I’m in Asterisk reporting on rationalist cults.
This was my first time doing actual reporting. In some ways, it was the easiest way to do actual reporting—I only talked to people I already knew who had some baseline positive feeling about me. In other ways, it was terrible because I had to sidle into people’s DMs all “hey, we haven’t talked in six years. Want to tell me all about the worst thing that ever happened to you?”
But everyone was very nice! And I learned a lot about the dysfunction in my community. If you’re a rationalist, I genuinely believe my article is valuable to read. If you’re not a rationalist, meh, but at least you can enjoy voyeuristically looking at other people’s trauma.
There is this mix of self-improvement/spiritual practices, science fiction fandom, cults, and then against all odds being on the actual cutting edge of applied science. Surprisingly, this is pretty old and keeps repeating itself.
For example the story of Jack Parsons, greatest of rocket scientists, early SF fan, and founder of JPL with some of his other SF fan friends, who also did magickal rituals in a polyamorous group house that at a certain point spun into a destructive quasi-cult.
During the earliest years, before truly ramping up the high-control aspects, L. Ron Hubbard (former ties with Parsons) and Dianetics had a friendly reception with a number of legitimate scientists. There is a friendly letter from Claude Shannon (working at Bell Labs when it was the center of the universe) introducing Hubbard (who he met through science fiction luminary John Campbell) to Warren McCullough.
I think most of the factors laid out in your article probably apply to these cases as well as to the rationalists, but it's an oddly specific thing that keeps happening over the decades.
I liked this line: There is no conflict so small that five hours straight of emotional processing can’t make it feel both profoundly important and profoundly unsolvable.
The phenomenon of everything seeming Incredibly Important matches my experience. It’s important to cult dynamics that everyone feel guilty at all times, even if your sin is much closer to not doing the dishes than to murder