but Maple is pretty careful about getting informed consent from people who join.
Is this true? It’s basically my crux about them?
When I read awful reports, of local cults, I think I’m somewhat less phased by them than others are. I’m not usually outraged, or taking a stance of “this is obviously crazy and bad, they should be ashamed of themselves.” Rather, I’m taking it for granted that 1) many basically good things will sound awful from the outside and 2) lots of extreme stuff that might be really powerful / effective / transformative (along some dimension or another), are just going to be weird and have costs that would be bad for most people.
And overall, I fundamentally think people have the right to try weird harmful-seeming experiments, that go beyond the defaults of conventional western culture. This means that there’s the possibility of finding equilibria that are much better (in some ways, if not in others) and also removes the guardrails which are usually bounding how bad things can get.
But I care a lot how much people participating in those experiments are meaningfully opting in of their own free choice.
My experience was that not only were they not good at filtering, when I tried to filter myself out they told me my concerns wouldn’t be a problem. When I attended a retreat the concerns played out exactly as I initially predicted.
This was in 2018 and they claimed to have improved since then.
I thought I had discussed this in a comment but I couldn’t find it.
What I had in mind here was basically the process of becoming a resident involves ~3 months of being embedded in the community, several passes of discussion with longer term residents before committing, etc. I think more recently they’ve done more aggressive filtration before people come at all etc.
Is this true? It’s basically my crux about them?
When I read awful reports, of local cults, I think I’m somewhat less phased by them than others are. I’m not usually outraged, or taking a stance of “this is obviously crazy and bad, they should be ashamed of themselves.” Rather, I’m taking it for granted that 1) many basically good things will sound awful from the outside and 2) lots of extreme stuff that might be really powerful / effective / transformative (along some dimension or another), are just going to be weird and have costs that would be bad for most people.
And overall, I fundamentally think people have the right to try weird harmful-seeming experiments, that go beyond the defaults of conventional western culture. This means that there’s the possibility of finding equilibria that are much better (in some ways, if not in others) and also removes the guardrails which are usually bounding how bad things can get.
But I care a lot how much people participating in those experiments are meaningfully opting in of their own free choice.
My experience was that not only were they not good at filtering, when I tried to filter myself out they told me my concerns wouldn’t be a problem. When I attended a retreat the concerns played out exactly as I initially predicted.
This was in 2018 and they claimed to have improved since then.
I thought I had discussed this in a comment but I couldn’t find it.
What I had in mind here was basically the process of becoming a resident involves ~3 months of being embedded in the community, several passes of discussion with longer term residents before committing, etc. I think more recently they’ve done more aggressive filtration before people come at all etc.