My interpretation is that cultishness is very human, a human bias. Lesswrong is a cult, but it is a cult that strives to overcome its culty biases.

I think the atom of cultishness is this: As long as any one of us believes that someone else knows something that we do not, and that we want to learn, we are believing through faith rather than through a private rational process. Believing that someone else knows true things that we do not know is an alternative to personal rationality. In the metaphor of the sequence, I see Eliezer hammer some nails in with his hammer, I try it myself and the nails bend and break most of the time. In matters of nails, I put more faith in Eliezer than I do in my very own hammer. As long as I see (or believe I see) Eliezer hammering nails that I cannot hammer (for example, proofs about FAI or CEV), I will either believe them through faith in Eliezer, or I won't believe them because I can't or won't or haven't hammered them myself.

Wanting to learn from Eliezer how to do these things, preceding that desire has to be the faith in Eliezer's hammering, a faith that a rationality I do not yet fully possess and may never fully posses exists.