I think it's perfectly fine to read these articles, think "definitely a cult" and ignore whether they believe in spaceships, or demons, or AGI.

The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag – not really a novel, or unique, or situational insight.

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andrewflnr 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's a side point of the article, acknowledged as an old idea. The central points of this article are actually quite a bit more interesting than that. He even summarized his conclusions concisely at the end, so I don't know what your excuse is for trivializing it.

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ethbr1 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The other key takeaway, that people with trauma are more attracted to organizations that purport to be able to fix and are thus over-represented in them (vs in the general population), is also important.

Because if you're going to set up a hierarchical (explicitly or implicitly) isolated organization with a bunch of strangers, it's good to start by asking "How much do I trust these strangers?"

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toasterlovin 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag

Even better: a social group with a lot of invented lingo is a red flag that you can see before you get isolated from your loved ones.

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DoctorOetker 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

By this token, most scientists would be considered cultists: normal people don't have "specific tensile strength" or "Jacobian" or "Hermitian operator" etc in their vocabulary. "Must be some cult"?

Edit: it seems most people don't understand what I'm pointing out.

Having terminology is not the red flag.

Having intricate terminology without a domain is the red flag.

In science or mathematics, there are enormous amounts of jargon, terms, definitions, concepts, but they are always situated in some domain of study.

The "rationalists" (better call them pseudorationalists) invent their own concepts without actual corresponding domain, just life. It's like kids re-inventing their generation specific words each generation to denote things they like or dislike, etc.

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toasterlovin 7 days ago | parent [-]

> social group

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DoctorOetker 7 days ago | parent [-]

fine, the jargon of a "social group" of science is a red flag?

sure, theres lots of nasty side effects of how academia is run, rewarded, etc..

but thats not because of precision of language employed.

do you want scientists recycling the same words and overloading ever more meanings onto ever more ambiguous words?

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toasterlovin 7 days ago | parent [-]

I don’t think we disagree. I’m not taking issue with scientists having jargon, which I agree is good and necessary (though I think the less analytical academic disciplines, not being rooted in fact, have come to bear many similarities to state-backed religions; and I think they use jargon accordingly). I’m pointing out that I specifically intended to exclude professionals by scoping my statement to “social groups”. Primarily I had in mind religion, politics, certain social media sites, and whatever you want to call movements like capital R Rationality (I have personally duck typed it as a religion).

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whilenot-dev 7 days ago | parent [-]

> I’m pointing out that I specifically intended to exclude professionals by scoping my statement to “social groups”.

I think your argumentation is a generalization that's close to a rationalist fallacy we're discussing:

> a social group with a lot of invented lingo is a red flag that you can see before you get isolated from your loved ones.

Groups of artists do this all the time for the sake of agency over their intentions. They borrow terminology from economics, psychology, computer science etc., but exclude economists, psychologists and computer scientists all the time. I had one choreographer talk to me about his performances as if they were "Protocols". People are free to use any vocabulary to describe their observed dynamics, expressions or phenomena.

As far as red flag moments go, the intent to use a certain terminology still prevails any choice of terminology itself.

	▲	woooooo 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think there's a distinction between inventing new terms for utilitarian purposes vs ideological and in-group signalling purposes. If you have groups talking about "expected value" or "dot products", that's different from groups who talk a lot about "privilege" or "the deep state". Even though the latter would claim they're just using jargon between experts, just like the scientists.

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ragazzina 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So every fandom in history?

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stale2002 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag – not really a novel, or unique, or situational insight

Well yes and no. The reason why I think the insight is so interesting is that these groups were formed, almost definitionally for the purpose of avoiding such "obvious" mistakes. The name of the group is literally the "Rationalists"!

I find that funny, ironic, and saying something important about this philosophy, in that it implies that the rest of society wasn't so "irrational" after all.

As a more extreme and silly example, imagine there was a group called "Cults suck, and we are not a cult!", that was created for the very purpose of fighting cults, and yet, ironically, became a cult into and of itself. That would be insightful and funny.