I wonder if it would be valuable to get partway in to Scientology, then quit, just to observe the power of peer pressure, groupthink, and whatnot.
Part of scientology program involve sharing personal secrets. If you quit they can use those against you. Scientology is set up in a way that makes it hard to quit.
A lot of people still do, though. Last time I looked into this, the retention rate (reckoned between the first serious [i.e. paid] Scientology courses and active participation a couple years later) was about 10%.
It’s not a question of whether they do leave, but whether they do come out ahead.
Scientology courses aren’t cheap. If you are going to invest money into training, I would prefer to buy training from an organisation that makes leaving easy instead of making it painful.
Oh, I’m pretty confident they don’t. But if you had strong reasons for joining and leaving Scientology other than what Scientologists euphemistically call “tech”, then in the face of those base rates it seems unlikely to me that they’d manage to suck you in for real.
There are probably safer places to see groupthink in action, though.
Part of scientology program involve sharing personal secrets.
More precisely, sharing personal secrets while connected to an amateur lie detector. And the secrets are documented on paper and stored in archives of the organization. It’s optimized for blackmailing former members.
Part of scientology program involve sharing personal secrets. If you quit they can use those against you. Scientology is set up in a way that makes it hard to quit.
A lot of people still do, though. Last time I looked into this, the retention rate (reckoned between the first serious [i.e. paid] Scientology courses and active participation a couple years later) was about 10%.
It’s not a question of whether they do leave, but whether they do come out ahead.
Scientology courses aren’t cheap. If you are going to invest money into training, I would prefer to buy training from an organisation that makes leaving easy instead of making it painful.
Oh, I’m pretty confident they don’t. But if you had strong reasons for joining and leaving Scientology other than what Scientologists euphemistically call “tech”, then in the face of those base rates it seems unlikely to me that they’d manage to suck you in for real.
There are probably safer places to see groupthink in action, though.
More precisely, sharing personal secrets while connected to an amateur lie detector. And the secrets are documented on paper and stored in archives of the organization. It’s optimized for blackmailing former members.