I’d find this post much more valuable if it argued that some parts of the EA community were bad, rather than arguing that they’re cultish. Cultish is an imperfect proxy for badness. Sure, cults are bad and something being a thing which cults do is weak evidence of its badness (see Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence). Is, say, advertising EA too aggressively bad? Probably! But it is bad for specific reasons, not because it is also a thing cults do.
A particular way cultishness could be bad, which would make it directly bad for EA to be cultish, is if cults are an attractor in the space of organizations. This would mean that organizations with some properties of cults would feel pressure to gain more and more properties of cults. Still, I currently don’t think is the case, and so I think direct criticisms are much more valuable than insinuations of cultishness.
I’d find this post much more valuable if it argued that some parts of the EA community were bad, rather than arguing that they’re cultish. Cultish is an imperfect proxy for badness. Sure, cults are bad and something being a thing which cults do is weak evidence of its badness (see Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence). Is, say, advertising EA too aggressively bad? Probably! But it is bad for specific reasons, not because it is also a thing cults do.
A particular way cultishness could be bad, which would make it directly bad for EA to be cultish, is if cults are an attractor in the space of organizations. This would mean that organizations with some properties of cults would feel pressure to gain more and more properties of cults. Still, I currently don’t think is the case, and so I think direct criticisms are much more valuable than insinuations of cultishness.