You are invited by a friend to what he calls a “cool organization”. You walk into the building, and are promptly greeted by around twenty different people, all using variations on the same welcome phrase. You ask what the main point of the organization is, and several different people chime in at the same time, all answering, “Politics.” You ask what kind of politics. Every single one of them proceeds to endorse the idea that abortion is unconditionally bad. Now feeling rather creeped out, you ask them for their reasoning. Several of them give answers, but all of those answers are variations of the same argument, and the way in which they say it gives you the feeling as though they are reciting this argument from memory.
Would you be inclined to stay at this “cool organization” a moment longer than you have to?
Now substitute “abortion is unconditionally bad” with “creationism should not be taught as science in public schools”.
If you would still be creeped out by that, then your creep detector is miscalibrated; that would mean nobody can have an organization dedicated to a cause without creeping you out.
If you would not be creeped out by that, then your initial reaction to the abortion example was probably being mindkilled by abortion, not being creeped out by the fact that a lot of people agreed on something.
Just because I agree with their ideas doesn’t mean I won’t find it creepy. A cult is a cult, regardless of what it promotes. If I wanted to join an anti-creationist community, I certainly wouldn’t join that one, and there are plenty such communities that manage to get their message across without coming off as cultish.
The example is supposed to sound cultist because the people think alike. But I have a hard time seeing how a non-cultist anti-creationist group would produce different arguments against creationism.
The non-cultist group could of course not all use the same welcome phrase, but that’s not really the heart of what the example is supposed to illustrate,
There are multiple anti-creationist arguments out there, so if they all immediately jump to the same one, I’d be suspicious. But even beyond that, it’s natural for humans to disagree about stuff, because we’re not perfect Bayesians. If you see a bunch of humans agreeing completely, you should immediately think “cult”, or at the very least “these people don’t think for themselves”. (I’d be much less suspicious if we replace humans with Bayesian superintelligences, however, because those actually follow Aumann’s Agreement Theorem.)
Just because people should reach the same conclusions does not imply they should always do the same thing; e.g. some versions of chicken have the optimal solution where both players have the same options but they should do different things. (On a one-off with binding preconditions (or TDT done right), where the sum of outcomes on their doing different things is higher than any symmetrical outcome, they should commit to choose randomly in coordination.)
This example looks similiar to me; the cool cultists don’t know how to assign turns. Even if I had several clones, we wouldn’t all be doing the same things; not because we would disagree on what was important, but because it’s unnecessary to do some things more than once.
Also, this organization sounds really cool! Where can I join? (Seriously, I’ve never been in a cult before and would love to have the experience.)
Seriously, I’ve never been in a cult before and would love to have the experience.
You really don’t want that.
edit: A concrete useful suggestion is to reorganize your life in such a way that you have better things to do with your time than be a tourist in other people’s misery and ruin.
Are you speaking from experience or general knowledge?
If I go in knowing it’s a cult, doesn’t that change a lot? I’d be interested in a comparison of survival rates (of general sanity) between people depending on their mindset upon joining
If you join a cult, then even your physical survival will suddenly become a lot more perilous. You will likely have to conform, or die. Keep that in mind.
The main problem with joining a cult isn’t physical danger, or even the chance of having your mind permanently changed (retention rates for cult membership are very low). It’s what they’ll get out of you while you’re in there. In most cases you can expect to see a lot of pressure to do things like handing over large sums of money, or donating large amounts of unpaid labor, or abandoning social links outside the organization, and those aren’t necessarily things you can get back once you’ve burned them.
I’d expect going in with eyes open to mitigate this to some extent, but not perfectly.
You are invited by a friend to what he calls a “cool organization”. You walk into the building, and are promptly greeted by around twenty different people, all using variations on the same welcome phrase. You ask what the main point of the organization is, and several different people chime in at the same time, all answering, “Politics.” You ask what kind of politics. Every single one of them proceeds to endorse the idea that abortion is unconditionally bad. Now feeling rather creeped out, you ask them for their reasoning. Several of them give answers, but all of those answers are variations of the same argument, and the way in which they say it gives you the feeling as though they are reciting this argument from memory.
Would you be inclined to stay at this “cool organization” a moment longer than you have to?
Now substitute “abortion is unconditionally bad” with “creationism should not be taught as science in public schools”.
If you would still be creeped out by that, then your creep detector is miscalibrated; that would mean nobody can have an organization dedicated to a cause without creeping you out.
If you would not be creeped out by that, then your initial reaction to the abortion example was probably being mindkilled by abortion, not being creeped out by the fact that a lot of people agreed on something.
Just because I agree with their ideas doesn’t mean I won’t find it creepy. A cult is a cult, regardless of what it promotes. If I wanted to join an anti-creationist community, I certainly wouldn’t join that one, and there are plenty such communities that manage to get their message across without coming off as cultish.
The example is supposed to sound cultist because the people think alike. But I have a hard time seeing how a non-cultist anti-creationist group would produce different arguments against creationism.
The non-cultist group could of course not all use the same welcome phrase, but that’s not really the heart of what the example is supposed to illustrate,
There are multiple anti-creationist arguments out there, so if they all immediately jump to the same one, I’d be suspicious. But even beyond that, it’s natural for humans to disagree about stuff, because we’re not perfect Bayesians. If you see a bunch of humans agreeing completely, you should immediately think “cult”, or at the very least “these people don’t think for themselves”. (I’d be much less suspicious if we replace humans with Bayesian superintelligences, however, because those actually follow Aumann’s Agreement Theorem.)
Yes, actually, and I don’t see why it is creepy despite your repeated assertions that it is.
And if they gave completely different arguments, you’d complain about the remarkable co-incidence that all these arguments suggest the same policy.
Difference of opinion, then. I would find it creepy as all hell.
I probably would, yes, but I would still prefer that world to the one in which they gave only one argument.
Now you’re just arguing from creepiness.
Just because people should reach the same conclusions does not imply they should always do the same thing; e.g. some versions of chicken have the optimal solution where both players have the same options but they should do different things. (On a one-off with binding preconditions (or TDT done right), where the sum of outcomes on their doing different things is higher than any symmetrical outcome, they should commit to choose randomly in coordination.)
This example looks similiar to me; the cool cultists don’t know how to assign turns. Even if I had several clones, we wouldn’t all be doing the same things; not because we would disagree on what was important, but because it’s unnecessary to do some things more than once.
Also, this organization sounds really cool! Where can I join? (Seriously, I’ve never been in a cult before and would love to have the experience.)
You really don’t want that.
edit: A concrete useful suggestion is to reorganize your life in such a way that you have better things to do with your time than be a tourist in other people’s misery and ruin.
Are you speaking from experience or general knowledge?
If I go in knowing it’s a cult, doesn’t that change a lot? I’d be interested in a comparison of survival rates (of general sanity) between people depending on their mindset upon joining
If you join a cult, then even your physical survival will suddenly become a lot more perilous. You will likely have to conform, or die. Keep that in mind.
...Not that I know much about cults or their relationship to the law, but that seems kind of illegal.
The main problem with joining a cult isn’t physical danger, or even the chance of having your mind permanently changed (retention rates for cult membership are very low). It’s what they’ll get out of you while you’re in there. In most cases you can expect to see a lot of pressure to do things like handing over large sums of money, or donating large amounts of unpaid labor, or abandoning social links outside the organization, and those aren’t necessarily things you can get back once you’ve burned them.
I’d expect going in with eyes open to mitigate this to some extent, but not perfectly.