I will say that I feel 95% confident that SIAI is not a cult because I spent time there (mjcurzi was there also), learned from their members, observed their processes of teaching rationality, hung out for fun, met other people who were interested, etc. Everyone involved seemed well meaning, curious, critical, etc. No one was blindly following orders. In the realm of teaching rationality, there was much agreement it should be taught, some agreement on how, but total openness to failure and finding alternate methods. I went to the minicamp wondering (along with John Salvatier) whether the SIAI was a cult and obtained lots of evidence to push me far away from that position.

I wonder if the cult accusation in part comes from the fact that it seems too good to be true, so we feel a need for defensive suspicion. Rationality is very much about changing one's mind and thinking about this we become suspicious that the goals of SIAI are to change our minds in a particular way. Then we discover that in fact the SIAI's goals (are in part) to change our minds in a particular way so we think our suspicions are justified.

My model tells me that stepping into a church is several orders of magnitude more psychologically dangerous than stepping into a Less Wrong meetup or the SIAI headquarters.

(The other 5% goes to things like "they are a cult and totally duped me and I don't know it", "they are a cult and I was too distant from their secret inner cabals to discover it", "they are a cult and I don't know what to look for", "they aren't a cult but they want to be one and are screwing it up", etc. I should probably feel more confident about this than 95%, but my own inclination to be suspicious of people who want to change how I think means I'm being generous with my error. I have a hard time giving these alternate stories credit.)