Rationality Quotes December 2014

Salemicus

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Are you speaking from experience or general knowledge?

If I go in knowing it's a cult, doesn't that change a lot? I'd be interested in a comparison of survival rates (of general sanity) between people depending on their mindset upon joining

If you join a cult, then even your physical survival will suddenly become a lot more perilous. You will likely have to conform, or die. Keep that in mind.

0Nornagest11y

The main problem with joining a cult isn't physical danger, or even the chance of having your mind permanently changed (retention rates for cult membership are very low). It's what they'll get out of you while you're in there. In most cases you can expect to see a lot of pressure to do things like handing over large sums of money, or donating large amounts of unpaid labor, or abandoning social links outside the organization, and those aren't necessarily things you can get back once you've burned them. I'd expect going in with eyes open to mitigate this to some extent, but not perfectly.

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