I agree. I’m reminded of Scott’s old post The Cowpox of Doubt, about how a skeptics movement focused on the most obvious pseudoscience is actually harmful to people’s rationality because it reassures them that rationality failures are mostly obvious mistakes that dumb people make instead of hard to notice mistakes that I make.
And then we get people believing allsortsofshoddyresearch – because after all, the world is divided between things like homeopathy that Have Never Been Supported By Any Evidence Ever, and things like conventional medicine that Have Studies In Real Journals And Are Pushed By Real Scientists.
Calling groups cults feels similar, in that it allows one to write them off as “obviously bad” without need for further analysis, reassures one that their own groups (which aren’t cults, of course) are obviously unobjectionable.
I agree. I’m reminded of Scott’s old post The Cowpox of Doubt, about how a skeptics movement focused on the most obvious pseudoscience is actually harmful to people’s rationality because it reassures them that rationality failures are mostly obvious mistakes that dumb people make instead of hard to notice mistakes that I make.
Calling groups cults feels similar, in that it allows one to write them off as “obviously bad” without need for further analysis, reassures one that their own groups (which aren’t cults, of course) are obviously unobjectionable.