[SEQ RERUN] Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult
Today’s post, Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult was originally published on 12 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Simply having a good idea at the center of a group of people is not enough to prevent that group from becoming a cult. As long as the idea’s adherents are human, they will be vulnerable to the flaws in reasoning that cause cults. Simply basing a group around the idea of being rational is not enough. You have to actually put in the work to oppose the slide into cultishness.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Robbers Cave Experiment, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
Shouldn’t ‘prevent’ be ‘cause’?
I’d edit the wiki, but don’t have login info on my mobile.
I really need to sleep more.
I’ve edited the post, but I’m currently unable to access the wiki, because someone keeps spamming the wiki from my university, and the IP gets autoblocked. Can someone else make that edit?
Gwern unblocked me and I made the correction.
Thanks. Upvoted.
I’m blocked too. I PMed gwern. Edit: fixed.
“As long as the idea’s adherents are human, they will be vulnerable to the flaws in reasoning that cause cults.” I could say many things here, but hear me out… this one is the most important:
That quote is a circular argument fallacy. It goes: ‘Humans cause cults so if you have humans in your group they will cause a cult’
It ignores the idea that the humans MAY not cause a cult. I agree where it says: “Simply basing a group around the idea of being rational is not enough.”
But i see that by following critical thinking criteria of credibility and scientific and debating procedure. Would render the group safely filling the criteria of being ‘rational’.
I don’t think it’s a rigorous statement, but I don’t think the intended line of reasoning was “human beings cause cults, ergo all human begins cause cults.” The implied reasoning (in my mind anyway) was “If you look at selection pressures within groups (in general) and knowledge of human psychology, you will see that most humans, when grouped together around a cause, have a tendency towards cultishness, and that means that unless you’re specifically guarding against it, your group will probably become increasingly cultish over time.”