EA may look like a cult (and it's not just optics)

As a newcomer to EA, and a person with a fair amount of experience of cults and cult-like groups (and I'm 78 years old), I would like to report my experience.

I am very attracted to the ideas expressed in Doing Good Better. Having a science background, the idea of analyzing how effective my philanthropy may be is something I have pursued for many years, leading to many of the same conclusions.

On the other hand, many of the ideas of longtermism, trying to save human beings thousands of years in the future, being concerned about spreading to other planets, seeing malevolent AGI as among the most critical issues to address, strike me as similar to cults like Scientology and other groups whose vision and ideas seem contrary to common sense (if not downright wacky) but which seems to be common currency if not required by "members."

In What We Owe the Future, MacAskill often expresses reservations about his ideas, points out alternatives or potential flaws, and in general shows somewhat more humility that I encounter on this Forum, for example. I certainly disagree with some of his conclusions and approaches, which I have begun to attempt to express in my few posts here to date, but I do respect his and others' efforts to think long-term when accompanied by express recognition of our limitations in trying to impact the future (except in set-in-stone certainties) more than a couple of decades out. Without those ongoing acknowledgments of our limitations, our uncertainty, and the weirdness of our perspectives (from a "normal" viewpoint), we are bound to come across as potentially cult-like.

It’s also important to note that with many (I think 86% at last survey) EAs being nonreligious, it can be relatively easy for EA to play that role in people’s lives. The cultural template is there, and it’s powerful.

Needed to be said. I'm someone who gravitates to a lot of EA ideas, but I've avoided identifying as "an EA" for just this reason. Recently went to an EAG, which quelled some of my discomfort with EA's cultishness, but I think there's major room for improvement.

My lightly held hypothesis is that the biggest reason for this is EA's insularity. I think that using broader means of communication (publishing in journals and magazines, rather that just the EA forum) would go a really long way to enabling people to be merely inspired by EA, rather than "EAs" themselves. I like EA as a set of ideas and a question, not so much as a lifestyle and an all-consuming community. People should be able to publicly engage with (and cite!) EA rhetoric without having to hang out on a particular forum or have read the EA canon.

Interestingly we both posted this on the same day but I have almost the entire opposite approach! Would appreciate your thoughts!

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3Jm6tK3cfMyaan5Dn/ea-is-not-religious-enough-ea-should-emulate-peak-quakerism

I'd find this post much more valuable if it argued that some parts of the EA community were bad, rather than arguing that they're cultish. Cultish is an imperfect proxy for badness. Sure, cults are bad and something being a thing which cults do is weak evidence of its badness (see Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence). Is, say, advertising EA too aggressively bad? Probably! But it is bad for specific reasons, not because it is also a thing cults do.

A particular way cultishness could be bad, which would make it directly bad for EA to be cultish, is if cults are an attractor in the space of organizations. This would mean that organizations with some properties of cults would feel pressure to gain more and more properties of cults. Still, I currently don't think is the case, and so I think direct criticisms are much more valuable than insinuations of cultishness.

I think a great way to prevent us from turning into a cult is listening to criticism and have a diversity and opinions.

I would say EAs for the most part are open to criticism but there are EAs who will unintentionally partake in fallacious reasoning when their EA cause or EA opinion is attacked.

MacAskill once said EAs for the most part are social liberals. This is understandable considering most EAs come from fortunate backgrounds and have a college education.

Matt Yglesias and Tyler Cowen noted in their fireside chats at EA Global that their is a sense of homogeneity and a common group. Tyler Cowen said most EAs are “coastal elites.” I wouldn’t use the term coastal, but most EAs definitely come from elite families, elite colleges, elite company, or some other form of elite group.

There’s nothing wrong with being a social liberal (I am one), college educated, wealthy, or elite, but it could create an echo chamber and result in a cult or something cult-like.

I would like to see more libertarians, conservatives, and non-elites in EA so we can get different viewpoints, critiques, and a diversity of thought.

Something I think is really valuable is being upfront about mistakes and uncertainties.  I really admire CEA's mistakes page, for example. Cults often try to portray themselves and their leaders as infallible. Whereas admitting mistakes helps dispel that illusion and encourage critical thinking and a diversity of ideas. 

I think that the "A narrative of EA as a cult" section is helpful for steelmanning this narrative/perception. I also appreciate your suggestions and ideas in the "How to make EA less cultish" section.

As far as I can see, you don't explore any substantive reasons or evidence why "the cult-like features of EA pose a real issue" beyond optics; you note that "the impression of a cult could also explain why some of the recent media attention on EA hasn’t been very positive", but this is about optics. So I'd be interested to hear/read you try to flesh out the "other negative consequences" that you allude to. 

The easier option is to remove "(and it's not just optics)" from the title and rename "It’s not just optics" to "It might be more than optics" or similar, but if you do have thoughts on the other negative consequences, these could be valuable to share.

(For context, I'm one of the people involved in reaching out to high school students, and I'm keen to understand the full implications -- pros and cons -- of doing so, and if there's anything we can do to mitigate the downsides while retaining the benefits.)

Thanks for this helpful post. Strong upvoted.

I'm curious whether the reason why EA may be perceived as a cult while, e.g., environmentalist and social justice activism are not, is primarily that the concerns of EA are much less mainstream.

I appreciate the suggestions on how to make EA less cultish, and I think they are valuable to implement, but I don't think they would have a significant effect on public perception of whether EA is a cult.

Interesting post, and some valid points.

I would also add: cults tend to micro-manage the sexual relationships and reproductive strategies of their members. 

Sometimes this involves minimizing sexual activity, so cult members direct all of their energy and time into cult-propagation rather than mating effort. Sometimes it involves maximizing sexual connections or endogamous marriages within the cult, so people don't feel any tension between their relationship commitments and their cult commitments.

Sometimes cults are anti-natalist and strongly discourage reproduction in order to maximize energy and time directed into cultural cult-propagation (i.e. 'horizontal cultural transmission'). Sometimes they're pro-natalist and strongly encourage reproduction in order to create new recruits for the next generation (i.e. 'vertical cultural transmission'). 

An implication is that the more 'normal' EA seems in terms of relationship formation (e.g. a nice mix of 'cultural inbreeding' within the group and outbreeding outside the group), and family formation (e.g. people having kids, but not crazy numbers of kids), the less cult-like we'll seem.

Maybe hiring nonEAs for certain roles (like "communications assistant" and not like "board member") could improve communications/appearances/maybe outreach?

I am not concerned too much with EA turning into a cult, for one reason:

Cults/New Religious Movements are vastly less bad than most people think, and the literature on cults repudiates a lot of claims that the general population believes on cults, especially anything to do with harm.

Link to it here:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TiG8cLkBRW4QgsfrR/notes-on-brainwashing-and-cults