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SilasBarta comments on Build Small Skills in the Right Order - Less Wrong
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But they were finely tuned over thirty years to do precisely that second thing. The TRs are the number one way Scientology gets its hooks into people's brains and keeps them there! That's why they always try to sell people a Communications Course!
You are not explicitly recommending LW readers go skinny-dipping in a sewer - but you are functionally recommending it by talking about what a marvellously successful experience it was for you. Personal recommendation (including implicit personal recommendation) is the thing that most effectively convinces people to try something.
You went dancing in live fire and dodged a bullet, and that's excellent. Others may not be so lucky, particularly including those who are sure they could never be fooled (since such certainly has no observed correlation with a detailed working awareness of human cognitive biases).
If you can write an article that makes your point (which is a great one) without the first third of it being a story of your great personal successes with Scientology, I would urge you to do so.
Good point ... now that I think about it, I should probably stop speaking so proudly of how I tried taking up smoking to see if it could hook me and yet it didn't ...
(splutter) That's probably more hazardous than Scientology, yes.
An important thing for the strong to realise when talking about hazards is that other people may not be as strong.
Trying cigarettes is more dangerous than trying Scientology classes?
Surely more people die from it.
I don't think people become addicted by TRYING a cigarette. It takes several if not dozens or more. The physical dependence is acquired and comes by degrees.
People don't typically get trapped in Scientology by trying it out either.
But if you try a cigarette there's some risk you'll want to smoke another and then another.
I'm confident smoking is a bigger danger to me than Scientology.
Agreed. I just sounded like this discussion was trending into hyperbole about the dangers of smoking.
More reliably addictive, I expect. I must admit I don't know of any comparative studies.
Mind you, Scientologists notoriously smoke like chimneys. Because not smoking enough will cause lung cancer. Hey, you could always bum a smoke from Ron.
For a proper comparison, you wouldn't just consider addictiveness, but also the harm resulting from becoming addicted. It's not obvious to me which does more expected lifetime damage to you.
Cigarettes (chain smoker): Spend a lot of your money, become uglier and smellier, get excluded from lots of places, lose health while alive and die earlier, lose some connection to family and friends
Scientology: Spend a lot of your money (probably more than a chain smoker on cigarettes), eviscerate your thinking ability, lose most connection to family and friends outside of Scientology.
Is the health hit worse than the mind hit? I really don't know.
With Scientology, there's a bit more of a lottery effect: if you lose, you can lose big. Cigarettes are more gradually hazardous (with a bit of a lottery effect).
If you had to choose to be one or the other which would it be?
Well, I already know far too much about Scientology, to the point where I used so much of the jargon that an ex-Scientologist on IRC many years ago refused to believe I wasn't an ex-member ... and I used to smoke (and still tend to bum cigs when sufficiently drunk). So the actual answer appears to be "both", though more the cigarettes.