Just Tal Here

NOT YOUR FAULT BUT MINE

And it was

YOUR HEART ON THE LINE

I really

you can never get a clear listen to him. his primary sense node is covered in "hair" and the part that isn't is hidden by two crystals that refract sound waves in a pleasing but disorienting way. he covers his body in billowy cloth at all times. not snug and sensible and unobstructive like eridian coverings, but loose and layered, draped and flowing.

the most clear part of him are his internal organs. because yes, the alien's carapace isn't sound-proof. his single heart beats insistingly in his core, his lungs exchanging gas constantly, his long digestive tract always bubbling and contracting. his thorax is packed impossibly tight and it's all moving and singing.

and it shouldn't be possible, with how fragile he is, for that internal pressure to maintain. how does the thin membrane of his external organ (another horror that sends eridians reeling) keep it all contained? his "skin" is so easily pierced, cut, bruised, burnt, how does he not split open under his own mass?

when savior rocky first arrived home and described the environmental needs of his alien, the scientists thought he'd made a mistake in his frantic panic to get everything out. it isn't possible this being lives at such low atmospheric pressure, at half the gravity, and in a gas that's nearly double the weight of ammonia. in a gas so dangerous, so caustic. and if it does then how is it obligately terrestrial like rocky claims? shouldn't it fly or float instead? (and then to see it in the water, learning that it can float or sink at will.)

and this alien has come bearing gifts that will not only save your species but launch it into impossible heights of technological and intellectual advancement. he has discovered the solution to astrophage and bred it to thrive on threeworld and translated his instructions into eridian. he has given your people the complete sum of his people's knowledge, advanced in ways the eridians can't believe and behind in ways that seem ludicrous. and he has given his life for your people to have these things.

he knows how your solar system was formed. he knows how the universe started.

his name means beautiful and generous and relieving.

the eridians experiencing cosmic bliss.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

It’s more nuanced than “cult” or “not cult” and doesn’t make false equivalences between groups

It’s versatile, applying to groups big and small, and cults of all kinds, religious, political, financial, etc.

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

I think sometimes words can actually obscure rather than clarify, if we’re not careful, and I think this case is important because the problem we’re talking about here is not “a group of people have a joint belief in a kooky thing or even behave in ways that are different from other groups of people”.

It’s the BITE Model stuff. It’s control and coercion backed up with threats of social isolation and other consequences. It’s group-based abuse and yes, it can end up with a weird fucked up lateral mutual abuse where everyone is reinforcing this dynamic on everyone else, but the important part is it’s that stuff that’s evil, bad, poison.

And I think pulling this out is useful because if you’re in a group of humans where this is happening, it literally doesn’t matter how mainstream/normal the bases of your beliefs or group-ness are. This is how social justice social-circles get “culty” and what we mean by that is this stuff; this is what we mean when wellness stuff gets “culty”, and what we mean is this.

What makes Scientology a dangerous cult is not that they believe we’re all trapped and anguished souls of long dead aliens. That’s not that much weirder to believe than that an omnipotent cosmic being made us out of dust; just because the one has been around for several thousand years and the other comes from a few decades back doesn’t actually change the character of the story except to make one more or less respectable.

The dangerous cultyiness is the control and coercion and isolation and, more than anything else, the punishment and retaliation for leaving the fold. It’s because this is a toxic, abusive group relationship.

And yes, this means you’re going to abruptly discover many groups of Respectable Religions are culty as hell, and that’s gonna feel all kinds of uncomfortable. (It also means you’re gonna find groups of other belief-based things - philosophy, politics, nationalistic stuff, whatever - that is likewise, and is likewise gonna be uncomfortable, and some of them are going to be on “your” side).

It means you might even find yourself perpetuating some culty behaviours, because this shit actually doesn’t arise necessarily out of Nefarious Purpose but a lot of the time just from the fact that human social behaviour REALLY inclines us to want everyone to Act Right and Understand Right otherwise it’s Dangerous, and our monkey brains aren’t helpful.

At which point one has to go ooookay self are we being a shitty control freak about this? Are we narrowing what people are “allowed” to do and feel into a rigid norm we’re comfortable with? Is that reasonable in this situation? And so on.

Because toxic groups come from humans, too, not just from ideologies, and we’re all human.

Instead, someone like me should study examples of coercive groups like LessWrong, Winterfox, TERFs, and Jonestown carefully. Those are places where I might, at various points in my life, have found myself tempted to sit down and listen for a spell. They’re groups where I can understand how someone like me might get caught, and their hooks are designed to sink into traits about myself that I like and value.

For individuals concerned about joining a dysfunctional group, I suggest: 1. If your relationship with a person or a group consists mostly of discussions about human psychology and social dynamics, that is a yellow flag. It is a red flag if: a. The conversations are many hours long and displace other activities in your life. b. The conversations generally focus on group members’ feelings and interactions, rather than social science or philosophy. c. The conversations are tense, stressful, and not fun.  2. Try to do things where there is some external gauge of whether you’re succeeding at them or not. Similarly, try to test your beliefs against reality.  3. Maintain multiple social groups. Ideally, have several friends who aren’t rationalists.  4. Keep your work, housing, and therapy separate.  5. Before assuming that something is true because everyone else seems to believe it, either check the argument yourself or talk to someone outside the friend group and who wasn’t introduced to you by anyone in the group.  6. The longer and more abstract a chain of reasoning is, the less you should believe it. This is particularly true if the chain of reasoning concludes: a. That it’s okay to do something that hurts people. b. That something is of such overwhelming importance that nothing else matters.  7. Be cautious about joining high-demand groups if you have nowhere else to go.  My recommendations for the general rationalist community are: If someone is in a group that is heading towards dysfunctionality, try to maintain your relationship with them; don’t attack them or make them defend the group. Let them have normal conversations with you.  Think carefully about how we can create more realistic expectations in new rationalists and whether it would be possible to offer more of them the support they need to become useful community members. Give people realistic expectations about whether they will ever be able to get a job in AI safety. Don’t act like people are uncool or their lives are pointless if they can’t work in AI safety.  Consider talking about “ethical injunctions:” things you shouldn’t do even if you have a really good argument that you should do them. (Like murder.) 

(You can Madlibs in “whatever issue your group considers the most important in the world” for “AI safety” etc.)

that damn quilt is so cool i want one so bad