5 ms·
What's so bad about this cult is all the murders. However, if you bracket out all the murders for a second (a big ask), I don't think there's anything particul
by throw241098 2y ago
What's so bad about this cult is all the murders.
However, if you bracket out all the murders for a second (a big ask), I don't think there's anything particularly special about this cult.
This is just the modern incarnation of something that's been going on for almost a hundred years in California.
In California there are Bohemian social scenes with a mix of high-performing technical people, spiritual/New Age/woo people, and "human potential" secular spirituality and self-improvement.
Magicians and Satanists involved in the founding of JPL (with a cameo from L. Ron Hubbard.) in the 1940s and 1950s. EST seminars, Esalen, UFO movements, communal yoga groups. Lesser known is the "General Semantics" movement (really quite similar to the Rationalists) from the 1950s. All these movements mix and overlap.
Mostly these social scenes are weird but harmless. But genuine cults often form in them and then spin off.
The Rationalists themselves are just another incarnation of this. They may seem totally bizarre, but if you just dig back in the history of California, they look very familiar. They are part of this stew of self-improvement/spirituality/tech/meditation. In particular they are the secular self-improvement people -- one thing they did is run training seminars where they teach you new thought techniques that will help you be more productive and successful. Many of them also engage in Buddhist meditation practices or take psychedelic drugs for exploration. In that scene, cults form. There have been multiple other rationalist-adjacent cults, although those did not kill people thank God.
I think it's a mistake to start analyzing the rationalists' beliefs about Bayesianism and expected utility and all that, to try and wonder how a cult could have possibly formed in this social scene. Nothing should be less surprising.
Now that this cult went on to commit multiple murders -- this is surprising and frightening. Perhaps some of the rationalist beliefs have something to do with it, but since there are a small number of other cults that have committed murders, looking at shared factors across all of them, such as charismatic psychopaths as leaders, may be a better choice.
Edit: upon reading to the very very bottom of the article, the author makes the exact same point. I'll leave this up just in case others aren't good readers either.
- _yb2s 2y agoI see a lot of parallels between the rationalists and the Beatniks- both seem to be a social experiment of radically throwing out the existing culture and lifestyle, and trying to think through something new from scratch. In both cases there are a lot of failed experiments, and disastrous personal consequences for many of the individuals involved, but also a lot of discovery and good ideas. Both groups are even obsessed with Moloch (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/).
- azeirah 2y agoIt's odd. I really like the Moloch post. It's a super interesting story that clearly exemplifies a problem in the real world. Well-intended people often end up acting against what's best because they only invest in the self, and don't act as a whole. It's cool philosophy! But um.. Taking it seriously as a sort of religious demon? You can characterize it for that purpose in the settings of stories, myths, theology etc, but in real-life? Nahh.. What the heck man Go join a labor union or something instead, what the heck
- Redoubts 2y agoWhat were the good ideas?
- _yb2s 2y agoProbably better to look and decide for yourself, but generally they teach specific techniques to reason more effectively in certain situations. They introduced me to Bayesianism, which is something I now use extensively in my science career, and I appreciate specific strategies to avoid falling into cognitive biases, and to argue more effectively and honestly, such as steelmanning. None of their lifestyle ideas really jive with me- I have no interest in things like raising children in a polyamorous group home, or in using consequentialist ethics combined with hand wavy mathematical models to make decisions in regular life.
- simplicio 2y agoYea, was reading a biography of (JPL founder) Jack Parsons a few weeks ago, and was struck how similar the Zizian patter sounded to a lot of the Golden Dawn/proto-Scientology stuff.
- falcor84 2y ago> What's so bad about this cult is all the murders. Seriously, that's the best opening sentence I have read in a long while, kudos!
- rat87 2y agoI think it may have been inspired by this Norm joke. Basically pointing out that the criminal act is what's actually the worst part and not just whatever is most annoying Norm MacDonald : Now do you think Cosby's legacy will be hurt? Jerry Seinfeld - Host : Yeah. Norm MacDonald : You do, huh? I mean, there's a comedian, Patton Oswalt, he told me, "I think the worst part of the Cosby thing was the hypocrisy." And I disagreed. Jerry Seinfeld - Host : You disagreed with that? Norm MacDonald : Yeah, I thought it was the raping.