You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Eugine_Nier comments on Notes on Brainwashing & 'Cults' - Less Wrong Discussion

35 Post author: gwern 13 September 2013 08:49PM

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

Comments (101)

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

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 September 2013 03:29:46PM 6 points [-]

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.