Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. (attribution unclear, likely not O. Wilde)
I’m not part of any of the EA communities for multiple reasons, but from the outside this looks like some mix of the standard cult/intense-culture problem of convincing yourself that your work is massively outsized in importance, and anything that makes the work tolerable is therefore acceptable. Combined with a bit of public overreaction to flaunting one’s weirdness making the bad parts far more salient. There are certainly problems, but asking for lifestyle changes or more professional separation between work and living is a bit of an isolated demand for rigor.
This branch of EA also tends to be a bit more literal than most cults/mission-oriented-enterprises, so it resists the most common and effective technique to avoid outside judgement of things they think is OK: hypocrisy. Most high-profile businesses include office romances and abuse of power relations. But they’re hidden and handled quietly when they reach the level of causing un-ignorable problems.
Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. (attribution unclear, likely not O. Wilde)
I’m not part of any of the EA communities for multiple reasons, but from the outside this looks like some mix of the standard cult/intense-culture problem of convincing yourself that your work is massively outsized in importance, and anything that makes the work tolerable is therefore acceptable. Combined with a bit of public overreaction to flaunting one’s weirdness making the bad parts far more salient. There are certainly problems, but asking for lifestyle changes or more professional separation between work and living is a bit of an isolated demand for rigor.
This branch of EA also tends to be a bit more literal than most cults/mission-oriented-enterprises, so it resists the most common and effective technique to avoid outside judgement of things they think is OK: hypocrisy. Most high-profile businesses include office romances and abuse of power relations. But they’re hidden and handled quietly when they reach the level of causing un-ignorable problems.