Just noting I was just quoting it, but it seems accurate.
My personal view is that Rationalism is more like a religion, and there are spin-offs that are cults.
> And surely the fact that mainstream Rationalists have been loudly denouncing and warning people about the Zizians for the past 5 years counts for something.
Religions usually are very vocal to denounce breakaways as apostates.
The OP said:
> If at the apex of an organization you have a person who has organized his life in such a way as to have sex with several other people, and if many people involved in the movement pay a tithe to the organization or charities it designates, and if many of the members of this organization go crazy thinking about the impending hell (of AGI), how is this different from a cult?
It seems your main objection is to the "many" word in "if many of the members of this organization go crazy".
>> It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me!
> This is the kind of thing you'd say if you wanted to smear a group but knew the dirt was actually pretty limited.
People can read what this "it sounds pretty culty to me" was about and decide for themselves: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupation...
Some quotes:
> (The way the page is written, I get the impression that the word "infohazardous" markets the content of the glossary as "extra powerful and intriguing occult material", as I noted is common in my recent post about infohazards.)
> Given that I thought I may had started World War 3 and was continuing to harm and control people with my mental powers, I seriously considered suicide.
> There is a very disturbing possibility (with some evidence for it) here, that people may be picked off one by one (by partially-subconscious and partially-memetic influences, sometimes in ways they cooperate with, e.g. through suicide), with most everyone being too scared to investigate the circumstances.
etc etc
Decide for yourself if "pretty culty" is a reasonable label.