my usual comment to people who say rationalism is a cult is to say, nah it’s a secular “religion”[1] that has spawned cults. several of them. it’s a problem. but comparing on the merits of leaveability and relationship to people who stopped chilling with rat folks, and lack of central command structure, vigorous and constant pushback against anyone who looks leader-ish, it’s less severe than some groups I’ve encountered. definitely not zero worrying features. definitely concerning how obsessed rationalists are with proving it’s neither a cult nor a religion. maybe if the ones who are bothered about that could take a sober look at how it’s spawned cults they’d be a bit less insufferable about it.
a point I most often make to people, rationalists or randos online, who are giggling about starting a cult: nah cult abuses are always bad and they’re easy to start doing. be aware of what they are and put effort into undoing them; the things you think you like about cults, spirituality and religiousness and friend groups or whatever, fine do those, humans like those, but don’t do the things that make something a cult rather than a new age religion. make real damn sure you don’t replace your ability to “touch grass” and see reality and shit like that, don’t start following a leader without exception handlers for if that leader tells you to do dangerous stuff. if they try to isolate you or convince you to do dangerous things without thinking them through, or with thinking them through but they are the authority on what’s true about a large part of the thing, that’s a really bad sign and you should get some space with people who don’t agree with the authority, and are socially far away, to at least see what they think. of course sometimes they’ll be in a conflicting memeplex, that’s the point, but it also means don’t take their word as law either. you have to actually, you know, do your own thing.
A good definition of religion is Harari’s “an idea that supports social harmony”, it explains why religions often become monotheistic/totalizing; new ideas that promote new kinds of social order may threaten an existing social order, it also explains why a religion doesn’t need to become totalizing; many organising principles are orthogonal or symbiotic, for instance, bayesianism partly resolves the long perceived tension between rationalism-classic (the principle that people should sometimes action novel arguments) and empiricism (the principle that people should go out and check things before acting) (it does this by explaining how to appraise complicated arguments about the balance of evidence), it (via FDT) also supports a synthesis of consequentialist individualism and kantianism (explaining that it can be egoistically rational to be the kind of person who would conform with moral policies even in situations where the immediate consequences don’t benefit them), to some extent it even rescues healthy forms of woo by telling us when it’s okay (or not) to follow the advice of heuristics or approximations.
Although I’d say bayratism is only a 7 on the religiousity scale due to its consequentialist origins underpreparing it to build the kind of accountability mechanisms that could ever make a religious community actually support coordination/being more moral. It loves its illegible contrarians too much. I’m not sure what to do about that.
my usual comment to people who say rationalism is a cult is to say, nah it’s a secular “religion”[1] that has spawned cults. several of them. it’s a problem. but comparing on the merits of leaveability and relationship to people who stopped chilling with rat folks, and lack of central command structure, vigorous and constant pushback against anyone who looks leader-ish, it’s less severe than some groups I’ve encountered. definitely not zero worrying features. definitely concerning how obsessed rationalists are with proving it’s neither a cult nor a religion. maybe if the ones who are bothered about that could take a sober look at how it’s spawned cults they’d be a bit less insufferable about it.
a point I most often make to people, rationalists or randos online, who are giggling about starting a cult: nah cult abuses are always bad and they’re easy to start doing. be aware of what they are and put effort into undoing them; the things you think you like about cults, spirituality and religiousness and friend groups or whatever, fine do those, humans like those, but don’t do the things that make something a cult rather than a new age religion. make real damn sure you don’t replace your ability to “touch grass” and see reality and shit like that, don’t start following a leader without exception handlers for if that leader tells you to do dangerous stuff. if they try to isolate you or convince you to do dangerous things without thinking them through, or with thinking them through but they are the authority on what’s true about a large part of the thing, that’s a really bad sign and you should get some space with people who don’t agree with the authority, and are socially far away, to at least see what they think. of course sometimes they’ll be in a conflicting memeplex, that’s the point, but it also means don’t take their word as law either. you have to actually, you know, do your own thing.
sort of, still less totalizing than the religion I grew up with in terms of behavior prescriptions
(Agreed)
A good definition of religion is Harari’s “an idea that supports social harmony”, it explains why religions often become monotheistic/totalizing; new ideas that promote new kinds of social order may threaten an existing social order, it also explains why a religion doesn’t need to become totalizing; many organising principles are orthogonal or symbiotic, for instance, bayesianism partly resolves the long perceived tension between rationalism-classic (the principle that people should sometimes action novel arguments) and empiricism (the principle that people should go out and check things before acting) (it does this by explaining how to appraise complicated arguments about the balance of evidence), it (via FDT) also supports a synthesis of consequentialist individualism and kantianism (explaining that it can be egoistically rational to be the kind of person who would conform with moral policies even in situations where the immediate consequences don’t benefit them), to some extent it even rescues healthy forms of woo by telling us when it’s okay (or not) to follow the advice of heuristics or approximations.
Although I’d say bayratism is only a 7 on the religiousity scale due to its consequentialist origins underpreparing it to build the kind of accountability mechanisms that could ever make a religious community actually support coordination/being more moral. It loves its illegible contrarians too much. I’m not sure what to do about that.