One of the reasons for why Yudkowsky is being drastically upvoted is of course that he's often, fasten your seatbelts, brilliantly right (whoever reads my comments knows that I am not really the most frenetic believer, so I think I can say this without sounding cultish). But others are too, so is Less Wrong a cult? Nah! There is a simple explanation for this phenomenon:

As you can see, there are already 13 people who subscribe to his Less Wrong feed via Google Reader. And there are many other ways to subscribe to a RSS feed (which is not the only way to follow his mental outpourings anyway), so the number of people who follow every post and comment is likely much higher.

That's why most of his comments receive more upvotes than other comments. It is not because he is a cult leader, it's just that his comments are read by many more people than the average comment on Less Wrong. There are of course other causes as well, but this seems to explain a fair chunk of the effect.

Also consider that I'm often upvoted (with a current Karma score of 1959) and I do not keep quiet regarding my doubts about some topics directly related to Yudkowsky and the SIAI. How could this happen if Less Wrong was an echo chamber?

I just wanted to let you know, because I have been wondering about it in the past.