Today's post, Cultish Countercultishness was originally published on 30 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People often nervously ask, "This isn't a cult, is it?" when encountering a group that thinks something weird. There are many reasons why this question doesn't make sense. For one thing, if you really were a member of a cult, you would not say so. Instead, what you should do when considering whether or not to join a group, is consider the details of the group itself. Is their reasoning sound? Do they do awful things to their members?

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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was To Lead, You Must Stand Up, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

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