Why are there so many rationalist cults?
asteriskmag.com
Why are there so many rationalist cults?
1–10 of 947 posts
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#2Why are there so many cults? People want to feel like they belong to something, and in a world in the midst of a loneliness and isolation epidemic the market conditions are ideal for cults.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#3Pertinent Twitter comment:
"Rationalism is such an insane name for a school of thought. Like calling your ideology correctism or winsargumentism"
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#4> One is Black Lotus, a Burning Man camp led by alleged rapist Brent Dill, which developed a metaphysical system based on the tabletop roleplaying game Mage the Ascension.
What the actual f. This is such an insane thing to read and understand what it means that i might need to go and sit in silence for the rest of the day.
How did we get to this place with people going completely nuts like this?
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#5Reminds me somewhat of the Culte de la Raison (Cult of Reason) birthed by the french revolution. It didn't last long.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#6See also Rational Magic: Why a Silicon Valley culture that was once obsessed with reason is going woo (2023)
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/rational-magic
and its discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961817
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#7It’s especially popular in Silicon Valley.
Quite possibly, places like Reddit and Hacker News, are training for the required level of intellectual smugness, and certitude that you can dismiss every annoying argument with a logical fallacy.
That sounds smug of me, but I’m actually serious. One of their defects, is that once you memorize all the fallacies (“Appeal to authority,” “Ad hominem,”) you can easily reach the point where you more easily recognize the fallacies in everyone else’s arguments than your own. You more easily doubt other people’s cited authorities, than your own. You slap “appeal to authority” against a disliked opinion, while citing an authority next week for your own. It’s a fast path from there to perceived intellectual superiority, and an even faster path from there into delusion. Rational delusion.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#8I keep thinking about the first Avengers movie, when Loki is standing above everyone going "See, is this not your natural state?". There's some perverse security in not getting a choice, and these rationalist frameworks, based in logic, can lead in all kinds of crazy arbitrary directions - powered by nothing more than a refusal to suffer any kind of ambiguity.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#9> One is Black Lotus, a Burning Man camp led by alleged rapist Brent Dill, which developed a metaphysical system based on the tabletop roleplaying game Mage the Ascension. What the actual f. This is such an insane thing to read and understand what it means that i might need to go and sit in silence for the rest of the day. How did we get to this place with people going completely nuts like this?
astronauts_meme.jpg
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#10> One is Black Lotus, a Burning Man camp led by alleged rapist Brent Dill, which developed a metaphysical system based on the tabletop roleplaying game Mage the Ascension. What the actual f. This is such an insane thing to read and understand what it means that i might need to go and sit in silence for the rest of the day. How did we get to this place with people going completely nuts like this?
Running a cult is a somewhat reliable source of narcissistic supply. The internet tells you how to do it. So an increasing number of people do it.