A recent Guardian article about events hosted at our conference venue Lighthaven is full of simple factual inaccuracies. We are reaching out to request the following five corrections: @betsyreed2 @awinston 1/n
1. No FTX funds were used in the purchase of Lighthaven. Here is the closing statement from our Escrow company (including the mentioned deposit which never entered our account and was credited and debited from North Dimension Inc, resulting in no equity).
Despite that, the Guardian article as well as tweets by the author claim directly that FTX funds were used in the purchasing of our property. Please correct this error in both the article and associated tweets.
2. The article claims that: > California business filings identify Habryka as the registered agent of [...] Lightcone RG. This can easily be falsified by going to the California business registry, which clearly lists a different name under "Agent Name":
3. The article claims: > the campus remain under the ownership of an LLC, Lightcone Rose Garden (Lightcone RG), of which Lightcone is the sole member, according to the filings. This is inaccurate. The Center for Applied Rationality is the sole member of Lightcone RG:
4. The article claims that "Manifund [is a] a prediction market". This is inaccurate. Manifund is a nonprofit that regrants to highly impactful projects. This is trivially verifiable by going to the Manifund about page: https://t.co/cv6n2WvJRs
5. Lastly, the article claims that "The Guardian contacted Habryka for comment on this reporting but received no response.” I have never received such communications, despite searching thoroughly through all my inboxes. See this thread for more context: https://t.co/GNWJmCLJAo
I request that The Guardian corrects these five straightforward factual errors, and takes steps to prevent future errors like that from appearing in future publications of theirs.
Separately, the article has many issues that are not as simple to debunk, and I really wish The Guardian took better care to not majorly misrepresent the truth in articles like this.
I wish I had the ear of Sam Altman, and "TESCREAL" is not a meaningful way to identify a social cluster. Those things are not as easy to debunk, but just as misleading as the clear factual inaccuracies listed above.
Bonus: The article also claims that "Manifold is a startup that runs Manifund", which is also verifiably inaccurate, though more forgivable. Manifund is an independent organization. The two organizations are separate, and with Austin's departure don't share any active staff
Anyway, all that said. I think Lighthaven is a great conference venue. We have great reviews (including a median 10/10 rating for the question "How good was the venue?" in the Manifest feedback survey). Consider booking with us! https://t.co/4mWN64I1He
