This sounds like damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If someone accuses you of being a cult, saying that you are not is exactly what a cult would do. But it’s not like saying nothing will clear the accusation either.
Actually, saying that you are not a cult is not what an actual cult would do. An actual cult would attack the accuser (like physically, not like “tweet a disagreement”), and redirect the debate to “freedom of religion”.
Is anyone defending the rationality community by some kind of argument that pattern-matches “we are the good/holy guys, therefore criticizing us for anything (whether truthfully or not) is inherently evil”? I am not aware of anything like this. Are people taking personal revenge against David Gerard or Cade Metz (other than complaining online about their behavior)? Again, I am unaware of that.
Less importantly, I don’t believe that “accepting the cult accusation lightheartedly” would work. I am not even sure it ever worked for anyone. Do you have some good examples?
I articulate a fake framework for thinking about strategies by which groups can fight for status as a legitimate culture-in-good-standing. This fight is a long-term struggle, not a guaranteed victory or defeat. Groups are always damned by many, but can aim to be damned by fewer over the long run by being organized and strategic about how they respond to criticism.
Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
For example, to assimilate, Mormons dropped polygamy and repudiated violent behavior of people who claim to be Mormons in the strongest terms, now frame themselves as Christians or the Church of Latter-day Saints (or LDS) rather than the more loaded “Mormon.” In fact, the Mormon at my PhD program just refers to “his church” without even mentioning LDS. They also take offense with public media for misrepresenting their faith or their current stance on the problems in the religion’s past, which they acknowledge and condemn. They don’t try to explain why they’re different from a cult according to a list of abstract criteria, the way OP is doing here.
Being lighthearted is not a suitable strategy for a group that is being subjected to serious sustained cult accusations. It’s a strategy for small odd and harmless groups to acknowledge their difference from the broader culture, creating space for a person who feels a momentary question or discomfort to bring it up, and then move on. It’s what to do for small new-age meditative communities, the Odd Fellows, etc.
If rationalists wanted to adopt a Mormon-like strategy, they’d need to define what are the core values of a rationalist. They’d need a formal leadership that can interact with media and pre-emptivey sanction subgroups and individuals who give rationalism a bad name. They’d need to make visible demonstrations of assimilation. And they’d need to demand respect and take offense at disrespect, insisting on being viewed as a positive cultural and community association. That’s very far from rationalist trends, and I don’t expect it will happen. But I do think it’s the strategy that every long-lived religion and major cultural group lands on.
Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
I like this summary!
Just a quick idea, I think a nice way to contact the outside culture without compromising on anything could be to organize public lectures or workshops. Kinda like the existing workshops for the mathematically gifted kids or wannabe bloggers, only they should be short (like, one afternoon) and instead of inviting people to our “walled compound” they should be on a neutral territory that feels safe (maybe even offer to organize the workshop in a local school). Possible topics: mathematics, statistics, computer science, learning in general, critical thinking, blogging. Too bad I am not in America, I would quite enjoy doing something like that, and I am not doing anything important that this would distract me from. This could help create public perception of our community as “harmless nerds”.
Ironically, one thing that might help would be to somehow make the membership explicit. Without explicit membership, you cannot exclude people (such as Zizians or SBF), so people can argue that they belong to us, and there is no way to prove the opposite. Mormons can say “this is not one of us” when he is not, and they can kick someone problematic out when he is. Or maybe rationality is too nebulous word, so we could instead talk about e.g. “Less Wrong community membership”. It’s like the orthogonality thesis: whether someone is good at Bayesian updating, and whether someone is a decent person, are two independent things—we should try to find the people in the intersection.
I wonder (but this would be a longer debate) if we could have some kind of “web of trust”, where individual rationalists could specify how much they trust someone to be a nice and reasonable person; the system would calculate the score in some way, and you need to exceed some threshold to be accepted. If you turn out to be a scammer or a serial killer, everyone who vouched for you would be punished in some way (lose their right to vouch for someone, get a penalty on their own score). No idea how specifically should the math work here.
These are good ideas. I like the idea of offering tutoring or classes as a way to engage a broader community. I also think having formal orgs that interface with media and have official leaders who speak on behalf of their membership seems like a good idea. However, to work, I think these orgs are going to have to officially put the brakes on some of the divergent lifestyle choices of membership and on some of the more radical statements by rationalist figures, and it may not be compatible with the culture of rationalists to submit to constraining, assimilative norms in that way.
The web of trust is also something I’ve wanted for the world of science. The way I picture it is that you need a way to subscribe to other people or organizations whose judgments you trust. Each participant can privately rate their trust level in other participants. The trust level they observe reflects the aggregate trust levels of the participants they subscribe to. Would love to see such a technology.
This sounds like damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If someone accuses you of being a cult, saying that you are not is exactly what a cult would do. But it’s not like saying nothing will clear the accusation either.
Actually, saying that you are not a cult is not what an actual cult would do. An actual cult would attack the accuser (like physically, not like “tweet a disagreement”), and redirect the debate to “freedom of religion”.
Is anyone defending the rationality community by some kind of argument that pattern-matches “we are the good/holy guys, therefore criticizing us for anything (whether truthfully or not) is inherently evil”? I am not aware of anything like this. Are people taking personal revenge against David Gerard or Cade Metz (other than complaining online about their behavior)? Again, I am unaware of that.
Less importantly, I don’t believe that “accepting the cult accusation lightheartedly” would work. I am not even sure it ever worked for anyone. Do you have some good examples?
I articulate a fake framework for thinking about strategies by which groups can fight for status as a legitimate culture-in-good-standing. This fight is a long-term struggle, not a guaranteed victory or defeat. Groups are always damned by many, but can aim to be damned by fewer over the long run by being organized and strategic about how they respond to criticism.
Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
For example, to assimilate, Mormons dropped polygamy and repudiated violent behavior of people who claim to be Mormons in the strongest terms, now frame themselves as Christians or the Church of Latter-day Saints (or LDS) rather than the more loaded “Mormon.” In fact, the Mormon at my PhD program just refers to “his church” without even mentioning LDS. They also take offense with public media for misrepresenting their faith or their current stance on the problems in the religion’s past, which they acknowledge and condemn. They don’t try to explain why they’re different from a cult according to a list of abstract criteria, the way OP is doing here.
Being lighthearted is not a suitable strategy for a group that is being subjected to serious sustained cult accusations. It’s a strategy for small odd and harmless groups to acknowledge their difference from the broader culture, creating space for a person who feels a momentary question or discomfort to bring it up, and then move on. It’s what to do for small new-age meditative communities, the Odd Fellows, etc.
If rationalists wanted to adopt a Mormon-like strategy, they’d need to define what are the core values of a rationalist. They’d need a formal leadership that can interact with media and pre-emptivey sanction subgroups and individuals who give rationalism a bad name. They’d need to make visible demonstrations of assimilation. And they’d need to demand respect and take offense at disrespect, insisting on being viewed as a positive cultural and community association. That’s very far from rationalist trends, and I don’t expect it will happen. But I do think it’s the strategy that every long-lived religion and major cultural group lands on.
I like this summary!
Just a quick idea, I think a nice way to contact the outside culture without compromising on anything could be to organize public lectures or workshops. Kinda like the existing workshops for the mathematically gifted kids or wannabe bloggers, only they should be short (like, one afternoon) and instead of inviting people to our “walled compound” they should be on a neutral territory that feels safe (maybe even offer to organize the workshop in a local school). Possible topics: mathematics, statistics, computer science, learning in general, critical thinking, blogging. Too bad I am not in America, I would quite enjoy doing something like that, and I am not doing anything important that this would distract me from. This could help create public perception of our community as “harmless nerds”.
Ironically, one thing that might help would be to somehow make the membership explicit. Without explicit membership, you cannot exclude people (such as Zizians or SBF), so people can argue that they belong to us, and there is no way to prove the opposite. Mormons can say “this is not one of us” when he is not, and they can kick someone problematic out when he is. Or maybe rationality is too nebulous word, so we could instead talk about e.g. “Less Wrong community membership”. It’s like the orthogonality thesis: whether someone is good at Bayesian updating, and whether someone is a decent person, are two independent things—we should try to find the people in the intersection.
I wonder (but this would be a longer debate) if we could have some kind of “web of trust”, where individual rationalists could specify how much they trust someone to be a nice and reasonable person; the system would calculate the score in some way, and you need to exceed some threshold to be accepted. If you turn out to be a scammer or a serial killer, everyone who vouched for you would be punished in some way (lose their right to vouch for someone, get a penalty on their own score). No idea how specifically should the math work here.
These are good ideas. I like the idea of offering tutoring or classes as a way to engage a broader community. I also think having formal orgs that interface with media and have official leaders who speak on behalf of their membership seems like a good idea. However, to work, I think these orgs are going to have to officially put the brakes on some of the divergent lifestyle choices of membership and on some of the more radical statements by rationalist figures, and it may not be compatible with the culture of rationalists to submit to constraining, assimilative norms in that way.
The web of trust is also something I’ve wanted for the world of science. The way I picture it is that you need a way to subscribe to other people or organizations whose judgments you trust. Each participant can privately rate their trust level in other participants. The trust level they observe reflects the aggregate trust levels of the participants they subscribe to. Would love to see such a technology.