The cults are always wrong, and not just a little wrong, but systematically wrong, with whole anti-epistemologies developing to bear the load. LW rationality activism can be eccentric, in the sense of paying attention to things that most folk don’t see as particularly interesting or important, but it’s interesting where a social movement would go, whose primary directive is to actually protect itself from error (instead of just keeping up the appearances) and to seek better methods for doing so. This is almost unexplored territory, if you don’t count global scientific community as a preceding example (one point, hard to draw generalizations from).
I believe we are significantly below a critical mass where the community becomes unlikely to fizzle out into obscurity, but given the non-arbitrary focus of the activism, it’s possible that the movement will persist, or get reincarnated elsewhere.
The cults are always wrong, and not just a little wrong, but systematically wrong, with whole anti-epistemologies developing to bear the load. LW rationality activism can be eccentric, in the sense of paying attention to things that most folk don’t see as particularly interesting or important, but it’s interesting where a social movement would go, whose primary directive is to actually protect itself from error (instead of just keeping up the appearances) and to seek better methods for doing so. This is almost unexplored territory, if you don’t count global scientific community as a preceding example (one point, hard to draw generalizations from).
I believe we are significantly below a critical mass where the community becomes unlikely to fizzle out into obscurity, but given the non-arbitrary focus of the activism, it’s possible that the movement will persist, or get reincarnated elsewhere.