I should clarify upfront that I am not a rationalist, and am not a fan of LessWrong.
That said, I have some experience when it comes to… this sort of thing.
So when I was a little younger, I was the figurehead and leader of a sex cult. (Oddly enough, I did this without ever really understanding that it was, in fact, a sex cult. One of my best friends described this as a “Jerry Smith plot”, which I found hilarious.) This cult was, in practice, a discord server focused around my erotic hypnosis work. I copied the model from another server that was definitely a sex cult, and tried to strip out all of the culty elements and just leave the aesthetics (because a lot of us liked the aesthetics). But you really can’t reconstitute the structure of a high-control group without, in various ways, reconstituting the behavior of a high-control group. It doesn’t work—the culty shit works its way back in if you’re not extremely careful. And I was not careful, for reasons that may be obvious if you think about the perks one gets as the figurehead of a sex cult. A lot of people got hurt.
Why bring that up? Because hoo boy does this tick a lot of similar boxes.
A lot of things scream “high control environment”, which… okay, not necessarily all red flags. And he’s dating subordinates. Again, not always bad. Like, in the traditional business world, a boss sleeping with one of their subordinates at all is considered a red flag—not illegal, but certainly a really bad idea due to the power dynamics in play.
But given what this post says, it sounds like he’s essentially using his star power to specifically attract young women, then grooming them, isolating them within the group, using various forms of psychological manipulation to make them more invested, and connecting their housing to their employment. My brain takes these facts, and then quickly and easily maps them onto my experience as a member of one sex cult and the leader of another. I find the result very concerning.
But even if all of that isn’t enough of a red flag, consider that the OP of this post has made it anonymously and seems to find it important that this organization not think ill of them.
There’s a lot going on in this comment, but I note with interest that this is the first time I’ve seen someone weigh in on questions of cultish behavior from the perspective of a former cult leader.
I’m fascinated with the claim that if you take on the outer facade of a cult, you now have a strong incentive gradient to turn up the cultishness (maybe because you’re now drawing in people who are looking for more of that, and driving away anyone who’s put off by it). Obviously the claim needs more than one person’s testimony, but it makes sense.
I wonder if some early red flags with Leverage (living together with your superiors who also did belief reporting sessions with you, believing Geoff’s theories were the word of god, etc) were explicitly laughed off as “oh, haha, we know we’re not a cult, so we can chuckle about our resemblances to cults”.
I think from a world and historical perspective, dating subordinates is a very common thing. The American cult bundle of traits is much more specific and rare. For me, the first red flag is shared housing for followers of the idea. Any movement that does it is already kind of weird to me (including the rationalist movement). If there’s also some kind of group psychological exercise, that takes it all the way to “nope” (again, including some parts of the rationalist movement).
I will say that the EA Hotel, during my 7 months of living there, was remarkably non-cult-like. You would think otherwise given Greg’s forceful, charismatic presence /j
I should clarify upfront that I am not a rationalist, and am not a fan of LessWrong.
That said, I have some experience when it comes to… this sort of thing.
So when I was a little younger, I was the figurehead and leader of a sex cult. (Oddly enough, I did this without ever really understanding that it was, in fact, a sex cult. One of my best friends described this as a “Jerry Smith plot”, which I found hilarious.) This cult was, in practice, a discord server focused around my erotic hypnosis work. I copied the model from another server that was definitely a sex cult, and tried to strip out all of the culty elements and just leave the aesthetics (because a lot of us liked the aesthetics). But you really can’t reconstitute the structure of a high-control group without, in various ways, reconstituting the behavior of a high-control group. It doesn’t work—the culty shit works its way back in if you’re not extremely careful. And I was not careful, for reasons that may be obvious if you think about the perks one gets as the figurehead of a sex cult. A lot of people got hurt.
Why bring that up? Because hoo boy does this tick a lot of similar boxes.
A lot of things scream “high control environment”, which… okay, not necessarily all red flags. And he’s dating subordinates. Again, not always bad. Like, in the traditional business world, a boss sleeping with one of their subordinates at all is considered a red flag—not illegal, but certainly a really bad idea due to the power dynamics in play.
But given what this post says, it sounds like he’s essentially using his star power to specifically attract young women, then grooming them, isolating them within the group, using various forms of psychological manipulation to make them more invested, and connecting their housing to their employment. My brain takes these facts, and then quickly and easily maps them onto my experience as a member of one sex cult and the leader of another. I find the result very concerning.
But even if all of that isn’t enough of a red flag, consider that the OP of this post has made it anonymously and seems to find it important that this organization not think ill of them.
There’s a lot going on in this comment, but I note with interest that this is the first time I’ve seen someone weigh in on questions of cultish behavior from the perspective of a former cult leader.
I’m fascinated with the claim that if you take on the outer facade of a cult, you now have a strong incentive gradient to turn up the cultishness (maybe because you’re now drawing in people who are looking for more of that, and driving away anyone who’s put off by it). Obviously the claim needs more than one person’s testimony, but it makes sense.
I wonder if some early red flags with Leverage (living together with your superiors who also did belief reporting sessions with you, believing Geoff’s theories were the word of god, etc) were explicitly laughed off as “oh, haha, we know we’re not a cult, so we can chuckle about our resemblances to cults”.
I think from a world and historical perspective, dating subordinates is a very common thing. The American cult bundle of traits is much more specific and rare. For me, the first red flag is shared housing for followers of the idea. Any movement that does it is already kind of weird to me (including the rationalist movement). If there’s also some kind of group psychological exercise, that takes it all the way to “nope” (again, including some parts of the rationalist movement).
I will say that the EA Hotel, during my 7 months of living there, was remarkably non-cult-like. You would think otherwise given Greg’s forceful, charismatic presence /j