SarahC comments on Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism - Less Wrong
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Is that what they are doing?!?
They seem to be funded by promoting the idea that DOOM is SOON - and that to avert it we should all be sending our hard-earned dollars to their intrepid band of Friendly Folk.
One might naively expect such an organisation would typically act so as to exaggerate the risks - so as to increase the flow of donations. That seems pretty consistent with their actions to me.
From that perspective the organisation seems likely to be an unreliable guide to the facts of the matter - since they have glaringly-obvious vested interests.
This is an incredibly anti-name-calling community. People ascribe a lot of value to having "good" discussions (disagreement is common, but not adversarialism or ad hominems.) LW folks really don't like being called a cult.
SIAI isn't a cult, and Eliezer isn't a cult leader, and I'm sure you know that your insinuations don't correspond to literal fact, and that this organization is no more a scam than a variety of other charitable and advocacy organizations.
I do think that folks around here are over-sensitive to normal levels of name-calling and ad hominems. It's odd. Holding yourself above the fray comes across as a little snobbish. There's a whole world of discourse out there, people gathering evidence and exchanging opinions, and the vast majority of them are doing it like this: UR A FASCIST. But do you think there's therefore nothing to learn from them?