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Why are there so many rationalist cults?

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Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#91

Post by bobson381 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #45
j_m_b wrote: post #26

> One way that thinking for yourself goes wrong is that you realize your society is wrong about something, don’t realize that you can’t outperform it, and wind up even wronger. many such cases

It is an unfortunate reality of our existence that sometimes Chesterton actually did build that fence for a good reason, a good reason that's still here. (One of my favorite TED talks was about a failed experiment in introducing traditional Western agriculture to a people in Zambia. It turns out when you concentrate too much food in one place, the hippos come and eat it all and people can't actually out-fight hippos…

You sound like you'd like the book Seeing like a State.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#92

Post by dkarl »

Isn't this entirely to be expected? The people who dominate groups like these are the ones who put the most time and effort into them, and no sane person who appreciates both the value and the limitations of rational thinking is going to see as much value in a rationalist group, and devote as much time to it, as the kind of people who are attracted to the cultish aspect of achieving truth and power through pure thought. There's way more value there if you're looking to indulge in, or exploit, a cult-like spiral into shared fantasy than if you're just looking to sharpen your logical reasoning.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#93

Post by ameliaquining »

optimalsolver wrote: post #3

Pertinent Twitter comment: "Rationalism is such an insane name for a school of thought. Like calling your ideology correctism or winsargumentism" https://x.com/growing_daniel/status/1893554844725616666

IIUC the name in its current sense was sort of an accident. Yudkowsky originally used the term to mean "someone who succeeds at thinking and acting rationally" (so "correctism" or "winsargumentism" would have been about equally good), and then talked about the idea of "aspiring rationalists" as a community narrowly focused on developing a sort of engineering discipline that would study the scientific principles of how to be right in full generality and put them into practice. Then the community grew and mutated into a broader social milieu that was only sort of about that, and people needed a name for it, and "rationalists" was already there, so that became the name through common usage. It definitely has certain awkwardnesses.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#94

Post by abullinan »

WJW wrote: post #39
mlinhares wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, i'd understand something like Wraith (which I did see people developing issues, the shadow mechanic is such a terrible thing) but Mage is so, like, straightforward? Use your mind to control reality, reality fights back with paradox, its cool for a teenager but you read a bit more fantasy and you'll definitely find cooler stuff. But i guess for you to join a cult your mind must stay a teen mind forever.

I didn't originally write this, but can't find the original place I read it anymore. I think it makes a lot of sense to repost it here: All of the World Of Darkness and Chronicles Of Darkness games are basically about coming of age/puberty. Like X-Men but for Goth-Nerds instead of Geek-Nerds. In Vampire, your body is going through weird changes and you are starting to develop, physically and/or mentally, while realis…

“ The people all around you are just sleep-walking through life, because they don't really get it.”

Twist: we’re sleepwalking through life because we really DO get it.

(Source: I’m 56)

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#95

Post by namuol »

mlinhares wrote: post #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?

> How did we get to this place with people going completely nuts like this?

Ayahuasca?

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#96

Post by bobson381 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #85

One of a few issues I have with groups like these, is that they often confidently and aggressively spew a set of beliefs that on their face logically follow from one another, until you realize they are built on a set of axioms that are either entirely untested or outright nonsense. This is common everywhere, but I feel especially pronounced in communities like this. It also involves quite a bit of navel gazing that m…

There should be an extremist cult of people who are certain only that uncertainty is the only certain thing

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#97

Post by ameliaquining »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #77
optimalsolver wrote: post #3

Pertinent Twitter comment: "Rationalism is such an insane name for a school of thought. Like calling your ideology correctism or winsargumentism" https://x.com/growing_daniel/status/1893554844725616666

To be honest I don't understand that objection. If you strip it from all its culty sociological effects, one of the original ideas of rationalism was to try to use logical reasoning and statistical techniques to explicitly avoid the pitfalls of known cognitive biases. Given that foundational tenet, "rationalism" seems like an extremely appropriate moniker. I fully accept that the rationalist community may have morphe…

That it refers to a different but confusingly related concept in philosophy is a real downside of the name.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#98

Post by SirFatty »

lazide wrote: post #44
SirFatty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came to ask a similar question, but also has it always been like this? The difference is now these people/groups on the fringe had no visibility before the internet? It's nuts.

Have you heard of Heavens Gate? [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_g... ]. There are at least a dozen I can think of, including the ‘drink the koolaid’ Jonestown massacre. People be crazy, yo.

Of course, Jim Jones and L Ron Hubbard, David Kersh. I realize there have always been people that are coocoo for cocoa puffs. But so many as there appear to be now?

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#99

Post by shadowgovt »

keybored wrote: post #51
iwontberude wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your profile says that you want to keep your identity small, but you have like over 30 thousand comments spelling out exactly who you are and how you think. Why not shard accounts? Anyways. Just a random thought.

[deleted]

"SC identity?"
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