WrongBot comments on Open Thread: July 2010 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: komponisto 01 July 2010 09:20PM

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Comment author: WrongBot 02 July 2010 03:58:01PM 3 points [-]

A very brief explanation of what I mean by prior probability: I've seen people making claims of this general sort about, say, twenty different techniques/philosophies/religions. In each of those twenty cases, the claimant and all other followers of the technique/philosophy/religion in question were together part of a cult.

So, presented only with the claims you have made and based on my past experience with such claims, I perceive that is very likely that you are promoting something cult-like, given the 100% correlation I have observed in the past.

This is not really an intuition: it's a statement of probability informed by the evidence available to me at this particular point in time. I make no claims about whether or not your group is actually a cult, only that I believe it to be very likely.