Adapted by the rationalists from an older esoteric term for a spirit made of a group’s thoughts, an egregore is a collective (of persons) that seems to act like a being in its own right, like “America” or “Microsoft”, although one need not be legally recognized to qualify. They often don’t act in the best interest of individual persons, including their own members, analogous to predators or parasites.
It’s unclear to what extent these entities can be called “minds” (or “conscious”), but your own mind is also made up of a collective (of neurons). “In truth, there are only atoms and the void,” and yet we give names to higher-order structures, like individuals or countries.
See also: memetics, reductionism, eldrich analogies, moral mazes.
Would Moloch qualify as an Egregores?
I feel like I read a definition for the rationalist version of this concept (which seemed pretty similar to one of the esoteric ones), but I can’t find it anymore. Was this on LessWrong or some other rationalist-adjacent blog? It must have been brought up or we wouldn’t have this many LW posts by different authors using such an obscure word. Did the article get deleted? Anyone remember?
Still not having luck finding it, but I added a description based on my imperfect recollection/understanding of how the term was defined. I may be way off base, or maybe the usage just hasn’t been that consistent.
Sister Y’s (deleted) blog perhaps? Based on her Ribbonfarm posts. Or maybe https://exploringegregores.wordpress.com/
Can’t say where the others got the concept, but I don’t recognize either of those blogs. I must have been introduced to it somewhere else.
I think maybe Ra is the first post about the rationalist egregores to use the term
That one just links to Wikipedia. Maybe I’ll start with a paraphrased definition from there.