I don't see how environmentalism or for that matter meditation itself is creepy.

Which goes to show how far into the zeitgeist they've penetrated. Go back to the 1960s when the cult panic and popular image of cults was being set, and things were quite different. One of the papers discusses a major lawsuit accusing the Hare Krishnas of 'brainwashing' a teen girl when she ran away from home and stayed with some Krishnas; the precipitating event was her parents getting angry about her meditating in front of a little shrine, and ripping it out and burning it (and then chaining her to the toilet for a while). To people back then, 'tune in, turn on, drop out' sounds less like a life choice than a threat...

What's creepy about Hare Krishnas is the zoned out sleep deprived look on the faces (edit: I am speaking of the local ones, from experience)

Well, I can hardly argue against your anecdotal experiences.

the whole obsession with the writings of the leader thing,

Supreme Court - jurists or cultists? Film at 11. We report, you decide.

and weirdly specific rituals.

I don't even know what 'weirdly specific' would mean. Rituals are generally followed in precise detail, right down to the exact repetitive wording and special garments like Mormon underpants; that's pretty much what distinguishes rituals from normal activities. Accepting Eucharist at mass? Ritual. Filling out a form at the DMV? Not ritual.

You can go to a local Yoga class, that manages to have same number of people attending as the local Khrishna hangout, despite not trying nearly as hard to find new recruits.

Hmm, where was one to find yoga back then... Ah yes, also in cults. Ashrams in particular did a lot of yoga. Interesting that you no longer have to go to an ashram or fly to India if you want to do yoga. It's almost like... these cult activities have been somehow normalized or assimilated into the mainstream...

You can join a normal environmentalist group.

And where did these environmentalist groups come from?

For example, putting up a portrait of the founder at every workplace (or perhaps in a handbook, or the like) would be something that a cult leader would do in a cult, but what a corporation would seldom ever do because doing so would be counter-productive.

Really? That seems incredibly common. Aside from the obvious examples of many (all?) government offices like post offices including portraits of their supreme leader - I mean, President - you can also go into places like Walmart and see the manager's portrait up on the wall.

What do you think makes joining a cult worse than joining a club, getting a job, and so on?

Personally? I think it's mostly competition from the bigger cults. Just like it's hard to start up a business or nonprofit.

It may be that people's resistance to joining a group drastically increases if the group fails any one of several criteria.

Maybe, but I don't know how we'd know the difference.

The level of abuse done by bosses and cult leaders is different, so although the statement is literally true for both bosses and cult leaders, it really doesn't imply that the two situations are similar.

Is it really? Remember how many thousands of NRMs there are over the decades, and how people tend to discuss repeatedly a few salient examples like Scientology. Can we really compare that favorably regular bosses with religious figures? Aside from the Catholic Church scandal (with its counterparts among other closemouthed groups like Jewish and Amish communities), we see plenty of sexual scandals in other places like the military (the Tailhook scandal as the classic example, but there's plenty of recent statistics on sexual assault in the military, often enabled by the hierarchy).

"These family members know that I am nonreligious and aggressively proselytize because of it."

Outside view: These family members know that [diegocaleiro joined a group with weird non-mainstream religious beliefs] and [are trying to deconvert him].

That's the point. It doesn't look that way from the inside.

If someone would tell those family members that the OP cutted their family ties with them because he made a rational analysis with help from his LessWrong friends those family member might see it as an example of the evil influence that LessWrong has on people.

I don't care and I'm somewhat outraged at this distortion of reasoning. It is so obviously bad and yet remains common and is all too seldom refuted.

Sorry, exactly what is it that you're outraged about? Eugene seemed to merely be pointing out that people inside particular social groups might see things differently than people outside them, with the outsiders being creeped out and insiders not being that. More specifically, that things that we deem okay might come off as creepy to outsiders. That seems correct to me.

Emotional abuse is a sufficiently well defined thing. It is an undesirable thing.

So could you provide a definition. The article you linked to begins by saying:

As of 1996, There were "no consensus views about the definition of emotional abuse."

And then proceeds to list three categories that are sufficiently vague to include a lot of legitimate behavior.

Enduring emotional abuse rather than severing ties with the abuser because sometimes cultists sever ties while using that phrase is idiotic.

You don't seem to be getting the concept of "outside view". Think about it this way: as the example of cults shows, humans have a bias that makes them interpret Bob attempting to persuade Alice away from one's meme set as emotional abuse. Consider the possibility that you're also suffering from this bias.

I'd say vast majority of start-ups are founded by people with some head issues in the direction of narcissism...Meanwhile, day to day actions are actually based on desire for self gratification (avoidance of feedback especially, things that generally make them feel well), with very short sighted planning.

I respect your bullet-biting with regard to equating startups and cults, even if I think your view is as ridiculous as it looks.

How is a theory that presupposes utterly self defeating behaviour at odds with, you know, defeat?

My point was that the cult death rates were similar to that of organizations which are not generally believed to be organized to gratify narcissistic leaders' egos but make money, which would have been a counter example that refuted your argument, except you then chose to bite that bullet and argue that businesses are exactly like cults in this respect and aren't counter-examples at all. So you're right that that argument no longer works, but you've done so only by making completely absurd claims which prove too much.

If you want to argue that businesses are cults and hence the equivalent death rates are consistent with both being about leader gratification, that's consistent. But it's absurd and I don't believe it for a second and I doubt anyone else will either.