pnrjulius comments on Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 December 2007 03:04AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (31)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Matt_Heath 12 December 2007 12:43:23PM 1 point [-]

The I found the main points of the article interesting and fairly convincing but you seem to over-correct for correspondence bias when you say "If the allegations about Wikipedia are true, they're explained by ordinary human nature, not by extraordinary human nature". Even if normal human behaviour leads to cultishness, why assume that individual psychological quirks didn't have a relevant effect in a specific case?

Comment author: pnrjulius 20 April 2012 01:49:19PM 1 point [-]

It's certainly possible to overcompensate for the fundamental attribution error.

This is what I think happens when people say things like "Stalin was just a product of his circumstances." No, he was a manipulative, sadistic psychopath; his circumstances are what made him a world leader and mass murderer instead of a corrupt banker or serial killer.

But in this case, I do think that the admins of Wikipedia are humans of at least normal---if not in fact above-average---moral character, falling prey to their circumstances. Their behavior does not seem SO extreme, SO cruel, that it can't be fit with what we know about normal human beings.