Leverage Research 1.0
The article details the rise and fall of Leverage Research, a controversial organization that sought to use scientific methods to improve human reasoning and well-being, but ultimately collapsed due to allegations of psychological manipulation, cult-like control, and a failed expansion into a planned community known as "the Island."
Background
- Leverage Research was a Bay Area nonprofit founded in 2008 by Geoffrey Miller, Paul Chitlik, and others, with early backing from major figures in the effective altruism (EA) and rationalist communities (e.g., the FTX Future Fund, Open Philanthropy).
- The group aimed to build a "science of understanding and improving the human mind" — studying psychological change, belief formation, and "unlocking human potential" — using methods that critics say became increasingly secretive, authoritarian, and cult-like.
- Over time, former members alleged emotional abuse, coercive control, financial exploitation, and isolation from outside relationships. A 2022 investigation by the Leverage Investigations Project documented these claims in depth.
- The piece is part of a wave of post-FTX-collapse reckonings in which formerly respected EA-adjacent organizations (like the Center for Applied Rationality, the Spectacular Fund, and others) have been reexamined under a harsher spotlight, revealing patterns of harm that critics say were enabled by the movement's deference to intellectual authority and "longtermist" reasoning.