realized that dream, but you still studied cults a lot.

00:01:25.420 And so I thought we could go over a recent cult that formed and fell apart and theoretically has reformed and is still alive and operational today, and I can get your analysis.

00:01:36.740 Yeah, so this is going to be the leverage video.

00:01:38.960 Now, something I should note to our audience about us and leverage is we have a lot of connections to leverage.

00:01:46.340 Like, I know at least a dozen people who were in this cult.

00:01:51.780 In it or just involved or they knew someone?

00:01:54.080 It's involved or in it.

00:01:55.980 So, yeah, so if you were in the effective altruist community or the less wrong or rationalist community in the Bay Area, in the, like, well, the period I was there.

00:02:07.620 God, if I can remember when that was, like, early 2000s, I want to say.

00:02:10.820 We met in 2012.

00:02:12.100 You were there from 2012 to 2015.

00:02:15.700 No, I was there before we met, Simone, for years.

00:02:18.000 Okay, so you were there.

00:02:19.240 No, you graduated college in 2010.

00:02:21.280 So theoretically, you were there from 2010.

00:02:23.100 Dates are really better.

00:02:24.280 To 2015.

00:02:24.900 And leverage during, we'll say leverage 1.0, which is leverage and paradigm.

00:02:28.980 The failed cult that we're going to be talking about existed from late 2011, early 2012 through 2019.

00:02:35.360 So there was definitely overlap while you were in the Bay Area.

00:02:39.680 Perfect overlap while I was in the Bay Area.

00:02:41.480 Now, a few things that you should note is a big fallout of this is a lot of people in this cult take umbrage was it being called a cult, which is actually now, was it publicly being known as a cult?

00:02:53.480 Some people openly call it a cult.

00:02:56.160 Most seem to not.

00:02:57.140 Yeah.

00:02:57.980 Well, no.

00:02:58.900 People who are in it actively.

00:02:59.900 I should note that normatively, like, of the time when I was in Silicon Valley, and everyone I know after my time in Silicon Valley, everyone who touched it called it a cult.

00:03:11.420 While they were involved?

00:03:13.140 Yeah.

00:03:13.660 That was common.

00:03:14.840 You're like, oh, I'm going to go hang out at the cult headquarter.

00:03:17.140 Yeah, this, this, we're not a cult is some new, they like, well, at least the younger lower order members knew it was a cult, but like, it was. 0.54

00:03:27.460 Who joins a cult as a lower order member knowing that it's a cult?

00:03:32.180 Well, for the same reason that I'm interested in cults, in a way.

00:03:35.020 Oh, they have this idea of, well, maybe we can construct a true metaphysical understanding of reality and like a better way of ordering our brains and the way we relate to reality and through that improve ourselves.

00:03:49.760 Like, when I studied cult psychology, the thing that interested me about cult psychology is I was like, these people are able to significantly alter their self identities.

00:03:58.080 Um, maybe that could be used for benefit.

00:04:01.420 Like, if our self identities are that malleable, then why not build a framework that an individual can just sort of pick up and use to rewrite who they are in the same way cults do that to people.

00:04:13.660 And that is, that is what really interested me about, about the topic.

00:04:17.440 And I think that they saw the same thing.

00:04:19.640 And there was this sort of cool underground stigma to talking about it that way or thinking about it that way.

00:04:25.220 Like, oh yeah, I hang out with those cultists, you know.

00:04:27.080 Or it's almost like saying that you're, you're in a gang, maybe.

00:04:30.180 It's a little cachet.

00:04:31.040 Yeah.

00:04:31.480 So I, I will note that this modern framing of we're not a cult is just out of nowhere and likely due to the negative repercussions they've had of being likened to a cult instead of saying, well, we are a cult, but we're cool.

00:04:44.480 So.

00:04:44.820 That's so interesting.

00:04:46.240 Cause I, I, I wasn't one, you were there, you were in the Bay Area during early leverage days.

00:04:51.740 So maybe at the end of leverage, when things started to fall apart after 2015, things were different and they started getting a little more self-conscious, but yeah, it's, I had no idea.

00:05:02.080 That's really fascinating.

00:05:03.700 So reading to me, I've been watching some leverage content recently, so I have some idea, but read to me.

00:05:08.360 So to really understand how things went off the rails, which is where I think Malcolm really wants to delve in here and where I think things get interesting.

00:05:15.440 It's just best to turn to Zoe Kersey's medium write-up, my experience with leverage.

00:05:20.260 I'll give you some highlights just to give you a picture of how this went off the rails and why this was a cult from Zoe quote, people, not everyone, but definitely a lot of us genuinely thought we were going to take over the U S government.

00:05:33.600 One of my supervisors would regularly talk about this as a daunting, but inevitable strategic reality.

00:05:39.620 Obviously we'll do it, but, and succeed, but it seems hard.

00:05:42.900 Another supervisor bemoaned with some performative unease that the necessity of theories about violence and military skill, because they just couldn't see any other way we could get to world takeover level.

00:05:55.880 So here's an organization, a cult, it turns out, as you would say, that is keen on taking over the world.

00:06:02.300 That's its plan.

00:06:03.480 Actually.

00:06:03.980 This is necessarily a red flag.

00:06:05.780 So a lot of people in my organization were talking about eventually taking over the world.

00:06:10.040 Look, the world needs taking over.

00:06:11.780 I've got a plan to take over the world.

00:06:13.860 So you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're finding this is not bad, not bad.

00:06:18.100 No.

00:06:18.400 Again, this is one of those categories where like, fine, you want to take over the world, take over the world. 1.00

00:06:22.860 And you do need to, but, but I, I would say that the group was stupid. 1.00

00:06:27.800 It like, like actively stupid. 1.00

00:06:29.300 The more you'll hear about this group, the more you'll be like, oh, wow. 1.00

00:06:32.020 There must've been a really large number of stupid people in like the early singularity EA and rationalist community. 1.00

00:06:37.940 And I was like, there still are, but like astoundingly stupid. 1.00

00:06:41.880 Like the idea that you're like, okay, well, we're going to take over the world one day. 1.00

00:06:45.240 So let's study military tactics.

00:06:47.880 Like that is not.

00:06:48.980 That was one person.

00:06:49.780 And this was a minority.

00:06:50.920 I'm just saying, but they were, there were people who had their own opinions in there.

00:06:55.040 Uh, and yes, it was, it was a thing, but yeah, so that, that is one place where it went off

00:07:00.080 the rails and that is a spicy detail, but I guess you're going to play Liz Lemon in this

00:07:04.380 and be like, is it a deal breaker?

00:07:05.740 And this for you, not a deal breaker.

00:07:08.640 Yeah.

00:07:08.920 Keep going.

00:07:09.440 Domination.

00:07:10.060 Also, I think it's, it's uniquely ballsy for a cult.

00:07:12.100 Normally they're just like, we're all going to go to heaven or something.

00:07:14.260 So good for them.

00:07:15.760 Zoe also very conveniently has a numbered list, which is, I think very EA rationalist community

00:07:21.020 of a taste of how out of control this got.

00:07:25.080 So I will read to you to give you a picture of where the culture eventually ended up.

00:07:29.820 Here's a list of some of the things I experienced by the end of my time there.

00:07:34.060 One, two to six hour long group debugging sessions in which we as a sub-faction alignment group

00:07:41.620 would attempt to articulate a demon, which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival

00:07:48.700 groups, its nature and effects and get it out of our system using debugging tools.

00:07:55.340 Deal breaker.

00:07:57.180 Well, no, so this is actually interesting to talk about debugging.

00:07:59.940 So something you'll often have in groups that are attempting to manipulate you psychologically.

00:08:05.060 And it's important to know because like, okay, if you could actually rework your personality

00:08:10.220 in your brain, which I believe you can, like, would you not want access to those tools?

00:08:15.420 And would you want somebody else to make sure you didn't utilize them in a way that was

00:08:19.860 deleterious or caused negative downstream effects?

00:08:22.900 Sure.

00:08:24.440 I think the real core is who's setting the goals.

00:08:29.640 So with something like debugging, it is very easy to brainwash someone.

00:08:34.120 If you are in the room with one other person who is asking you about your past and who you

00:08:39.660 are expected to often admit sins to, that's another thing that's really important.

00:08:42.980 Actually, if you have to look at them in the eyes for long periods of time, this can very

00:08:48.300 easily brainwash people.

00:08:50.620 It was a technique that I looked at.

00:08:52.620 I learned.

00:08:53.100 I was like, could I like, where should you notice this?

00:08:56.600 So whenever you're in a group and this is something that's happening, that group has developed

00:09:01.300 often organically a form of brainwashing.

00:09:04.480 Oh, so without intending it, this can all be.

00:09:06.560 Yeah, sometimes it just happens accidentally.

00:09:09.260 Like you have a group of people who are trying to like talk through things, right?

00:09:14.060 Like trying to work on themselves, like do interpersonal work.

00:09:17.760 And so they get in groups of two where they talk through things.

00:09:21.340 And then, uh-oh, accidentally they decided to do this in a hierarchical way because they

00:09:25.300 wanted people who were more competent to be sort of helping the people who were less

00:09:29.000 competent.

00:09:29.700 And now that hierarchy ends up self-expanding because everyone who's doing it is supposed

00:09:33.940 to recruit more people to do it.

00:09:35.260 And now, oh, you accidentally just evolved a cult.

00:09:38.440 Cults do not need to be started malevolently.

00:09:40.840 Now, in Jeff's case, because I know a lot about leverage, I do believe that he intentionally

00:09:45.140 Googled brainwashing techniques just because they look like they were a collection of obvious

00:09:50.780 brainwashing techniques.

00:09:52.320 But yeah, this is why you see this in leverage right here, which is actually very similar

00:09:57.240 to the readings.

00:09:59.960 Yeah, debugging sessions sound like audits from Scientology.

00:10:04.500 Yeah.

00:10:04.760 Or Catholic confessions, I guess.

00:10:07.900 I'd say they're quite a bit different from Catholic confessions.

00:10:11.020 Actually, I can go into how they're different from Catholic confessions and why Catholic

00:10:14.180 confessions are so uniquely healthy among cultural subgroups.

00:10:18.200 Oh, yeah.

00:10:18.520 Let's compare and contrast.

00:10:19.620 When you go to a Catholic confession, you are taking the sins you feel you committed, okay?

00:10:30.300 You are volunteering those to an external party who you don't know, so you cannot accidentally

00:10:36.920 become influenced by them as an individual, which is very important.

00:10:40.580 You are unloading them more to like an amorphous entity, the church.

00:10:44.040 Yeah, no eye contact.

00:10:45.340 You can't see them.

00:10:46.220 You don't theoretically know who they are, but you probably do.

00:10:48.920 It's pretty hard for an individual priest to use this system to manipulate an individual.

00:10:54.920 So that's one thing that's really important because of how simplistic the interaction is.

00:11:01.240 I give you my sins.

00:11:02.880 You tell me what I need to do to make them not important anymore.

00:11:06.160 Now, psychologically, this has a lot of benefits doing this because now you're taking the things

00:11:10.440 that are psychologically weighing you down and you are giving them to an external entity,

00:11:16.100 but they are not saying those things don't matter or you should learn to not care about

00:11:20.400 the things, which is what modern psychology does, which I actually think it's pretty

00:11:22.880 psychologically unhealthy.

00:11:23.840 Those things do matter and here is how you play penance for them.

00:11:28.380 And it's some easy physical act like saying a prayer a number of times or doing prayer beads

00:11:33.760 or something like that.

00:11:35.020 Yeah.

00:11:35.240 Very eloquently and well-designed psychologically healthy system.

00:11:40.740 Now, psychologically unhealthy systems will often have you in these stories do full personal

00:11:46.800 narratives, often with the goal of discovering quote unquote trauma or where thetans

00:11:53.220 bind it to you.

00:11:54.620 That's what they do in psychology.

00:11:56.560 You mean Scientology?

00:11:58.680 Scientology.

00:11:59.340 That's what they're looking for is some sort of inciting event that they can then say,

00:12:03.580 ah, this is why you have these problems and you need me to deal with this inciting event.

00:12:08.280 They will usually choose something tied to your parents or birth culture as the inciting event

00:12:13.260 because it makes it easier to draw a distance between you and your birth culture.

00:12:17.740 Right.

00:12:17.820 Um, so if you, if you see a group that's doing that, what they are trying to do is drive a

00:12:24.240 wedge between you and your, your support network while also recontextualizing yourself as needing

00:12:30.700 that group, being dependent on that group.

00:12:32.760 Hmm.

00:12:34.080 All right.

00:12:34.420 Keep going with the list.

00:12:35.660 Well, you haven't even commented on one of the most interesting elements of this, which

00:12:39.560 I think is the group faction that she alludes to here.

00:12:44.240 Keep in mind that Zoe is talking about how the debugging sessions weren't just this type

00:12:49.840 of audit that you're describing Scientology style, but this is one in which the alignment

00:12:55.400 group of which Zoe was a member was attempting to articulate a demon that had infiltrated their

00:13:01.740 psyches from one of their rival groups. 0.98

00:13:04.760 Do you think that these rival groups were intentionally created?

00:13:07.780 They, I don't, I've not heard of them in any cult environment, but I have heard of them

00:13:11.800 in that one where they took a boy's camp and made them hate each other and things got so

00:13:16.780 violent.

00:13:17.280 They had to stop the study.

00:13:20.060 You recall this, right?

00:13:21.760 Very interesting.

00:13:22.460 So I know, I think that the rival groups thing naturally evolved and it actually evolved because

00:13:28.340 sort of an inefficiency in the way that the organization was created.

00:13:32.900 Side note here, I find it odd that they thought that they could create these ultra cooperative

00:13:41.060 and efficient humans with their techniques.

00:13:44.580 And yet the people acting within their organization were demonstrably less good at cooperating with

00:13:51.000 each other and less efficient than people outside of their organization.

00:13:54.940 Like to see around you, everything collapsing and not realizing that the psychological techniques

00:14:01.180 that you are implementing are markedly worse than even the terrible psychological techniques

00:14:09.580 that pervade our society today.

00:14:12.120 So first we should talk about the demons.

00:14:14.120 So they believed in two types of things at different parts of the story here.

00:14:19.000 One was demons and one was objects.

00:14:21.140 They are both basically like concepts that one person can create and plant in another

00:14:28.280 person's mind.

00:14:29.480 So it's like memes or ideas or even moves.

00:14:33.600 Yeah, there's, well, you and I would contextualize them as like a packaged meme, but they don't,

00:14:39.340 they sort of see it more like a bomb or a security camera that somebody placed in their brain

00:14:43.620 that is like watching them and will like give them like vibes of like who planted it there

00:14:48.660 or that demons, I think also can enter from the other world and, and engage with them.

00:14:53.620 So something that is very important in understanding leverage is he wanted to create an integrated

00:14:57.820 philosophy of everything.

00:14:59.120 Right.

00:15:00.060 And Anders did.

00:15:01.220 Yes.

00:15:01.840 Jeff Anders did.

00:15:02.900 And the way that he decided to do that was what I would actually call sort of bog standard

00:15:07.920 mysticism.

00:15:08.880 And so what is he combining, which is bog standard mysticism.

00:15:12.700 If people know what I mean, bog standard mysticism is the belief that there's some sort of

00:15:16.140 supernatural, like extra real reality.

00:15:19.780 That's beyond our fabric of reality.

00:15:21.900 And that is also God, that extra, that, that medium, that ultra reality is actually God.

00:15:27.680 And that, that reality can be engaged with through certain types of corrupted mental states.

00:15:32.380 What those states are depends on which group of mystics you're with.

00:15:36.040 And he came up with honestly pretty bog standard mystical beliefs like demons exist and stuff like

00:15:42.860 that. The core thing that makes leverage different from other groups in the way that it formed and

00:15:47.540 the way that it was structured is that it paid its members to be members. So leverage would pay

00:15:53.920 you to live in a leverage house and you had to commit to live in a leverage house for a year.

00:15:58.560 And so who's going to do that? First of all, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's people who are

00:16:01.480 already, you know, on the outs with society. Often, you know, they don't have a family where

00:16:05.200 they're living. They don't have a, you know, a support.

00:16:07.320 Well, I think common themes seem to be that these are recent grads who may have had some

00:16:12.120 short-term jobs. Like Zoe, for example, had done some acting. She'd done some admin work and that 0.99

00:16:17.740 was kind of it. So she didn't have a big career already started. No one who did could do something

00:16:22.760 like this easily. That's what you think.

00:16:26.000 No, she was, I can tell from the profile. She was a quote unquote actor who was paid to give acting

00:16:31.040 classes once a week. No, she was being paid around. Keep in mind, these were all like big

00:16:35.780 polyamorous houses. She was being kept for, to be used for sex. 1.00

00:16:41.980 We'll have to say, legally, this is all very alleged and you're-

00:16:45.340 No, no, I'm telling you, like I under-

00:16:47.520 I'm saying from a legal standpoint, Malcolm.

00:16:49.280 Okay, yes.

00:16:50.200 This is alleged and you're not slanting.

00:16:51.820 The other people in these groups are like competent individuals. Like many people in these

00:16:56.260 groups, they would get, so it was hard to get into leverage because, you know, it was a

00:17:00.640 closed resource. It was like a cult that paid you to be a member, gave you housing,

00:17:05.240 and gave you access to well-connected, wealthy individuals. Okay?

00:17:10.300 Yeah. Well, and people going into it, I think genuinely thought they were saving the world.

00:17:13.840 They didn't think that they were being used for things.

00:17:16.380 It was a cult playing on the easiest difficulty conceivable. So it did a lot of inefficient

00:17:23.120 things that a normal cult that couldn't afford to pay its members wouldn't have done.

00:17:28.960 Now you're asking, how did a cult get a bunch of money to pay its members to participate?

00:17:35.240 Because they sold itself to wealthy people as a group that was going to do like systemic

00:17:43.300 functional research on this mystical realm. Like mystical perennialism is a fairly common

00:17:49.740 philosophy.

00:17:50.740 What is mystical? Wait, define mystical perennialism. This is new to me.

00:17:54.740 Perennialism means they believe there is some truth in every religious tradition.

00:17:57.920 Mysticalism is a fabric of reality thing I mentioned before. And so they basically told

00:18:04.240 these wealthy people, we are going to do systemic research on this other side of reality, on like

00:18:11.640 a, you know, mystical truth. That is not like a terrible idea if you're actually going to do like

00:18:17.660 evidence-based research, but they weren't doing evidence-based research. The real con, and this is

00:18:23.820 interesting because this caused the whole thing for the structure to be inverted. If you're contrasting

00:18:29.440 it with a traditional cult. Okay. A traditional cult recruits people and takes their money.

00:18:35.200 Yeah. The source of income comes from the recruits, the converts, right? Yeah.

00:18:43.320 They used converts who they were paying to be converts and paying to house, to sell a product 0.86

00:18:51.240 up to wealthy people. Part of this product was, you know, the research that they were doing.

00:19:00.580 Yeah. But part of this product was also the humans that were being brainwashed.

00:19:08.160 Yes. And when we should clarify that the mission of the, well, obviously the mission of the cult was

00:19:15.800 to save the world, but the general project that they established, at least for Leverage 1.0,

00:19:21.000 Leverage 2.0, who knows, was to create extremely highly effective people who are also cooperative.

00:19:27.320 So apparently it's a misnomer that they're trying to learn how to sort of mint Elon Musk's because

00:19:32.400 Elon Musk is not very cooperative, but they were trying to basically mint very highly effective

00:19:37.140 people. And there was this premise, at least stated that it would be possible to take the right type

00:19:43.640 of person. And they apparently vetted people for this before offering them these paid positions and

00:19:50.100 housing who could, through all of this coaching, through this, these, these debugging sessions,

00:19:58.060 et cetera, become these people just to provide context.

00:20:01.900 So the goal, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to, so the, the, basically you could almost think of it

00:20:05.480 as a cult startup. It was pitching to these rich people. Yes, we're going to do this mystical

00:20:11.560 research. And that was what most of the rich people who funded it were actually interested in,

00:20:14.880 was the mystical research. They also were pitching it sort of like a startup. Like,

00:20:18.780 well, we're going to figure out how to make these ultra effective people who then send money back

00:20:23.240 to the central organization. Like that was the idea. When they say cooperative, they mean subservient,

00:20:27.780 like that they're going to continue to support this organization and its mission that turned them

00:20:33.460 into these Ubermitches. What their goal was, was to create spiritual Ubermitches that could out 1.00

00:20:39.720 compete within competitive capitalist economies, other individuals. And that was like their game plan.

00:20:44.940 Well, of course they failed to do that because they, they, they, we can talk about why they failed,

00:20:50.660 which I think it's actually a very specific reason why they failed. And they have changed

00:20:54.320 their business plan with leverage too. They've actually moved to a crypto product. And so what

00:20:58.800 they do is this crypto product is they have moved from, because most of the wealthy people that they

00:21:03.900 otherwise could raise money from, like they could with leverage one now know that one, they are a cult 0.99

00:21:09.540 to Jeff is just an incompetent buffoon. Like, I'm sorry, like everything I've heard about him, 0.99

00:21:15.280 his theories, they are bog standard mystic cult. They are not sophisticated ideas. They are not even

00:21:22.740 sophisticated. It's like a guy picked up a book on brainwashing and then read a few, he is not a bright

00:21:29.200 guy. He's really charismatic enough to get all of these people to sign on, to get all of these people

00:21:33.540 to hold him with a very high level of reference and to raise enough money to do multiple times.

00:21:40.280 Brainwashing someone isn't hard. If I wanted to start a cult by brainwashing people in the way he

00:21:44.640 started this cult, I could have done that ages ago. Why didn't you? Because my goal was always to free

00:21:51.540 people. It was to give them the tools. Oh, right. Yeah. Your whole, yeah. The thesis was, can you use cult

00:21:57.100 methods on yourself to become a better person, not coerce other people, right? Not coerce other

00:22:03.220 people to be your servant. You're ruining our evil reputation. Stop. I know I will actually,

00:22:10.320 well, people could argue, like, remember, like a lot of people know, you know, I slept with over

00:22:13.980 a hundred people. I got really, really good at getting people to sleep with me.

00:22:18.320 One of the things I implemented in that process were some of the brainwashing techniques.

00:22:23.200 Bringing it back. Thanks, Malcolm. Bringing it back.

00:22:25.060 Bringing it back. It's not that I never utilize these techniques in my life. I just had no

00:22:30.700 interest in creating a self-replicating memetic set. I may have, to some extent, you know,

00:22:37.260 like when I was younger and horny, I was not the most ethical person in the world. Like,

00:22:41.120 I could definitely be a better person. If you're an addict to anything,

00:22:44.340 you will do unethical stuff. And I think most young horny men could be argued to be addicts. 0.95

00:22:49.560 Yeah. So I look at these, these sort of sessions that he's talking about. And I did this

00:22:53.400 with girls. Very easy. Like, like, and then, and then you realize, oh, like, and this happened

00:22:58.940 to me, when you can get sex whenever you want with anyone you want, it gets really boring.

00:23:04.380 You think that's how he turned into world domination? 0.82

00:23:07.940 No, I don't think he, I think that we'll talk about what, what he screwed up. It wasn't the

00:23:13.540 world domination that screwed up. It wasn't even the goals that screwed up. It was the touching

00:23:17.480 mysticism that ruined everything. Um, back to the themes. Well, if you look at the things he did,

00:23:24.960 when other people would give an idea, he would always shoot it down and then maybe like give

00:23:28.520 it again, repackaged to the next week or something. Only ideas that came from Jeff were allowed to be

00:23:33.380 thought of as serious ideas was in this group. According to Zoe. Yes. According to Zoe, but

00:23:39.780 that's what I've heard as well. Yeah. So if this is true, if, you know, Jeff just shoots down ideas all

00:23:46.100 the time and everything like that, that's very easy to do when you adopt a mystical framework.

00:23:49.560 And it's one of the core problems was mystical frameworks. If your access to truth is supernatural,

00:23:55.940 i.e. it is achieved through states that only you can achieve. Well, this causes a problem. Either

00:24:00.740 you can't communicate with anyone else's source to truth. So there's no cross interpretability or

00:24:06.380 one individual has access to a source of truth above all other individual source of truth.

00:24:11.660 So if Jeff, it sort of disagrees with your belief about like the way psychology works,

00:24:15.480 the way whatever works, because he has mystical fortification for these beliefs, he's able

00:24:21.220 to just lean on that. And so there can never be any real study or advancement in a meaningful

00:24:28.360 context. Um, that could be the way that you see this as a secular person. And like people

00:24:35.740 need to understand my hatred of mysticism is both theological and secular. Clearly that's

00:24:41.920 that's why mysticism is so bad. But from a theological standpoint, I can say, well, okay,

00:24:50.060 so suppose they had good means and they were trying to tap into this mystical realm. Why did it read

00:24:55.520 with like everyone I know who was involved in this was like, this really messed me up. Like

00:24:59.040 this is not just a, her thing. Like everyone I've heard of who's involved with it. It's like, yeah,

00:25:03.560 this was really, even, even the, those who seem to be defending it report, having gone through a lot

00:25:11.520 of healing after it and are no contact with most of the people who were involved. So yeah,

00:25:16.780 kind of damning. Yeah. So no, I don't think I, I, I, you don't just get this here. I actually argue

00:25:23.320 that Stanford has a weird evolved cult in it called touchy feely. Um, yeah, it's a class that

00:25:28.980 basically is a cult. I started it and I was like, wait, you're trying to bring, you started taking

00:25:33.480 class. You didn't start the class. Yeah. I started taking the class and I just was like, these are

00:25:37.800 all brainwash techniques from the eighties that you're using right now. And if you talk to people

00:25:41.720 who completed it, I'll be like, it's the best thing ever. It transformed me for life. It blah,

00:25:44.940 blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, because there was a bunch of brainwash techniques from the eighties

00:25:48.000 that like, we are taught now in psychology, make sure you never do this. It can cause dependency.

00:25:53.320 Yeah. And keep in mind, these are, they were uniquely long classes. They typically took place

00:25:57.260 at the end of the day. They would, people would come home crying, that kind of thing. This is not

00:26:01.980 a normal class. No, no, no, no. They, they would intentionally sleep deprive you. They were at the

00:26:06.160 end of the day, they were in an incredibly emotionally charged situation where like,

00:26:09.540 you really couldn't win. It was, it was stupidly, obviously just brainwashing. And I do not know, 0.99

00:26:15.720 like I, I, I wanted to bring this up, but I knew I couldn't bring this up because so many people

00:26:19.640 have gone through the brainwashing session that if I was like, you know, that's a

00:26:23.260 brainwashing seminar you sent me to, they'd be like, but all of our top staff at Stanford

00:26:27.900 business school has gone through the brainwashing thing and they love it. They say it's actually

00:26:32.700 become the focus of their entire lives. And I'm like, okay, well, listen, but touchy feely isn't as

00:26:41.100 bad. It's just brainwashing to in debt you for your entire life to a corporation, the Stanford

00:26:46.200 business school, but leverage is bad because I actually don't think that the type done within

00:26:51.620 Stanford causes that much damage. The type done within leverage is incredibly damaging

00:26:55.860 because it's mystical brainwashing that levels one person's personal and subjective experience

00:27:02.900 of reality above other people's, which always leads to deleterious outcomes and prevents any

00:27:08.100 real research from taking place. That's why all they have are their quote unquote notes and they've

00:27:12.060 never gotten better at anything.

00:27:13.000 And it's such a shame too, because that whole apartment building they were living in could have

00:27:18.580 been this incredible psychological research study.

00:27:23.740 Well, no, but what's really cool, you can still do it, like find all their notes and then do a study

00:27:29.120 on it because it's interesting. But if you look at the theological perspective on the mystic, it's like

00:27:35.680 if their hypothesis was true and you could study the mystical realm and use it to improve people,

00:27:40.480 people like these would have ended up all successful, or at least some success cases,

00:27:45.700 instead of all severely psychologically damaged. So if I'm outside of my sector-

00:27:49.640 Some have gone on to be successful, I think.

00:27:52.520 Not wildly, as far as I've heard. I've heard of people like getting out. I don't know anyone

00:27:55.880 who's successful and thinks positively of it.

00:27:58.040 You're going to take this part that I'm about to say out, right?

00:28:01.280 That doesn't matter. I said anyone who's successful has a non-positive perception.

00:28:05.220 Oh, okay. I thought you were saying anyone who came out wasn't successful. That's what I heard.

00:28:08.420 No, no. Okay. Anyone who came out, I should clarify, the successful people who came out

00:28:12.880 of it typically have a negative perception of it. If it was able to work, so then the question is,

00:28:17.640 and they would say it did psychological harm to them. So then the question is, okay, if they're

00:28:21.960 right in these mystical beliefs, if they actually are contacting some sort of, then what they have

00:28:26.640 demonstrated is you should never attempt to do this because you will release real demons.

00:28:31.580 Well, actually, funny aside, and I feel like this must be some kind of Bay Area contagion,

00:28:36.720 I feel like my father participated in things almost exactly like this in the seventies and

00:28:44.280 eighties in the Bay Area, like in the same, like five mile vicinity of leverage. Because I remember

00:28:51.560 my dad, one, like he went to these like psychic workshops and he went through Est, which is a

00:28:58.360 little cult-like as well. And I remember him telling me at one point when I was a kid,

00:29:02.940 when I was trying to ask him about all this psychic stuff, he's like, yeah, man, like we were messing

00:29:08.380 with some pretty dangerous things. You have to keep in mind that when you open your mind to these

00:29:11.500 things, like they can get in. And I just took that away to like, I contextualize that as a kid quite

00:29:17.380 helpfully is this is what happens when you allow yourself to believe something and fear something that

00:29:21.860 then it actually, you get really afraid of it. But I think he actually got, I think these people

00:29:27.220 thought that bringing up demons and I think having leverage, why is this always in the Bay Area?

00:29:32.800 Most long-lived philosophical traditions culturally evolve prohibitions against this form of mysticism.

00:29:40.200 Now you can say that there is a theological truth for them, or you can say they did this for secular

00:29:44.420 reasons, but it's just, oh, by the way, people might be like, not Jews. I'm like, actually, yes,

00:29:49.500 Jews. Look at the Kabbalah. Sorry, hold on. What's the word I'm looking for? If you look at the word

00:29:55.700 Baal Shem, you're going to get the Baal Shem Tal, the guy who originally started the recent Hasidic 1.00

00:30:00.640 site. Baal Shems used to be thought of as mostly con artists within Jewish communities and were

00:30:05.880 generally looked down upon. That's why he's called like the good Baal Shem. So when Kabbalah originally 0.73

00:30:12.700 started, it was fighting against an upstream fight. But when the Kabbalistically, the extremely 0.82

00:30:20.640 Kabbalistically influenced sects of Judaism began to gain prevalence, they were fighting against

00:30:25.700 evolved mechanisms that said you should think of these sorts of things as huckstery. They just

00:30:30.100 overcame them. But generally every group in history is like, yes, if you touch the realms of chaos,

00:30:37.160 your mind gets corrupted. Don't do it. And that's a good theological framing for a secular truth,

00:30:41.860 which is when you engage with these sorts of mystical concepts, it always leads to negative

00:30:46.620 extra. It doesn't go well. Yeah. Just don't do it. And people will say, when I'll talk to religious 1.00

00:30:51.600 people about this, they'll be like, no, it causes fanaticism. It causes a fervent belief. It causes,

00:30:58.800 you know, visions which reaffirm a person's face. And it's like, yeah, but all those negative things

00:31:02.980 are happening in leverage too. Like all of the good stuff you're getting is getting from the non-mystical

00:31:08.300 side of things. The mystical, like those things, the fanaticism, which is created by whether or not

00:31:15.160 it's this realm of evil, or it's this realm of mental corruption, or it's this just completely,

00:31:21.200 you're allowing some people to say that there's subjective experiences of reality, trump other

00:31:25.140 people's subjective experiences of reality, and everyone should be engaged in their own. It's always

00:31:28.660 going to lead to these negative externalities, which is why I'm so anti-mystic. But something that's

00:31:32.840 interesting here is the framing of this for a lot of people. I think the people who are at the high

00:31:38.980 levels of this, what they see is the collapse. Reason is that they accidentally unleashed a bunch

00:31:44.100 of demons. Wait, people actually believe that? They don't just think that people devolved into weird

00:31:48.880 social, what's the word when you have a schizophrenic break? Psychosis? No, no, no. Outsiders who are

00:31:56.920 secularists believe psychosis. And if you look at what they did, it was basically like a house. 0.92

00:32:02.080 Insiders who left don't think it was psychosis? I'll explain. Okay. Okay, so basically everyone

00:32:09.360 involved was like a house, where almost everyone else, they were the strict hierarchy, and within

00:32:14.760 the hierarchy, people were just constantly watching you, taking notes on you, as if you were their test

00:32:19.460 subject, so they had this sense of superiority over everyone else. Well, in many cases, their financial

00:32:24.240 compensation and role in the house was contingent on them working on you, so yes, they kind of had to do it.

00:32:29.320 Yes, yes. But keep in mind this cycle, if you know that everyone you're interacting with is

00:32:34.340 writing about you at the end of the day, like, oh, here's this, and trying to understand you and

00:32:39.020 your motivations. If you can't see how that would be psychologically harmful in mass, you just don't

00:32:44.180 understand human psychology. Of course that's going to lead to negative externalities. Of course it's

00:32:49.120 going to lead to everyone attempting to sort of overanalyze everything they're doing in the

00:32:54.540 movement, having this sort of panicky self-reflection and existential dread, and it will cause the

00:33:01.780 creation of little cabals that are going to fight against each other, because you sort of need-

00:33:05.320 Wow, hence these groups, yeah.

00:33:07.680 Because you need teammates to sort of protect you and everything like that in this incredibly

00:33:12.020 hostile environment, where everyone is constantly psychoanalyzing you, but is untrained to do so.

00:33:16.940 Well, so then I can give you a quote from A Taste of How Out of Control This Got, which is number

00:33:21.560 two, which is related to this, just to give an example to people from a firsthand account.

00:33:26.880 Quote, people in my group commenting on a rival group having done magic that weekend and clearly

00:33:32.540 having powered up and saying we needed to now go debug the effects of being around that powered up

00:33:39.100 group, which they said was attacking them or otherwise affecting their ability to trust their

00:33:43.620 own perceptions. Number three, related as well, accusations of being thrown around.

00:33:49.060 Oh, sorry. Accusations being thrown around about people leaving objects similar to demons in other

00:33:55.400 people and people trying to sort out where the bad object originated and if it had been left

00:34:01.400 intentionally or malevolently or by action slash subconsciously.

00:34:07.060 So as a secularist, when you put on a secular hat and you're approaching any of this, it's very obvious

00:34:12.060 that this would lead to psychological breaks.

00:34:13.540 Yeah. Like this is obviously a psychologically unhealthy environment. However, these people

00:34:18.180 are not secularists. When you have entered this community, you have accepted that there is some

00:34:23.760 other like supernatural realm that you are studying.

00:34:28.760 Yeah. Well, I mean, she gave a definition of objects. Would that be helpful?

00:34:32.760 Yeah, go for it.

00:34:34.260 Objects were something that became a topic of study at Leverage about which Jeff gave presentations.

00:34:39.120 Aside from Simone, do you think Jeff intentionally created the concept of objects or this was just

00:34:44.480 something that he- 0.99

00:34:45.260 No, it's a stupid, obvious concept. 1.00

00:34:47.540 Okay. 1.00

00:34:47.900 Jeff is just not that bright. I'm sorry. But anyway, continue.

00:34:50.960 They were considered to be sort of like autonomous psychological bits that you could accidentally or

00:34:55.840 purposefully leave in another person's mind to affect or control them. If intentional,

00:35:01.880 it might cause them to subtly view you a different way, make more real or less real certain concepts,

00:35:06.840 change their experience of the passage of time, say, or make them more susceptible to mind-reading

00:35:13.100 attempts in the future, et cetera.

00:35:16.620 This is just meant to stoke paranoia. Like, I don't think that he may have been trying to

00:35:21.140 stoke paranoia, but it's also just not a particularly novel or complicated concept. He's describing like

00:35:27.360 a self-replicating memetic package, like a meme bomb, basically. But that's not the way he sees it.

00:35:33.440 Yeah.

00:35:33.980 He sees it as mystical.

00:35:35.280 To your point of things going off the rails because they went mystical, I think it's also

00:35:40.660 helpful to give these additional examples she presented as an example, just how mystical they

00:35:45.740 got. Because some of this could probably be construed as, oh, they're doing this weird

00:35:50.360 psychological research. They're just trying to use weird words to explain a phenomenon that they're

00:35:54.760 trying to coin as psychological researchers and they'll publish it. But here she says, number four,

00:36:00.620 people doing seances seriously. I was under the impression the purpose was to call on demonic

00:36:06.000 energies and use their power to affect the practitioner's social standing. So seances.

00:36:12.040 She also has number five, former rationalists clearing their homes of that energy using crystals.

00:36:18.540 And this is where I think your point about mysticism is really strong, Malcolm, extra strong, because

00:36:23.260 rationalists were, it was like, they were like a different Bay Area cult, but the standard

00:36:28.640 of that religion was just how much based on scientific research your life was being lived to a great

00:36:35.860 extent. You know, just how completely reasoned and non-mystical you were. And the fact that someone

00:36:43.520 could go from being a rationalist to using crystals to clear their homes of bad energy,

00:36:50.680 that's wild. Well, I mean, but that can happen. When you engage with the mystical, you allow for

00:36:58.020 forms of truth to come from things other than objective evidence and objective reality. And so

00:37:03.340 you're like, wait, really? People who were in this, even afterwards, still believe that they were just

00:37:08.620 attacked by demons. Like, of course they do. As soon as you open yourself to these sorts of explanations

00:37:14.600 and you're trying to explain why these bad things happened to you when you were engaging in these

00:37:21.880 environments, you're going to come up with mystical explanations for it. And that's what they did. They

00:37:28.620 thought they were attacked by demons that they had accidentally summoned.

00:37:32.420 Yeah. And what's so notable too, is that this was so damaging to the members of the group. So

00:37:38.960 to provide her number six, seven, and eight on this list, which give, I think, good illustrations of how

00:37:45.600 people came away damaged to your earlier point and prove your earlier point. Number six, much talk in

00:37:51.280 theorizing on the subject of intention reading, which was something like mind reading. Jeff gave multiple

00:37:56.620 presentations on this, which of course, like you said, would have people acting weird and feeling

00:38:00.500 paranoid. Seven, I personally went through many months of near constant terror at being mentally

00:38:06.140 invaded. My only source of help for this became the leaders of my own subgroup, who unfortunately

00:38:12.400 were also completely caught up in the mania and had their own goals and desires for me that were

00:38:17.760 mostly definitely not in my interest. Eight, I personally prayed for hours most nights for months to rid

00:38:27.040 myself of specific demons. I felt like picked up from other members of leverage. If this sounds

00:38:32.680 insane, it's because it was, I was completely, Oh, it was a crazy experience. I'm like any I've ever

00:38:39.940 had. And there are many more weird anecdotes where that came from. Again, it's a really good read and

00:38:45.160 you should read it the whole thing, but yeah, but I think, yeah, this, this hammers home your entire

00:38:51.140 point that it was the mysticism that brought them off. This is why you don't engage with mysticism.

00:38:55.900 You could have done something like this. That could have been quite interesting without the

00:38:59.720 mysticism. Well, and to that point, I'd love for you to open up, um, a, one of their very,

00:39:05.900 very early plans. It's a, it's a flow chart. I'll open it up here. Because I think this can show

00:39:11.060 how such a well-intentioned and wide spanning project that I'm sure this was pitched to some

00:39:19.900 of the people who donated initial funds to leverage 1.0 got really excited about. And the

00:39:27.400 plan, Malcolm, you'll probably include, uh, some of this on the screen. The, the end of the goal was

00:39:33.440 global wellbeing. So yeah, they, they probably really did intend to take over the government

00:39:38.940 because you kind of can't do all of the things that they wanted to, which included, they were

00:39:44.120 going to really solve everything. Education, ensure universal access to excellent educational

00:39:48.780 resources. They were also going to cure disease and ensure universal access to recreational and

00:39:55.500 artistic opportunities. They were going to provide basically universal basic income and access to

00:40:00.780 social goods. And they were going to eliminate all harmful governments somehow, which is probably

00:40:07.360 where their whole, we have to take over the government thing came over and reduce risk of global

00:40:12.540 catastrophic events, which also would probably need to involve governmental control while also

00:40:17.680 minimizing harmful norms. That is to say, quote, have everyone choose to remove all harmful social

00:40:22.700 rules that can be removed, unquote, which is also very coercive and creepy per our standards. But still

00:40:29.580 like these people basically just wanted to fix the world and make heaven on earth, right? Like that was

00:40:34.120 it. Yeah, no, I, it's very clear their, their plan is eventually, I mean, they were trying to

00:40:40.640 create a memetic structure very similar to, to what I'm trying to do in a way that could eventually

00:40:46.460 become the dominant memetic structure on earth. When instead, what I'm trying to do is create a

00:40:51.120 memetic structure that can become a, um, a, reach a stable optimum with other memetic structures that

00:40:57.280 allow people different from them to exist, which is, which is quite different from their goal in that

00:41:01.840 respect. So it's not true world domination. And the, just the core difference is, is they engage with

00:41:09.100 mysticism. They engage with saying, we're going to do all this, but we don't need to have the secular 0.98

00:41:15.400 backing. Like whenever I give a theological position, I always say, and here's the secular

00:41:21.360 reason you would take the same position. They didn't need to do that. They never did it. And when

00:41:26.740 you look at this flow chart, there's nothing, at least I haven't looked at every single box on it,

00:41:32.360 but there's nothing to me that reads mysticism in the beginning. In fact, it, what it seems to more or

00:41:38.260 less be is we're going to make the world perfect by our standards at least. And we're going to do so

00:41:44.660 by creating incredibly effective people and have those people create nonprofits and businesses that

00:41:51.160 get more resources and get more control until eventually we run absolutely everything and have

00:41:55.840 infinite resources and can solve all the problems. That was it. And of course they started with trying

00:42:01.360 to create the world's most effective people. Cause they felt like that was the most limited resource.

00:42:05.100 You couldn't start an amazing nonprofit. You couldn't start an amazing business and solve

00:42:10.000 market problems and find arbitral opportunities. If you didn't have these high agency cooperative

00:42:15.660 people. And it seems to, I disagree with you on that's why they started with that. Really? Okay.

00:42:20.500 Why do you sell them as a revenue source? That was the core reason they wanted to create effective

00:42:24.260 people. Well, that's part of it. Yeah. Is that they would generate the nonprofits and the companies

00:42:29.980 that created revenue, but those were also supposed to be the nonprofits and the companies that did the

00:42:34.280 research that cured disease and created amazing education. Yeah, no, it was a plan for creating

00:42:40.560 power based on the hypothesis that if they expose people to the mystical realm, it improves them

00:42:46.080 instead of destroys them. And what we saw is the hypothesis, the opposite turned out to be true.

00:42:51.660 When you, it engages mystical realm for both secular and theological reasons, it destroys your soul

00:42:57.060 or whatever you want to say, or your brain or your ability to think rationally. And so now we need to

00:43:02.400 look at what they've become with leverage 2.0. So leverage 2.0, because now most competent rich people

00:43:08.500 who are in any way connected to the Silicon Valley ecosystem, you know, they know that this doesn't

00:43:13.140 work. At the very least, they know that whatever Jeff did last time summoned a bunch of demons, you

00:43:18.200 know, even if they believe that everything else happened and they're just not going to work with him

00:43:21.520 again. So now he needs to find another way to get money to fund this. Now he is not quite smart enough

00:43:27.920 to start a real cult. To start a real cult, he'd have to start a group that, you know, funded from

00:43:32.480 its members. Like the people who were going through it were both competent and believed in enough to

00:43:37.640 fund it, which is, which is a hard thing to do. You know, one way you could do that is to exhaust

00:43:42.080 your members wealth, like them to give everything to you when they join the cult, but then you need

00:43:46.040 to constantly recruit new members to keep things basically running. And that's stupid. Like if you're 1.00

00:43:50.420 going to create a really effective cult, you need the people to be able to earn money

00:43:53.460 while still paying it. Now, what he's doing now is a crypto iteration where he is trying to build

00:44:00.540 the cult into the product, you know, still pay people to be a member and then fundraise through

00:44:07.360 making the product exclusive and cool enough that people want to engage with it, you know,

00:44:12.140 through this belief that they're going to have a lot of access and everything like that in the future,

00:44:15.140 which is doable when you're dealing with, you know, bog standard mystics. I think when people begin

00:44:21.120 to see mysticism, like leverage and stuff like that coming from an external force, they can begin

00:44:27.160 to see why I have so much, ah, when I see it within their own world, right? Like they see me walk up

00:44:33.840 and encounter mysticism and, and, uh, and they don't get why I'm doing that because they're like,

00:44:40.960 but this has been here for a couple hundred years at this point, you know, this has always been part of

00:44:45.900 this tradition. And I'm like, no, it just came a couple hundred years ago. What are you doing?

00:44:51.260 That's the dangerous bomb you're wielding. And with leverage, it's the same, right? Like,

00:44:57.360 or not with leverage, it's the same. With leverage, it's a good external way to see how mysticism

00:45:01.200 can destroy otherwise well-intentioned individuals. The problem is, is that if you move, remove mysticism

00:45:08.900 from what they were doing, then what he was doing was just psychology and education, which is sort of

00:45:15.540 like what we're doing, right? If you look at the Collins Institute, it's like, how can we at scale

00:45:20.920 create more effective people? But we are doing it with a completely different framework than him,

00:45:29.260 which is saying, but what if we can do it in a pluralistic way where they're able to maintain

00:45:33.120 their birth culture? So, so instead of doing what he did, we're like, you go into his educational

00:45:37.840 system, you go into his psychological framing and you need to adopt everything he subjectively

00:45:43.120 believes about reality. You need to presume is true. Yeah. Everything he did seem to be very

00:45:46.820 unifying and unified. Whereas, and this is the problem with mysticism, you know, it leads in that

00:45:53.000 direction, right? Like, well, if this is ultimate choice, then everyone has to believe it. Whereas

00:45:57.360 we take the exact opposite approach, right? We're like, well, truce emerges from different ideas

00:46:02.700 competing in an ecosystem. And so that, that, that causes us to say, well, we'll create an education

00:46:07.640 system. We'll eventually take over the world with the Collins Institute. It's called the Institute at

00:46:12.420 that point. You've got leverage versus the Institute, but we will be able to be efficacious

00:46:17.060 in the way that we lay this out. You know, I think we make our fans' lives better because we basically

00:46:22.340 lay everything out for them. Like when he would do something like do all the things and that could

00:46:27.380 potentially brainwash, whatever I suggest, like brainwashing techniques, I'm like, this is a

00:46:31.720 brainwashing technique. Here's how you might be able to use it to benefit yourself, but be careful.

00:46:36.920 But yeah, to, to the mystical thing, I think through leverage, somebody can see why they may

00:46:42.660 have blind spots in things that are just like culturally and ancestrally close to them and

00:46:47.460 not understand why we view them with such antagonism and fear and genuine fear. Like, like I, I view

00:46:54.820 mystical engagement as really dangerous. And I don't think that everyone who engages with it is like

00:47:01.540 permanently damaged. But I think that when you like at the community begin to engage with it

00:47:08.340 like this and certain individuals can like Jeff can then utilize this to brain hack people pretty

00:47:14.340 quickly. And then there was a pushback, which was like, this isn't a cult. It's a, here's all the

00:47:20.540 cult things we do. Um, why do you think they started trying to distance themselves so vehemently from the

00:47:26.340 cult branding? If you indeed are correct about them being so open about it in early leverage.

00:47:32.280 Yeah. Now keep in mind, well, a lot of groups, you go to early singularitarians, they're like,

00:47:36.780 we're a cult. You got to early, they may have meant it kind of jokingly, but was leverage. It was taken

00:47:42.220 differently because like they obviously were a cult. Um, and keep in mind, you know, these are,

00:47:47.460 everyone has to live in the house. They're all poly or a lot of them are polyamorous and they're being

00:47:52.180 paid by the house and you could be fired if you don't please your superiors. Like to it, you don't

00:47:59.540 see how this would basically lead to a garden of sex slaves. There's really nothing else that could 0.75

00:48:05.720 come out of this. That was the, always the in the state. As soon as you structured things this way.

00:48:13.740 Well, I mean, no, just think, I'm not saying like everyone in leverage is a perfect saint. Okay.

00:48:19.640 You would then have somebody who is supposed to constantly be watching over you, who is allowed 0.98

00:48:24.800 to have sex with you. Cause that often happened. She mentioned it in pieces that people who were

00:48:30.080 other people's direct subordinates. So you needed to meet with them. You needed to do these life

00:48:33.900 counseling things where they would debug you and you could get fired if you didn't please them.

00:48:38.800 And you would lose a home and a source of income and have a big blink spot on your resume. 0.68

00:48:44.120 You think that didn't create an intrinsic pressure to have sex with them? 0.94

00:48:48.060 Well, when you put it that way and then the house is run by this stud, right? Who's like, well, 1.00

00:48:58.200 you know, I am the number one, you know, enlightened guy of all enlightened guys. And I have access to

00:49:03.980 truth and I can basically kick anyone out who disagrees with me in any meaningful way. The, the thing

00:49:09.920 that I find interesting about leverage, about the only thing I find interesting is the novel business

00:49:15.580 model novel business model for a cult, but, but the novel business model itself was sort of cheesing

00:49:22.440 the Silicon Valley environment at that time period to hustle ultra wealthy people. Not, you know,

00:49:29.240 it's that impressive to me that somebody was able to hustle ultra wealthy people with bog standard

00:49:34.220 mysticism. Like, no, no, not really. Are ideas like objects, sophisticated ideas? No. Do they give you a

00:49:44.640 better understanding of reality? No, like nothing that came out of leverage was sophisticated or like

00:49:52.740 even, even from a completely malevolent perspective other than his marketing and sales skills. 0.97

00:50:00.580 But that was mostly cheesed by the environment he was in and all the dumb EA people. 0.77

00:50:04.920 And this is the other thing about like the EA community, the EA community and rationalists and 0.96

00:50:09.520 singulaterians, they like think of themselves as smart, but they get brain hacked way too easily. 0.93

00:50:15.260 They're like one of the easiest communities to brain hack. And this is what I see was the AI

00:50:19.520 apocalypticism movement. Actually recently I've been trying to understand that movement better and

00:50:23.660 we'll do a different episode about it. But one thing I've noticed is I started to be like,

00:50:27.820 there's these people who I respect and see as smart and they believe this person who is obviously a

00:50:35.260 charlatan and does not think using logical structures. And so then I dug into it and I was

00:50:41.160 like, oh, everyone who I respect who believes him is autistic and he's just hacking their autism. 0.52

00:50:47.640 I don't think that Zoe comes across as autistic.

00:50:51.260 I don't think that this was totally that, but it was like, I'm a well-meaning person who wants to make

00:50:56.540 the world a better place. Okay. Come into this system. And then they begin to define truth

00:51:01.080 differently than the way a person who is a steeled in the monotheistic traditions would, which is

00:51:08.220 it's, it's about rules and laws and predictability and using faith and, and, and your ability to

00:51:16.080 understand reality, to better predict future states of reality. They just throw all that out.

00:51:19.680 They say truth comes from your subjective experience and not, and now when our subjective

00:51:24.760 experience is clash, truth comes from the hierarchy where the subjective experience of

00:51:29.580 the person at the top of the hierarchy matters more than the subjective experience at the bottom

00:51:32.360 of the hierarchy. And that's really what I mean when I say mysticism. So when people are like,

00:51:36.340 what do you really mean when you say mysticism? I mean, all truth and all philosophical systems

00:51:41.900 where an individual subjective experience of reality has more truth than their objective

00:51:49.060 engagement with that reality. Interesting. I think one of the final things that you often say

00:51:57.360 about people going off the rails is that when people believe that they're good and they're right,

00:52:04.360 that they're far more likely to end up doing very evil things. So I don't necessarily think that Jeff

00:52:09.860 or other leaders in this organization meant to do harm or to act selfishly. In fact, a really common

00:52:18.280 theme among everyone writing about their experiences is that they legit thought they were going to save

00:52:24.040 the world. They were going to go down in history books. They were doing such important work. And it was

00:52:28.700 really scary to them, this concept that they could be kicked out because then it's like you could have

00:52:33.200 mattered so much. Right. And what makes me think that that kind of mindset really pervaded this

00:52:39.560 is the fact that in her account on in defense of attempting hard things, Kathleen writes about her

00:52:49.040 current state, her current life, quote, it's painful for me to share all of this. And it's also

00:52:54.560 inconvenient. I have important work to do on my current project that a lot of people are counting on

00:52:59.300 me to do carefully and quickly, which is already pretty overwhelming for me in my current

00:53:03.200 state and which unfortunately can't be paused while I figure out what might make sense to say

00:53:08.180 publicly that will steer people toward what seems to be more accurate beliefs. And you can just see

00:53:13.580 this sense of urgency and importance and everything that she's writing, that she thinks that she's doing

00:53:18.620 something urgent and essential. And it's weird reading it because I read it and I think, oh, you're in

00:53:24.920 leverage right now. Right. But no, she's not. She's no contact with leverage people. She's doing her own

00:53:29.740 next thing now. But she still maintains this mindset of, well, that almost seems like someone

00:53:35.120 who's like on 24, you know, who's like, they have to save the world. The world's about to blow up and

00:53:40.780 it only depends on me. And everyone's well, you're believing her that she's no contact with leverage.

00:53:45.720 She might still keep in mind, you know, she's defending them. I did. This is why I don't believe

00:53:50.260 anyone who contacted leverage that defends leverage. Everyone I know who was involved with leverage said

00:53:56.900 either one of two things. Either it was a deleterious cult or it was all real, but they let

00:54:03.860 demons into the world. Those are the only two opinions I have ever heard. I have never heard

00:54:08.840 anyone be like, oh yeah, it was a good project. Just a little wrongheaded in a few areas.

00:54:14.080 But this is a sentiment that I see pervades rationalism, effective altruism, AI apocalypticism

00:54:20.900 that I am right. I am fighting for good. Anyone who thinks that I'm, you know, doing the wrong thing

00:54:27.680 or whatever is, is wrong, misguided, evil, ignorant, et cetera. And that there's a lot less

00:54:35.560 internal criticism, even though everything about leverage was about questioning yourself and breaking

00:54:41.740 yourself down to build a better self, which is really interesting to me. And I just feel like

00:54:46.440 that perception that you're fighting on the side of good and that you're doing good can be really

00:54:51.360 dangerous. Or even if you just think that you're, you're out to do good because Zoe in her account

00:54:57.480 keeps talking about these instances in which people kind of accused her of, of placing bad objects in

00:55:02.580 them, you know, and she was seen with a lot of suspicion after a period of time. And one of the reasons

00:55:07.280 her experiences were so bad was that the community really started to demonize her and throw her to

00:55:12.140 the bottom of the social hierarchy and accuse her of all sorts of things. And she genuinely believed 0.89

00:55:17.060 it because she was in this terrible position. And she was like, Oh God, what have I done wrong? I can't

00:55:21.100 believe this. But I think even she thought that she was a good person and that may have just led,

00:55:26.120 led her to be victimized more. I don't know, but I just feel like that's another theme going on here.

00:55:31.120 And this is the problem. It's people fighting to be good people that creates most of society's

00:55:37.280 problems. You should be a great person and a great person is often a bad person. A great person doesn't

00:55:45.220 care about what is good and bad. They care about what must be done for what must come to pass.

00:55:53.020 Alexander, the great, you know, Catherine, the great, these are not good.

00:55:57.320 Or even Ivan, the terrible, but that'd be fun. And one day I become the type of Malcolm, the great.

00:56:06.500 But no, I, you, you, you want to be a great person, you know, that requires, and this is,

00:56:10.880 this is like, I understand what you're saying, but you can develop this sort of mindset around

00:56:15.660 anything. You can develop it around climate change. You can develop it around, you know,

00:56:19.880 the question is, is, are you basing your beliefs about the world? And this is, this is the problem.

00:56:26.360 It's too many people decide how good they are of a person based on their intentionality.

00:56:36.360 Everybody has the intentionality of being a good person. How good you intend to be

00:56:43.720 has no correlation with how good you are. How good you are is dependent on your understanding of

00:56:53.360 reality. Oh, and that's, you know, a really good example of this because we don't just have to

00:56:57.560 shit all over mysticism. We can also shit all over antinatalism is the Sandy Hook shooter. He thought 0.99

00:57:03.920 that he was doing a favor to all of these young children who were tragically shot because life is

00:57:11.420 suffering and it's terrible that their parents brought them into the world. And it would be terrible

00:57:16.300 if they lived full lives and were exposed to all the horrors of being alive. And he thought he was

00:57:21.260 doing good, right? Hitler thought he was doing good too. I don't know if Genghis Khan thought he was

00:57:26.200 doing good though. I don't know about that. This is why it's so important when people are like,

00:57:30.620 why do you care about all this philosophy stuff? Why do you care about like the nature of good and evil,

00:57:34.880 the true nature of reality, et cetera? That needs to be like your top question because how good of a

00:57:40.980 person, how good your life ends up being, ends up not being determined by how good you try to be.

00:57:48.480 It ends up being determined by your understanding of reality. You know, I was just on a show

00:57:53.480 and somebody was like, we'll do a longer episode about this. But he asked me,

00:57:57.420 well, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for love in your system. And I said, yeah, there isn't

00:58:05.260 because love isn't a compass that points to good. Love often points to evil. And if you're using the

00:58:12.120 wrong thing as a compass, no matter how hard you follow it, you could be the most evil person ever.

00:58:20.040 People who live for love often end up living lives of evil. Okay. Because they misunderstand

00:58:28.220 reality. They misunderstand the consequences of the things that they're doing.

00:58:34.120 Hmm. And that's why this is so critical. And it's so critical with these people,

00:58:38.200 whereas they thought they were good people because they were trying to be good people

00:58:41.840 extra hard without understanding. Everyone does that. You need to understand. When I say

00:58:47.260 understand reality, I mean, understand society, understand the way other people think,

00:58:50.280 understand philosophy, all the things we talk about on the show, that is understanding reality.

00:58:54.060 If you're understanding there is wrong, then you end up evil. Every time.

00:58:59.400 Depressing. But still fascinating. And a dumpster fire that I wish I was able to watch more closely.

00:59:09.520 Probably not though, actually. It seems to involve a lot of socializing.

00:59:12.640 And this comes to why the mysticism thing is so important to us.

00:59:15.020 Because if we have this framing, if you are getting an understanding of reality from a non-confirmable

00:59:23.120 space, from a space outside of rules and reason and knowledge.

00:59:25.340 Oh, then there's no way you'll know when you teeter into the world of evil.

00:59:30.380 Exactly. So you always do. Anyway, love you.

00:59:35.120 I love you too. What would you like?

Based Camp - June 12, 2024

Leverage： My Ties to a Silicon Valley Cult

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