I agree wholeheartedly, you beautifully managed to capture my feelings of unease. By targeting socially awkward nerds (such as me, I confess) it becomes unclear whether the popularity of LW among intellectuals (e.g. university students, I am looking for a better word than ‘intellectuals’ but fail to find anything) is due to genuine content or due to a clever approach to a vulnerable audience.
I have been contemplating this point. One of the things that sets off red flags for people outside a group is when people in the group appear to have cut’n’pasted the leader’s opinions into their heads. And that’s definitely something that happens around LW.
Note that this does not require malice or even intent on the part of said leader! It’s something happening in the heads of the recipients. But the leader needs to be aware of it—it’s part of the cult attractor, selecting for people looking for stuff to cut’n’paste into their heads.
I know this one because the loved one is pursuing ordination in the Church of England … and basically has this superpower: convincing people of pretty much anything. To the point where they’ll walk out saying “You know, black really is white, when you really think about it …” then assume that that is their own conclusion that they came to themselves, when it’s really obvious they cut’n’pasted it in. (These are people of normal intelligence, being a bit too easily convinced by a skilled and sincere arguer … but loved one does pretty well on the smart ones too.)
As I said to them, “The only reason you’re not L. Ron Hubbard is that you don’t want to be. You’d better hope that’s enough.”
Edit: The tell is not just cut’n’pasting the substance of the opinions, but the word-for-word phrasing.
I have been contemplating this point. One of the things that sets off red flags for people outside a group is when people in the group appear to have cut’n’pasted the leader’s opinions into their heads. And that’s definitely something that happens around LW.
The failure mode might be that it’s not obvious that an autodidact who spent a decade absorbing relevant academic literature will have a very different expressive range than another autodidact who spent a couple months reading the writings of the first autodidact. It’s not hard to get into the social slot of a clever outsider because the threshold for cleverness for outsiders isn’t very high.
The business of getting a real PhD is pretty good at making it clear to most people that becoming an expert takes dedication and work. Internet forums have no formal accreditation, so there’s no easy way to distinguish between “could probably write a passable freshman term paper” knowledgeable and “could take some months off and write a solid PhD thesis” knowledgeable, and it’s too easy for people in the first category to be unaware how far they are from the second category.
I have been contemplating this point. One of the things that sets off red flags for people outside a group is when people in the group appear to have cut’n’pasted the leader’s opinions into their heads. And that’s definitely something that happens around LW.
I don’t know. On the one hand side, that’s how you would expect it to look if the leader is right. On the other hand, “cult leader is right” is also how I would expect it to feel if cult leader was merely persuasive. On the third hand side, I don’t feel like I absorbed lots of novel things from cult leader, but mostly concretified notions and better terms for ideas I’d held already, and I remember many Sequences posts having a critical comment at the top.
A further good sign is that the Sequences are mostly retellings of existing literature. It doesn’t really match the “crazy ideas held for ingroup status” profile of cultishness.
The cut’n’paste not merely of the opinions, but of the phrasing is the tell that this is undigested. Possibly this could be explained by complete correctness with literary brilliance, but we’re talking about one-draft daily blog posts here.
I have been contemplating this point. One of the things that sets off red flags for people outside a group is when people in the group appear to have cut’n’pasted the leader’s opinions into their heads. And that’s definitely something that happens around LW.
Note that this does not require malice or even intent on the part of said leader! It’s something happening in the heads of the recipients. But the leader needs to be aware of it—it’s part of the cult attractor, selecting for people looking for stuff to cut’n’paste into their heads.
I know this one because the loved one is pursuing ordination in the Church of England … and basically has this superpower: convincing people of pretty much anything. To the point where they’ll walk out saying “You know, black really is white, when you really think about it …” then assume that that is their own conclusion that they came to themselves, when it’s really obvious they cut’n’pasted it in. (These are people of normal intelligence, being a bit too easily convinced by a skilled and sincere arguer … but loved one does pretty well on the smart ones too.)
As I said to them, “The only reason you’re not L. Ron Hubbard is that you don’t want to be. You’d better hope that’s enough.”
Edit: The tell is not just cut’n’pasting the substance of the opinions, but the word-for-word phrasing.
The failure mode might be that it’s not obvious that an autodidact who spent a decade absorbing relevant academic literature will have a very different expressive range than another autodidact who spent a couple months reading the writings of the first autodidact. It’s not hard to get into the social slot of a clever outsider because the threshold for cleverness for outsiders isn’t very high.
The business of getting a real PhD is pretty good at making it clear to most people that becoming an expert takes dedication and work. Internet forums have no formal accreditation, so there’s no easy way to distinguish between “could probably write a passable freshman term paper” knowledgeable and “could take some months off and write a solid PhD thesis” knowledgeable, and it’s too easy for people in the first category to be unaware how far they are from the second category.
I don’t know. On the one hand side, that’s how you would expect it to look if the leader is right. On the other hand, “cult leader is right” is also how I would expect it to feel if cult leader was merely persuasive. On the third hand side, I don’t feel like I absorbed lots of novel things from cult leader, but mostly concretified notions and better terms for ideas I’d held already, and I remember many Sequences posts having a critical comment at the top.
A further good sign is that the Sequences are mostly retellings of existing literature. It doesn’t really match the “crazy ideas held for ingroup status” profile of cultishness.
The cut’n’paste not merely of the opinions, but of the phrasing is the tell that this is undigested. Possibly this could be explained by complete correctness with literary brilliance, but we’re talking about one-draft daily blog posts here.
I feel like charitably, another explanation would just be that it’s simply a better phrasing than people come up with on their own.
So? Fast doesn’t imply bad. Quite the opposite, fast-work-with-short-feedback-cycle is one of the best ways to get really good.