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How to spot cult leader personalities
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Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#22An accurate description of a good many politicians.
Yah, but one really stands out.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#23There's lots and lots written about cults and cult leaders, which is worth reading, such as Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, or if you prefer a more traditional take, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton. Or any of other dozens of good authoritative takes on the subject by people who have spent their careers formally studying such phenomena, which can draw lines between a…
Thank you for the book recommendations! If you wouldn’t mind sharing what you found most interesting while reading the books you mentioned.
well of course that people can be made to fully believe in things that are demonstrably false. That's like no big deal today as we see it everywhere, but back in 1987 when
"Dianetics" was on TV all the time including a whole list of completely false claims, I needed some help to understand exactly what that was about and how indeed maybe I didn't need to throw my life away at the local Scientology center as that book would have you believe. As a young absolute literalist, I needed some help to learn that people can be made to think basically anything, so if someone is claiming to you, "I can levitate - no really, I can float around the room" - they are likely incorrect (yet still saying those words that are easily disproven).
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#24There's lots and lots written about cults and cult leaders, which is worth reading, such as Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, or if you prefer a more traditional take, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton. Or any of other dozens of good authoritative takes on the subject by people who have spent their careers formally studying such phenomena, which can draw lines between a…
Cult leader behavior: belief that no field of study matters until one's own attention is turned to it :)
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Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#25No, we judge people by actions, not by random categorizations or 'fits type' or 'Polarizing Charisma'. Here's how to Spot Cult Leader proper: They manipulate people and exploit them by taking their money. Otherwise it's not a cult leader.
There is post-facto judgment of those who have done harm, and then there are heuristics we can use to help us avoid people who would do harm before it's been done.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#26Good observations and I've observed more than a few in computerland, especially in startups.
However, it's not true that cult leaders are always grandiose. They can be strategically vulnerable too!
When confronted -- especially by someone too smart to be fooled by their facade -- they can take that critic aside, in a private setting, and suddenly express vulnerability, maybe even fragility. The critic is taken aback, maybe even worries that they've gone too far, but also feels honored to have become a confidant of the leader. The critic may now even feel compelled to help cover for the leader's failings!
But this, too, is an act. Remember, as Sasha said, such people are always being strategic, and strategic vulnerability is part of how they operate.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#27My impression is this is a common phenomenon in the software engineering community, probably mainly because a significant fraction of the community are young and/or inexperienced (e.g. number of programmers double every 5 years, which means 50% of programmers have less than 5 years experience). There are plenty of examples from streamers to serious programmers but the most common is probably the benevolent dictator f…
> There are plenty of examples from streamers to serious programmers but the most common is probably the benevolent dictator for life personalities for numerous software projects
Can you provide any examples from either of these?
I feel like you may be confusing "people with strong opinions" with "narcissistic cult leader."
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#28No, we judge people by actions, not by random categorizations or 'fits type' or 'Polarizing Charisma'. Here's how to Spot Cult Leader proper: They manipulate people and exploit them by taking their money. Otherwise it's not a cult leader.
There is post-facto judgment of those who have done harm, and then there are heuristics we can use to help us avoid people who would do harm before it's been done.
What is the false positive rate of these heuristics?
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#29It's interesting how many of these traits line up perfectly with the actions of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Especially the parts about lacking humility to the point where they think their ideology will save the universe from certain doom. Or making people who follow his words say that everyone who thinks he's crazy just "doesn't get it" and is tragically unable to absorb the wisdom or goodness.
That's not interesting at all, because it was written partially to target Yudkowsky, with the goal that you won't "Pascal's mug"* yourself eg https://twitter.com/sashachapin/status/1657063187655843841
Keep in mind that a lot of tech-adjacent writing these days is just AI debates (and this is why he is not engaging with the actual cult literature or providing examples); this is not the place to debate the object-level arguments, but I will say I disapprove of Chapin writing like this, and not owning up to the real purpose of this essay and the Bay Area dynamics he's criticizing. It is deceptive in precisely the way you inadvertently illustrate.
* His use is wrong, incidentally, both in the original abstruse decision-theory sense of the phrase as coined by Yudkowsky, ironically enough, and in the vulgarized sense of 'you should ignore small probabilities of very bad things' (because we are now far beyond some 'small' probability of AI, and AI risk is now considered so probable people like Geoff Hinton are quitting their jobs so they can speak out about it https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bLvc7XkSSnoqSukgy/a-brief-co... )
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#30There's lots and lots written about cults and cult leaders, which is worth reading, such as Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, or if you prefer a more traditional take, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton. Or any of other dozens of good authoritative takes on the subject by people who have spent their careers formally studying such phenomena, which can draw lines between a…
The author is on point, and he didn't say 'cult leaders' are good, he said that people with that personality type can be, which of course they can. I think that most of our 'great leaders' (good one's) that we look up to, flirt with this mindset for periods of time in their lives. Not all cult leaders maintain their disposition after being arrested. The author was fairly concise actually in identifying core attribute…
I've known a few of these guys (usually guys, but not always), and I agree they are a very generic type. I also think they can be tremendously beneficial to society as well, even if they aren't to the individuals in their lives. (Steve-Jobs-types, etc.)
I still find them fascinating, because they tend to exist in interesting environments. It's like going to Africa, but not wanting to see any lions.