Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?

Summary

The rationalist community was drawn together by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog post series The Sequences, a set of essays about how to think more rationally. You would think, then, that they’d be paragons of critical thinking and skepticism — or at least that they wouldn’t wind up summoning demons. And yet, the rationalist community has hosted perhaps half a dozen small groups with very strange beliefs (including two separate groups that wound up interacting with demons). Some — which I won’t name in this article for privacy reasons — seem to have caused no harm but bad takes. But the most famous, a loose group of vegan anarchist transhumanists nicknamed the Zizians, have been linked to six violent deaths. Other groups, while less violent, have left a trail of trauma in their wake. One is Black Lotus, a Burning Man camp led by alleged rapist Brent Dill, which developed a metaphysical system based on the tabletop roleplaying game Mage the Ascension. Another is Leverage Research, an independent research organization that became sucked into the occult and wound up as Workplace Harassment With New Age Characteristics. For this article, I spoke to ten people who were associated with various rationalist-adjacent groups, including Black Lotus, Leverage Research, and the Zizians. I also spoke with people who were familiar with the early development of the rationalist community. I myself am a rationalist, and the rationalist community is closely knit; my interviewees included exes, former clients, and the dad of my kid’s best friend. I am close to my subject in a way most journalists aren’t. At the same time, I got an unprecedented level of access and honesty from members of a community that is often hostile to outsiders. The problem of young rationalists The rationalist community as a whole is remarkably functional. Like any subculture, it is rife with gossip, personality conflicts, and drama that is utterly incomprehensible to outsiders. But overall, the community’...