Even people who at first blush should be immune, since they, you know, worship reason and rationality, have created something which has all the outward appearan

Even people who at first blush should be immune, since they, you know, worship reason and rationality, have created something which has all the outward appearances of a doomsday cult (a prophetic leader, who lives on donations from wealthy followers, elaborate prophesies about impending doom, an extensive corpus of religious texts w/ commentaries, polyamory, group living, an elaborate rationale to dissuade followers from being concerned about their finances, etc.). Like, if you created a dataset with the notable features of various doomsday cults and then compared them with the notable features of Rationalism, then used that dataset to inform your priors in an attempt to answer the question, “Are my concerns about impending doom reasonable or have I succumbed to a doomsday cult?” surely the only reasonable answer is, “I have succumbed to a doomsday cult.” And yet here we are.