[SEQ RERUN] Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
Today’s post, Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs was originally published on 07 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
When a cult encounters a blow to their own beliefs (a prediction fails to come true, their leader is caught in a scandal, etc) the cult will often become more fanatical. In the immediate aftermath, the cult members that leave will be the ones who were previously the voice of opposition, skepticism, and moderation. Without those members, the cult will slide further in the direction of fanaticism.
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The Church of SubGenius is satirical. When July 5th 1998, 7am, came around and the X-ists didn’t destroy the normal world, in many ways, they responded the same way as a serious cult. At first there was an “official answer” to what happened, and a spate of heretical counter-answers. But within a short time, one of the most extreme unofficial answers had been accepted by the Church and most of its followers (a conspiracy swapped Earth and Mars, so the flying saucers went to an empty planet), and the annual X-Day celebrations reflect that single answer, while people who insisted on other answers that don’t fit as well with the new jokes and parties gradually drifted away from the Church. Meanwhile, the X-Day celebrations became bigger than ever (although still nowhere near as big as the massive festivals the Church pretends to have, of course), and a more central part of the Church than ever. Which is a lot like what happened with, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
So, is this because most SubGenii understand the mind enough to know how to pretend to act normal-irrationally? Probably not. Or are examples like Jehovah’s WItnesses and Unarians just so obvious that you don’t need to be rational or even all that clever to consciously parody their irrationality? Possibly. Or is it that some of the same factors are subconsciously driving subgenii as Unarians, even though they’re not being serious? And, if the last one, can those factors be explained as cognitive dissonance, evaporative cooling, and/or something else?
I don’t know the answers, but I think it could be an interesting study.