SneerClub

Do you really think "cult" is a useful category/descriptor here?

My view: things identified as "cults" have a bunch of good traits. EA should, where possible, adopt the good traits and reject the bad ones, and ignore whether they're associated with the label "cult" or not.

Yes, this is real

It took me a few comments to realize that we were taking about Effective Altruists and not Electronic Arts. I read EA was becoming a cult and yelling at wokeism for all its troubles, ya, that sounds about right.

blaming your issues on a conspiracy is a great way to ensure your movement doesn't become a cult!

the indignant outrage at the mere suggestion that the cultists be slightly less visibly racist, maybe, is 10/10, no notes.

also, isn't that the “nonlinear” thing co-founder?

these people can't stop telling on themselves lmao

There’s currently a loud minority of EAs saying that EA should ostracize people if they associate with people who disagree with them. That we should try to protect EAs from ideas that are not held by the majority of EAs.

how fucking far are their heads up their own collective arses to not understand that you can't have a productive, healthy discourse without drawing a line in the sand?

they spend fucking hundreds of collective hours going around in circles on the EA forum debating^[where "debating" here is continually claiming to be "'open to criticism" while, at the same time, trashing anyone who does provide any form of legitimate criticism, so much so that it seems to be a "norm" for internal criticism to be anonymous for fear of retribution] this shit, instead of actually doing anything useful

how do they, in good conscience, deny any responsibility for the real harms ideas cause, when they continue to lend them legitimacy by entertaining them over and over and over again?

I swear these fuckers have never actually had to fight for or defend something that is actually important, or directly affects the day-to-day lived experience or material conditions of themselves or anyone they care about

I hope we protect EA’s incredible epistemic norms

lol, the norms that make it a-okay to spew batshit stuff like this? fuck off

Also, it’s obvious that this isn’t actually EA cultiness really, but just woke ideology trying to take over EA

Honestly bonkers to hear “woke” used unironically

what the heck EA forum doesn't have a block feature? That's just... ew.

Also how long have all these people been obsessed with "woke" and "the left"? Because it's been really obvious and over the top lately.

For a moment there I wanted to say, “ok hold on for a minute: you think EA doesn’t create cult-like behaviour, only woke creates cult-like behaviour, but even if I grant all that about woke, surely EVERY charitable enterprise in modern history has tended towards cult behaviour?”

“So what do you think makes EA so goddamn special?”

Then I realised it’s the “incredible epistemic norms” of EA, i.e. the strongest drivers of cult-like behaviour going almost worldwide at the moment, which are the primary bulwark against EA behaving like a cult

The People Who Pray At Prompts are suddenly very worried about cults.

E: haha spoke too soon

from the replies:

Do you really think "cult" is a useful category/descriptor here?

My view: things identified as "cults" have a bunch of good traits. EA should, where possible, adopt the good traits and reject the bad ones, and ignore whether they're associated with the label "cult" or not.

Wonder what went wrong there, did they just see the word EA and Cult and went 'people are calling Rationalism a cult again, time to deploy the Rationalist answer. A bot? Something else? (More edit, ah prob somethign else as this is prob a reaction to the whole line of tweets and not that specific tweet, a line of tweets which are doing the geek social fallacies there is a little bit more to being a cult than just ostracizing people)

Can there be a rule about acronyms being defined on first usage? I spent way to long trying to figure out how Electronic Arts had some cult infestation in their upper management and how “wokeism” applied, especially since stuff like that has been in the game developer news cycle again. I started getting really confused when I saw some linked post conversation talking about some founder and their polyamorous relationship.

I’ve figured out that we’re talking about effective altruism, but at this point I’ve wasted my entire pre-bed shit time on people I couldn’t care less about.

btw, this is Kat Woods from our good friends Nonlinear:

https://awful.systems/post/220620
https://awful.systems/post/682110

it's about the curse of ___ism

why tf can't she say the word "racist"? like is it supposed to be a dogwhistle insinuating similarity between "racist" and "leftist"??

they must be just great at conga crossbars, with that little spine