Comment by toasterlovin

> the typical outside view that rationalism itself is a cult and Eliezer Yudkowsky is a cult leader, both of which I consider absurd notions

Cults are a whole biome of personalities. The prophet does not need to be the same person as the leader. They sometimes are and things can be very ugly in those cases, but they often aren’t. After all, there are Christian cults today even though Jesus and his supporting cast have been dead for approaching 2k years.

Yudkowsky seems relatively benign as far as prophets go, though who knows what goes on in private (I’m sure some people on here do, but the collective We do not). I would guess that the failure mode for him would be a David Miscavige type who slowly accumulates power while Yudkowsky remains a figurehead. This could be a girlfriend or someone who runs one of the charitable organizations (controlling the purse strings when everyone is dependent on the organization for their next meal is a time honored technique). I’m looking forward to the documentaries that get made in 20 years or so.