Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs - LessWrong
Early studiers of cults were surprised to discover than when cults receive a major shock—a prophecy fails to come true, a moral flaw of the founder is revealed—they often come back stronger than befo…
x Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs — LessWrong Death Spirals Groupthink Social & Cultural Dynamics Frontpage 203 Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs by Eliezer Yudkowsky 7th Dec 2007 4 min read 51 203 Early studiers of cults were surprised to discover that when cults receive a major shock—a prophecy fails to come true, a moral flaw of the founder is revealed—they often come back stronger than before, with increased belief and fanaticism. The Jehovah’s Witnesses placed Armageddon in 1975, based on Biblical calculations; 1975 has come and passed. The Unarian cult, still going strong today,
related reading
- Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?—Asteriskasteriskmag.com
- Lonely Dissent — LessWronglesswrong.com
- The Rationality Community Sucksuli.rocks
- Evaporative Cooling Effectjzhao.xyz
- Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?asteriskmag.substack.com
- Power Lies Trembling: a three-book review — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Group chats rule the worldsriramk.com
- Do not conquer what you cannot defend — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Rule Thinkers In, Not Out — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cultaeon.co
- Group Narcissism - Erik Torenbergeriktorenberg.substack.com