I was expecting more from the Cola Wars after Pepsi bought those Russian battleships.

I read a lot and it was formative, sad half of them turned out to be either sex pests or a white SSC fanboy writing under an Asian pseudonym. Robert Evans seems cool though

Sorry forgot to include the smiley. I knew. Those people ([some more news on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng) is also former cracked people iirc) now doing proper journalism together with the huffington post/buzzfeed news has been one of the stranger developments in the world.

LessWrong and the subculture that's sprouted from it as this generation's Church of Scientology is a shockingly good analogy. Both are belief systems that, on the surface, wrap themselves in a veneer of intellectualism and claim to offer scientific solutions to humanity's problems, and both have deep followings in subcultures of wealthy Californians (Hollywood for Scientology and Silicon Valley for LessWrong) that give them power and influence far beyond their mere numbers. And once you dig beneath the "rational" surface and go down the rabbit hole, both turn out to have some shockingly whackadoodle beliefs. It's about aliens for Scientology and AI for LessWrong, but either way, very little of it can appear "rational" in any way unless you're already deeply immersed in the culture. Even the insidious real-world influence has precedent. Scientology may be a joke nowadays, but back in the '70s they were taken seriously as a new religious movement amidst a culture that was deeply into that sort of thing, and they had enough power to silence their critics and get the FBI to back off on investigating them. It was only in the '00s, after Tom Cruise's public meltdown, *South Park*'s "Trapped in the Closet" episode, and Operation Chanology, that Scientology's public image went from "eccentric but harmless Hollywood kooks" to "holy shit, this is an actual, dangerous cult". We're just now learning how deeply Scientology had its hooks in the LAPD to get them to cover up the crimes committed by their celebrity members, and how (at least if you ask Leah Remini) this had the knock-on effect of creating a broader culture of not taking sex crimes seriously (because any attempt to investigate sex crimes in Hollywood could risk exposing prominent Scientologists). All the awful shit that antisemites accuse the Jews of, or that Christians accuse nebulous "Satanists" of, are things that the Church of Scientology actually did, or at least tried to. (Minus the baby killing.) An even better analogy, though, would be to say that the "rationalist" movement is a modern-day version of the broader New Age movement that Scientology was a part of. The big difference, I feel, is that Scientology is an organized religion with a hierarchical structure, while the rationalists are a diffuse subculture, with a handful of influential figures who one could call its "leaders" but no one organization running the show -- much like the New Agers, where you had multiple gurus and groups but no one single guiding power or organization. Also, while Scientology had a lot of money and celebrity members, it left no broader cultural impact. L. Ron Hubbard's books sold only within the Church, and its celebrity members didn't make movies that featured what you could call "Scientologist themes". (And when they tried to, like with *Battlefield Earth*, they usually flopped.) When movies, TV, music, and games featured Scientology or (more commonly) parodies thereof, it was usually to poke fun at it. The New Age movement, on the other hand, is a legitimate subculture. People shop at New Age stores. They go to New Age retreats and seminars. The Western lay person's understanding of Eastern religions and philosophies is heavily influenced by how the New Agers presented them in the West. The entire wellness industry is filled with New Age concepts. There are tons of movies, records, books, and graphic novels, from mainstream hits like *Star Wars* to underground cult favorites, that are rooted in New Age worldviews. And just like the rationalists, the New Age movement is filled with a lot of pseudoscientific silliness that, as seen with the rise of "conspirituality" in the last several years, can lead in some very disturbing directions.