Rationalwiki et al: LW is a personality cult around Eliezer because of so-and-so.
A widely revered figure who has written a million+ words that form the central pillars of LW and has been directly (or indirectly) responsible for bringing many people into the rationality memespace says “don’t do X” so it is obvious that X must be false.
Dismissing accusations of a personality cult around Eliezer by saying Eliezer said “no personality cult” is a fairly poor way of going about it. Two key points:
saying “as a group, we don’t worship Eliezer” doesn’t guarantee that it is true (groupthink could easily suck us into ignore evidence)
someone might interpret what Eliezer said as false modesty or an attempt to appear to be a reluctant saviour/messiah (i.e. using dark arts to suck people in)
A widely revered figure who has written a million+ words that form the central pillars of LW and has been directly (or indirectly) responsible for bringing many people into the rationality memespace says “don’t do X” so it is obvious that X must be false.
Dismissing accusations of a personality cult around Eliezer by saying Eliezer said “no personality cult” is a fairly poor way of going about it. Two key points:
saying “as a group, we don’t worship Eliezer” doesn’t guarantee that it is true (groupthink could easily suck us into ignore evidence)
someone might interpret what Eliezer said as false modesty or an attempt to appear to be a reluctant saviour/messiah (i.e. using dark arts to suck people in)