Seems more like a political party in form than a cult per se. Putting aside the distasteful connotations of the word politics, most political parties are (or at least were at their inception) groupings of people who agree on a set of values and a philosophy.
Most cults don’t permit the degree of participation from peripheral semi-lurkers who only fractionally accept the principles that this site does.
Anyway I voted the post down because these meta-discussions are boring.
What bores you is obviously way too subjective for me to discuss further, but if you think that good is unlikely to come of this discussion, I’d be interested to know why.
A serious question deserves a serious answer so here it is, even though as a peripheral semi-lurker it’s probably not relevant to your program. My motivations for coming here are entertainment on the one hand, and trawling for insights and ideas I can use at work.
I’m a rationalist, but not a Rationalist. I cringe at the idea of a self-identified Rationalist movement or organisation in the same way I cringe at Richard Dawkin’s ‘Bright’ movement. I think there is a danger of a sort of philosophical isolationism where participants forget that rationalism and materialism are alive and well in many scientific professional societies, political organisations, educational institutions and families.
I never said no good would come from the discussion—I sincerely hope you accomplish something worthwhile.
There are of course plenty of rationalists who aren’t here, but I think they would benefit from learning about some of the stuff we take for granted here. If there are other attempts to develop a complete (FSVO) and consistent programme for what rationalism is and how to achieve it, I’d like to know more about them.
Seems more like a political party in form than a cult per se. Putting aside the distasteful connotations of the word politics, most political parties are (or at least were at their inception) groupings of people who agree on a set of values and a philosophy.
Most cults don’t permit the degree of participation from peripheral semi-lurkers who only fractionally accept the principles that this site does.
Anyway I voted the post down because these meta-discussions are boring.
What bores you is obviously way too subjective for me to discuss further, but if you think that good is unlikely to come of this discussion, I’d be interested to know why.
A serious question deserves a serious answer so here it is, even though as a peripheral semi-lurker it’s probably not relevant to your program. My motivations for coming here are entertainment on the one hand, and trawling for insights and ideas I can use at work.
I’m a rationalist, but not a Rationalist. I cringe at the idea of a self-identified Rationalist movement or organisation in the same way I cringe at Richard Dawkin’s ‘Bright’ movement. I think there is a danger of a sort of philosophical isolationism where participants forget that rationalism and materialism are alive and well in many scientific professional societies, political organisations, educational institutions and families.
I never said no good would come from the discussion—I sincerely hope you accomplish something worthwhile.
I agree with you about “Brights”.
There are of course plenty of rationalists who aren’t here, but I think they would benefit from learning about some of the stuff we take for granted here. If there are other attempts to develop a complete (FSVO) and consistent programme for what rationalism is and how to achieve it, I’d like to know more about them.