Heard on #lesswrong:

<a> BTW, I figured out why Eliezer looks like a cult leader to some people. It's because he has both social authority (he's a leader figure, solicits donations) and epistemological authority (he's the top expert, wrote the sequences which are considered canonical).

<a> If, for example, Wei Dai kicked Eliezer's ass at FAI theory, LW would not appear cultish

<b> This suggests that we should try to make someone else a social authority so that he doesn't have to be.

(I hope posting only a log is ok)