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E_Ransom comments on Open thread, 7-14 July 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The simplest explanation I can see: I'm pretty sure the writers who coined some of the memes you reference (i.e. "Bayesian Conspiracy," "higher gate") were drawing on those very same occult traditions for affect and flair. The parallels are analogy because analogy is useful. Which brings up a question: I'm curious what you mean by "useful"? Useful as teaching analogies or useful as sources of structure and methodology? Or something else?
I'm pretty sure this is false, except insofar as some of the style of Western ceremonial magic has seeped into pop-cultural ideas of how conspiracies and secret teachings work. There isn't much overlap in doctrine, terminology, or practice other than what you'd expect from two different groups that've spent a lot of time thinking about how to cause change in accordance with will (which we call "instrumental rationality" and they call "magic").
There are people willing to run through the entire rigamarole of the Golden Dawn initiation rituals, and all associated memorization, without any significant evidence that any of the supposed magic has any effect on the real world. How much more motivation could be created using a similar process, but which can be demonstrated to be linked to how the universe actually works?
I do not know. A comparative study would help.
Some of my central questions: Would such methods prove effective with subjects whose drive to join is a desire to question and improve upon methods? If such methods led them to discover effective facts that can optimize efforts in the real world (rather than a "magic" used mainly for interpersonal signalling), then wouldn't secrecy be self-defeating? After all, the subjects are being linked to the underlying laws of the universe. To expect them not to apply those laws in their public life, and, if altruistic, to share such discoveries, is a fact hard for me to accept.
Certainly, I find the drama and seriousness of such an idea exciting. It lends a nice, hefty weight to learning that the task should possess. Secret knowledge is appetizing, so it makes sense to want that knowledge to be useful rather than just a pageant show. The problem comes with the fact that secret knowledge that is entangled in the real world is not really secret. It's real. We're only pretending to keep it secret when really the answer is, literally, the nose in front of our face.
It's like the adage "homeopathic medicine that worked would be called 'medicine.'" Secret knowledge that is true is knowledge, plain and simple. It only takes one genius kid riding a train with a stopwatch and a mirror to discover relativity. Then the secret's out and, probably, being used to produce terrible ads for the sides of trains.