I was chatting with someone, and they said that a particular group of people seemed increasingly like a cult. I thought that was an unhelpful framing, and here’s the rough argument I wrote for why:
There’s lots of group dynamics that lead a group of people to go insane and do unethical things.
The dynamics around Bankman-Fried involve a lot of naivety when interfacing with an sociopath who was scamming people for billions of dollars on a massive scale.
The dynamics around Leverage Research involved lots of people with extremely little savings and income in a group house trying to do ‘science’ to claims of paranormal phenomena.
The dynamics around Jonestown involves total isolation from family, public humiliation and beatings for dissent, and a leader with personal connection to the divine.
These have all produced some amounts of insane and unethical behavior, to different extents, for quite different reasons.
They all deserve to be opposed to some extent. And it is pro-social to share information about their insanity and bad behavior.
Calling them ‘cults’ communicates that these are groups that have gone insane and done terrible things, but it also communicates that these groups are all the same, when in fact there’s not always public beatings or paranormal phenomena or billions of dollars, and the dynamics are very different.
Conflating them confuses outside people, they have a harder time understanding whether the group is actually insane and what the dynamics are.
So, if someone said that both Singapore and the United States were “States” you could also provide a list of ways in which Singapore and the United States differ—consider size, attitude towards physical punishment, system of government, foreign policy, and so on and so forth. However—share enough of a family resemblance that unless we have weird and isolated demands for rigor it’s useful to be able to call them both “States.”
Similarly, although you’ve provided notable ways in which these groups differ, they also have numerous similarities. (I’m just gonna talk about Leverage / Jonestown because the FTX thing is obscure to me)
They all somewhat isolated people, either actually physically (Jonestown) or by limiting people’s deep interaction with outsiders (“Leverage research” by my recollection did a lot of “was that a worthwhile interaction?”)
They both put immense individual pressure on people, in most cases in ways that look deliberately engineered and which were supposed to produce “interior conversion”. Consider leverage’s “Debugging” or what Wikipedia says about the People’s Temple Precursor of Jonestown: “They often involved long “catharsis” sessions in which members would be called “on the floor” for emotional dissections, including why they were wearing nice clothes when others in the world were starving.”
They both had big stories about How the World Works and how narratives in which they hold the Key for Fixing How the World Works.
(4. Fun fact: all of the above—including FTX—actually startedin San Francisco.)
That’s just the most obvious, but that’s… already some significant commonality! If I did more research I expect I would find much much more.
My personal list for Sus about Cult Dynamics is a little more directly about compromised epistemics than the above. I’m extremely wary of groups that (1) bring you into circumstances where most everyone you are friends with is in the group, because this is probably the most effective way in history of getting someone to believe something, (2) have long lists of jargon with little clear predictive ability whose mastery is considered essential for Status with them -- historically this also looks like a good way to produce arbitrary Interior Conviction, albeit not quite as good as the first, (3) have leaders whose Texts you are supposed to Deeply Read and Interiorize, the kind of thing you to Close Readings. And of course (4) stories about the end of the world, because these have been a constant in culty dynamics for actual centuries, from the Munster Rebellion to Jonestown to.… other groups.
This list is a little fuzzy! Note that it includes groups that I like! I still have fond feelings for Communion and Liberation, though I am not a believer, and they pretty obviously have at least 3 / 4 of my personal list (no apocalypse with CL as far as I know, they’re too chill for that). Human epistemics adapted for cladistic categories which are unusually tight; it would be a mistake to think that “cult” is as tight as “sheep” or as “lion,” and if you start reasoning that “Cult includes X, Y is cult, so Y includes X” you might find you are mistaken quickly.
But “cult” does clearly denominate a real dynamic in the world, even if less tight than “sheep”. When people find groups “culty,” they are picking up on actual dynamics in those groups! And you shall not strike works from people’s expressive vocabulary without replacing them with suitable replacement. I think in many cases it is entirely reasonable to say “huh, seems culty” and “that groups seems like a cult” and that trying to avoid this language is trying to prevent an original seeing; that avoiding this language is trying to avoid seeing a causal mechanism that is operative in the world, rather than trying to actually see the world better.
Singapore and the US both have a military, a police, and taxation. This seems much more clear-cut to me than “cults” do.
I think maybe one could treat “cult” more like a pronoun than like a theoretical object. Like when one is in the vicinity of one of the groups Ben Pace mentioned, it makes sense to have a short term to talk about the group, and “the cult” is useful for disambiguating the cult from other groups that might be present.
I wonder if you’re objecting to identifying this group as cult-like, or to implying that all cults are bad and should be opposed. Personally, I find a LOT of human behavior, especially in groups, to be partly cult-like in their overfocus on group-identification and othering of outsiders, and often in outsized influence of one or a few leaders. I don’t think ALL of them are bad, but enough are to be a bit suspicious without counter-evidence.
I was chatting with someone, and they said that a particular group of people seemed increasingly like a cult. I thought that was an unhelpful framing, and here’s the rough argument I wrote for why:
There’s lots of group dynamics that lead a group of people to go insane and do unethical things.
The dynamics around Bankman-Fried involve a lot of naivety when interfacing with an sociopath who was scamming people for billions of dollars on a massive scale.
The dynamics around Leverage Research involved lots of people with extremely little savings and income in a group house trying to do ‘science’ to claims of paranormal phenomena.
The dynamics around Jonestown involves total isolation from family, public humiliation and beatings for dissent, and a leader with personal connection to the divine.
These have all produced some amounts of insane and unethical behavior, to different extents, for quite different reasons.
They all deserve to be opposed to some extent. And it is pro-social to share information about their insanity and bad behavior.
Calling them ‘cults’ communicates that these are groups that have gone insane and done terrible things, but it also communicates that these groups are all the same, when in fact there’s not always public beatings or paranormal phenomena or billions of dollars, and the dynamics are very different.
Conflating them confuses outside people, they have a harder time understanding whether the group is actually insane and what the dynamics are.
So, if someone said that both Singapore and the United States were “States” you could also provide a list of ways in which Singapore and the United States differ—consider size, attitude towards physical punishment, system of government, foreign policy, and so on and so forth. However—share enough of a family resemblance that unless we have weird and isolated demands for rigor it’s useful to be able to call them both “States.”
Similarly, although you’ve provided notable ways in which these groups differ, they also have numerous similarities. (I’m just gonna talk about Leverage / Jonestown because the FTX thing is obscure to me)
They all somewhat isolated people, either actually physically (Jonestown) or by limiting people’s deep interaction with outsiders (“Leverage research” by my recollection did a lot of “was that a worthwhile interaction?”)
They both put immense individual pressure on people, in most cases in ways that look deliberately engineered and which were supposed to produce “interior conversion”. Consider leverage’s “Debugging” or what Wikipedia says about the People’s Temple Precursor of Jonestown: “They often involved long “catharsis” sessions in which members would be called “on the floor” for emotional dissections, including why they were wearing nice clothes when others in the world were starving.”
They both had big stories about How the World Works and how narratives in which they hold the Key for Fixing How the World Works.
(4. Fun fact: all of the above—including FTX—actually started in San Francisco.)
That’s just the most obvious, but that’s… already some significant commonality! If I did more research I expect I would find much much more.
My personal list for Sus about Cult Dynamics is a little more directly about compromised epistemics than the above. I’m extremely wary of groups that (1) bring you into circumstances where most everyone you are friends with is in the group, because this is probably the most effective way in history of getting someone to believe something, (2) have long lists of jargon with little clear predictive ability whose mastery is considered essential for Status with them -- historically this also looks like a good way to produce arbitrary Interior Conviction, albeit not quite as good as the first, (3) have leaders whose Texts you are supposed to Deeply Read and Interiorize, the kind of thing you to Close Readings. And of course (4) stories about the end of the world, because these have been a constant in culty dynamics for actual centuries, from the Munster Rebellion to Jonestown to.… other groups.
This list is a little fuzzy! Note that it includes groups that I like! I still have fond feelings for Communion and Liberation, though I am not a believer, and they pretty obviously have at least 3 / 4 of my personal list (no apocalypse with CL as far as I know, they’re too chill for that). Human epistemics adapted for cladistic categories which are unusually tight; it would be a mistake to think that “cult” is as tight as “sheep” or as “lion,” and if you start reasoning that “Cult includes X, Y is cult, so Y includes X” you might find you are mistaken quickly.
But “cult” does clearly denominate a real dynamic in the world, even if less tight than “sheep”. When people find groups “culty,” they are picking up on actual dynamics in those groups! And you shall not strike works from people’s expressive vocabulary without replacing them with suitable replacement. I think in many cases it is entirely reasonable to say “huh, seems culty” and “that groups seems like a cult” and that trying to avoid this language is trying to prevent an original seeing; that avoiding this language is trying to avoid seeing a causal mechanism that is operative in the world, rather than trying to actually see the world better.
Singapore and the US both have a military, a police, and taxation. This seems much more clear-cut to me than “cults” do.
I think maybe one could treat “cult” more like a pronoun than like a theoretical object. Like when one is in the vicinity of one of the groups Ben Pace mentioned, it makes sense to have a short term to talk about the group, and “the cult” is useful for disambiguating the cult from other groups that might be present.
I wonder if you’re objecting to identifying this group as cult-like, or to implying that all cults are bad and should be opposed. Personally, I find a LOT of human behavior, especially in groups, to be partly cult-like in their overfocus on group-identification and othering of outsiders, and often in outsized influence of one or a few leaders. I don’t think ALL of them are bad, but enough are to be a bit suspicious without counter-evidence.