SIAI, I can’t comment on. I’d hope enough people there (preferably every single one) are expressly mindful of Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult and of the dangers of small closed groups with confidential knowledge and the aim to achieve something big pulling members toward the cult attractor.
I don’t have extensive personal experience with SIAI (spent two weekends at their Visiting Fellows house, attended two meetups there, and talked to plenty of SIAI-affiliated people), but the following have been my impressions:
People there are generally expected to have read most of the Sequences… which could be a point for cultishness in some sense, but at least they’ve all read the Death Spirals & Cult Attractor sequence. :P
There’s a whole lot of disagreement there. They don’t consider that a good thing, of course, but any attempts to resolve disagreement are done by debating, looking at evidence, etc., not by adjusting toward any kind of “party line”. I don’t know of any beliefs that people there are required or expected to profess (other than basic things like taking seriously the ideas of technological singularity, existential risk, FAI, etc., not because it’s an official dogma, but just because if someone doesn’t take those seriously it just raises the question of why they’re interested in SIAI in the first place).
On one occasion, there were some notes on a whiteboard comparing and contrasting Singularitarians and Marxists. Similarities included “[expectation/goal of] big future happy event”, “Jews”, “atheists”, “smart folks”. Differences included “popularly popular vs. popularly unpopular”. (I’m not sure which was supposed to be the more popular one.) And there was a bit noting that both groups are at risk of fully general counterarguments — Marxists dismissed arguments they didn’t like by calling their advocates “counterrevolutionary”, and LW-type Singularitarians could do the same with categorical dismissals such as “irrational”, “hasn’t overcome their biases”, etc. Note that I haven’t actually observed SIAI people doing that, so I just read that as a precaution.
(And I don’t know who wrote that, or what the context was, so take that as you will; but I don’t think it’s anything that was supposed to be a secret, because (IIRC) it was still up during one of the meetups, and even if I’m mistaken about that, people come and go pretty freely.)
People are pretty critical of Eliezer. Of course, most people there have a great deal of respect and admiration for him, and to some degree, the criticism (which is usually on relatively minor things) is probably partly because people there are making a conscious effort to keep in mind that he’s not automatically right, and to keep themselves in “evaluate arguments individually” mode rather than “agree with everything” mode. (See also this comment.)
So yeah, my overall impression is that people there are very mindful that they’re near the cult attractor, and intentionally and successfully act so as to resist that.
So yeah, my overall impression is that people there are very mindful that they’re near the cult attractor, and intentionally and successfully act so as to resist that.
Sounds like it more so than any other small group I know of!
I don’t have extensive personal experience with SIAI (spent two weekends at their Visiting Fellows house, attended two meetups there, and talked to plenty of SIAI-affiliated people), but the following have been my impressions:
People there are generally expected to have read most of the Sequences… which could be a point for cultishness in some sense, but at least they’ve all read the Death Spirals & Cult Attractor sequence. :P
There’s a whole lot of disagreement there. They don’t consider that a good thing, of course, but any attempts to resolve disagreement are done by debating, looking at evidence, etc., not by adjusting toward any kind of “party line”. I don’t know of any beliefs that people there are required or expected to profess (other than basic things like taking seriously the ideas of technological singularity, existential risk, FAI, etc., not because it’s an official dogma, but just because if someone doesn’t take those seriously it just raises the question of why they’re interested in SIAI in the first place).
On one occasion, there were some notes on a whiteboard comparing and contrasting Singularitarians and Marxists. Similarities included “[expectation/goal of] big future happy event”, “Jews”, “atheists”, “smart folks”. Differences included “popularly popular vs. popularly unpopular”. (I’m not sure which was supposed to be the more popular one.) And there was a bit noting that both groups are at risk of fully general counterarguments — Marxists dismissed arguments they didn’t like by calling their advocates “counterrevolutionary”, and LW-type Singularitarians could do the same with categorical dismissals such as “irrational”, “hasn’t overcome their biases”, etc. Note that I haven’t actually observed SIAI people doing that, so I just read that as a precaution.
(And I don’t know who wrote that, or what the context was, so take that as you will; but I don’t think it’s anything that was supposed to be a secret, because (IIRC) it was still up during one of the meetups, and even if I’m mistaken about that, people come and go pretty freely.)
People are pretty critical of Eliezer. Of course, most people there have a great deal of respect and admiration for him, and to some degree, the criticism (which is usually on relatively minor things) is probably partly because people there are making a conscious effort to keep in mind that he’s not automatically right, and to keep themselves in “evaluate arguments individually” mode rather than “agree with everything” mode. (See also this comment.)
So yeah, my overall impression is that people there are very mindful that they’re near the cult attractor, and intentionally and successfully act so as to resist that.
Sounds like it more so than any other small group I know of!