Rationalism has spawned many offshoot cults which are genuine and in some cases dangerous cults, but rationalism and Effective Altruism are not themselves cults.
Most people among both ideologies have long believed in the arrival of a machine demigod of sorts, but I kind of am skeptical of the notion that there are any tech people who have not always held similar beliefs in the long run. Like, all the people reading this: you think in a thousand years from now humans are going to be doing most labor? Obviously far, far, far smarter machines will have unimaginably changed things by then, and/or we'll all be gone.
The difference is most people in tech have historically thought it's maybe a century or three away, while the rationalists think it's a decade or two away (and also thought it would be 2020s - 2040s even decades prior to now).
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Rationalism has spawned many offshoot cults which are genuine and in some cases dangerous cults, but rationalism and Effective Altruism are not themselves cults.
Most people among both ideologies have long believed in the arrival of a machine demigod of sorts, but I kind of am skeptical of the notion that there are any tech people who have not always held similar beliefs in the long run. Like, all the people reading this: you think in a thousand years from now humans are going to be doing most labor? Obviously far, far, far smarter machines will have unimaginably changed things by then, and/or we'll all be gone.
The difference is most people in tech have historically thought it's maybe a century or three away, while the rationalists think it's a decade or two away (and also thought it would be 2020s - 2040s even decades prior to now).