Psy-Kosh comments on Two Cult Koans - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 December 2007 05:45AM

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Comment author: Benquo 21 December 2007 07:44:04AM 5 points [-]

Tiiba, do you mean to imply that if your group is cultish, the group I belong to is safe by the tu quoque principle? ;)

In all seriousness, I think the second point is a little more complicated than you described. Specifically, I think Mr. Yudkowsky is trying to point out that Bouzo had plenty of evidence more closely entangled with cult/non-cult status than whether or not they had uniforms. He had experienced Ougi's teachings directly. In the absence of that evidence, of course, the uniforms would be more important evidence.

But Mr. Yudkowski, why shouldn't we be concerned with such apparently superficial signs of cultishness? Shouldn't we -- especially the less experienced rationalists among us -- be on the lookout for objective clues to bias? After all, as has been pointed out already on Overcoming Bias, situations often look different from the inside, in ways that generate inaccuracies. (People tend to underestimate how biased their beliefs are. It's easier to show that someone's wearing uniform clothes than to show that they're wearing irrationally uniform beliefs.)