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

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

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Comment author: gwern 15 September 2013 06:49:15PM 2 points [-]

Kidnap a few new members from different religious organizations. (It's just an imaginary experiment.)

This is pretty similar to what the deprogrammers did. They didn't have too high success rates.

Comment author: Gabriel 15 September 2013 07:30:50PM 2 points [-]

People like to resist coercion. Reactions to being kidnapped in order to be forced to abandon the cult could be different than reactions to being kidnapped and held for a week by a mad psychologist with a mysterious agenda. Though for the agenda to be mysterious, the idea of preventing them from engaging in rituals would have to be abandoned.