02-12-2021, 02:44 PM
This article compares artificial intelligence doomsday alarmism (prominent both inside and outside of academia) to a cult:
Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People.
Apart from being about AI alarmism - and providing counterarguments for specific arguments used for it - it is a humoristic and thoughtful examination of cult-like mentalities in general, in a very modern and idea-centric take on the meaning of cults.
Inside an intellectual groupthink-practicing circle of people, there's the shared "specific content" which is used to build "crystal palaces of thought", and defend them. Outside, there's only the "form and context" visible, which outsiders judge intuitively in order to say "it's a cult", which can be argued against on the inside. A "self-reinforcing worldview" is a key feature of such cults, though that would happen with a genuine scientific breakthrough too.
When I first read this article a longer time ago, it helped me to bridge the gap between conventional thinking about cults, and examining something which does not necessarily fit that mold, namely intellectually sophisticated groups which wall themselves off from the outside world with their mental constructs while in some respects staying away from traditional attributes of cults.
Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People.
Apart from being about AI alarmism - and providing counterarguments for specific arguments used for it - it is a humoristic and thoughtful examination of cult-like mentalities in general, in a very modern and idea-centric take on the meaning of cults.
Inside an intellectual groupthink-practicing circle of people, there's the shared "specific content" which is used to build "crystal palaces of thought", and defend them. Outside, there's only the "form and context" visible, which outsiders judge intuitively in order to say "it's a cult", which can be argued against on the inside. A "self-reinforcing worldview" is a key feature of such cults, though that would happen with a genuine scientific breakthrough too.
When I first read this article a longer time ago, it helped me to bridge the gap between conventional thinking about cults, and examining something which does not necessarily fit that mold, namely intellectually sophisticated groups which wall themselves off from the outside world with their mental constructs while in some respects staying away from traditional attributes of cults.
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