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RobertLumley comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong
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"Twelve Virtues of Rationality" has always seemed really culty to me. I've never read it, which may be part of the reason. It just comes across as telling people exactly how they should be, and what they should value.
Also, I've never liked that quote about the Sequences. I agree with it, what I've read of the sequences (and it would be wrong to not count HPMOR in this) is by far the most important work I've ever read. But that doesn't mean that's what we should advertise to people.
All you are saying here is "The title of the Twelve Virtues makes me feel bad." That is literally all you are saying, since you admit to not having read it.
I quote:
I'll tell you one thing. It got my attention. It got me interested in rationality. I've shown it to others; they all liked it or were indifferent. If you're going to say "culty" because of the title, you are both missing the (most important) point and failing to judge based on anything reasonable. And I don't particularly care if LW appeals to people who don't even try to be reasonable.
That's still an useful data-point. Do we want to scare away people with strong weirdness filters?
The answer to this may very well turn out to be yes.
What proportion of top people at SIAI love sf?
It's at least plausible that strong weirdness filters interfere with creativity.
On the other hand, weirdness is hard to define-- sf is a rather common sort of weirdness these days..
There is no reason to turn them off right away. The blog itself is weird enough. Maybe they will be acclimated, which would be good.
I almost forgot this, but I was pretty put off by the 12 virtues as well when I first came across it on reddit at age 14 or so. My reaction was something like "you're telling me I should be curious? What if I don't want to be curious, especially about random stuff like Barbie dolls or stamp collecting?" I think I might have almost sent Eliezer an e-mail about it.
When you put this together with what Eliezer called "the bizarre "can't get crap done" phenomenon that afflicts large fractions of our community, which he attributes to feelings of low status, this paints a picture of LW putting off the sort of person who is inclined to feel high status (and is therefore good at getting crap done, but doesn't like being told what to do). This may be unrelated to the cult issue.
Of course, these hypothetical individuals who are inclined to feel high status might not like being told how to think better either... which could mean that Less Wrong is not their cup of tea under any circumstances. But I think it makes sense to shift away from didacticism on the margin.