Comments
Nobody ever talks about this, but a cult infiltrated and took over EA.
People do talk about Leverage - that is how you know about them - but they did not take over EA, and nor does the comment you cite from Habryka claim this.
Nobody ever talks about this, but a cult infiltrated and took over EA.
People do talk about Leverage - that is how you know about them - but they did not take over EA, and nor does the comment you cite from Habryka claim this.
People do talk about Leverage - that is how you know about them
The sense in which this is true is the sense in which I did not claim otherwise. In the sense in which I claimed otherwise, this is false.
When people say "nobody talks about this", they obviously don't mean literally nobody has ever talked about it. This is just a misunderstanding of ordinary language. Surely you understand the meaning of this phrase?
I don't understand why people leave comments like this. How does it help? How does it settle anything? I don't want to engage with this kind of non-substantive, hyper-literal semantic nitpicking. I'm going to try to resist the temptation to engage further with these kinds of comments if I see them.
It might be worse for EA than FTX that the EA community is so often just so unpleasant to interact with. People inside the EA bubble seem unaware of how they come across to people outside it (or they don't care, or they find they can't change their behaviour even if they want to).
Also, the EA Forum should implement a block feature. It would make the forum more usable.
EA 1.0 vs EA 2.0 is worse terminology than GHD vs longtermism. GHD and longtermism is more descriptive, and therefore less likely to confuse folks.
But longtermism doesn't necessarily include AI safety, since many advocates of AI safety are not longtermists. If you think there's a 50%+ chance of superintelligence within a decade and a 5%+ chance of human extinction if superintelligence is created, you don't have to be concerned at all with anything that might happen 1,000+ years from now to treat that as an urgent priority.
In 2021, Will MacAskill, who coined the term longtermism, defined longtermism like this:
Longtermism is the view that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.
In the introduction to the 2025 anthology Essays on Longtermism, Hillary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad cite that definition from Will MacAskill. They also characterize longtermism like this:
A cluster of ideas going under the label ‘longtermism’ hold that considerations of the far future—on timescales of thousands, millions, or even billions of years—are highly significant for today’s decision-making.
Not all AI safety advocates are longtermists. Some are concerned with what will happen within the next 100 years and don't really think or care that much about the future 1,000+ years from now.
To accurately break down the EA 1.0 vs. EA 2.0 distinction by cause area, it would have to be something convoluted like: global health and development + animal welfare vs. AI safety + longtermism.
It seems like you're drawing a connection between the Leverage stuff and "EA 2.0" without really justifying that.
Yes. It could just be a coincidence. But I don't think it's just a coincidence. I think the lack of critical thinking and lack of good norms you need to let a cult take over your movement is a bad sign, and may predict bad things to come. Particularly if there isn't an adequately large post-mortem, an adequate attempt to reckon with such a catastrophic mistake, such a catastrophic failure, and learn deep lessons from it.
This risks going down a rabbit hole, but I think one of the systemic problems with the EA movement is a consistent failure to do good post-mortems. (And while we're at it, good pre-mortems would probably help too.) Many movements, organizations, groups, individuals, etc. experience big failures. Sometimes they learn from them and turn things around. Sometimes they don't. There are several instances such as the Leverage Research infiltration, the Manifest racism scandal, and even the collapse of FTX where I think EA had opportunities to learn hard lessons and do things better in the future, but didn't.
But, of course, I can't prove any of this. It's all just my opinion.
Using the term "cult" in in a purported terminology post isn't helpful.
I know it's annoying, but I would have suggested splitting this into two posts, one introducing the terminology in a neutral fashion and another where you use the terminology to make your criticism.
Of course, the terminology I’m actually advocating is EA 1.0 and EA 2.0. I noticed that Daniel Frank (a board member of Giving What We Can Canada) already used this terminology in a post back in 2022. I also noticed one or two examples of other people using it organically.
To be clear, I didn’t come up with this terminology myself.
I think it should be fairly uncontroversial to say that the late 2000s, early 2010s version of EA focused almost exclusively on global poverty can be called EA 1.0. And that the late 2010s and 2020s version of EA focused largely on AGI safety, longtermism, and existential risk can be called EA 2.0. I think people generally agree that an important change happened, regardless of whether they think the change is good or bad.
There does indeed seem to be a split in the community, but I’m not sure it’s great to work towards that rather than against it.
I kind of try to speak to folks in EA 2.0 occasionally despite being pretty squarely in EA 1.0 and that’s probably net positive, e.g. to avoid a complete echo chamber?
Okay, so I'm advocating two things. The first is a new piece of terminology. The second is online discussion spaces oriented around EA 1.0 (and not EA 2.0).
If people can articulate the distinction better by having this terminology, it might mean people talk past each other less, which might mean they have fewer frustrating discussions where neither person feels like they're getting their point across. In that way, making the distinction could help people get along better rather than worse.
I'm totally against echo chambers, but the EA Forum is mostly an EA 2.0 echo chamber and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. I think there should be EA 1.0 spaces for discussion that make room for all the pro-EA 1.0 and anti-EA 2.0 conversations that can't happen on the EA Forum. You risking winding up in just another echo chamber if you do that, so it will be up to whoever gets involved to make sure that doesn't happen. And if people who prefer EA 1.0 want to engage with EA 2.0 discourse, the EA Forum will still be around for them to do it.
Update:
The two paragraphs of this post about Leverage Research stimulated the most reaction because apparently a lot of people in EA are not aware of the history of Leverage Research's involvement in EA. Or because they're not aware that Leverage Research is a cult (or cult-like group, if you prefer).
If you're reading this, you can help by a) writing a deep dive post on Leverage Research's involvement in EA, b) asking someone you know if they would write one, or c) offering payment or a cash incentive for someone to write one. More details here.
When we talk about EA, we’re often talking about two different things that we should distinguish. On one hand, there’s the pre-2013, global poverty-oriented version of EA. We might call that EA 1.0. On the other hand, there’s the post-2017 version of EA that’s much more oriented around AI, longtermism, and existential risk. We could call that EA 2.0.[1]
An important part of the story is that a cult, Leverage Research, organized the first EA Summit in 2013 and eventually gained full control of the Centre for Effective Altruism in 2018 when one of its members became the CEO. Nobody ever talks about this, but a cult infiltrated and took over EA. That’s a major part of EA’s history and development. It might help explain a lot of what’s wrong with EA today.
So, we could also call the pre-2013 era the pre-cult era of EA and the post-2012 era the cult era of EA. The first EA conferences were organized by a cult. Major EA programs like the Pareto Fellowship — which I applied to! — were run by a cult and in a cult-like fashion. This is complete insanity and I almost never see anybody talk about this. Although Leverage Research has mostly — but not entirely! — been ejected from EA now, other cults and extremist groups are still in EA’s orbit.[2] Including dangerous, violent ones that have killed people and tried to kill people.[3]
Update (2026-06-07 at 20:01 UTC): The preceding two paragraphs stimulated the most reaction because apparently a lot of people in EA are not aware of the history of Leverage Research's involvement in EA. Or because they're not aware that Leverage Research is a cult (or cult-like group, if you prefer). If you're reading this, you can help by a) writing a deep dive post on Leverage Research's involvement in EA, b) asking someone you know if they would write one, or c) offering payment or a cash incentive for someone to write one. More details here.
Anyway, EA 1.0 still exists within EA 2.0. In absolute size, EA 1.0 might have even grown, although in relative terms it’s gone from 100% of EA to maybe 50% or less (depending how you measure).
Sometimes people want to criticize EA 2.0 specifically, without criticizing EA 1.0. Since we don’t have clear terminology (such as “EA 1.0” vs. “EA 2.0”) to distinguish these two parts of effective altruism, the critics often just say they’re criticizing effective altruism. People who want to defend the distinctive characteristics of EA 2.0 sometimes dodge getting to the crux of the disagreement by invoking the nice qualities of EA 1.0 that the critics often actually like.
For instance, a critic might say EA hasn’t put forward enough high-quality evidence or arguments for the supposedly imminent advent of superintelligence. A defender of EA 2.0 might then find a way to invoke GiveWell in order to defend EA’s intellectual rigour and empiricism.
The critic might say the EA community doesn’t focus enough on input from experts, peer-reviewed research, scientific evidence, etc. The criticism is specifically aimed at EA 2.0. But the defender will then use GiveWell as an example of an organization that gets lots of input from experts, reads a lot of peer-reviewed research in order to make decisions, and prizes randomized controlled trials and data from the field.
In this case, the critic is criticizing EA 2.0 (not EA 1.0) and the defender is defending EA 1.0 (not EA 2.0) and they’re just talking past each other. This is why terminology is helpful. This is why distinctions are helpful.
When you break it down, most critics of EA have a lot to criticize about EA 2.0 but very little, if anything, to criticize about EA 1.0. EA 1.0 had (and has) its critics as well — some make great points about, e.g., the importance of institutions in economic development, others make more dubious points related to Marxism or nationalism or communitarianism — but they are much fewer in number than the critics of EA 2.0.
Also, critics of EA 1.0 more often make criticisms that are fundamentally constructive, e.g., look into funding pro-democracy and anti-corruption interventions in developing countries in addition to global health. By contrast, critics of EA 2.0 more often find very little that is salvageable from EA thinking on AI, longtermism, and existential risk. The advice is commonly: go back to the drawing board, start over from scratch.
I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but my impression is that, for example, frequent EA Forum poster titotal and the philosopher David Thorstad have relatively little (if any) criticism for EA 1.0 and a whole heap of criticism for EA 2.0. Speaking for myself, I’m pro-EA 1.0 and anti-EA 2.0. I’m a fan of EA’s pre-cult era and then things seem to have gotten worse after the cult infiltration began. Critics and defenders of EA 2.0 can stop talking past each other so much if we adopt the EA 1.0 vs. EA 2.0 distinction.
This is particularly important given that EA is not an all or nothing, black or white, binary proposition. People sympathetic to EA can make fine-grained choices about what they support and invest themselves in — and what they don’t. If we’re thinking on the margin, it doesn’t make sense to try to weigh up all the good and bad of EA and see if it’s a net positive. That’s a pointless exercise. We’re not faced with a binary choice. The thing is to think about the next right step. Where should our next incremental unit of resources go? What communities and organizations should we focus our time and energy on? Among all possible actions we could take, which are the best ones? Or at least, good enough?[4]
The point of this post is just to a) make the distinction between EA 1.0 and EA 2.0 and b) encourage people to start using the “EA 1.0” vs. “EA 2.0” terminology. If you want to get into the reasons I’m against EA 2.0, I’ve written extensively about that elsewhere. Even better, you could read the philosopher David Thorstad’s years of thoughtful criticism on EA 2.0. The point here is just to make the distinction, and encourage the terminology.
Also, since the EA Forum is overwhelmingly EA 2.0 (to the point of suppressing anti-EA 2.0 sentiment, including through moderation), I want to encourage anyone with the time and energy to work on alternative platforms for discussion to do so. There should be an EA 1.0 space for discussion. (If you email me or message me on Substack, I might be able to help or connect you with people who can.)
Edit (2026-06-05 at 01:04 UTC): The EA 1.0 vs. EA 2.0 terminology is also used in an EA Forum post written in 2022 by Giving What We Can Canada board member Daniel Frank.
Edit (2026-06-04 at 23:17 UTC): If you don't like the phrase "in EA's orbit", consider substituting another phrase like "adjacent to EA" or "only one or two degrees separated from EA". Fill in the blank with whatever you think is accurate.
Edit (2026-06-05 at 01:15 UTC): See this comment for evidence of the connection between EA and Stop AI, whose co-founder threatened to commit a mass shooting at OpenAI.
Incidentally, black and white thinking like this is a frequent trap in political discussions. Is capitalism or mixed market economies good or bad? Is nationalism good or bad? Are regulations good or bad? Is the government good or bad? Is liberal democracy good or bad? Is social justice good or bad? If you get stuck in the binary role of a critic, you’ll often end up advocating worse alternatives to what you’re criticizing, such as Marxism-Leninism, libertarianism, authoritarianism, illiberal populism, etc. If you get stuck in the binary role of a defender, you wind up becoming an apologist for problems and failures that people are rightly angry about. Even if you have good intentions, you don’t come across as a credible reformer who is going to fix things and make them right.
I strong-downvoted this post. Criticism such as this ought to be more carefully written, with greater precision, clarity, and evidence. As it is, I find this strawmans much of what EA is today and (despite your plea for no one to criticize wording) uses at times deceivingly vague wording to make something seen worse than it really is (e.g. "in EA's orbit" to imply that these things happened within EA).
Furthermore, to claim that "a cult infiltrated and took over EA" without elaborating, and then to continuously call the modern era of EA as the post-cult era, is slander. Provide evidence and good arguments or don't post such critique at all.
I found your substack post critiquing EA intriguing if strongly worded at times, and your response to criticism seemed sincere and thoughtful. I'm disappointed to see this much less thoughtful post.
The post uses hyperlink citations. When a word or phrase is hyperlinked, that's a citation. You can open the links and see the evidence for yourself.
For example, I cited this comment from Oliver Habryka, who worked for the Centre for Effective Altruism during the 2010s:
I cited Zoe Curzi's account of her time at Leverage Research, which supports its characterization as a cult. I also cited the Centre for Effective Altruism's webpage which documents some of its historical relationship with Leverage Research, and notes that Leverage Research organized the EA Summit conferences and the Pareto Fellowship. An additional citation in the post is an EA Forum comment (with a reply corroborating it) that describes cult-like behaviour during the interview process for the Pareto Fellowship.
I've actually never heard anyone in EA either a) deny that Leverage Research is a cult or b) deny that it was deeply involved in EA and the CEA, although maybe some people do deny one or both of those things. I don't necessarily have my finger on the pulse.
By in EA's orbit, I mean, e.g., that if Stop AI's co-founder, Sam Kirchner, had committed a mass shooting at OpenAI (like he said he wanted to do) some of the Stop AI money — which the co-founder wanted to use to buy high-powered weapons and ammo, but was prevented from doing by other people at Stop AI — that bought those guns and those bullets that massacred people in the OpenAI offices might have been, in part, donated by people in the EA community who thought they were donating to an EA-aligned organization in an EA cause area (AI safety).
A 2024 GoFundMe fundraiser by Stop AI raised $9,111. Among the publicly listed donors is Stijn Bruers, who donated $578. His LinkedIn says he was the president of Effective Altruism Belgium for 8 years. Stijn Bruers has also been on the EA Forum since 2015 and has 1075 karma. So, we can confirm that Stop AI has been, in some part, funded by donations from people in the EA community.
A day after OpenAI's offices were locked down in response to the threat from the Stop AI co-founder, a post on the EA Forum debated whether to donate to Stop AI. It ultimately decided against, but not for the reason that Stop AI is likely to be too extremist or might end up killing people. Just that the evidence for the efficacy of its tactics is not strong enough. (I assume this post was written and published before the author heard the news about Stop AI.)
More evidence about Stop AI's connection to EA: another Stop AI member, Remmelt Ellen, has posted 86 times on the EA Forum since 2017, commented 280 times, and has 1439 karma. According to his LinkedIn, he co-founded Effective Altruism Netherlands in 2017. His EA Forum profile and his LinkedIn also say he's had a major role at an EA project called AI Safety Camp, which has in part been funded by Effective Altruism Funds and the FTX Future Fund. Apparently one of Remmelt Ellen's roles at AI Safety Camp has been to work on "Stop/Pause AI projects", but I don't know what connection (if any) that has with the organization Stop AI (with which he is involved). Stop AI is a splinter group off of PauseAI, which has a more prominent place in the EA community and on the EA Forum.
Here's a positive EA Forum comment about Stop AI from Greg Colbourn. Greg Colbourn created the EA Hotel. He's been on the EA Forum since 2014 and has 5972 karma. Greg Colbourn has also made a number of positive tweets about Stop AI: example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4.
Is this enough evidence to establish a meaningful connection between EA and Stop AI? I think so, but you may disagree.
The Zizians did not come from EA directly, but they came from the LessWrong community. There is so much overlap between EA and the LessWrong community these days that the distinction between the two is porous. The lead sentence of the Wikipedia article on the Zizians describes them like this:
The Wikipedia article on the rationalist community (or LessWrong community) describes the Zizians as a “splinter group” off of the rationalist community.
Whether that's "in EA's orbit" or what the phrase "in EA's orbit" means is something you can feel free to disagree with me on. Would it have been better if I said "adjacent to EA" or "only one or two degrees separated from EA"? The core point is that Leverage Research was not just a totally random, out-of-the-blue fluke. New groups with extreme views and violent behaviours are still not that far separated from EA. This is not normal and doesn't typically happen.
Note (2026-06-05 at 00:56 UTC): I made substantial edits to this comment after posting. Use the Wayback Machine to see version history.
Where you're making controversial arguments, you need to explain the evidence behind them in the text. Citations should be only for the extra diligent reader, it's not fair to expect the reader to look into them.
Many of the citations like the one you mentioned now aren't sufficient. From what I've seen, you've provided evidence that Leverage did cult-like things, and was involved in organizing EA conferences for a time and there was some overlap with staff. It's a big jump to then say that EA was literally taken over by a cult and that this effect continues until today. Referring to one comment about the interview process for one fellowship is just so clearly not sufficient to color EA as a whole - not even for that fellowship, of which there are many!
Control AI is related to EA, clearly. This does not seem analagous to the Bay Area cults you referred to, not even close.
The general point is that a post like this cannot be made as a quick take, but needs to be argued more thoroughly with much clearer evidence. As it is, it feels like name-calling.
I'm going on holiday now so I won't be able to engage further, but I think the above is quite clear.
Someone should write a separate deep-dive post about Leverage Research and its infiltration of EA. (Although you’d be able to get a lot the same information just by reading the sources I cited.) A lot of people in EA are unaware of this story, but it’s important. It’s not exactly super secret or hidden — there seems to be general agreement that Leverage Research is a cult and the Centre for Effective Altruism describes its history with Leverage Research on its website under its “Mistakes we’ve made” page — yet people in EA don’t talk about it.
Maybe you could investigate the topic for yourself and write a deep dive post on it. Maybe someone else could.
The key thing is for people in EA to understand the truth about what happened. And to learn whatever lessons they think they should learn from that.
I’m a bit numb to procedural or formalistic critiques at this point because they always seem to just end up being another way to express substantive disagreement. It’s not like the EA community actually follows the writing and sourcing norms you’re advocating here.
The important thing is the substantive questions:
Is Leverage Research a cult?
Did it take over the Centre for Effective Altruism?
Did it organize the EA Summits and the Pareto Fellowship? Did it play an important role in organizing the first EA Globals?
If so, how could the EA movement, particularly the core international leadership, let this happen?
If so, what might be the broader ramifications of this?
What (if anything) is there to learn from this?
Similarly:
Are there multiple cults (or cult-like groups) that have emerged from or been associated with the LessWrong community (rationalist community)?
If so, why?
Is the threat of a Stop AI co-founder to commit a mass shooting a concern for EA?
If so, what could EA do in response? For instance, what could EA do to discourage extremist beliefs and behaviour, particularly violent behaviour?
Does any of this point to deeper concerns with EA? Is it just a string of bad luck, or is there something more here?
If it’s not just bad luck, what could be done better in the future?
Just jumping in to say I know both Stijn and Remmelt, so can confirm they’ve been heavily involved in EA (Stijn still is, Remmelt I’m not so sure, but he definitely co-founded EA Netherlands — I last spoke with him in 2024).
From what I know, Remmelt was (is?) heavily involved in StopAI.
I don’t want to speak for them but I’m pretty sure they’d both strongly oppose violent acts. Remmelt did so on Twitter here.
I’m not endorsing the rest of your claims in the post, just wanted to corroborate this specific part.
Thanks.
I assume everyone who has donated to Stop AI, supported it, or been involved was shocked and horrified by Sam Kirchner’s threats to murder people. I can’t imagine anyone supported that.
Nothing I said was intended to imply that anyone who has supported Stop AI supported Sam Kirchner’s threats. It was just to establish that there is a meaningful connection between Stop AI and EA — that Stop AI is “in EA’s orbit”.
FWIW my bio on X now reads: "Ex-EA (left over EA's anti-Pause, pro-Anthropic stance)."
And it's pretty clear that Stop AI are committed to non-violence given they expelled Kirchner after he started talking about it!
(And here is something positive that is happening with Stop AI now (and could be really impactful).)
I don’t believe Stop AI expelled Sam Kirchner. I think he resigned. After Sam Kirchner threatened to commit a mass shooting at OpenAI, a few people on the EA Forum expressed concern about what Stop AI said about it.
They say in their announcement (already linked) that they expelled him. What makes you think he resigned?