No, Rationalism Is Not a Cult
Tight-knit community with countercultural values ≠ cult
Recently, Scott Alexander gave a list of tight-knit communities with strong values:
The Amish: They live apart in tight-knit communities with strong countercultural values, and carefully control their technological and ideological environment. 10/10.
Cults and communes: Any cult mature enough to have its own compound, or any communal living project, has succeeded almost as thoroughly as the Amish. We may not support their insane religious beliefs, or the various sex crimes they are no doubt committing, but they have succeeded at Fukuyama’s suggestion of knitting themselves a new god within the liberal order. 9.5/10.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Mormons: Get lots of people of the same religion together in one place - a timeless classic. Some of the ultra-est of the ultra-Orthodox are still more fluent in Yiddish than English, giving them near-invincibility from the mainstream. 9/10.
The Free State Project: some libertarians made a deal that if enough other libertarians agreed, they would all move to New Hampshire and try to turn it into a libertarian paradise. They got about 20,000 people on board; the results ranged from building entirely new libertarian towns in the forest, to buying homes in Portsmouth or Manchester and keeping in touch with their libertarian friends. 7/10.
Serious Christianity: Lots of Christians have social circles centered around their church, send their children to Christian schools, have Christian therapists they can visit if they feel down, and consume Christian media. On the other hand, they usually work a secular job, and most of their neighbors are secular. 6/10.
The LGBTQ community: don’t laugh at this one. If you know many of these people, you know they have their own parallel society of LGBT friends, LGBT bars, and LGBT dating sites. They attend LGBT parties, conform to LGBT fashions, and watch LGBT sports (like roller derby). They live in special LGBT-friendly neighborhoods, and everyone around them follows LGBT-friendly norms. They even have their own flag, an obvious first step for people trying to form a country-within-a-country. 5/10.
The rationalists: I live on a street with five other rationalist families and a small rationalist microschool. The broader Bay Area rationalist community has its own parties, dating sites, media, holidays, a conference center, and even a choir. 5/10
I would probably add the Jewish community writ large to this list. Most Jews, while not as strict or communitarian as the Ultra-Orthodox, have their own traditions, holidays, newspapers, and socialize in synagogues or other Jewish groups. In fact, most ethnic communities in America fall into this category. Chinese Americans, to give just one example, also have their own holidays, social groups, community centers, Chinatowns, and Chinese-language newspapers. Oftentimes religious organizations in America draw most of their membership from a particular racial / ethnic community (e.g. black churches, Korean churches, or Indian Hindu temples).
Also, political groups might fall under this category. People on the political left might choose to only associate with other leftists, only live in blue areas or blue states, and only get their news from left-leaning political commentators. Leftists have their own value system and their own leaders, and these are distinct from the values and leaders that are respected by the rest of society. The same applies for the political right.
I bring this up to make the point that there’s no clear line between cults and normal, wholesome community groups. When, exactly, does an insular community go from quirky to culty? When, exactly, does a church go from normal religious group to cult? Few people would argue that we need to get eliminate the Chinese, Jewish, Mormon, or LGBTQ communities on account of their groupish natures. We, as a society, generally think it’s fine to have close-knit communities with strong values, even strong countercultural values, so long as those communities are not actively harmful to the rest of society.
Unfortunately, this standard is not universally applied, and people often use the label “cult” as a way to insult their political opponents. Take, for instance, this recent article written by Cade Metz of the New York Times about the Rationalist community.
For context: Metz has had a years-long adversarial relationship with the Rationalist community ever since he doxxed and wrote a hit piece about the above-quoted Scott Alexander, who is a famous and well-respected Rationalist writer. In this recent article, Metz describes the Rationalists and their activities, while not-so-subtly implying that the Rationalists have a secretive and nefarious agenda. Metz also favorably quotes a chaplain named Greg Epstein, who argues that the Rationalist / Effective Altruist (EA) community is a cult.
Needless to say, I disagree with this accusation. Yes, we’re a close-knit community with strange habits, but so are the Mormons, the Muslims, and the Marxists. Unless you’re willing to say that every Mormon, Muslim, or Marxist is part of a cult, then it’s unfair to say that about the Rationalists. If anything, I’d say there’s a stronger argument for Mormons, Muslims, and Marxists being cultists than Rationalists.
To be fair, that’s not immediately obvious to an outsider. If you’re standing outside a walled compound, it can be hard to tell whether the people inside are part of a wholesome community or a cult. So in the spirit of transparency and responding to accusations in good faith, I’ll give my reasons for believing that the Rationalist community is not a cult. In order to do so, I’ll use this list of 10 warning signs of cults. (By the way, I’m not cherry-picking this list in order to support my argument. This list was literally the first result on Google when I searched “warning signs of a cult”.)
As I’m going through this list, I want you to beware isolated demands for rigor. It’s easy to point to some bad incident in the Rationalist community and claim that it proves the entire group is evil or cultish. But in a community with thousands of people that has lasted for around 20 years, it is inevitable that some bad incidents will occur. The relevant question to ask is not, “Can I find something wrong with the Rationalist community?” Rather, the relevant question is, “Is the Rationalist community worse than other communities I care about?” Whatever scrutiny you wish to apply to the Rationalist community, you should seriously ask yourself if your own communities can survive that same level of scrutiny.
Warning Signs of a Cult
1. Absolute authoritarianism without accountability
The simplest way to refute the claim that the Rationalist community is authoritarian is to ask, “Where’s the authority?” There is no Rationalist leadership team that members are forced to pledge allegiance to, and there is no central Rationalist organization with rules that members are forced to follow.
Yes, there are leaders in the Rationalist community, in the sense that there are individuals who are popular and well-respected in that community. But the same can be said of any community. Yes, there are norms you have to follow in certain Rationalist spaces (e.g. the norm that you don’t lie to people or act in bad faith). But once again, that can be said of literally any community. Rationalist leaders face the same, if not greater level of accountability as the leaders of other major movements and organizations.
2. Zero tolerance for criticism or questions
Definitely not true! Rationalists probably ask way more questions than the general population, and we both give and receive more criticism than the general population. In fact, one of the defining features of the Rationalist movement is our penchant for heated debates and our commitment to near-absolute free speech.
If anything, we are unusually prone to criticizing ourselves. The Effective Altruism Forum has an entire section highlighting criticism of Effective Altruism. They even put on a “Criticism and Red Teaming Contest”, where they solicited people to argue against the movement and awarded money to best critics. Can you imagine any other advocacy organization doing this? Can you imagine, for instance, a reproductive rights organization hosting an “Abortion Criticism Contest” and giving money to most persuasive pro-life advocates?
3. Lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget
Once again, this is an area where the EA / Rationalist community is actually unusually good compared to other communities. One of the original ideas of Effective Altruism is that charities need to be more transparent about their finances and their results. And we try as hard as possible to live up to that standard! GiveWell — one of the largest EA charities — is probably the gold standard of transparency in charities. All of their official records, dating back to their founding in 2007, are easily accessible from their website, and they even have a full page detailing mistakes they’ve made over the years.
EA / Rationalist organizations are subject to the same laws as any other organizations, and their finances can be reviewed via the same legal processes. In many cases, as mentioned above, Rationalist organizations are more transparent than they are legally required to be.
And before you mention Sam Bankman-Fried, I want to remind you that he committed crimes as a private individual, not in collaboration with the broader EA / Rationalist community. There is no evidence that EA leaders knew about his crimes before the general public did. So while some EA / Rationalist organizations were funded using ill-gotten FTX money, this was not known to any of the recipients at the time. SBF’s crimes were immediately and forcefully denounced by EA leaders as soon as they were uncovered, and Lightcone Infrastructure (the organization that runs the Lighthaven campus in Berkeley) even returned significant portions of the money that they had been given by SBF.
Any movement can contain a criminal. Indeed, once a movement gets large enough, it’s almost inevitable that at least one of its members will be a criminal. The important question to ask is, “How well does the community respond to a criminal’s crimes, once they are discovered?” And in the case of SBF, I think the Rationalist / EA community responded about as well as they could have.
4. Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions
This is just not something that happens in the Rationalist community. We don’t believe we’re being persecuted, and we don’t believe there’s some evil conspiracy against us. We are sometimes wary of journalists writing hit pieces about us. But this is a reasonable concern, since journalists have a habit of writing hit pieces about us! We believe that we are sometimes unfairly attacked, but we respond to those attacks without resorting to conspiracy theories or developing a persecution complex. As you can hopefully see by this article, I respond to criticism in a reasonable way without resorting to personal attacks against my critics.
5. A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving and there is never a legitimate reason for anyone else to leave
This is the exact opposite of what the Rationalist community is like. There is an entire sub-community of people calling themselves “Post-Rationalists”, people who were once Rationalists but who now believe the Rationalist project is somehow misguided. The Rationalists do not shun these people or try to censor their ideas. To the contrary: Rationalists and Post-Rationalists typically get along great, and Post-Rationalists frequently retain positive relationships with Rationalists even after leaving the movement.
Similarly, there are sub-communities of self-styled “Rat-adjacents” or “EA-adjacents” — people who share some of the beliefs of the Rationalist / EA communities, but who choose not to get fully on board. Do we shun these people or try to purity-test them? No!
Whether a person is post-Rationalist, Rationalist-adjacent, or even just non-Rationalist, we accept them. There are legitimate reasons to leave the movement, and we don’t blame anybody for doing so.1
6. Abuse of members
Can I claim that nobody in the Rationalist community has ever been mistreated or abused? No. In any large community, something bad is bound to happen to somebody. There have, unfortunately, been incidents of sexual harassment within the Rationalist community. These incidents should be, and are, forcefully condemned by the community.
Once again, I urge you to apply the same standard toward the Rationalist community that you would apply toward any other community. Does abuse / mistreatment happen more often in the Rationalist / EA community than anywhere else? Is there a pattern of abuse, rather than isolated incidents? Are there cover-ups of this abuse? Are victims shamed or ostracized by the community when they speak out? I can confidently answer “No” to each of these questions.
7. Records, books, articles, or programs documenting the abuses of the leader or group
Again, not something that happens in the Rationalist community. As stated above, we do not believe we have been “abused” by our critics, nor do we spend much time ruminating on this “abuse”.
The only time I can recall something even close to this happening is in the aftermath of the aforementioned Scott Alexander doxxing controversy, when there was a good deal of writing about how unfairly Scott had been treated. But I think this was a reasonable reaction to the situation. If your personal identity gets revealed on the pages of the New York Times, you have the right to be angry about that!
8. Followers feeling they are never able to be “good enough”
This is the one point out of ten that does apply to the Rationalist / EA communities. I know several Rationalists who feel guilty for not being rational enough. And I know several EAs who feel guilty for not being effective or altruistic enough. Hell, I sometimes feel guilty about this.
There is an implicit demand inherent in Effective Altruism, which is: You must be the most effective version of yourself that you possibly can be, and you must use this power to help as many sentient beings as possible. To be clear, EA leaders do not explicitly endorse that demand, but many EAs nonetheless internalize it. And like any strict moral code, it is impossible to live by fully. We are mere mortals, and we are not perfect. Even the best of us will sometimes make mistakes, believe falsehoods, or fail to live up to our potential. I will never be good enough, but I will never stop trying.
So fine. Score one for “Rationalism is a cult”.
9. A belief that the leader is right at all times
Definitely not true! As mentioned above, there is no one Rationalist leader to pledge allegiance to, and even if there was, we wouldn’t do it. Probably the biggest name in Rationalism is Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the originators of the movement as well as one of its most prolific writers. We do not believe Yudkowsky is right at all times. I believe Yudkowsky is wrong about many things. In fact, I have yet to meet a Rationalist who doesn’t have some bone to pick with him.
The same can be said of other prominent Rationalists, like Scott Alexander or Robin Hanson. We certainly respect these people, and we often defer to them on areas where we think they’re more knowledgeable than us. But we do not hold it as an article of faith that you have to agree with these people. People can, and frequently do, disagree with leading Rationalists while remaining Rationalists in good standing. If anything, one of the fastest ways to gain status within the Rationalist community is to publish an effective critique of a popular Rationalist writer, since it proves that you’re capable of “playing ball” with the best.
10. A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or giving validation
See Point 9.
Conclusion
As you can hopefully see by now, the Rationalist community does not exhibit the disturbing patterns that cults typically exhibit. We do not try to isolate our members from outside influences, and we do not demand allegiance to any ideology or leader. There is no way to credibly accuse the Rationalist community of being a cult without also impugning other well-regarded communities as cults as well.
The reason I’m writing this article is not only because I want to defend my community against unfair accusations, but because the standard set by this New York Times article, if applied more broadly, would damage society as a whole. It’s good for people to form tight-knit communities with countercultural values. Some of the greatest friendships and romantic relationships come from communities with strong, abnormal beliefs and habits. By contrast, forcing people to conform to a mainstream society that they dislike is bad for them, since it will cause them to become alienated and resentful. And it is be bad for society as a whole, since alienated, resentful individuals are more likely to lead dysfunctional lives and join extremist political movements.
Speaking for myself, I became much happier after joining the Rationalist / EA community, and I have formed some of my greatest friendships and professional connections through that community. Rationalism definitely isn’t for everyone, but I think that everyone should have some version of it — some version of a tight-knit community with strong values. (See here for advice on how to find / build your own.) As a society, we should allow and even encourage the formation of these communities, rather than attacking the ones that exist by calling them cults.
There are real cults in the world, and they should be criticized. But demonizing innocent communities as cults helps nobody, and only worsens our society’s already-terrible loneliness epidemic. So no, I’m not part of a cult. If you want to accuse Rationalists of being cultists, you’ll have to find a better argument than, “Look at all the weird things they do!”
The only example I can think of where a person became disliked by the Rationalist community after leaving the Rationalist community is Émile P. Torres. We dislike Torres not because they left the community (which is fine), but because after leaving the community, they repeatedly published bad-faith attacks against the community.
Great article mate