seems inaccurate and a boo light
I agree. "Cult" is not a great description.
Those who successfully banned discussion of NR ideas
No one has successfully (or for that matter unsuccessfully) banned discussion of NR ideas on Less Wrong. Eugine has been banned again and again because he misbehaves again and again. advancedatheist was banned for allegedly suggesting that women should be forced to have sex with men they don't want to have sex with[1]. I can't offhand think of anyone else who has been banned lately, nor do I recall ever hearing any moderator say anything at all like "no discussion of NRx on LW".
[1] It's less than clear that that was his actual intent, but that's the reason that was given. The fact that he had a narrow range of topics that he kept going on and on and on about (and kept being downvoted heavily for it, so it's not like these were topics LW was crying out for opportunities to talk about more) presumably didn't help.
There is, and has been for some time, more discussion of NRx ideas on LW than anywhere else I know of that isn't explicitly a right-wing site.
disliked that others exposed to them found them attractive
It doesn't look to me as if NRx advocates on LW are actually getting much traction. So maybe "disliked the idea that others exposed to them might find them attractive" would be better. But actually I think what Viliam wants to avoid is having LW used for that purpose, whether or not the "cult recruiters" have any success -- the point being that being proselytized at is annoying, regardless of whether the proselytism is ever successful.
"religion I disapprove of"
Yeah, that's a common complaint. But it doesn't actually match how most people use the word "cult". Very few people would call Christianity or Islam a cult, for instance, even among those who strongly disapprove of Christianity or Islam. (I don't mean that that never happens. But it very seldom does.)
So, is Viliam using "cult" to mean "movement I disapprove of" here? I don't think so. I think he's using it to mean something more like "very small movement with extreme views that most here find unpleasant and/or highly implausible". If you replace "movement" with "religion" and delete "here", that's a pretty good approximation to how "cult" is actually used.
Very few people would call Christianity or Islam a cult
No, I think that's usually the point of the snarky definition of a cult as a "religion I disapprove of", i.e. Christianity and Islam have the same characteristics as organizations called cults, but are not called cults because they're popular.
"If you wake up tomorrow morning thinking that saying a few Latin words over your pancakes is going to turn them into the body of Elvis Presley, you have lost your mind. But if you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of Jesus, you are just a Catholic."
-Sam Harris
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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