Running a cult is a somewhat reliable source of narcissistic supply. The internet tells you how to do it. So an increasing number of people do it.
by linohh 6 minutes ago
astronauts_meme.jpg
by optimalsolver 7 minutes ago
Mage: The Ascension is basically a delusions of grandeur simulator, so I can see how an already unstable personality might get attached to it and become more unstable.
by TimorousBestie 6 minutes ago
I don't know, i'd understand something like Wraith (which I did see people developing issues, the shadow mechanic is such a terrible thing) but Mage is so, like, straightforward?
Use your mind to control reality, reality fights back with paradox, its cool for a teenager but you read a bit more fantasy and you'll definitely find cooler stuff. But i guess for you to join a cult your mind must stay a teen mind forever. by mlinhares 2 minutes ago
Rationalism is the belief that reason is the primary path to knowledge, as opposed to, say, the observation that is championed by empiricism. It's a belief system that prioritises imposing its tenets on reality rather than asking reality what reality's tenets are. From the outset, it's inherently cult-like.
by cjs_ac 0 minutes ago
I keep thinking about the first Avengers movie, when Loki is standing above everyone going "See, is this not your natural state?". There's some perverse security in not getting a choice, and these rationalist frameworks, based in logic, can lead in all kinds of crazy arbitrary directions - powered by nothing more than a refusal to suffer any kind of ambiguity.
by bobson381 7 minutes ago
Perhaps I will get downvoted to death again for saying so, but the obvious answer is because the name "rationalist" is structurally indistinguishable from the name "scientology" or "the illuminati". You attract people who are desperate for an authority to appeal to, but for whatever reason are no longer affiliated with the church of their youth. Even a rationalist movement which held nothing as dogma would attract people seeking dogma, and dogma would form.
The article begins by saying the rationalist community was "drawn together by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog post series The Sequences". Obviously the article intends to make the case that this is a cult, but it's already done with the argument at this point. by noqc 4 minutes ago
Thinking too hard about anything will drive you insane but I think the real issue here is that rationalists simply over-estimate both the power of rational thought and their ability to do it. If you think of people who tend to make that kind of mistake you can see how you get a lot of crazy groups.
I guess I'm a radical skeptic, secular humanist, utilitarianish sort of guy, but I'm not dumb enough to think throwing around the words "bayesian prior" and "posterior distribution" makes actually figuring out how something works or predicting the outcome of an intervention easy or certain. I've had a lot of life at this point and gotten to some level of mastery at a few things and my main conclusion is that most of the time its just hard to know stuff and that the single most common cognitive mistake people make is too much certainty. by nathan_compton 5 minutes ago
We live in an irrational time. It's unclear if it was simply under reported in history or social changes in the last ~50-75 years have had breaking consequences.
People are trying to make sense of this. For examples.
The Canadian government heavily subsidizes junk food, then spends heavily on healthcare because of the resulting illnesses. It restrict and limits healthy food through supply management and promotes a “food pyramid” favoring domestic unhealthy food. Meanwhile, it spends billions marketing healthy living, yet fines people up to $25,000 for hiking in forests and zones cities so driving is nearly mandatory.
Government is an easy target for irrational behaviours. by incomingpain 4 minutes ago
Pertinent Twitter comment:
"Rationalism is such an insane name for a school of thought. Like calling your ideology correctism or winsargumentism"
https://x.com/growing_daniel/status/1893554844725616666 by optimalsolver 10 minutes ago
Are you using that one?
by nyeah 0 minutes ago
See also Rational Magic: Why a Silicon Valley culture that was once obsessed with reason is going woo (2023)
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/rational-magic
and its discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961817 by amiga386 9 minutes ago
It’s especially popular in Silicon Valley.
Quite possibly, places like Reddit and Hacker News, are training for the required level of intellectual smugness, and certitude that you can dismiss every annoying argument with a logical fallacy.
That sounds smug of me, but I’m actually serious. One of their defects, is that once you memorize all the fallacies (“Appeal to authority,” “Ad hominem,”) you can easily reach the point where you more easily recognize the fallacies in everyone else’s arguments more than your own. It’s a fast path from there to perceived intellectual superiority, and an even faster path from there into delusion. by gjsman-1000 7 minutes ago
Reminds me somewhat of the Culte de la Raison (Cult of Reason) birthed by the french revolution. It didn't last long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason by thrance 9 minutes ago
Why are there so many cults? People want to feel like they belong to something, and in a world in the midst of a loneliness and isolation epidemic the market conditions are ideal for cults.
by api 10 minutes ago
What an American thing to do. Take ideas for living and thinking better and over apply them into a twisted dogma that you then try to force the rest of the population to adopt.
Rationalist cults sound like a new MBA pathway. by righthand 5 minutes ago
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by throwaway984393 1 minute ago
What the actual f. This is such an insane thing to read and understand what it means that i might need to go and sit in silence for the rest of the day.
How did we get to this place with people going completely nuts like this? by mlinhares 9 minutes ago