No, Rationalism Is Not a Cult
19James Camacho
16DirectedEvolution
7Viliam
2DirectedEvolution
4Viliam
4DirectedEvolution
6Elizabeth
4DirectedEvolution
13Hastings
13Elizabeth
2Hastings
12the gears to ascension
2mako yass
11rosalie
2Viliam
4the gears to ascension
10Brendan Long
8Signer
New Comment
Spend ~5 minutes on the r/exmormon or r/exmuslim subreddits, and you'll find most people leaving those religions consider them cults. Spend ~5 hours in a Mormon church or Muslim mosque, and most people not born into those religions will consider them cults. My guess is:
- You only have an outside perspective on Mormons/Muslims. You don't understand why they do what they do, or why they believe what they do, but the actions you do see seem mostly fine. Maybe a few quirks here and there, but they're mostly happy, good people.
- Also, you're working under a different definition of cult. Which is strange, because even according to your definition, Mormons/Muslims should be more culty than other groups, which means you should probably trust their understanding of what constitutes a cult better than your own.
If your argument is, "from an inside perspective, Rationalism doesn't seem like a cult," then you're proving way too much. From an inside perspective, every Mormon believes they are not part of a cult:
- Absolute authoritarianism without accountability? No, we have votes of confidence every year and can tell our leaders privately when we have problems.
- Zero tolerance for criticism or questions? We love asking questions. We even have a guide for our youth to ask questions and come up with their own answers.
- Lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget? Okay, we haven't always been great about this, but it's because we were embarrassingly in debt for ~50 years. We do at least have an internal audit every year to confirm things look good, and we disclose how much we donate.
- Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions? Our fears aren't unreasonable. Just look at the Missouri Extermination Order, or the Utah War. People outside of our community have, historically, been out to get us, and using the powers of the state to systematically dismantle our religion. Things have certainly calmed down in the last 100 years, and with a 90% representation in our state of
DeseretUtah we don't really fear the government so much, but there's still lots of people out there trying to trick us into leaving the religion. Just look at how many people get led astray every year and fall away from The Church™ - A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving and there is never a legitimate reason for anyone else to leave? Um... yeah? That's because we have the truth. If it's true, you shouldn't have a legitimate reason to leave. Every other religion believes this too, even those queer woke scientists, they're just less willing to proclaim it to the world. Probably because they only have a part of the truth.
- Abuse of members? We don't want abuse any more than any other group, and we do much better than the general population.
- Records, books, articles, or programs documenting the abuses of the leader or group? Maybe way back in the 1850s there was some questionable history, but (1) things were different back then, and (2) we're different now. If we judged every group older than a hundred years through a presentist lens, every group would fail the test.
- Followers feeling they are never able to be “good enough”? Everyone knows we're imperfect, but that's the beauty of Jesus' Atonement. Honestly, I'd be scared of an ideology that teaches its members they are "good enough" or they can do no wrong. Look at how kids coming out of that parenting environment end up: belligerent, stupid, addicted to drugs, and living in their parents' basement at thirty.
- A belief that the leader is right at all times? Definitely not true. We acknowledge all the time that prophets have made mistakes (in both the Old Testament and modern times). Now, it may take a few decades to figure out when they're making a mistake, so we usually assume the current leader is speaking-as-god-not-as-a-man, but there are plenty of weirdos even within the church who are willing to contradict the prophets.
- A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or giving validation? Nah, we can all get personal revelation.
I think you could argue that Mormonism fits maybe one or two of these cult warning signs, but I'm pretty sure every group hits one or two. Heck, your company probably hits more than Mormonism.
I believe that there are four main strategies groups use to respond to accusations of being a cult: defense, offense, assimilation, and acceptance. This article is representative of the typical rationalist strategy of mounting an intellectual defense. Religious and ethnic groups tend to assimilate or play offense. Nonthreatening but unusual hobbyist, spiritual, or community groups often jokingly pretend to accept, or at least entertain, the accusation.
It seems to me that a defensive strategy is often what genuinely threatening groups often use to justify their existence. They may claim that technically, the group doesn't fit the characteristics of a cult, or that technically some other group that is an accepted part of society does fit the characteristics of a cult, and therefore that society, by its own standards, must accept the group. But this is false! Society doesn't have to use this standard, and often doesn't. It comes across as trying to undermine the often unspoken norms of the society, make them legible so the group can manipulate them in order to achieve its ends. That feels threatening. Multi-level marketing schemes try to frame themselves as technically legitimate businesses. Right-wing extremists try to frame themselves as legitimate well-organized militias. White nationalists and neo-Nazis try to frame themselves as ordinary ethnic and cultural groups. And rationalists try to frame themselves as ordinary community associations. This pattern-matching, I claim, is part of why rationalists are so vulnerable to cult accusations.
Compounding this is what rationalists do take offense at. Rationalists don't take offense at being called cults. They did take offense at having the real name of one of their community leaders revealed. That is very much the sort of thing a secret society or cult might do. If rationalists took loud offense at being insulted by "cult" accusations while also making moves to show up in wider society as well-assimilated, upstanding members of it, then over time, that would tamp down on the cult accusations. But rationalists very much don't seem to be assimilating. They incorporate seemingly every weird strain of Silicon Valley culture and don't seem to do almost anything the "normal way," from dress, to food, to housing, to relationships, to art, to conversation, to work, to politics.
So no assimilation, not taking offense at being called cults, not accepting the cult accusation lightheartedly, just mounting intellectual defenses against meeting some self-chosen technical criteria of what it means to be a "cult." Sounds like the kind of thing a cult might do, in order to attract more of the kind of people who buy into this way of thinking and isolate them from the rest of society through an indoctrination into their weird culture!
Having some affinity for rationalism, I think I understand why rationalists do this. They've had a history of, inconsistently, rejecting what they call the Dark Arts and "asymmetric weapons," and trying to stick with a facts-and-logic approach to every debate. Focusing on a strategy based on intellectual defense is in line with that. It suits the self-chosen morality of rationalists. But sticking to that so consistently is, again, a refusal to assimilate. So I think that as long as rationalists persist in this strategy, so long will they be perceived as a cult.
This sounds like damned if you do, damned if you don't. If someone accuses you of being a cult, saying that you are not is exactly what a cult would do. But it's not like saying nothing will clear the accusation either.
Actually, saying that you are not a cult is not what an actual cult would do. An actual cult would attack the accuser (like physically, not like "tweet a disagreement"), and redirect the debate to "freedom of religion".
Is anyone defending the rationality community by some kind of argument that pattern-matches "we are the good/holy guys, therefore criticizing us for anything (whether truthfully or not) is inherently evil"? I am not aware of anything like this. Are people taking personal revenge against David Gerard or Cade Metz (other than complaining online about their behavior)? Again, I am unaware of that.
Less importantly, I don't believe that "accepting the cult accusation lightheartedly" would work. I am not even sure it ever worked for anyone. Do you have some good examples?
I articulate a fake framework for thinking about strategies by which groups can fight for status as a legitimate culture-in-good-standing. This fight is a long-term struggle, not a guaranteed victory or defeat. Groups are always damned by many, but can aim to be damned by fewer over the long run by being organized and strategic about how they respond to criticism.
Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
For example, to assimilate, Mormons dropped polygamy and repudiated violent behavior of people who claim to be Mormons in the strongest terms, now frame themselves as Christians or the Church of Latter-day Saints (or LDS) rather than the more loaded “Mormon.” In fact, the Mormon at my PhD program just refers to “his church” without even mentioning LDS. They also take offense with public media for misrepresenting their faith or their current stance on the problems in the religion’s past, which they acknowledge and condemn. They don’t try to explain why they’re different from a cult according to a list of abstract criteria, the way OP is doing here.
Being lighthearted is not a suitable strategy for a group that is being subjected to serious sustained cult accusations. It’s a strategy for small odd and harmless groups to acknowledge their difference from the broader culture, creating space for a person who feels a momentary question or discomfort to bring it up, and then move on. It’s what to do for small new-age meditative communities, the Odd Fellows, etc.
If rationalists wanted to adopt a Mormon-like strategy, they’d need to define what are the core values of a rationalist. They’d need a formal leadership that can interact with media and pre-emptivey sanction subgroups and individuals who give rationalism a bad name. They'd need to make visible demonstrations of assimilation. And they’d need to demand respect and take offense at disrespect, insisting on being viewed as a positive cultural and community association. That’s very far from rationalist trends, and I don’t expect it will happen. But I do think it’s the strategy that every long-lived religion and major cultural group lands on.
Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
I like this summary!
Just a quick idea, I think a nice way to contact the outside culture without compromising on anything could be to organize public lectures or workshops. Kinda like the existing workshops for the mathematically gifted kids or wannabe bloggers, only they should be short (like, one afternoon) and instead of inviting people to our "walled compound" they should be on a neutral territory that feels safe (maybe even offer to organize the workshop in a local school). Possible topics: mathematics, statistics, computer science, learning in general, critical thinking, blogging. Too bad I am not in America, I would quite enjoy doing something like that, and I am not doing anything important that this would distract me from. This could help create public perception of our community as "harmless nerds".
Ironically, one thing that might help would be to somehow make the membership explicit. Without explicit membership, you cannot exclude people (such as Zizians or SBF), so people can argue that they belong to us, and there is no way to prove the opposite. Mormons can say "this is not one of us" when he is not, and they can kick someone problematic out when he is. Or maybe rationality is too nebulous word, so we could instead talk about e.g. "Less Wrong community membership". It's like the orthogonality thesis: whether someone is good at Bayesian updating, and whether someone is a decent person, are two independent things -- we should try to find the people in the intersection.
I wonder (but this would be a longer debate) if we could have some kind of "web of trust", where individual rationalists could specify how much they trust someone to be a nice and reasonable person; the system would calculate the score in some way, and you need to exceed some threshold to be accepted. If you turn out to be a scammer or a serial killer, everyone who vouched for you would be punished in some way (lose their right to vouch for someone, get a penalty on their own score). No idea how specifically should the math work here.
These are good ideas. I like the idea of offering tutoring or classes as a way to engage a broader community. I also think having formal orgs that interface with media and have official leaders who speak on behalf of their membership seems like a good idea. However, to work, I think these orgs are going to have to officially put the brakes on some of the divergent lifestyle choices of membership and on some of the more radical statements by rationalist figures, and it may not be compatible with the culture of rationalists to submit to constraining, assimilative norms in that way.
The web of trust is also something I’ve wanted for the world of science. The way I picture it is that you need a way to subscribe to other people or organizations whose judgments you trust. Each participant can privately rate their trust level in other participants. The trust level they observe reflects the aggregate trust levels of the participants they subscribe to. Would love to see such a technology.
They may claim that technically, the group doesn't fit the characteristics of a cult, or that technically some other group that is an accepted part of society does fit the characteristics of a cult, and therefore that society, by its own standards, must accept the group. But this is false! Society doesn't have to use this standard, and often doesn't. It comes across as trying to undermine the often unspoken norms of the society, make them legible so the group can manipulate them in order to achieve its ends. That feels threatening.
I think this is both an important point and proves too much. I'm interested in a discussion harms-of-cults or (not of cults) rationalism might be producing, but I can't get invested in the opinion of a guy who thinks a three story building is inherently ominous.
That’s an entirely valid interest. One point I want to make is that when people spin a narrative accusing a group of being a cult, the points of evidence they raise are often post-hoc rationalizations rather than true reports on how they concluded the group was a cult. In this case, I doubt the guy truly finds the building is ominous, any more than I find pictures of the art in Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion ominous. They take on an ominous feeing because of prior assumptions about the group that are being mapped on to things associated with it.
This matters because it’s important to accurately distinguish the real evidence someone’s drawing on to form their conclusion that a group is a cult from the narrative they’re spinning to make an accusation or insult. In this case, the quip about the building is the insult, not the evidence. It’s still fine to not take the insult seriously. But usually we evaluate people’s evidence and reasoning process to decide whether to take them seriously. In this case, we’d want to know how the guy truly first came to the conclusion that rationalism was a cult. Maybe he heard a bunch of stories about the Zizians and was exposed to some salacious Metz quotes of Scott’s writing and Tyler Cowen’s quotes of Eliezer. Maybe he heard from his friend they’re a cult and saw some weirdly dressed people going to a party and heard about Aella doing sex work to pay for IVF. Or maybe he applied the cult criteria differently than OP here and decided the rationalists fit the bill. Some reasons may be good, others bad, but in any case, this is where I’d look to decide whether to take him seriously. If I just wanted to defend rationalism I’d say “this guy is a bigot, a rationalist-phobe, and a hypocrite. He should be ashamed of himself. Would he talk this way about a religious community or an ethnic group or a hobby community? No? Then what makes it OK to talk about us this way? It’s unacceptable.” Etc.
This feels like a bit of a straw man. Rationalism isn’t a cult, but it spawns cults- and they tend to make the evening news. I think the cause and effect is a bit backwards- my pet opinion is that rationalism is a particularly effective tool for escaping cults, and so rationalist spaces are full of ex-cult members, who despite their newfound anti-cult tools, tend to relapse- but the rationalism cult correlation is there
my usual comment to people who say rationalism is a cult is to say, nah it's a secular "religion"[1] that has spawned cults. several of them. it's a problem. but comparing on the merits of leaveability and relationship to people who stopped chilling with rat folks, and lack of central command structure, vigorous and constant pushback against anyone who looks leader-ish, it's less severe than some groups I've encountered. definitely not zero worrying features. definitely concerning how obsessed rationalists are with proving it's neither a cult nor a religion. maybe if the ones who are bothered about that could take a sober look at how it's spawned cults they'd be a bit less insufferable about it.
a point I most often make to people, rationalists or randos online, who are giggling about starting a cult: nah cult abuses are always bad and they're easy to start doing. be aware of what they are and put effort into undoing them; the things you think you like about cults, spirituality and religiousness and friend groups or whatever, fine do those, humans like those, but don't do the things that make something a cult rather than a new age religion. make real damn sure you don't replace your ability to "touch grass" and see reality and shit like that, don't start following a leader without exception handlers for if that leader tells you to do dangerous stuff. if they try to isolate you or convince you to do dangerous things without thinking them through, or with thinking them through but they are the authority on what's true about a large part of the thing, that's a really bad sign and you should get some space with people who don't agree with the authority, and are socially far away, to at least see what they think. of course sometimes they'll be in a conflicting memeplex, that's the point, but it also means don't take their word as law either. you have to actually, you know, do your own thing.
- ^
sort of, still less totalizing than the religion I grew up with in terms of behavior prescriptions
(Agreed)
A good definition of religion is Harari's "an idea that supports social harmony", it explains why religions often become monotheistic/totalizing; new ideas that promote new kinds of social order may threaten an existing social order, it also explains why a religion doesn't need to become totalizing; many organising principles are orthogonal or symbiotic, for instance, bayesianism partly resolves the long perceived tension between rationalism-classic (the principle that people should sometimes action novel arguments) and empiricism (the principle that people should go out and check things before acting) (it does this by explaining how to appraise complicated arguments about the balance of evidence), it (via FDT) also supports a synthesis of consequentialist individualism and kantianism (explaining that it can be egoistically rational to be the kind of person who would conform with moral policies even in situations where the immediate consequences don't benefit them), to some extent it even rescues healthy forms of woo by telling us when it's okay (or not) to follow the advice of heuristics or approximations.
Although I'd say bayratism is only a 7 on the religiousity scale due to its consequentialist origins underpreparing it to build the kind of accountability mechanisms that could ever make a religious community actually support coordination/being more moral. It loves its illegible contrarians too much. I'm not sure what to do about that.
With all due respect, this post reads as, “The lady doth protest too much.” It looks like you’ve dedicated this post to absolutely, comprehensively dismantling any notion that your community has anything to do with cults — with a religious fervour, almost. :)
But do you think there’s any merit to the argument that your community has some cult-like aspects to it?
I suspect that it would have been easier for me to take your post in good faith, if you’d been, like, “Yeah. We definitely have some problems and norms that are worrisome. We should probably examine those things. I can see how someone would make that connection, even if I don’t think that we’re a full-blown cult.”
It’s not like Cade is the only person who’s ever critiqued the rationalists on this subject. I’ve spent some time in Berkeley and I’ve certainly thought about how some of the stuff is cult-y; and I’ve talked to other people about it, who agree.
(I made my account to leave this comment, but I’m engaging in good faith; I’m not a troll.)
1I agree that we should discuss the specific problems.
I would even approve of writing some kind of resource on "bad things that happened in the rationalist community". It should be mandatory reading for new members.
On the other hand, the fact that your comment is upvoted here... is not something you would expect from a typical cult, would you?
On the other hand, the fact that your comment is upvoted here... is not something you would expect from a typical cult, would you?
maybe not as often, but could still be "Ooh, someone who doesn't like the cult! better show them we're Normal!", not to mention "hey, look, we're not a cult, see? we upvoted you!" Traditional hardcore cults would definitely have difficulty doing it, but medium-strength cults like the religion I grew up with explicitly tell evangelists to listen to people's doubts, while never holding any doubts oneself. there are still ways for permitting doubt to be turned into a tool of control.
There are usually not simple and reliable ways to tell that something isn't bad. they're either simple or reliable. Usually people err on the side of simple and classify some things as bad that aren't necessarily but which are hard to confirm as being not bad, so as to not risk get screwed over by mistakes in complex is-it-bad-or-not rules. Eg, "don't talk to strangers on the street unsupervised" is common (generally good!) advice for kids, and it excludes talking to the majority of actually pretty nice people so as to not get screwed over by less-but-still-plenty-common dangerous people.
It should be mandatory reading for new members.
I don't think having explicit membership that makes a mandatory reading moment possible is itself a good idea.
I do think a community having a warnings doc is good and that people who encounter the community can inform themselves about what kind of danger or annoyance or etc the community is likely to produce is familiar and avoidable. Though if your list of warnings is incomplete, it can produce a false sense of security in readers. If it's complete and accurate, it can become a target of attacks by the people it's trying to contain, which they sometimes succeed at, at least partially. And if it contains mistakes, people can even have legitimate issues with it. Eg, malicious folk love to try to get in a position where they can add people to a warnings list like that, so it can even become a tool of control itself.
Still seems like a good idea, that's why I comment places like this to point out things are not fine, but requires having a good sense of the landscape of attacks.
If you’re standing outside a walled compound, it can be hard to tell whether the people inside are part of a wholesome community or a cult.
It's probably also worth mentioning that Lighthaven is a conference venue, not a place people typically live long-term. If we all lived there it would definitely be a step or two up on the cultiness scale.
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