It always seemed obvious to me that cults have rather low conversion rates.
Cults do not optimize for having many members. They optimize for the dedication of the members. This may be because the typical cult leader would rather have 10 people believe that he is the saviour and the messenger of God, than have 1000 people believe that he’s merely a good guy.
(I tend to delineate cults/non-cults on the basis of how they resolve this trade-off between extremism and popularity)
Cults do not optimize for having many members. They optimize for the dedication of the members. This may be because the typical cult leader would rather have 10 people believe that he is the saviour and the messenger of God, than have 1000 people believe that he’s merely a good guy.
No one in the literature suggests this, and cults (just like mainstream religions such as Mormonism) invest enormous efforts into proselytization, rather than strenuous filtering of existing converts. The efforts just don’t succeed, and like the Red Queen, minority religions need to run as fast as they can just to stay in place.
The low rate of retention is extreme filtering. The cults try to get members to sever ties with the family and friends, for example—and this is a filter, most people get creeped out and a few go through with it. edit: and of course, with such extreme filtering, one needs a lot of proselytism to draw just a hundred very dedicated supporters.
You are arguing by definition here; please consider what could falsify your mental model of cults. If my local gym discovers only 1% of the people joining after New Years will stick around for more than a year, does that necessarily imply that the gym is ruled by a charismatic leader driving people away so as to maximize the proportion of unthinkingly loyal subordinates?
Low rate of retention is simply low rate of retention. This can be for a great many reasons, such as persecution, more attractive rival organizations, members solving their problems and leaving, or (way down the list) extreme filtering for loyalty which drives away otherwise acceptable members. How often do you see a cult leader going ‘well, sure, we could have thousands more members if we wanted (people are pounding down the doors to convert), and majorly increase our donations and financial holdings, but gosh, we wouldn’t want to sell out like that!’
Of course, like any organization, there’s concerns about freeriding and wasting club goods and it’ll seek to strike a balance between inclusiveness and parasite load; but a cult which has ‘successfully’ shed all but a few fanatics is a cult which is about to become history.
The cults try to get members to sever ties with the family and friends, for example
Recruiting through family and friends is a major strategy of cults—indeed, perhaps the only strategy which does not have abysmally low success rates.
Low rate of retention is a product of many reasons simultaneously, including the extreme weird stuff creeping people out. If your local gym is creepy, it will have lower retention rate, than same gym that is not creepy.
My mental model of failed retention includes the general low retention rate, in combination with the weird things that cult does creeping people out, on top of that.
How often do you see a cult leader going ‘well, sure, we could have thousands more members if we wanted (people are pounding down the doors to convert), and majorly increase our donations and financial holdings, but gosh, we wouldn’t want to sell out like that!’
I rarely see people reflect on their motives or goal structure. You often see a cult leader abusing a cultist, which leads insufficiently dedicated cultists to leave. Such actions sacrifice quantity for “quality”.
Recruiting through family and friends is a major strategy of cults—indeed, perhaps the only strategy which does not have abysmally low success rates.
Yes, and a lot of the time that fails, and the family members start actively denouncing the cult, and the member has to choose between the family and friends, and the cult, at which point, well, few choose the cult.
Low rate of retention is a product of many reasons simultaneously, including the extreme weird stuff creeping people out.
As pointed out in the OP by one author, the cults in question have in many ways been assimilated by the mainstream and so are far less ‘weird’ than ever before. Has that helped their retention rates? Environmentalism and meditation are completely mainstream now, have the Hare Krishnas staged a comeback?
If your local gym is creepy, it will have lower retention rate, than same gym that is not creepy.
The counterfactual is not available or producible, and so this is meaningless to point out. If the Hare Krishnas did not hold ‘creepy’ beliefs, in what sense is this counterfactual organization similar to the Hare Krishnas? If Transcendental Meditators did not do as weird a thing as meditate, how are they Transcendental Meditators? Defining away all the unique characteristics does not add any insight.
You often see a cult leader abusing a cultist, which leads insufficiently dedicated cultists to leave.
“You often see a boss abusing a subordinate, which leads insufficiently dedicated employees to leave. This is because bosses wish to sacrifice quantity and being able to handle work for ‘quality’ of subordinates.”
No, there is nothing unique about cults in this respect. Monkeys gonna monkey. And for the exact same reason businesses do not casually seek to alienate 99% of their employees in order to retain a fanatical 1%, you don’t see cults systematically organization-wide try to alienate everyone. You see a few people in close proximity to elites being abused. Just like countless other organizations.
the member has to choose between the family and friends, and the cult, at which point, well, few choose the cult.
Which explains the success of deprogrammers, amirite?
Environmentalism and meditation are completely mainstream now, have the Hare Krishnas staged a comeback?
I would suggest that if beliefs believed by cults becoime mainstream, that certainly decreases one barrier to such a cult’s expansion, but because there are additional factors (such as creepiness) that alone is not enough to lead the cult to expand much. It may be that people’s resistance to joining a group drastically increases if the group fails any one of several criteria. Just decrementing the number of criteria that the group fails isn’t going to be enough, if even one such criterion is left.
“You often see a boss abusing a subordinate, which leads insufficiently dedicated employees to leave. This is because bosses wish to sacrifice quantity and being able to handle work for ‘quality’ of subordinates.
The level of abuse done by bosses and cult leaders is different, so although the statement is literally true for both bosses and cult leaders, it really doesn’t imply that the two situations are similar.
It may be that people’s resistance to joining a group drastically increases if the group fails any one of several criteria.
Maybe, but I don’t know how we’d know the difference.
The level of abuse done by bosses and cult leaders is different, so although the statement is literally true for both bosses and cult leaders, it really doesn’t imply that the two situations are similar.
Is it really? Remember how many thousands of NRMs there are over the decades, and how people tend to discuss repeatedly a few salient examples like Scientology. Can we really compare that favorably regular bosses with religious figures? Aside from the Catholic Church scandal (with its counterparts among other closemouthed groups like Jewish and Amish communities), we see plenty of sexual scandals in other places like the military (the Tailhook scandal as the classic example, but there’s plenty of recent statistics on sexual assault in the military, often enabled by the hierarchy).
I don’t see how environmentalism or for that matter meditation itself is creepy.
What’s creepy about Hare Krishnas is the zoned out sleep deprived look on the faces (edit: I am speaking of the local ones, from experience), and the whole obsession with the writings of the leader thing, and weirdly specific rituals. Now that environmentalism and meditation are fairly mainstream, you don’t have to put up with the creepy stuff if you want to be around people who share your interests in environmentalism and meditation. You have less creepy alternatives. You can go to a local Yoga class, that manages to have same number of people attending as the local Khrishna hangout, despite not trying nearly as hard to find new recruits. You can join a normal environmentalist group.
No, there is nothing unique about cults in this respect. Monkeys gonna monkey. And for the exact same reason businesses do not casually seek to alienate 99% of their employees in order to retain a fanatical 1%, you don’t see cults systematically organization-wide try to alienate everyone. You see a few people in close proximity to elites being abused. Just like countless other organizations.
The difference is, of course, in extent. For example, putting up a portrait of the founder at every workplace (or perhaps in a handbook, or the like) would be something that a cult leader would do in a cult, but what a corporation would seldom ever do because doing so would be counter-productive.
edit: actually. What do you think makes joining a cult worse than joining a club, getting a job, and so on? Now, what ever that is, it makes it harder to get new recruits, and requires more dedication.
I don’t see how environmentalism or for that matter meditation itself is creepy.
Which goes to show how far into the zeitgeist they’ve penetrated. Go back to the 1960s when the cult panic and popular image of cults was being set, and things were quite different. One of the papers discusses a major lawsuit accusing the Hare Krishnas of ‘brainwashing’ a teen girl when she ran away from home and stayed with some Krishnas; the precipitating event was her parents getting angry about her meditating in front of a little shrine, and ripping it out and burning it (and then chaining her to the toilet for a while). To people back then, ‘tune in, turn on, drop out’ sounds less like a life choice than a threat...
What’s creepy about Hare Krishnas is the zoned out sleep deprived look on the faces (edit: I am speaking of the local ones, from experience)
Well, I can hardly argue against your anecdotal experiences.
the whole obsession with the writings of the leader thing,
Supreme Court—jurists or cultists? Film at 11. We report, you decide.
and weirdly specific rituals.
I don’t even know what ‘weirdly specific’ would mean. Rituals are generally followed in precise detail, right down to the exact repetitive wording and special garments like Mormon underpants; that’s pretty much what distinguishes rituals from normal activities. Accepting Eucharist at mass? Ritual. Filling out a form at the DMV? Not ritual.
You can go to a local Yoga class, that manages to have same number of people attending as the local Khrishna hangout, despite not trying nearly as hard to find new recruits.
Hmm, where was one to find yoga back then… Ah yes, also in cults. Ashrams in particular did a lot of yoga. Interesting that you no longer have to go to an ashram or fly to India if you want to do yoga. It’s almost like… these cult activities have been somehow normalized or assimilated into the mainstream...
You can join a normal environmentalist group.
And where did these environmentalist groups come from?
For example, putting up a portrait of the founder at every workplace (or perhaps in a handbook, or the like) would be something that a cult leader would do in a cult, but what a corporation would seldom ever do because doing so would be counter-productive.
Really? That seems incredibly common. Aside from the obvious examples of many (all?) government offices like post offices including portraits of their supreme leader—I mean, President—you can also go into places like Walmart and see the manager’s portrait up on the wall.
What do you think makes joining a cult worse than joining a club, getting a job, and so on?
Personally? I think it’s mostly competition from the bigger cults. Just like it’s hard to start up a business or nonprofit.
I wasn’t around in the 60s and wasn’t aware for any of the 70s, but… Environmentalism seems qualitatively different from everything else here. Is there some baggage to this beyond, say, conservation, or assigning plants and animals some moral weight, that is intended here?
Something may have seemed weirder in the past because it was weirder back then.
I suspect few modern Christians would sign up for AD 200 Christianity.
Environmentalism seems qualitatively different from everything else here. Is there some baggage to this beyond, say, conservation, or assigning plants and animals some moral weight, that is intended here?
Not really, aside from the standard observation that you can just as easily play the ‘find cult markers’ game with environmental groups like Greenpeace or ELF. Cleansing rituals like recycling, intense devotion to charismatic leaders, studies of founding texts like Silent Spring, self-abnegating life choices, donating funds to the movement, sacralization of unusual objects like owls or bugs, food taboos (‘GMOs’), and so on and so forth.
Of course it makes sense. As I’ve already claimed, cults are not engaged in some sort of predatory ‘brainwashing’ where they exploit cognitive flaws to just moneypump people with their ultra-advanced psychological techniques: they offer value in return for value received, just like businesses need to offer value to their customers, and nonprofits need to offer some sort of value to their funders. And these cults have plenty of established competition, so it makes sense that they’d usually fail. Just like businesses and nonprofits have huge mortality rates.
Rest likewise doesn’t seem in any way contradictory to the point I am making, but is posed as such.
I’ve given counter-examples and criticized your claims. Seems contradictory to me.
The question was, “What do you think makes joining a cult worse than joining a club, getting a job, and so on?” . How is competition from other cults impacting the decision to join a cult—any cult?
As I’ve already claimed, cults are not engaged in some sort of predatory ‘brainwashing’ where they exploit cognitive flaws to just moneypump people with their ultra-advanced psychological techniques: they offer value in return for value received
Well, I know of one cult that provides value in form of the nice fuzzy feeling of being able—through a very little effort—to see various things that, say, top physicists can not see. Except this feeling is attained entirely through self deception, unbeknown to the individuals, and arguing that it is providing value is akin to arguing that a scam which sells fake gold for the cheap is providing value.
(Then there’s of course Janestown, and so on and so forth)
How is competition from other cults impacting the decision to join a cult?
Exactly as I said, pressure from other cults: direct retaliation (like the legal system endorsing your kidnapping), opportunity costs, lack of subsidies, regulatory capture being used against you, the risk of joining a small new organization… Many of the reasons that apply to not joining a startup and instead working at Microsoft can be tweaked to apply to small cults vs big cults.
Well, I know of one cult that provides value in form of the nice fuzzy feeling of being able—through a very little effort—to see various things that, say, top physicists can not see. Except this feeling is attained entirely through self deception, unbeknown to the individuals, and arguing that it is providing value is akin to arguing that a scam which sells fake gold for the cheap is providing value.
You know what’s even more awesome than self-deception? Sliming people you don’t like as cults, when your ideas about what a cult is aren’t even right in the first place. Sweet delicious meta-contrarianism.
True, it’s not as good a racket as Singer getting paid tons of money to testify about how awful cults are and how powerful their deceptions are—but it’s a lot less work and more convenient.
Exactly as I said, pressure from other cults: direct retaliation (like the legal system endorsing your kidnapping), opportunity costs, lack of subsidies, regulatory capture being used against you, the risk of joining a small new organization… Many of the reasons that apply to not joining a startup and instead working at Microsoft can be tweaked to apply to small cults vs big cults.
I said, joining a cult. I didn’t say, joining a small cult, I didn’t say, joining a big cult, I said, joining a cult.
You know what’s even more awesome than self-deception? Sliming people you don’t like as cults, when your ideas about what a cult is aren’t even right in the first place. Sweet delicious meta-contrarianism.
Well, a scam then, if you don’t like me to call it a cult. It is my honest opinion that the value arises through the self deception, which goes against the intent of individual, and is of lesser value compared to what the individual is expecting to get.
I said, joining a cult. I didn’t say, joining a small cult, I didn’t say, joining a big cult, I said, joining a cult.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was supposed to interpret that as meaninglessly general as possible, rather than, you know, be about the topic of my post or the topic of the previous comments.
Why do all organizations and religions in particular exist? That’s a tough question which I’m afraid I have no quick answer to, but the right answer looks like ‘all sorts of reasons’.
Your barrage of non-sequiturs posed as “counterarguments” is incredibly annoying. Your post clearly doesn’t deal with specifically the small cults, nor anything else does.
Krishnas, scientology, moonies, etc. how are those examples of small cults?
/sigh
You know, I suspected that you hadn’t actually read what I posted and jumped straight to the comment section to vomit your preconceptions out, but that assertion pretty much confirms it. Here, from the quotes:
These groups are actually very small in numbers (the Hare Krishna and the Unification Church each have no more than two to three thousand members nationwide), which puts the lie to brainwashing claims. If “brainwashing” practiced by new religions is so powerful, why are the groups experiencing so much voluntary attrition, and why are they so small?
Two of the most famous cults together have like a third of the people the university I went to did? That sounds pretty darn small to me!
Or do you count every major religion as a cult?
I don’t think there’s any meaningful difference aside from things like the size or social acceptability, as I think I’ve been pretty clear all along.
The cults try to get members to sever ties with the family and friends, for example—and this is a filter, most people get creeped out and a few go through with it.
I’m not sure whether that’s true. You have people on LessWrong talking about cutting family ties with nonrational family members and nobody get’s creeped out.
I don’t think I have ever witnessed people getting creeped out by such discussions in the self help area and I think I have frequently heard people encouraging others to cut ties with someone that “holds them back”.
Really? Links? A lot of stuff here is a bit too culty for my tastes, or just embarassing, but “cutting family ties with nonrational family members”?? I haven’t been following LW closely for a while now so I may have missed it, but that doesn’t sound accurate.
diegocaleiro didn’t just say they were just irrational:
(1) Stupid (2) Religious (3) Non-rationalists (4) Absolutely clueless about reality (5) Pushy about inserting their ideas/ideals/weltenshaaung/motifs into you?
I strongly suspect that this isn’t a case of “My family members don’t believe as I do, therefore fuck those guys.” but rather “These family members know that I am nonreligious and aggressively proselytize because of it.” This probably isn’t even about rationality or LessWrong, rather atheism.
Note also that it is diegocaleiro who initiated the conversation, and note the level of enthusiasm about the idea received from other posters (Only ChristianKI and Benito’s responses seem wholly in favor, Villiam_Bur and drethelin’s responses are against, shminux and Ben_LandauTaylor’s responses are neutral).
“These family members know that I am nonreligious and aggressively proselytize because of it.”
Outside view: These family members know that [diegocaleiro joined a group with weird non-mainstream religious beliefs] and [are trying to deconvert him].
Thanks for the link. I don’t really see creepy cult isolation in that discussion, and I think most people wouldn’t, but that’s just my intuitive judgment.
That’s the point. It doesn’t look that way from the inside.
If someone would tell those family members that the OP cutted their family ties with them because he made a rational analysis with help from his LessWrong friends those family member might see it as an example of the evil influence that LessWrong has on people.
I’m not sure whether that’s true. You have people on LessWrong talking about cutting family ties with nonrational family members and nobody get’s creeped out.
I do not believe you. If it is the case that people talk about cutting family ties with ‘nonrational family members’ then there will be people creeped out by it.
Note that if the ‘nonrational’ family members also happen to be emotionally abusive family members this would not match the criteria as I interpret it. (Even then I expect some people to be creeped out by the ties cutting and would expect myself to aggressively oppose such expressions so as to suppress a toxic influence.)
Note that if the ‘nonrational’ family members also happen to be emotionally abusive family members this would not match the criteria as I interpret it.
You do realize that a lot of cults tend to classify normal family reactions, e.g., attempting to get the person out of the cult, as emotional abuse.
You do realize that a lot of cults tend to classify normal family reactions, e.g., attempting to get the person out of the cult, as emotional abuse.
I don’t care and I’m somewhat outraged at this distortion of reasoning. It is so obviously bad and yet remains common and is all too seldom refuted. Emotional abuse is a sufficiently well defined thing. It is an undesirable thing. Various strategies for dealing with it are possible. In severe cases and in relationships where the gains do not offset the damage then severing ties is an appropriate strategy to consider. This doesn’t stop being the case if someone else also misuses the phrase ‘emotional abuse’.
Enduring emotional abuse rather than severing ties with the abuser because sometimes cultists sever ties while using that phrase is idiotic. Calling people ‘creepy’ for advocating sane, mainstream interpersonal strategies is absurd and evil.
I don’t care and I’m somewhat outraged at this distortion of reasoning. It is so obviously bad and yet remains common and is all too seldom refuted.
Sorry, exactly what is it that you’re outraged about? Eugene seemed to merely be pointing out that people inside particular social groups might see things differently than people outside them, with the outsiders being creeped out and insiders not being that. More specifically, that things that we deem okay might come off as creepy to outsiders. That seems correct to me.
Sorry, exactly what is it that you’re outraged about?
As a general policy:
All cases where non-sequitur but technically true claims are made where the actual implied rhetorical meaning is fallacious. Human social instincts are such that most otherwise intelligent humans seem to be particularly vulnerable to this form of persuasion.
All arguments or insinuations of the form “Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and/or cultists do . Therefore, if you say that is ok then you are Bad.”
Additional outrage, disdain or contempt applies when:
The non-sequitur’s are, through either high social skill or (as in this case) plain luck, well calibrated to persuade the audience despite being bullshit.
Actual negative consequences can be expected to result from the epistemic damage perpetrated.
All cases where non-sequitur but technically true claims are made where the actual implied rhetorical meaning is fallacious. Human social instincts are such that most otherwise intelligent humans seem to be particularly vulnerable to this form of persuasion.
In my experience nearly all accusations that someone is being “emotionally abusive” are of this type.
In my experience nearly all accusations that someone is being “emotionally abusive” are of this type.
If that is true then you are fortunate to have lived such a sheltered existence. If it is not true (and to some extent even if it is) then I expect being exposed to this kind of denial and accusation of dishonesty to be rather damaging to those who are actual victims of the phenonemon you claim is ‘nearly all’ fallacious accusation.
If that is true then you are fortunate to have lived such a sheltered existence.
I could say the same thing about you if you’ve never encountered people willing to make false accusations of abuse (frequently on behalf of children) with the force of the law, or at least child services behind them.
If it is not true (and to some extent even if it is) then I expect being exposed to this kind of denial and accusation of dishonesty to be rather damaging to those who are actual victims of the phenonemon you claim is ‘nearly all’ fallacious accusation.
This is as good a summery of the “how dare you urge restraint” position as any I’ve heard.
Emotional abuse is a sufficiently well defined thing. It is an undesirable thing.
So could you provide a definition. The article you linked to begins by saying:
As of 1996, There were “no consensus views about the definition of emotional abuse.”
And then proceeds to list three categories that are sufficiently vague to include a lot of legitimate behavior.
Enduring emotional abuse rather than severing ties with the abuser because sometimes cultists sever ties while using that phrase is idiotic.
You don’t seem to be getting the concept of “outside view”. Think about it this way: as the example of cults shows, humans have a bias that makes them interpret Bob attempting to persuade Alice away from one’s meme set as emotional abuse. Consider the possibility that you’re also suffering from this bias.
Yes, but I do not believe this to be necessary or appropriate at this time. The sincere reader is invited to simply use their own definition in good faith. The precise details do not matter or, rather, are something that could be discussed elsewhere by interested parties or on a case by case basis. For now I will say this is an example of emotional abuse which would in most situations call for the severing of ties. Other cases are less clear but, again, can be argued about when they crop up.
You don’t seem to be getting the concept of “outside view”.
Don’t be absurd. Conversation over. Be advised that future comments of your on any of the subjects of emotional abuse, cults or creepiness will be voted on without reply unless I perceive them to be a danger to others. The reasoning you are using is both non-sequitur and toxic. I don’t have the patience for it.
Think about it this way: as the example of cults shows, humans have a bias that makes them interpret Bob attempting to persuade Alice away from one’s meme set as emotional abuse. Consider the possibility that you’re also suffering from this bias.
I don’t care about evangalism. I care about gaslighting, various forms of emotional blackmail and verbal abuse. Again, the fact that the phrase “emotional abuse” can be misused by someone in a cult does not make refusal to respond to actual emotional abuse appropriate or sane. To whatever extent your ‘outside’ view cannot account for that your outside view is broken.
For now I will say this is an example of emotional abuse which would in most situations call for the severing of ties.
I agree gaslighting is bad. Ironically, most of the examples that come to mind (and the only example of attempted gaslighting happening to some I know) involve attempting to plant false memories that someone else was emotionally (and possibly also physically) abusing them.
Don’t be absurd. Conversation over. Be advised that future comments of your on any of the subjects of emotional abuse, cults or creepiness will be voted on without reply unless I perceive them to be a danger to others. The reasoning you are using is both non-sequitur and toxic. I don’t have the patience for it.
What I suspect is happening is you perceive evil “emotional abuse” as having occured and your reaction is “how dare eugine urge restraint.”
I care about gaslighting, various forms of emotional blackmail and verbal abuse. Again, the fact that the phrase “emotional abuse” can be misused by someone in a cult does not make refusal to respond to actual emotional abuse appropriate or sane.
Yes, but is “actual emotional abuse” (to the extent it’s an objective concept) occurring. In particular do you have any evidence that gaslighting (the only specific example you gave) occurred in any of the examples under discussion. Setrainly none of the things diego mentioned even suggest gaslighting was occurring.
What I suspect is happening is you perceive evil “emotional abuse” as having occured and your reaction is “how dare eugine urge restraint.”
This is false. I object to the reasoning used in this conversation for the previously expressed reasons. I consider it disingenuous, with the inevitable caveat that I cannot reliably distinguish between disengenuity and sincere inability to think in a manner which I consider coherent. That is all.
For better or worse I viscerally experience more disgust when observing clever use of non-sequitur retorts than I experience at descriptions of the hypothetical abusive behaviours. Bullshit is my enemy. “Emotional abuse” is a mere abstract evil.
Your first response to my comment was not to declare it “bullshit” but to declare it “evil”. Furthermore, all your reasons boil down to “How dare you invoke the outside view when we all know Evil Things(tm) are happening”. And you don’t bother to engage with any of the arguments I provided.
Your first response to my comment was not to declare it “bullshit” but to declare it “evil”.
This accusation seems to be actively relying on the assumption that readers will not check the context to verify accuracy. The first two sentences in the reply in question seem to be quite clearly declaring ‘bullshit’. In particular note the phrases “distortion of reasoning”, “so obviously bad and yet remains common” and “all too seldom refuted”. I quite frequently reference on bullshit when describing that pattern of behaviour but it doesn’t seem necessary to explicitly use the word ‘bullshit’ every single time. In fact I try to make myself use natural language descriptions like this rather than using bullshit every time because that habit would just get weird.
Furthermore, all your reasons boil down to “How dare you invoke the outside view when we all know Evil Things(tm) are happening”.
This is false. Eugine_Nier has presented approximately the same straw man previously and it was false then too. I conclude that he has little interest in making his accusations match reality.
And you don’t bother to engage with any of the arguments I provided.
I did engage, and that was a mistake. Like other users have mentioned in the past I now must concur that Eugine_Nier is systematically incapable of engaging in good-faith conversation. I will henceforth refrain from communicating with Eugine_Nier except when I deem it necessary to lend support to another user I perceive to be mistreated (via straw man barrages and the like). Apart from such cases I will limit myself to downvoting as appropriate then ignoring.
That would be a much more convincing example about cults in general if it weren’t about a failed dead cult. EDIT: I would add that successful cults tend to spend time and energy minimizing and explaining away failed prophecies rather than being happy to spiral into a tiny core of believers & no one else; Jehovah’s Witnesses spend little time discussing failed predictions by the Watchtower, and Christian theologians for millennia have been explaining away things like Jesus’s prophecy that the apocalypse would come within a generation of him.
BTW, if you are interested in cults, you should really read the book When Prophecy Fails (it’s on Libgen, so no excuses!) - you’ll find it doesn’t match your ideas about cults, but matches the academic literature described in OP, with regard to very low retention rates, minimal efficacy of recruitment, and the cult adding value to retained members’ lives.
I would add that successful cults tend to spend time and energy minimizing and explaining away failed prophecies rather than being happy to spiral into a tiny core of believers & no one else; Jehovah’s Witnesses spend little time discussing failed predictions by the Watchtower, and Christian theologians for millennia have been explaining away things like Jesus’s prophecy that the apocalypse would come within a generation of him.
Very few cults are as successful as Jehovah’s Witnesses or the like. Your typical cult is something fairly small, a congregation around one or a few literally insane persons which are indulging in short sighted self gratification such as convincing oneself that god speaks to them, or at times, around a person initially out for easy money (e.g. Keith Raniere). Said people need a certain number of close admirers. The danger, likewise, is not in the successes but in failure modes that infrequently include mass murder, and much more frequently include e.g. sexual abuse of minors, consequences to the member’s health, and so on.
Your typical cult is something fairly small, a congregation around one or a few literally insane persons which are indulging in short sighted self gratification such as convincing oneself that god speaks to them, or at times, around a person initially out for easy money (e.g. Keith Raniere).
The median cult may be small, but the median cult quickly dies. Why does this matter? If you were to apply your argument that cults are not intended to grow to, say, businesses, wouldn’t it look completely ridiculous?
‘Very few corporations are as successful as Microsoft. Your typical corporation is something fairly small, a group of one or two literally insanely optimistic entrepreneurs who are indulging in short-sighted egotistic expenditures such as the delusional belief that what the market needs is another Facebook clone, or at times, around a successful marketer out for easy money (e.g. Peter Pham). Said people need a certain number of close employees. Businesses are not intended to be successful or grow and make money, just keep loyal employees for the founder’s gratification. The danger, likewise, is not in the successes but in failure modes that infrequently include mass murder like the Bhopal incident, and much more frequently include e.g. sexual abuse of minors, consequences to the customer’s health, and so on.’
As I already said, cults die at such high rates that your theory is impossible because it presupposes utterly self-defeating behavior and is inconsistent with the behavior of successful cults.
The median cult may be small, but the median cult quickly dies. Why does this matter? If you were to apply your argument that cults are not intended to grow to, say, businesses, wouldn’t it look completely ridiculous?
I’d say vast majority of start-ups are founded by people with some head issues in the direction of narcissism. Who may well be in some abstract sense intending to succeed, but to get from intent to succeed to actions takes quite a lot of intellect, which they mostly lack. Meanwhile, day to day actions are actually based on desire for self gratification (avoidance of feedback especially, things that generally make them feel well), with very short sighted planning. The end result is massive waste of human potential (of those unfortunate enough to end up in said startups), financial losses (often avoided by the narcissistic founder himself), and so on.
As I already said, cults die at such high rates that your theory is impossible because it presupposes utterly self-defeating behavior
What? How is a theory that presupposes utterly self defeating behaviour at odds with, you know, defeat?
and is inconsistent with the behavior of successful cults.
I’m speaking of cults in general, which as you yourself say generally die. The few highly successful cults are not particularly bad, and succeed precisely by being dramatically different from the unsuccessful cults.
I’d say vast majority of start-ups are founded by people with some head issues in the direction of narcissism...Meanwhile, day to day actions are actually based on desire for self gratification (avoidance of feedback especially, things that generally make them feel well), with very short sighted planning.
I respect your bullet-biting with regard to equating startups and cults, even if I think your view is as ridiculous as it looks.
How is a theory that presupposes utterly self defeating behaviour at odds with, you know, defeat?
My point was that the cult death rates were similar to that of organizations which are not generally believed to be organized to gratify narcissistic leaders’ egos but make money, which would have been a counter example that refuted your argument, except you then chose to bite that bullet and argue that businesses are exactly like cults in this respect and aren’t counter-examples at all. So you’re right that that argument no longer works, but you’ve done so only by making completely absurd claims which prove too much.
If you want to argue that businesses are cults and hence the equivalent death rates are consistent with both being about leader gratification, that’s consistent. But it’s absurd and I don’t believe it for a second and I doubt anyone else will either.
That would be a much more convincing example about cults in general if it weren’t about a failed dead cult.
I think an example about a failed dead startup is most informative about startups in general.
edit: also, on the reading list, what I expect is for my interpretation of it to be quite massively different from yours. I’d be better served by picking a reputable book about cults at random, anyway (cherry picking vs unfiltered data).
edit2: as for adding value, I’m not sure value adding cults are nearly of as much of impact-weighted interest as cults which end up in a Jonestown. Furthermore, sunk cost fallacy—like failure mode seems massively relevant to retention in cults.
I think an example about a failed dead startup is most informative about startups in general.
What’s that? Surely if a prophecy were a useful filtering mechanism as you say, then dying is a problem. A cult which fails cannot serve anyone’s purpose at all...
I’d be better served by picking a reputable book about cults at random, anyway (cherry picking vs unfiltered data).
Fair enough, but shouldn’t you then retract your previous claims? I mean, what with it being based on cherry picked evidence and all?
Furthermore, sunk cost fallacy—like failure mode seems massively relevant to retention in cults.
You should probably know that I consider it seriously questionable whether sunk costs affect individuals at all, then, and reject the premise of that argument, much less whether it applies to cults.
It always seemed obvious to me that cults have rather low conversion rates.
Cults do not optimize for having many members. They optimize for the dedication of the members. This may be because the typical cult leader would rather have 10 people believe that he is the saviour and the messenger of God, than have 1000 people believe that he’s merely a good guy.
(I tend to delineate cults/non-cults on the basis of how they resolve this trade-off between extremism and popularity)
No one in the literature suggests this, and cults (just like mainstream religions such as Mormonism) invest enormous efforts into proselytization, rather than strenuous filtering of existing converts. The efforts just don’t succeed, and like the Red Queen, minority religions need to run as fast as they can just to stay in place.
The low rate of retention is extreme filtering. The cults try to get members to sever ties with the family and friends, for example—and this is a filter, most people get creeped out and a few go through with it. edit: and of course, with such extreme filtering, one needs a lot of proselytism to draw just a hundred very dedicated supporters.
You are arguing by definition here; please consider what could falsify your mental model of cults. If my local gym discovers only 1% of the people joining after New Years will stick around for more than a year, does that necessarily imply that the gym is ruled by a charismatic leader driving people away so as to maximize the proportion of unthinkingly loyal subordinates?
Low rate of retention is simply low rate of retention. This can be for a great many reasons, such as persecution, more attractive rival organizations, members solving their problems and leaving, or (way down the list) extreme filtering for loyalty which drives away otherwise acceptable members. How often do you see a cult leader going ‘well, sure, we could have thousands more members if we wanted (people are pounding down the doors to convert), and majorly increase our donations and financial holdings, but gosh, we wouldn’t want to sell out like that!’
Of course, like any organization, there’s concerns about freeriding and wasting club goods and it’ll seek to strike a balance between inclusiveness and parasite load; but a cult which has ‘successfully’ shed all but a few fanatics is a cult which is about to become history.
Recruiting through family and friends is a major strategy of cults—indeed, perhaps the only strategy which does not have abysmally low success rates.
Low rate of retention is a product of many reasons simultaneously, including the extreme weird stuff creeping people out. If your local gym is creepy, it will have lower retention rate, than same gym that is not creepy.
My mental model of failed retention includes the general low retention rate, in combination with the weird things that cult does creeping people out, on top of that.
I rarely see people reflect on their motives or goal structure. You often see a cult leader abusing a cultist, which leads insufficiently dedicated cultists to leave. Such actions sacrifice quantity for “quality”.
Yes, and a lot of the time that fails, and the family members start actively denouncing the cult, and the member has to choose between the family and friends, and the cult, at which point, well, few choose the cult.
As pointed out in the OP by one author, the cults in question have in many ways been assimilated by the mainstream and so are far less ‘weird’ than ever before. Has that helped their retention rates? Environmentalism and meditation are completely mainstream now, have the Hare Krishnas staged a comeback?
The counterfactual is not available or producible, and so this is meaningless to point out. If the Hare Krishnas did not hold ‘creepy’ beliefs, in what sense is this counterfactual organization similar to the Hare Krishnas? If Transcendental Meditators did not do as weird a thing as meditate, how are they Transcendental Meditators? Defining away all the unique characteristics does not add any insight.
“You often see a boss abusing a subordinate, which leads insufficiently dedicated employees to leave. This is because bosses wish to sacrifice quantity and being able to handle work for ‘quality’ of subordinates.”
No, there is nothing unique about cults in this respect. Monkeys gonna monkey. And for the exact same reason businesses do not casually seek to alienate 99% of their employees in order to retain a fanatical 1%, you don’t see cults systematically organization-wide try to alienate everyone. You see a few people in close proximity to elites being abused. Just like countless other organizations.
Which explains the success of deprogrammers, amirite?
I would suggest that if beliefs believed by cults becoime mainstream, that certainly decreases one barrier to such a cult’s expansion, but because there are additional factors (such as creepiness) that alone is not enough to lead the cult to expand much. It may be that people’s resistance to joining a group drastically increases if the group fails any one of several criteria. Just decrementing the number of criteria that the group fails isn’t going to be enough, if even one such criterion is left.
The level of abuse done by bosses and cult leaders is different, so although the statement is literally true for both bosses and cult leaders, it really doesn’t imply that the two situations are similar.
Maybe, but I don’t know how we’d know the difference.
Is it really? Remember how many thousands of NRMs there are over the decades, and how people tend to discuss repeatedly a few salient examples like Scientology. Can we really compare that favorably regular bosses with religious figures? Aside from the Catholic Church scandal (with its counterparts among other closemouthed groups like Jewish and Amish communities), we see plenty of sexual scandals in other places like the military (the Tailhook scandal as the classic example, but there’s plenty of recent statistics on sexual assault in the military, often enabled by the hierarchy).
I don’t see how environmentalism or for that matter meditation itself is creepy.
What’s creepy about Hare Krishnas is the zoned out sleep deprived look on the faces (edit: I am speaking of the local ones, from experience), and the whole obsession with the writings of the leader thing, and weirdly specific rituals. Now that environmentalism and meditation are fairly mainstream, you don’t have to put up with the creepy stuff if you want to be around people who share your interests in environmentalism and meditation. You have less creepy alternatives. You can go to a local Yoga class, that manages to have same number of people attending as the local Khrishna hangout, despite not trying nearly as hard to find new recruits. You can join a normal environmentalist group.
The difference is, of course, in extent. For example, putting up a portrait of the founder at every workplace (or perhaps in a handbook, or the like) would be something that a cult leader would do in a cult, but what a corporation would seldom ever do because doing so would be counter-productive.
edit: actually. What do you think makes joining a cult worse than joining a club, getting a job, and so on? Now, what ever that is, it makes it harder to get new recruits, and requires more dedication.
Which goes to show how far into the zeitgeist they’ve penetrated. Go back to the 1960s when the cult panic and popular image of cults was being set, and things were quite different. One of the papers discusses a major lawsuit accusing the Hare Krishnas of ‘brainwashing’ a teen girl when she ran away from home and stayed with some Krishnas; the precipitating event was her parents getting angry about her meditating in front of a little shrine, and ripping it out and burning it (and then chaining her to the toilet for a while). To people back then, ‘tune in, turn on, drop out’ sounds less like a life choice than a threat...
Well, I can hardly argue against your anecdotal experiences.
Supreme Court—jurists or cultists? Film at 11. We report, you decide.
I don’t even know what ‘weirdly specific’ would mean. Rituals are generally followed in precise detail, right down to the exact repetitive wording and special garments like Mormon underpants; that’s pretty much what distinguishes rituals from normal activities. Accepting Eucharist at mass? Ritual. Filling out a form at the DMV? Not ritual.
Hmm, where was one to find yoga back then… Ah yes, also in cults. Ashrams in particular did a lot of yoga. Interesting that you no longer have to go to an ashram or fly to India if you want to do yoga. It’s almost like… these cult activities have been somehow normalized or assimilated into the mainstream...
And where did these environmentalist groups come from?
Really? That seems incredibly common. Aside from the obvious examples of many (all?) government offices like post offices including portraits of their supreme leader—I mean, President—you can also go into places like Walmart and see the manager’s portrait up on the wall.
Personally? I think it’s mostly competition from the bigger cults. Just like it’s hard to start up a business or nonprofit.
I wasn’t around in the 60s and wasn’t aware for any of the 70s, but… Environmentalism seems qualitatively different from everything else here. Is there some baggage to this beyond, say, conservation, or assigning plants and animals some moral weight, that is intended here?
Something may have seemed weirder in the past because it was weirder back then.
I suspect few modern Christians would sign up for AD 200 Christianity.
Not really, aside from the standard observation that you can just as easily play the ‘find cult markers’ game with environmental groups like Greenpeace or ELF. Cleansing rituals like recycling, intense devotion to charismatic leaders, studies of founding texts like Silent Spring, self-abnegating life choices, donating funds to the movement, sacralization of unusual objects like owls or bugs, food taboos (‘GMOs’), and so on and so forth.
That doesn’t even make sense as an answer. Rest likewise doesn’t seem in any way contradictory to the point I am making, but is posed as such.
Of course it makes sense. As I’ve already claimed, cults are not engaged in some sort of predatory ‘brainwashing’ where they exploit cognitive flaws to just moneypump people with their ultra-advanced psychological techniques: they offer value in return for value received, just like businesses need to offer value to their customers, and nonprofits need to offer some sort of value to their funders. And these cults have plenty of established competition, so it makes sense that they’d usually fail. Just like businesses and nonprofits have huge mortality rates.
I’ve given counter-examples and criticized your claims. Seems contradictory to me.
The question was, “What do you think makes joining a cult worse than joining a club, getting a job, and so on?” . How is competition from other cults impacting the decision to join a cult—any cult?
Well, I know of one cult that provides value in form of the nice fuzzy feeling of being able—through a very little effort—to see various things that, say, top physicists can not see. Except this feeling is attained entirely through self deception, unbeknown to the individuals, and arguing that it is providing value is akin to arguing that a scam which sells fake gold for the cheap is providing value.
(Then there’s of course Janestown, and so on and so forth)
Exactly as I said, pressure from other cults: direct retaliation (like the legal system endorsing your kidnapping), opportunity costs, lack of subsidies, regulatory capture being used against you, the risk of joining a small new organization… Many of the reasons that apply to not joining a startup and instead working at Microsoft can be tweaked to apply to small cults vs big cults.
You know what’s even more awesome than self-deception? Sliming people you don’t like as cults, when your ideas about what a cult is aren’t even right in the first place. Sweet delicious meta-contrarianism.
True, it’s not as good a racket as Singer getting paid tons of money to testify about how awful cults are and how powerful their deceptions are—but it’s a lot less work and more convenient.
I said, joining a cult. I didn’t say, joining a small cult, I didn’t say, joining a big cult, I said, joining a cult.
Well, a scam then, if you don’t like me to call it a cult. It is my honest opinion that the value arises through the self deception, which goes against the intent of individual, and is of lesser value compared to what the individual is expecting to get.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was supposed to interpret that as meaninglessly general as possible, rather than, you know, be about the topic of my post or the topic of the previous comments.
Why do all organizations and religions in particular exist? That’s a tough question which I’m afraid I have no quick answer to, but the right answer looks like ‘all sorts of reasons’.
Your barrage of non-sequiturs posed as “counterarguments” is incredibly annoying. Your post clearly doesn’t deal with specifically the small cults, nor anything else does.
Failure to engage noted.
You’re right, it’s not like all the cites deal with small organizations or anything like that.
Krishnas, scientology, moonies, etc. how are those examples of small cults? Or do you count every major religion as a cult?
/sigh
You know, I suspected that you hadn’t actually read what I posted and jumped straight to the comment section to vomit your preconceptions out, but that assertion pretty much confirms it. Here, from the quotes:
Two of the most famous cults together have like a third of the people the university I went to did? That sounds pretty darn small to me!
I don’t think there’s any meaningful difference aside from things like the size or social acceptability, as I think I’ve been pretty clear all along.
I’m not sure whether that’s true. You have people on LessWrong talking about cutting family ties with nonrational family members and nobody get’s creeped out.
I don’t think I have ever witnessed people getting creeped out by such discussions in the self help area and I think I have frequently heard people encouraging others to cut ties with someone that “holds them back”.
Really? Links? A lot of stuff here is a bit too culty for my tastes, or just embarassing, but “cutting family ties with nonrational family members”?? I haven’t been following LW closely for a while now so I may have missed it, but that doesn’t sound accurate.
Here’s an example.
diegocaleiro didn’t just say they were just irrational:
I strongly suspect that this isn’t a case of “My family members don’t believe as I do, therefore fuck those guys.” but rather “These family members know that I am nonreligious and aggressively proselytize because of it.” This probably isn’t even about rationality or LessWrong, rather atheism.
Note also that it is diegocaleiro who initiated the conversation, and note the level of enthusiasm about the idea received from other posters (Only ChristianKI and Benito’s responses seem wholly in favor, Villiam_Bur and drethelin’s responses are against, shminux and Ben_LandauTaylor’s responses are neutral).
Outside view: These family members know that [diegocaleiro joined a group with weird non-mainstream religious beliefs] and [are trying to deconvert him].
Thanks for the link. I don’t really see creepy cult isolation in that discussion, and I think most people wouldn’t, but that’s just my intuitive judgment.
That’s the point. It doesn’t look that way from the inside.
If someone would tell those family members that the OP cutted their family ties with them because he made a rational analysis with help from his LessWrong friends those family member might see it as an example of the evil influence that LessWrong has on people.
I’m at least mildly creeped out by occasional cultish behavior on LessWrong. But every cause wants to be a cult
Eliezer said so, so therefore it is Truth.
I do not believe you. If it is the case that people talk about cutting family ties with ‘nonrational family members’ then there will be people creeped out by it.
Note that if the ‘nonrational’ family members also happen to be emotionally abusive family members this would not match the criteria as I interpret it. (Even then I expect some people to be creeped out by the ties cutting and would expect myself to aggressively oppose such expressions so as to suppress a toxic influence.)
You do realize that a lot of cults tend to classify normal family reactions, e.g., attempting to get the person out of the cult, as emotional abuse.
I don’t care and I’m somewhat outraged at this distortion of reasoning. It is so obviously bad and yet remains common and is all too seldom refuted. Emotional abuse is a sufficiently well defined thing. It is an undesirable thing. Various strategies for dealing with it are possible. In severe cases and in relationships where the gains do not offset the damage then severing ties is an appropriate strategy to consider. This doesn’t stop being the case if someone else also misuses the phrase ‘emotional abuse’.
Enduring emotional abuse rather than severing ties with the abuser because sometimes cultists sever ties while using that phrase is idiotic. Calling people ‘creepy’ for advocating sane, mainstream interpersonal strategies is absurd and evil.
Sorry, exactly what is it that you’re outraged about? Eugene seemed to merely be pointing out that people inside particular social groups might see things differently than people outside them, with the outsiders being creeped out and insiders not being that. More specifically, that things that we deem okay might come off as creepy to outsiders. That seems correct to me.
As a general policy:
All cases where non-sequitur but technically true claims are made where the actual implied rhetorical meaning is fallacious. Human social instincts are such that most otherwise intelligent humans seem to be particularly vulnerable to this form of persuasion.
All arguments or insinuations of the form “Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and/or cultists do . Therefore, if you say that is ok then you are Bad.”
Additional outrage, disdain or contempt applies when:
The non-sequitur’s are, through either high social skill or (as in this case) plain luck, well calibrated to persuade the audience despite being bullshit.
Actual negative consequences can be expected to result from the epistemic damage perpetrated.
Thanks, that sounds reasonable. I didn’t interpret Eugene’s comments as being guilty of any of those, though.
In my experience nearly all accusations that someone is being “emotionally abusive” are of this type.
If that is true then you are fortunate to have lived such a sheltered existence. If it is not true (and to some extent even if it is) then I expect being exposed to this kind of denial and accusation of dishonesty to be rather damaging to those who are actual victims of the phenonemon you claim is ‘nearly all’ fallacious accusation.
I could say the same thing about you if you’ve never encountered people willing to make false accusations of abuse (frequently on behalf of children) with the force of the law, or at least child services behind them.
This is as good a summery of the “how dare you urge restraint” position as any I’ve heard.
So could you provide a definition. The article you linked to begins by saying:
And then proceeds to list three categories that are sufficiently vague to include a lot of legitimate behavior.
You don’t seem to be getting the concept of “outside view”. Think about it this way: as the example of cults shows, humans have a bias that makes them interpret Bob attempting to persuade Alice away from one’s meme set as emotional abuse. Consider the possibility that you’re also suffering from this bias.
Yes, but I do not believe this to be necessary or appropriate at this time. The sincere reader is invited to simply use their own definition in good faith. The precise details do not matter or, rather, are something that could be discussed elsewhere by interested parties or on a case by case basis. For now I will say this is an example of emotional abuse which would in most situations call for the severing of ties. Other cases are less clear but, again, can be argued about when they crop up.
Don’t be absurd. Conversation over. Be advised that future comments of your on any of the subjects of emotional abuse, cults or creepiness will be voted on without reply unless I perceive them to be a danger to others. The reasoning you are using is both non-sequitur and toxic. I don’t have the patience for it.
I don’t care about evangalism. I care about gaslighting, various forms of emotional blackmail and verbal abuse. Again, the fact that the phrase “emotional abuse” can be misused by someone in a cult does not make refusal to respond to actual emotional abuse appropriate or sane. To whatever extent your ‘outside’ view cannot account for that your outside view is broken.
I agree gaslighting is bad. Ironically, most of the examples that come to mind (and the only example of attempted gaslighting happening to some I know) involve attempting to plant false memories that someone else was emotionally (and possibly also physically) abusing them.
What I suspect is happening is you perceive evil “emotional abuse” as having occured and your reaction is “how dare eugine urge restraint.”
Yes, but is “actual emotional abuse” (to the extent it’s an objective concept) occurring. In particular do you have any evidence that gaslighting (the only specific example you gave) occurred in any of the examples under discussion. Setrainly none of the things diego mentioned even suggest gaslighting was occurring.
This is false. I object to the reasoning used in this conversation for the previously expressed reasons. I consider it disingenuous, with the inevitable caveat that I cannot reliably distinguish between disengenuity and sincere inability to think in a manner which I consider coherent. That is all.
For better or worse I viscerally experience more disgust when observing clever use of non-sequitur retorts than I experience at descriptions of the hypothetical abusive behaviours. Bullshit is my enemy. “Emotional abuse” is a mere abstract evil.
Your first response to my comment was not to declare it “bullshit” but to declare it “evil”. Furthermore, all your reasons boil down to “How dare you invoke the outside view when we all know Evil Things(tm) are happening”. And you don’t bother to engage with any of the arguments I provided.
This accusation seems to be actively relying on the assumption that readers will not check the context to verify accuracy. The first two sentences in the reply in question seem to be quite clearly declaring ‘bullshit’. In particular note the phrases “distortion of reasoning”, “so obviously bad and yet remains common” and “all too seldom refuted”. I quite frequently reference on bullshit when describing that pattern of behaviour but it doesn’t seem necessary to explicitly use the word ‘bullshit’ every single time. In fact I try to make myself use natural language descriptions like this rather than using bullshit every time because that habit would just get weird.
This is false. Eugine_Nier has presented approximately the same straw man previously and it was false then too. I conclude that he has little interest in making his accusations match reality.
I did engage, and that was a mistake. Like other users have mentioned in the past I now must concur that Eugine_Nier is systematically incapable of engaging in good-faith conversation. I will henceforth refrain from communicating with Eugine_Nier except when I deem it necessary to lend support to another user I perceive to be mistreated (via straw man barrages and the like). Apart from such cases I will limit myself to downvoting as appropriate then ignoring.
Ohh, another good example of filtering, prophesies.
That would be a much more convincing example about cults in general if it weren’t about a failed dead cult. EDIT: I would add that successful cults tend to spend time and energy minimizing and explaining away failed prophecies rather than being happy to spiral into a tiny core of believers & no one else; Jehovah’s Witnesses spend little time discussing failed predictions by the Watchtower, and Christian theologians for millennia have been explaining away things like Jesus’s prophecy that the apocalypse would come within a generation of him.
BTW, if you are interested in cults, you should really read the book When Prophecy Fails (it’s on Libgen, so no excuses!) - you’ll find it doesn’t match your ideas about cults, but matches the academic literature described in OP, with regard to very low retention rates, minimal efficacy of recruitment, and the cult adding value to retained members’ lives.
Very few cults are as successful as Jehovah’s Witnesses or the like. Your typical cult is something fairly small, a congregation around one or a few literally insane persons which are indulging in short sighted self gratification such as convincing oneself that god speaks to them, or at times, around a person initially out for easy money (e.g. Keith Raniere). Said people need a certain number of close admirers. The danger, likewise, is not in the successes but in failure modes that infrequently include mass murder, and much more frequently include e.g. sexual abuse of minors, consequences to the member’s health, and so on.
The median cult may be small, but the median cult quickly dies. Why does this matter? If you were to apply your argument that cults are not intended to grow to, say, businesses, wouldn’t it look completely ridiculous?
‘Very few corporations are as successful as Microsoft. Your typical corporation is something fairly small, a group of one or two literally insanely optimistic entrepreneurs who are indulging in short-sighted egotistic expenditures such as the delusional belief that what the market needs is another Facebook clone, or at times, around a successful marketer out for easy money (e.g. Peter Pham). Said people need a certain number of close employees. Businesses are not intended to be successful or grow and make money, just keep loyal employees for the founder’s gratification. The danger, likewise, is not in the successes but in failure modes that infrequently include mass murder like the Bhopal incident, and much more frequently include e.g. sexual abuse of minors, consequences to the customer’s health, and so on.’
As I already said, cults die at such high rates that your theory is impossible because it presupposes utterly self-defeating behavior and is inconsistent with the behavior of successful cults.
I’d say vast majority of start-ups are founded by people with some head issues in the direction of narcissism. Who may well be in some abstract sense intending to succeed, but to get from intent to succeed to actions takes quite a lot of intellect, which they mostly lack. Meanwhile, day to day actions are actually based on desire for self gratification (avoidance of feedback especially, things that generally make them feel well), with very short sighted planning. The end result is massive waste of human potential (of those unfortunate enough to end up in said startups), financial losses (often avoided by the narcissistic founder himself), and so on.
What? How is a theory that presupposes utterly self defeating behaviour at odds with, you know, defeat?
I’m speaking of cults in general, which as you yourself say generally die. The few highly successful cults are not particularly bad, and succeed precisely by being dramatically different from the unsuccessful cults.
I respect your bullet-biting with regard to equating startups and cults, even if I think your view is as ridiculous as it looks.
My point was that the cult death rates were similar to that of organizations which are not generally believed to be organized to gratify narcissistic leaders’ egos but make money, which would have been a counter example that refuted your argument, except you then chose to bite that bullet and argue that businesses are exactly like cults in this respect and aren’t counter-examples at all. So you’re right that that argument no longer works, but you’ve done so only by making completely absurd claims which prove too much.
If you want to argue that businesses are cults and hence the equivalent death rates are consistent with both being about leader gratification, that’s consistent. But it’s absurd and I don’t believe it for a second and I doubt anyone else will either.
From recent personal experience at a startup, I am inclined to believe the view, as it makes said experience make a lot more sense.
Your reductio ad absurdam is something I can quite easily imagine Michael Vassar saying.
I think an example about a failed dead startup is most informative about startups in general.
edit: also, on the reading list, what I expect is for my interpretation of it to be quite massively different from yours. I’d be better served by picking a reputable book about cults at random, anyway (cherry picking vs unfiltered data).
edit2: as for adding value, I’m not sure value adding cults are nearly of as much of impact-weighted interest as cults which end up in a Jonestown. Furthermore, sunk cost fallacy—like failure mode seems massively relevant to retention in cults.
What’s that? Surely if a prophecy were a useful filtering mechanism as you say, then dying is a problem. A cult which fails cannot serve anyone’s purpose at all...
Fair enough, but shouldn’t you then retract your previous claims? I mean, what with it being based on cherry picked evidence and all?
You should probably know that I consider it seriously questionable whether sunk costs affect individuals at all, then, and reject the premise of that argument, much less whether it applies to cults.