Thanks for the thoughts! I’ve not thought about this topic that much before, so my comment(s) will be longer as I’m figuring it out for myself, and in the process of generating hypotheses.
I’m hearing you say that while I have drawn some distinctions, that overall these groups still have major similarities, so the term accurately tracks reality and is helpful.
On further reflection I’m more sympathetic to this point; but granting it I’m still concerned that the term is net harmful for thinking.
My current sense is that a cult is the name given to a group that has gone off the rails. The group has
some weird beliefs
intends to behave in line with those beliefs
seems unable to change course
the individuals seem unable to change their mind
and the behavior seems to outsiders to be extremely harmful.
My concern is that the following two claims are true:
There are groups with seemingly closed epistemologies and whose behavior has a large effect size, in similar ways to groups widely considered to be ‘cults’, yet the outcomes are overall great and worth supporting.
There are groups with seemingly closed epistemologies and whose behavior has a large effect size, in similar ways to groups widely considered to be ‘cults’, yet are not called cults because they have widespread political support.
I’ll talk through some potential examples.
Startups
Peter Thiel has said that a successful startup feels a bit like a cult. Many startups are led by a charismatic leader who believes in the product, surrounded by people who believe in the leader and the product, where outsiders don’t get it at all and think it’s a waste of time. The people in the company work extreme hours, regularly hitting sleep deprivation, and sometimes invest their savings into the project. The internal dynamics are complicated and political and sometimes cut-throat. Sometimes this pays off greatly, like with Tesla/SpaceX/Apple. Other times it doesn’t, like with WeWork, or FTX, or just most startups where people work really hard and nothing comes of it.
I’d guess there are many people in this world who left a failed startup in a daze, wondering why they dedicated some of the best years of their lives to something and someone that in retrospect clearly wasn’t worth it, not entirely dissimilar to someone leaving a more classical cult. However, it seems likely to me the distribution of startups is well-worth-it for civilization as a whole (with the exception of suicidal AI-companies).
(This is a potential example of number 1 above.)
Religions
Major religions have often done things just as insane and damaging as smaller cults, but aren’t called cults. The standard list of things includes oppression of homosexuality and other sexualities, subjugation of women, genital mutilation, blasphemy laws, opposition to contraception in developing countries (exacerbating the spread of HIV/AIDS), death orders, censorship, and more.
It seems plausible to me that someone would do far more harm and become far more closed in their epistemology via joining the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Holy See in the Vatican than if they joined Scientology or one of the many other things that get called cults (e.g. a quick googling came up with cryptocurrencies, string theory, Donal Trump, and PETA). Yet it seems to me that these aren’t given as examples of cults, only the smaller religions that are easier to oppose and which have little political power get that name. Scientology seems to be the most powerful one where people feel like they can get away with calling it a cult.
(This is a potential example of number 2 above.)
Education
A hypothesis I take seriously is that schooling is a horrible experience for kids, and the systems don’t change because children are often not respected as whole people and can be treated as subhuman.
Kids are forced to sit still for something like more-than-10% of the hours of their childhood, and regularly complain about this and seem to me kind of psychologically numbed by it.
I seem to recall a study that all homework other than mathematics had zero effect on learning success, and also I think I recall a study from Scandinavia where kids who joined school when they were 7 or 8 quickly caught up to their peers (suggesting the previous years had been ~pointless). I suspect Bryan Caplan’s book-length treatment of education will have some reliable info making this point (even though I believe he focuses on higher education).
I personally found university a horrible experience. Leaving university I had a strong sense of “I need to get away from this, why on Earth did I do that?” and a sense that everyone there was kind of in on a mass delusion where your status in the academic system was very important and mattered a great deal and you should really care about the system. A few years ago I had a phone call with an old friend from high-school who was still studying in the education system at the age of ~25, and I encouraged them to get out of it and grow up into a whole person.
There’s not a charismatic leader here, but I believe there’s some mass delusion and very harmful outcomes. I don’t think the education system should be destroyed, but I think it probably causes more harm than many things more typically understood to be cults (as most groups with dedicated followings and charismatic leaders have very little effect size either way), and my sense is that many people involved are extremely resistant that they are not doing what’s best for the children or are doing some bad things.
(This is a potential example of both numbers 1 and 2 above.)
———
To repeat: my concern is that the things that are common to cults is more like “what groups with closed epistemologies and unusual behavior is it easy to coordinate on destroying” rather than “what groups have closed epistemologies and behavior with terrible effects”.
If so, while I acknowledge that many of the groups that are widely described as “cults” probably have closed epistemologies and cause a lot of damage, I am concerned that whether a group is called a cult is primarily a political question about whether you can backing for destroying it in this case.
To talk about the education example, while I do think that the education system can have a lot of problems, I’d say a crux here is that easy classes anti-predict learning, and a lot of kid complaints on schooling would probably making kids learn worse, because hardness is correlated to learning:
A possible model is that while good startups have an elevation in the “cult-factor”, they have an even greater elevation in the unique factor related to the product they are building. Like SpaceX has cult-like elements but SpaceX also has Mars and Mars is much bigger than the cult-like elements, so if we define a cult to require that the biggest thing going on for them is cultishness then SpaceX is not a cult.
This is justified by LDSL (I really should write up the post explaining it...).
I’d say that the reason why the SpaceX cult/business can actually make working rockets is because they have rich feedback from reality when they try to design rockets, even at the pre-testing stage, because while it’s not obvious to a layperson if a rocket does work, it is relatively easy to check the physics of whether a new rocket does work for an expert, meaning the checking of claims can be made legible, which is an enemy to cults in general.
More generally, I’d say the difference between a cult and a high-impact startup/business is whether they can get rich and reliable feedback from a source, and secondarily how legible their theory of impact/claims are.
Thanks for the thoughts! I’ve not thought about this topic that much before, so my comment(s) will be longer as I’m figuring it out for myself, and in the process of generating hypotheses.
I’m hearing you say that while I have drawn some distinctions, that overall these groups still have major similarities, so the term accurately tracks reality and is helpful.
On further reflection I’m more sympathetic to this point; but granting it I’m still concerned that the term is net harmful for thinking.
My current sense is that a cult is the name given to a group that has gone off the rails. The group has
some weird beliefs
intends to behave in line with those beliefs
seems unable to change course
the individuals seem unable to change their mind
and the behavior seems to outsiders to be extremely harmful.
My concern is that the following two claims are true:
There are groups with seemingly closed epistemologies and whose behavior has a large effect size, in similar ways to groups widely considered to be ‘cults’, yet the outcomes are overall great and worth supporting.
There are groups with seemingly closed epistemologies and whose behavior has a large effect size, in similar ways to groups widely considered to be ‘cults’, yet are not called cults because they have widespread political support.
I’ll talk through some potential examples.
Startups
Peter Thiel has said that a successful startup feels a bit like a cult. Many startups are led by a charismatic leader who believes in the product, surrounded by people who believe in the leader and the product, where outsiders don’t get it at all and think it’s a waste of time. The people in the company work extreme hours, regularly hitting sleep deprivation, and sometimes invest their savings into the project. The internal dynamics are complicated and political and sometimes cut-throat. Sometimes this pays off greatly, like with Tesla/SpaceX/Apple. Other times it doesn’t, like with WeWork, or FTX, or just most startups where people work really hard and nothing comes of it.
I’d guess there are many people in this world who left a failed startup in a daze, wondering why they dedicated some of the best years of their lives to something and someone that in retrospect clearly wasn’t worth it, not entirely dissimilar to someone leaving a more classical cult. However, it seems likely to me the distribution of startups is well-worth-it for civilization as a whole (with the exception of suicidal AI-companies).
(This is a potential example of number 1 above.)
Religions
Major religions have often done things just as insane and damaging as smaller cults, but aren’t called cults. The standard list of things includes oppression of homosexuality and other sexualities, subjugation of women, genital mutilation, blasphemy laws, opposition to contraception in developing countries (exacerbating the spread of HIV/AIDS), death orders, censorship, and more.
It seems plausible to me that someone would do far more harm and become far more closed in their epistemology via joining the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Holy See in the Vatican than if they joined Scientology or one of the many other things that get called cults (e.g. a quick googling came up with cryptocurrencies, string theory, Donal Trump, and PETA). Yet it seems to me that these aren’t given as examples of cults, only the smaller religions that are easier to oppose and which have little political power get that name. Scientology seems to be the most powerful one where people feel like they can get away with calling it a cult.
(This is a potential example of number 2 above.)
Education
A hypothesis I take seriously is that schooling is a horrible experience for kids, and the systems don’t change because children are often not respected as whole people and can be treated as subhuman.
Kids are forced to sit still for something like more-than-10% of the hours of their childhood, and regularly complain about this and seem to me kind of psychologically numbed by it.
I seem to recall a study that all homework other than mathematics had zero effect on learning success, and also I think I recall a study from Scandinavia where kids who joined school when they were 7 or 8 quickly caught up to their peers (suggesting the previous years had been ~pointless). I suspect Bryan Caplan’s book-length treatment of education will have some reliable info making this point (even though I believe he focuses on higher education).
I personally found university a horrible experience. Leaving university I had a strong sense of “I need to get away from this, why on Earth did I do that?” and a sense that everyone there was kind of in on a mass delusion where your status in the academic system was very important and mattered a great deal and you should really care about the system. A few years ago I had a phone call with an old friend from high-school who was still studying in the education system at the age of ~25, and I encouraged them to get out of it and grow up into a whole person.
There’s not a charismatic leader here, but I believe there’s some mass delusion and very harmful outcomes. I don’t think the education system should be destroyed, but I think it probably causes more harm than many things more typically understood to be cults (as most groups with dedicated followings and charismatic leaders have very little effect size either way), and my sense is that many people involved are extremely resistant that they are not doing what’s best for the children or are doing some bad things.
(This is a potential example of both numbers 1 and 2 above.)
———
To repeat: my concern is that the things that are common to cults is more like “what groups with closed epistemologies and unusual behavior is it easy to coordinate on destroying” rather than “what groups have closed epistemologies and behavior with terrible effects”.
If so, while I acknowledge that many of the groups that are widely described as “cults” probably have closed epistemologies and cause a lot of damage, I am concerned that whether a group is called a cult is primarily a political question about whether you can backing for destroying it in this case.
To talk about the education example, while I do think that the education system can have a lot of problems, I’d say a crux here is that easy classes anti-predict learning, and a lot of kid complaints on schooling would probably making kids learn worse, because hardness is correlated to learning:
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/post-apocalyptic-education
https://x.com/emollick/status/1756396139623096695
A possible model is that while good startups have an elevation in the “cult-factor”, they have an even greater elevation in the unique factor related to the product they are building. Like SpaceX has cult-like elements but SpaceX also has Mars and Mars is much bigger than the cult-like elements, so if we define a cult to require that the biggest thing going on for them is cultishness then SpaceX is not a cult.
This is justified by LDSL (I really should write up the post explaining it...).
I’d say that the reason why the SpaceX cult/business can actually make working rockets is because they have rich feedback from reality when they try to design rockets, even at the pre-testing stage, because while it’s not obvious to a layperson if a rocket does work, it is relatively easy to check the physics of whether a new rocket does work for an expert, meaning the checking of claims can be made legible, which is an enemy to cults in general.
More generally, I’d say the difference between a cult and a high-impact startup/business is whether they can get rich and reliable feedback from a source, and secondarily how legible their theory of impact/claims are.
Bigness alone doesn’t cut it.