It's worth discussing an issue as important as cultishness every so often, but as you might expect, this isn't the first time Less Wrong has discussed the meme of "SIAI agrees on ideas that most people don't take seriously? They must be a cult!"
ETA: That is, I'm not dismissing your impression, just saying that the last time this was discussed is relevant.
Less Wrong has discussed the meme of "SIAI agrees on ideas that most people don't take seriously? They must be a cult!"
Awesome, it has discussed this particular 'meme', to prevalence of viral transmission of which your words seem to imply it attributes it's identification as cult. Has it, however, discussed good Bayesian reasoning and understood the impact of a statistical fact that even when there is a genuine risk (if there is such risk), it is incredibly unlikely that the person most worth listening to will be lacking both academic credenti...
Why does SI/LW focus so much on AI-FOOM disaster, with apparently much less concern for things like
Why, for example, is lukeprog's strategy sequence titled "AI Risk and Opportunity", instead of "The Singularity, Risks and Opportunities"? Doesn't it seem strange to assume that both the risks and opportunities must be AI related, before the analysis even begins? Given our current state of knowledge, I don't see how we can make such conclusions with any confidence even after a thorough analysis.
SI/LW sometimes gives the impression of being a doomsday cult, and it would help if we didn't concentrate so much on a particular doomsday scenario. (Are there any doomsday cults that say "doom is probably coming, we're not sure how but here are some likely possibilities"?)