there are a lot of these sorts of things, he's just, ironically, bad at communicating the run-away-very-fast parts clearly, resorting to a sort of hyped up "beware" secrecy.
Heh. The subject reminds me a little of the comment section of this post from the same
dude. He just linked to an creepy & interesting video about cults,
only adding the comment “sound familiar?” Presumably, since the blog’s
subject is atheism, Luke was referring to religion. But the commentors
took it to be a reference to their own subculture. The video’s
discussion of thought control apparently hit a little too close to home,
and a bunch started spontaneously, vigorously defending an accusation
that was never actually made:
Nope, not familiar at all. I sometimes hear “cult!” from people who
only read Less Wrong and have never met anyone from the community. But
[…]
it sounds like you're describing received wisdom or something, which as we all know wasn't put forward by proper rational Bayesians, so we should listen to Luke instead
note the "hey there's no evidence scientology is bad actually" further down in the comments
if you're not coming up instantly with explanations why dumb shit is good actually then you're not rationaling hard enough
yeah, that was back when I had this foolish notion that it was probably fine except for the weirdy bits, and hadn't internalised the degree to which the weirdy bits were literally the point
so yeah basically? Particularly in 2011, when there was this big influx from HPMOR, who hadn't been around for Roko's basilisk (which was still s3kr1t kn0wledge) in mid-2010. Anyone who could write convincingly was believed by n00b acolytes ready to soak up their wisdom.
p.s.: don’t do this thing that worked out really well for me and I shall now describe in thrilled detail
Heh. The subject reminds me a little of the comment section of this post from the same dude. He just linked to an creepy & interesting video about cults, only adding the comment “sound familiar?” Presumably, since the blog’s subject is atheism, Luke was referring to religion. But the commentors took it to be a reference to their own subculture. The video’s discussion of thought control apparently hit a little too close to home, and a bunch started spontaneously, vigorously defending an accusation that was never actually made:
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