It intuitively appeals to me that people in cults might not have the self-awareness to debate their own cultishness, but, then, I don't really know anyone in a cult. At one point I did meet a couple at a party who were involved in... something... that involved homeopathy and a spiritual leader. And they chuckled and said that they might be in a cult.
That said, having read most of LessWrong, my impression was that what is said there is mostly obvious in retrospect. Like, "Of course, how could I not see that?". My guess is, I already believed most of the sequences before I even read them.
When a community matches my own world view so closely, I just can't feel any cult, and I tend to assume there is none.
> That said, having read most of LessWrong, my impression was that what is said there is mostly obvious in retrospect. Like, "Of course, how could I not see that?". My guess is, I already believed most of the sequences before I even read them.
I had exactly the same reaction. Most of it seemed obvious in retrospect. Heck, few years ago (when I had a lot more of free time) I spent many weeks thinking about how could I code a smart virtual assistant/proto-AI. Then later, after reading the sequences I realized that I figured out many of described concepts myself, except I lacked the proper formalisms and maybe haven't thought some things thoroughly enough.
It's actually fairly typical for cults to rationalize and explain away their cultish behaviors. That's not to argue that the lesswrong group is a cult, just that it's not any kind of argument against it.
