No, it doesn't define "a cult" as that. It defines the word "cult" to also mean that, in certain contexts. Specifically, when you say "the cult of Britney Spears" or "the cult of Kim Jong Un", the word "cult" in those contexts has the meaning you quoted.

But when used simply as "a cult", in a context outside of history or anthropology, it's meaning is virtually always meaning 1 from Merriam-Webster - "a group (such as an organization or religious sect) with tenets and practices regarded as coercive, insular, or dangerous". And there is no doubt that, rightly or wrongly, this is what the article author means to accuse Rationality/EA of being.

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roenxi 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Or the cult of Eliezer Yudkowsky aka Yud.

> And there is no doubt that, rightly or wrongly, this is what the article author means to accuse Rationality/EA of being.

There is substantial doubt, I don't think the article did accuse them of being any of those things. Obsessed, yes. Poorly reasoned, sure. Coercive and insular I am not seeing, and dangerous is a difficult reading to find. Whats the danger here, we accidentally maintain the status quo of the insufferable 2025? There is a totally unrelated firebombing invoked, I doubt the dude was in the sex cult and the US seems a bit CEOcidal right now. The most specific criticism I spotted is the article writer thinks they may, in a possible edge case where people take them seriously, hinder medical research. Which is not actually a rare policy position if you spend any time talking to people about what needs to happen to speed up medical research.

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tsimionescu 16 hours ago | parent [-]

> There is substantial doubt, I don't think the article did accuse them of being any of those things.

The article says:

> Rationalism as a whole is a religious movement. Not everyone takes marching orders. The core people who mostly live together and attend events and especially orgies in Berkeley are a sex cult, and the ones that aren't having any sex are part of the wider movement and are its recruiting funnel.

> This industry frames its regulations in this way because it has, at its core, a millenarian death cult that worships and fears AI as the cause of the end of the world, that feels compelled to create AI, and that at least somewhat wants to destroy AI as a field.

This is quite clearly accusing them of being a cult in the sense of Scientology or Jonestown, not in the sense of Britney Spears lovers.

As for specific nefarious things that it associates this sex cult with:

- being beneficiaries of money that FTX defrauded their customers of

- being an inspiration/breeding ground for more extreme cults, like the murderous Zizians

- inspiring corporate collusion for absurd outcomes

- monopolizing the discussion and real research/influence into AI safety by focusing on their doomsday scenario instead of more concrete short-term issues (say, copyright issues, cybersecurity, bias-induction, institutional degradation in favor of AI decision making)

- extreme alarmism, such as Yudkowsky advocating for nuclear war as an alternative to allowing AI risks

	▲	roenxi 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> This is quite clearly accusing them of being a cult in the sense of Scientology or Jonestown, not in the sense of Britney Spears lovers. If that were true, I believe you would be able to draw support from the text. You've got quotes there clearly identifying that the author thinks they're a cult, but not a cult in the sense of Scientology or Jonestown (which are/were notable for being coercive, insular, or dangerous). The quotes identify both are cults. Which, yeah, sure they are. There are a lot of cults. This one has some reasonable points, building an intelligence more intelligent than humans is a hitherto unexplored risk for the species. And none of this means all cults are the same. Unless & until this cult does something bad it isn't in the same camp as the worst cults. And delis-thumbs-7e has a post nearby pointing out that the Britany Spears cultists do actually sleep with each other which I thought was an interesting point. > As for specific nefarious things that it associates this sex cult with: This is a list of remarkably mild activities for a cult (more like white collar crimes of opportunity and standard political activism, really, if anything) and an allusion to a different cult, aka the Zizians. And if the Yudowsky people end up like the Zizians they will be the worst type of cult - but if that happened someone has to accuse them of something first.