When old friends ask what I’ve been up to lately, I usually start by saying “Well, I joined a cult.” Which is a satisfying thing to utter in the moment because, objectively, it’s a more interesting answer than an asker of this mundane question has a right to expect. There is an additional layer of surprise involved for those who know me well, since I’m an inveterate non-joiner. But as a secret admirer of actual weird cults, it is on some level what I have longed to be able to say since I was audited with an actual e-meter in a Scientology tent.
Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult | Aeon Essays
First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult
Effective Altruism Is a Dangerous Cult — Here's Why
Understanding the "Scientology of Silicon Valley." (7,700 words)
The sad decline of effective altruism
A once wholesome and inspiring movement has become entangled with cults and has lost years chasing dead-end ideas
How to communicate why your startup is worth joining | Wasp
Except for a handful of companies who send people to Mars or develop AGI, most startups don’t seem to offer a good reason to join them. You go to their websites and all you see is vague, baseless, overly generic mission-schmission/values-schvalues HR nonsense that supposedly should turn you into a raving fan of whatever they’re doing and make you hit that “Join” button until their servers crash. Well…
AI cults are here - Robert Edward Grant, a self-proclaimed polymath talks to his ChatGPT instance he calls The Architect, during his Sacred Britain Expedition in May 2026.
319 votes, 102 comments. 167K subscribers in the cults community. A place for discussion about cults and other new age religious movements.
Disclosure Day
Across the films of Steven Spielberg, aliens have frequently been a vehicle to explore religiosity from a secular perspective. Institutions and dogma are elided in favor of dramatizing the ecstatic feeling of believing in something far beyond one�s station, and having that faith rewarded.
Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?
There’s a lot to like about the Rationalist community, but they do have a certain tendency to spawn — shall we say — high demand groups. We sent a card-carrying Rat to investigate what’s really going on.
Assumed Audiences
Naming your invisible audiences to free yourself from unspoken obligations
(PDF) Facebook confessions: Corporate abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism
PDF | This article investigates the public confessions of a small group of ex-Facebook employees, investors, and founders who express regret helping to... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
Some Contemporary Heresies
I define a heresy as: something you believe that the people you most admire and respect don’t believe and reject out of hand.
Excuse me but this is cult behavior. And as a scientist, I have no business joining a cult. These personalized insults and intolerance for criticism are not scholarly virtues however you cut it. I do not understand or relate to it. What is my worth as a scholar if I do not value evidence over faith?
SPECIAL REPORT Last month, Alpha School invited people to follow student social media accounts "if curious about life in our high schools." I accepted their offer. What I've found shocks me. Forget the AI and ask instead: Is Alpha Schools a cult? Follow along for a summary of my findings.
SPECIAL REPORT: My So-Called Alpha School
buildcognitiveresonance.substack.comThe snake eating its own tail effect of AI agents isn’t so much a problem of training data model collapse as the collapse of the social epistemic foundations by which human sense-making can be carried out at all—and which AI agents *also* rely on for whatever facsimile of sense-making they conduct.
Ryan McGrady
The original: arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-co… and the context: theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-p… I hope they elaborate on the retraction, too, though I'm glad they acted quickly to take it down (and hope they put more effort into covering this terrifying story, since it's in their wheelhouse)
There's growing experimental evidence¹˒²˒³˒⁴ that LLMs are unusually good at talking people out of entrenched false beliefs and conspiracy theories. ¹ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39264999/ ² pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41179846/ ³ sciety.org/articles/activity/10.21203/rs… ⁴ connecticut.adl.org/resources/report/short-dialog…
Der Fisher
Unpopular opinion: LLMs are generally deradicalizing people whose beliefs are based on pure propaganda. I've been watching this happen slowly with some people I care about. ChatGPT is one of the reasons they finally accept that the NRA, OAN, and NewsMax are lying to them.
