Where you're making controversial arguments, you need to explain the evidence behind them in the text. Citations should be only for the extra diligent reader, it's not fair to expect the reader to look into them. 

Many of the citations like the one you mentioned now aren't sufficient. From what I've seen, you've provided evidence that Leverage did cult-like things, and was involved in organizing EA conferences for a time and there was some overlap with staff. It's a big jump to then say that EA was literally taken over by a cult and that this effect continues until today. Referring to one comment about the interview process for one fellowship is just so clearly not sufficient to color EA as a whole - not even for that fellowship, of which there are many!

Control AI is related to EA, clearly. This does not seem analagous to the Bay Area cults you referred to, not even close. 

The general point is that a post like this cannot be made as a quick take, but needs to be argued more thoroughly with much clearer evidence. As it is, it feels like name-calling.

I'm going on holiday now so I won't be able to engage further, but I think the above is quite clear. 

I strong-downvoted this post. Criticism such as this ought to be more carefully written, with greater precision, clarity, and evidence. As it is, I find this strawmans much of what EA is today and (despite your plea for no one to criticize wording) uses at times deceivingly vague wording to make something seen worse than it really is (e.g. "in EA's orbit" to imply that these things happened within EA). 

Furthermore, to claim that "a cult infiltrated and took over EA" without elaborating, and then to continuously call the modern era of EA as the post-cult era, is slander. Provide evidence and good arguments or don't post such critique at all. 

I found your substack post critiquing EA intriguing if strongly worded at times, and your response to criticism seemed sincere and thoughtful. I'm disappointed to see this much less thoughtful post.

I strongly disagree with this argument and feel that very little evidence has been provided in its support. Below I respond to what I take to be each of the main arguments (not in order, but in the order that makes sense to me):

1. EA as a question vs a project

From what I can tell, @hbesceli's argument mostly depends on the idea of EA as a question. But I strongly disagree with this. EA is and always has been about answering that question and putting the answer into practice. By encouraging EAs to change careers, to donate etc. CEA is encouraging the outcomes that EA aims at. I see this as a clearly good thing.

2. Is EA dying?

@hbesceli also offers arguments that EA is dying. These partly depend on their conception of the answer to (1), but also partly on twitter posts and things their friends have said about finding EA ideological or not wanting to identify with it. I just don't think this evindence is worth much. My own experience is that long-time EAs I know still identify as such, and I don't really care if people on twitter think EA is ideological - I care if it is in reality. The community building efforts in Switzerland where I live definitely still ask newcomers to question, to do their own cause-prioritization, and only offer established EA answers as ones they might want to consider. 

3. Should community building focus on growth?

I think community building should focus on growth as well as asking questions. I also think it's ok for community builders to explain the answers that EA has generally settled on. This seems very analogous to the scientific community: it's perfectly normal and even good for a science teacher to tell you how the cell works, to explain how greenhouse gasses cause climate change, while still encouraging you to use the scientific method and question things. This is where EA is at: we want everything to be continuously questioned, but we have some answers and there is more value, frankly speaking, in spending more time on the less-answered questions. And just as the science teacher might encourage students to go become climate scientists or climate policymakers, I see no problem with EA funnelling people into AI safety careers.

4. Should EA community building serve experienced/highly engaged EAs?

Again, I disagree here and say "no". I would consider myself an established EA, and I have no problem with community building not being primarily for me. I want it to serve newcomers - they need it most, and they are the ones with the greatest potential to add new value to the world. EA community building served me in the past, and now I'm trying to serve it.

5. FTX

This is the one part that I agreed with, but I'm not sure why it's relevant. I do wish there was more of a responses from EA leadership to the FTX crisis, e.g. more accountability and steps taken to ensure it won't happen again. But this doesn't seem to be about community building.

6. Should CEA be positive about the EA brand?

But I do understand CEAs desire to bring revitalize the EA brand post-FTX. FTX was unfortunate, but EA is still great. We do want people to see the positive in it and be excited about that. I have no issue with that, and I think @hbesceli 's perspective here is largely informed by the above disagreements.

End note: This post has already gotten a lot of karma, so I am genuinely wondering what I'm missing. I'd like to know if the points I've made here make sense to others or not.

Do you have a target date for deciding the next location? 

Asking because my plans for the next few months are slowly accumulating 🫠 But in theory I am very interested!

I notice a huge influx of substack reposts on the forum, and with it, a decline in community norms around writing style. 

It's unfortunate that blog posts are generally designed to attract readers, and rarely to seek truth.

In most worlds where AI disempowers humanity, the human species continues

Do you mean most likely worlds? The difference seems incredibly important - there are, in my view, quite compelling arguments that the most likely outcome given disempowerment is human extinction, but of course I can imagine worlds in which that doens't happen.

Right, what seemed to be missing to me was evidence that longtermists specifically had stopped working on extinction risk. But I see there are a good amount of posts others have linked in the comments that would count as evidence for this.

Is this post conflating EAs or AI-safety researchers/advocates with longtermists? My impression is that actually rather few EAs are strong longtermists, and AI safety researchers/advocates maybe even less - they're just united by their wish to avoid catastrophe, but differ in their understandings of the kind of catastrophe we should expect.

I think when AI safety was young and, er, weird, a lot of those talking about it were longtermists. That makes sense. But now it's become a mainstream EA concern, and even a not-weird concern in society generally, so it's unsurprising that it's become less longtermist, from a sociological perspective.

I quite liked this article by Martha Nussbaum: Virtue Ethics is a Misleading Category. She points out that both the classical utilitarians and Kant talked extensively about virtues. On the other hand, there's great variation among those who call themselves 'virtue ethicists', such that it's not clear if virtue ethics is really a thing.

But the point I want to make is: a good utilitarian has to acknowledge the role of virtue, and I think a lot of modern utilitarians have forgotten this. We want to use utility-calculation to guide our actions, but humans can't think like calculators all the time. 

I'm not really into deontological constraints myself. Rules of thumb, yes, but they should always be open to revision. Exceptional circumstances can always justify breaking rules - and in those cases, I will refer to what maximizes utility.

There are a few things missing from this argument, that I think are important to add:

1. Even on "humane" farms, most animals will only live a few months. It takes some clever twisting of logic to say that bringing someone into existence only to kill them a few months later isn't wrong. 

2. Even on the ideal free range farm, animals don't live as well as they could. E.g. where I grew up, there are free range sheep. But they are still treated roughly by the farmers, they still die out on the fields if they get sick or too cold. Why settle for humane when we could actually care for animals the way we do for our pets?

3. Donating is great, but political action is also essential if we ever hope to achieve fundamental change for animals. Join protests, sign petitions, write to your representatives and vote for politicians who promise to fight for animals.