- 7 weeks ago, I precommitted that censoring a post or comment on LessWrong would cause a 0.0001% increase in existential risk.
- Earlier today, Yudkowsky censored a post on less wrong
- 20 minutes later, existential risks increased 0.0001% (to the best of my estimation).
I would be surprised if less wrong itself ever developed fully into a cult. I'm not so sure about SIAI, but I guess it will probably just collapse at some point. LW doesn't look like a cult now. But what was Scientology like in its earliest stages?
Is there mostly a single way how groups gradually turn into cults, or does it vary a lot?
My intuition was more about Ayn Rand and objectivists than Scientology, but I don't really know much here. Anybody knows what were early objectivists like?
I didn't put much thought into this, it's just some impressions.
Yes, there is. One of the key features of cults is that they make their members sever all social ties to people outside the cult, so that they lose the safeguard of friends and family who can see what's happening and pull them out if necessary. Sci*****ogy was doing that from the very beginning, and Less Wrong has never done anything like that.