Could people list philosophy oriented internet forums with high concentration of smart people and no significant memetic overlap so that one could test this? I don't know any and I think it's dangerous.

You too are using an even looser definition of a cult. Surely you know that 'cult' carries some different (negative) connotations for other people?

I believe we are cult. The best cult in the world. The one whose beliefs works. Otherwise, we're the same; an unusual cause, a charismatic ideological leader, and, what distinguishes us from a school of philosophy or even a political party, is that we have an excathology to worry about; an end-of-the-world scenario. Unlike other cults, though, we wish to prevent or at least minimize the damage of that scenario, while most of them are enthusiastic in hastening it. For a cult, we're also extremely loose on rules to follow, we don't ask people to cast off material posessions (though we encourage donations) or to cut ties with old family and friends (it can end up happening because of de-religion-ing, but that's an unfortunate side-effect, and it's usually avoidable).

I could list off a few more traits, but the gist of it is this; we share a lot of traits with a cult, most of which are good or double-edged at worst, and we don't share most of the common bad traits of cults. Regardless of whether one chooses to call us a cult or not, this does not change what we are.

In my experience the 'social cost' tends to be paid by people trying to push (hard) concepts and ideas that are, often at least, very true and useful, but when it is not necessarily relevant to the conversation or the person isn't interested.

No price is due -- if anything, the opposite -- as long as you follow a few basic rules, and are able to explain your ideas eloquently and succinctly (and if you can't -- should you be talking about it at all?)

A curse of intelligent people seems to be to want to try to 'show' everyone just how smart they are by talking about subjects they don't totally understand, or else subjects that are irrelevant to whatever situation they are in.

A discussion on Bayesian Reasoning may be very appropriate in certain college or high school academic situations, but repeatedly bringing it up in all sorts of casual conversations will cause social harm to the individual refusing to follow social expectations in this are

I assume sex would be more fun in a telepathic environment, and likewise for dancing and making music. Competition probably wouldn't work.

I'd be delighted for Neo-Nazis to have their own virtual environment, with nothing to kill but NPCs, at least so long as I could trust they'd stay there.

You don't seem to provide a USP (unique selling point) that would give a random interested individual much reason to join it over the 100s of other larger blogs, forums, etc., discussing such topics.

Creating some sort of portal that allowed access to a wide range of topics related to futorology, rationality, solutions toward a better future, strong AI, philosophy, etc., would be a huge boon and if you could put that together, I believe it would be a massive step forward.

Incidentally, I am a web developer and if anyone is interested in helping out with the project (it's just a concept at this stage, although very practical), I'd love to hear from you :)

A lot of the discussion in both the original post and the comments seems to be stuck in '21st century' (present day social) mindsets.

Firstly, the idea of there being only one or two societies for people to participate in seems highly unlikely in a simulation environment. Computation of the mind is much more complex than computation of the environment, meaning it's difficult to foresee a reason why engineers in charge of the 'sim' would limit the number of environments to anything less than whatever the individuals decide to dream up.

Of course it's likely that over time certain environments (IE 'planets' or 'spaceships' or whatever scenery/location/laws of physics) will be appealing to a large number of people, leading them to become much more popular and almost like a 'real life' for members who spend much of their life there.

Assuming that two of the most popular of these environments were 'telepath' and 'non-telepath' mirrored versions of reality, then it's true that many members would spend time deciding which of these societies to spend time with.

This decision is much less finalistic than earth decisions, however. If a person get's sick of one of these, they could, presumably switch into the other environment with very little effort.

I believe you would see a bit of a split between those who enjoy the more 'primitive' enjoyments in life, who would choose to go with non-telepath, and those with a more spiritual/philosophical interest who would be more likely to start on the telepath route.

Sports, competition, games, sex, many other recreational activities are, one would imagine, more fun in a non-telepath environment. However, I couldn't imagine the incredible rush of knowledge, wisdom and compassion that would come with being able to hear everyone's thoughts.

To a degree, one could assume a telepath society to be calm, happy, esoteric, and relatively laid back. Since everyone has dark secrets and nasty character flaws, only those with enough courage to lay bare their darkest secrets, and enough wisdom not to judge others would be able to enjoy a true uncensored mental link with someone else.

There is a middle ground, however, that I believe is most likely.

In a simulation environment:

1. instant travel is trivial
2. there is virtually unlimited resources
3. any idea or concept, whether social or political, etc., will ultimately stand or fall on the merits of how many fellow players want to experience a reality where your idea is implemented in some way. I'm sure some Neo-Nazi player might try to create a fourth reich, and no doubt it would be a beautiful imitation of 1930s Germany, but it's hard to imagine that many players excited to join him in his new Nazi Germany locale, as free as he is to create and promote it.

One could easily imagine a scenario where the most popular 'reality' would be something like:

Clone of real earth except: 1. positive thoughts are broadcast, negative or embarrassing ones are not. (presumably trivial to a computer that can simulate a planet and billions of minds) 2. there are numerous large land masses where people can build their own cities and businesses instantly accessible by anyone. 3. due to unlimited resources, lots of different venues exist, each with different 'rules' (ie program state) in regards to telepathy.