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pnrjulius comments on Two Cult Koans - Less Wrong
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I'll try to decipher the message.
If I am concerned that the group I belong to is becoming cultish, the thing to do is to ask what is a cult and what is not a cult, and see if the definition applies to your group. The second koan reminds us not to use extraneous details like uniforms. More non-cultists than cultists use uniforms. In general P(Category|Feature) != P(Feature|Category).
I THINK that's what you're saying...
Maybe... but here's the thing: Uniforms actually ARE a very cultish thing. They are one of the quantitative traits that can add up into driving you into the cult attractor. The proper rationalist response is actually "I will not wear the hat, because I don't want to and you've not given me a reason to."
The only sort of "uniform" that is rationally justifiable is something like body armor, or a hazmat suit, or a labcoat; sure, it's all the same, because it SERVES A PURPOSE---there's a reason soldiers wear Kevlar instead of tissue paper. But if you can't actually justify the uniform (like a nurse hat, or epaulettes, or the Pope's miter), then it really IS a bad sign that you are slipping into irrationality.
The line isn't nearly as crisp as you make it sound.
For example, is a nurse's uniform as "rationally justifiable" as a hazmat suit? No. But it does serve a useful purpose for nurses, in that it frequently makes patients more likely to treat them as authority figures.
Now, you might ask why patients do that, but in some sense that doesn't matter. Even if patients are irrational to do that, it is still pragmatically useful for nurses to wear the uniform if it reliably obtains that benefit.
But in fact it isn't a senseless thing for patients to do, either, in that wearing a nurse's uniform is a more costly signal if I'm not a nurse than simply saying "I'm a nurse" (since other nurses might see me wearing the uniform and punish me), and therefore more reliable than simply saying that.
More generally: uniforms are one way humans signal a certain kind of social status, and status signaling is a valuable function.
I think Tiiba2 perfectly addressed this with
It helps to have read An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem, but the short of it is this: The majority are not in cults. The minority are in cults. The minority of non-cults may wear uniforms, and the majority of cults may wear uniforms. The majority of the minority is not necessarily greater than the minority of the majority. So taking uniforms to mean cults is kind of intuitive, but not necessarily true.
If, for instance, your stamp collecting club decides they should all wear matching t-shirts at their meetings, it doesn't mean they've crossed the line into becoming a cult, just that they want to wear matching t-shirts.
It is possible that wearing uniforms not only is evidence that your group is a cult (though it might be weak evidence, as you say) but also may contribute to your group becoming a cult. I can think of at least three somewhat plausible mechanisms. (1) Having a uniform may attract people who want to be in a cult and/or scare off people who very much want not to be in one. (2) Having a uniform may foster a sense of unity and conformity that makes cultishness come more naturally. (3) Having agreed to do something silly (like wearing a uniform) may put you in a frame of mind where you're more likely to agree to other silly things the leader of the group asks you to do later.
Why are uniforms necessarily silly? Let's take military dress uniforms. In the US, you can tell a military member's rank and branch of service, and even get an idea of their service record, just by looking at their dress uniform. To insiders, this can be rapidly gleaned looking at someone from across a room. With millions of members, individuals cannot possibly be expected to know everybody else and so the uniform serves a useful function.
Wearing a uniform is not always silly; as you say, sometimes there are compelling reasons for it. However, sometimes there are no such compelling reasons, and in that case wearing a uniform is (at least prima facie) pointless. In the scenario under discussion, no reason for wearing a uniform is provided (or apparent) other than "the leader says we have to".