I don’t know if this matters. I don’t particularly care for the Sequences, but that hasn’t caused me any problems at all. LessWrong has been an easy site to get into and to learn from, and would be even if I never read anything by EY. (This seems to be true for most aspects of the site; LessWrong is useful even if you don’t care about AIs, transhumanism, cybernetics, effective altruism.… there’s enough here that you can find plenty to learn.)
You may be seeing the problem as bigger than it is because of the lens that you are looking through, although I agree that charisma is an interesting thing to study, and was central to the development of the site.
I don’t know if this matters. I don’t particularly care for the Sequences, but that hasn’t caused me any problems at all. LessWrong has been an easy site to get into and to learn from, and would be even if I never read anything by EY. (This seems to be true for most aspects of the site; LessWrong is useful even if you don’t care about AIs, transhumanism, cybernetics, effective altruism.… there’s enough here that you can find plenty to learn.)
You may be seeing the problem as bigger than it is because of the lens that you are looking through, although I agree that charisma is an interesting thing to study, and was central to the development of the site.
It’s not just LW, it’s the invisible social organization around it.
“Culty” dynamics matter. It’s dangerous stuff to be playing with.