[lmm]

Pick your favourite cult checklist and see how much applies. Rationalists certainly have some cult-like characteristics, but e.g. practically any environmentalist group has all the ones you list and more (especially the targeting the young part). In particular the Rationalists I know don't discourage questioning and dissent (quite the opposite), don't focus much on bringing in money or members, don't give their leaders any exalted status or obey them unquestioningly (quite the opposite), don't encourage people to break the law or disobey the proper authorities, and don't try to isolate people from their outside friends or family.

[nl]

I suggest you read the section starting "The Zizians, believe it or not, are not the only cult-like groupuscule to have emerged from the heady stew of the Rationalist community" from [1]

Some quotes:

> (Alignment Group) would attempt to articulate a ‘demon’ which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival groups, its nature and effects, and get it out of our systems using debugging tools

> there were also psychotic breaks involving demonic subprocess narratives,” and where people in positions of power would “debug” underlings. “I experienced myself and others being distanced from old family and friends, who didn't understand how high-impact the work we were doing was,”

> Scott Alexander, maybe the most prominent Rationalist besides Yudkowsky, suggested that the problem was not really M.I.R.I. or C.F.A.R. so much as that Taylor was in a cult-like group centered around a former M.I.R.I. head

> I don’t know that I have the patience or energy to really get to the bottom of it all except to say: It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me! And I haven’t even gotten into the Burning Man camp Black Lotus or the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth

etc

[1] https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationali...

[lmm]

I'd read it already, thank you very much.

> The Zizians, believe it or not, are not the only cult-like groupuscule to have emerged from the heady stew of the Rationalist community

Many communities have cultlike offshoots. What frequency, what proportion are we talking about? And surely the fact that mainstream Rationalists have been loudly denouncing and warning people about the Zizians for the past 5 years counts for something.

> (Alignment Group) would attempt to articulate a ‘demon’ which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival groups, its nature and effects, and get it out of our systems using debugging tools

> there were also psychotic breaks involving demonic subprocess narratives,” and where people in positions of power would “debug” underlings.

Yeah, that's crazy. I don't think any of the people I know would get involved in anything like that. Again, is that "normal Rationalists" or is that what a snake-handler sect is to Christians?

> I don’t know that I have the patience or energy to really get to the bottom of it all except to say: It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me!

This is the kind of thing you'd say if you wanted to smear a group but knew the dirt was actually pretty limited.

[nl]

Just noting I was just quoting it, but it seems accurate.

My personal view is that Rationalism is more like a religion, and there are spin-offs that are cults.

> And surely the fact that mainstream Rationalists have been loudly denouncing and warning people about the Zizians for the past 5 years counts for something.

Religions usually are very vocal to denounce breakaways as apostates.

The OP said:

> If at the apex of an organization you have a person who has organized his life in such a way as to have sex with several other people, and if many people involved in the movement pay a tithe to the organization or charities it designates, and if many of the members of this organization go crazy thinking about the impending hell (of AGI), how is this different from a cult?

It seems your main objection is to the "many" word in "if many of the members of this organization go crazy".

>> It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me!

> This is the kind of thing you'd say if you wanted to smear a group but knew the dirt was actually pretty limited.

People can read what this "it sounds pretty culty to me" was about and decide for themselves: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupation...

Some quotes:

> (The way the page is written, I get the impression that the word "infohazardous" markets the content of the glossary as "extra powerful and intriguing occult material", as I noted is common in my recent post about infohazards.)

> Given that I thought I may had started World War 3 and was continuing to harm and control people with my mental powers, I seriously considered suicide.

> There is a very disturbing possibility (with some evidence for it) here, that people may be picked off one by one (by partially-subconscious and partially-memetic influences, sometimes in ways they cooperate with, e.g. through suicide), with most everyone being too scared to investigate the circumstances.

etc etc

Decide for yourself if "pretty culty" is a reasonable label.

[oooyay]

There's a lot of things that I'd qualify as "religious" that I probably wouldn't as a kid, even in my very Catholic upbringing. Most of the companies I've worked for command loyalty and have rituals that border on religious ceremonies. They use legal avenues rather than social avenues for control, but who's to say the modern corporate ethos isn't a cult? I feel semi-confident in saying that broadly of Fortune 500 companies and especially technology industry companies (and their leaders.)

That isn't to say rationalists on the whole are one thing or another, but rather my hypothesis is as society gets more desperate and divided this kind of order is a natural consequence.