Comment by scythe

One of the hallmarks of cults — if not a necessary element — is that they tend to separate their members from the outside society. Rationalism doesn't directly encourage this, but it does facilitate it in a couple of ways:

- Idiosyncratic language used to describe ordinary things ("lightcone" instead of "future", "prior" instead of "belief" or "prejudice", etc)

- Disdain for competing belief systems

- Insistence on a certain shared interpretation of things most people don't care about (the "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum uncertainty, self-improving artificial intelligence, veganism, etc)

- I'm pretty sure polyamory makes the list somehow, just because it isn't how the vast majority of people want to date. In principle it's a private lifestyle choice, but it's obviously a community value here.

So this creates an opportunity for cult-like dynamics to occur where people adjust themselves according to their interactions within the community but not interactions outside the community. And this could seem — to the members — like the beliefs themselves are the problem, but from a sociological perspective, it might really be the inflexible way they diverge from mainstream society.