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Antonio comments on Cultish Countercultishness - Less Wrong
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Comments (27)
This is a truly excellent post, thanks very much. My mind was leaping ahead to the last paragraph but three long before I got there.
You think it could be a cult? Put aside for a moment the question of whether or not their Big Idea is the real thing. Are they acting in a requisitely rational manner? If so, by all means put on a robe. If not, smile and back away.
To that end, does anyone have an example of some followers of an Irrational Big Idea conducting their society/group in a comparatively rational/non-cultish manner (aside from that belief)? If there's no cult-essence that comes with Faith-In-Big-Idea, there must be a couple of notables. (And no, you get no points for any of; Singularity, Transhumanism, Life Extension or Head-Freezing!)
I know this one is very old, but it deserves an answer. Yes. Frenology. Some time ago, a bit before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, some fisiologists noticed that regular use of specific parts of the brain leads to a change (swelling, I think) of that part. A dead pianist would have a huger part associated with manual dexterity and rithm, for example. They also believed this change in the cerebral tissue was enough to affect the skull, so that they could tell a person's personality/habilities/preferences/etc by measuring the relative size of parts of their skulls.
And they were, as far as I know, very rational about it. Their experiments and bookkeeping are actually examples of excelence in those areas. It's just that the base theory was rubbish.