My call: EA gets 3.9 out of 14 possible cult points.
The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
No
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
Yes (+1)
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Partial (+0.8)
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
No
Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
No
The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
No
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
Partial (+0.5)
The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
Very weak (+0.1)
The group’s leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).
No
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
Partial (+0.5)
The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
No
Members’ subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
No
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
Yes (+1)
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
I think this is probably partial, given claims in this post, and positive-agreevote concerns here (though clearly all of the agree voters might be wrong).
I think you may have very high standards? By these standards, I don’t think there are any communities at all that would score 0 here.
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I think this is nonzero, I think subsets of the community do display “excessively zealous” commitment to a leader given “What would SBF do” stickers. Outside views of LW (or at least older versions of it would probably worry that this was an EY cult.
I was not aware of “What would SBF do” stickers. Hopefully those people feel really dumb now. I definitely know about EY hero worship but I was going to count that towards a separate rationalist/LW cult count instead of the EA cult count.
I think you may have very high standards? By these standards, I don’t think there are any communities at all that would score 0 here.
I think where we differ is that I’m not making a comparison of whether EA is worse than this compared to other groups, if every group scores in the range of 0.5-1 I’ll still score 0.5 as 0.5, and not scale 0.5 down to 0 and 0.75 down to 0.5. Maybe that’s the wrong way to approach it but I think the least culty organization can still have cult-like tendencies, instead of being 0 by definition.
Also if it’s true that someone working at GPI was facing these pressures from “senior scholars in the field”, then that does seem like reason for others to worry. There also has been a lot of discussion on the forum about the types of critiques that seem like they are acceptable and the ones that aren’t etc. Your colleague also seems to believe this is a concern, for example, so I’m currently inclined to think that 0.2 is pretty reasonable and I don’t think I should update much based on your comment-but happy for more pushback!
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
has to get more than 0.2, right? Being elitist and on a special mission to save humanity is a concerningly good descriptor of at least a decent chunk of EA.
>> The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
> Partial (+0.5)
This seems too high to me, I think 0.25 at most. We’re pretty strong on “the ends don’t justify the means”.
>>The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
I don’t think it makes sense to say that the group is “preoccupied with making money”. I expect that there’s been less focus on this in EA than in other groups, although not necessarily due to any virtue, but rather because of how lucky we have been in having access to funding.
Seems worth considering that
A) EA has a number of characteristic of a “High Demand Group” (cult). This is a red flag and you should wrestle with it yourself.
B) Many of the “Sort of”s are peer pressure. You don’t have to do these things. And if you don’t want to, don’t!
In what sense is it “sort of” true that members need to get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, or marry?
I think there is starting to be social pressure on who to date. And there has been social pressure for which jobs to take for a while.
I think that one’s a reach, tbh.
(I also think the one about using guilt to control is a stretch.)
My call: EA gets 3.9 out of 14 possible cult points.
No
Yes (+1)
Partial (+0.8)
No
No
No
Partial (+0.5)
Very weak (+0.1)
No
Partial (+0.5)
No
No
Yes (+1)
No
I think you may have very high standards? By these standards, I don’t think there are any communities at all that would score 0 here.
~
I was not aware of “What would SBF do” stickers. Hopefully those people feel really dumb now. I definitely know about EY hero worship but I was going to count that towards a separate rationalist/LW cult count instead of the EA cult count.
I think where we differ is that I’m not making a comparison of whether EA is worse than this compared to other groups, if every group scores in the range of 0.5-1 I’ll still score 0.5 as 0.5, and not scale 0.5 down to 0 and 0.75 down to 0.5. Maybe that’s the wrong way to approach it but I think the least culty organization can still have cult-like tendencies, instead of being 0 by definition.
Also if it’s true that someone working at GPI was facing these pressures from “senior scholars in the field”, then that does seem like reason for others to worry. There also has been a lot of discussion on the forum about the types of critiques that seem like they are acceptable and the ones that aren’t etc. Your colleague also seems to believe this is a concern, for example, so I’m currently inclined to think that 0.2 is pretty reasonable and I don’t think I should update much based on your comment-but happy for more pushback!
I think
has to get more than 0.2, right? Being elitist and on a special mission to save humanity is a concerningly good descriptor of at least a decent chunk of EA.
Ok updated to 0.5. I think “the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar” being false is fairly important.
>> The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
> Partial (+0.5)
This seems too high to me, I think 0.25 at most. We’re pretty strong on “the ends don’t justify the means”.
>>The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
> No
This on the other hand deserves at least 0.25...
I don’t think it makes sense to say that the group is “preoccupied with making money”. I expect that there’s been less focus on this in EA than in other groups, although not necessarily due to any virtue, but rather because of how lucky we have been in having access to funding.