If it’s easier to place him with the scientists, or there’s no difference, that’s some evidence we haven’t become a cult yet. If it’s easier to place him with the cult leaders, we should start worrying.
Really? Don’t you think Scientologists would consider L. Ron Hubbard more similar to Einstein than to Jim Jones? I have no data, but I don’t imagine cultists develop positive attitudes toward leaders of cults unrelated to their own.
“Many (and probably most) animals also have gender in the sense that individuals with penises behave in certain ways, and individuals with ovaries behave in other ways, despite not having memes.” It would be surprising if H. sapiens were very different.
(The obviousness-in-retrospect of this argument, stated so straightforwardly, combined with the fact that I almost never hear it stated so straightforwardly and never thought of it myself, makes me update towards culture being able to non-obviously derange debates like this to a really high degree. Far mode isn’t naturally about truth.)