Do you really think “cult” is a useful category/descriptor here?
My view: things identified as “cults” have a bunch of good traits. EA should, where possible, adopt the good traits and reject the bad ones, and ignore whether they’re associated with the label “cult” or not.
“Look, all I’m saying is that Scientology managed to scale massively, both in members and funding! There’s obviously something there that we can learn from!”
Yes, this is real
Nobody:
EA: Scientology has some good traits, we should copy them.
Lukeprog on LessWrong: Scientology has some good traits, I’m gonna talk at length about them but I’m not saying to copy them you understand
“Look, all I’m saying is that Scientology managed to scale massively, both in members and funding! There’s obviously something there that we can learn from!”