There's lots and lots written about cults and cult leaders, which is worth reading, such as Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, or if you prefer a more traditional take, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton. Or any of other dozens of good authoritative takes on the subject by people who have spent their careers formally studying such phenomena, which can draw lines between all kinds of different groups and political movements that actually have lots in common.
What's wrong with this blog post is that the author does not seem to have read any books at all on the subject, which IMO is fairly irresponsible considering how much there is to read about it and how critical it is that "cult behavior" is widely understood in order for society to progress. Seems to be off the cuff musings about the topic, alarmingly even considering that some "cult leaders" are "good" (no) or that they can be "reformed" (irrelevant, but also REALLY doubtful considering what it means to be a cult leader; cult leaders generally remain such leaders well after they've been sentenced to prison for decades, their followers show up to visit, etc., there is no "reform" here, sorry), and overall a lot of muddy, uninformed and made-up thinking that will only get more people into cults.
Good observations and I've observed more than a few in computerland, especially in startups.
However, it's not true that cult leaders are always grandiose. They can be strategically vulnerable too!
When confronted -- especially by someone too smart to be fooled by their facade -- they can take that critic aside, in a private setting, and suddenly express vulnerability, maybe even fragility. The critic is taken aback, maybe even worries that they've gone too far, but also feels honored to have become a confidant of the leader. The critic may now even feel compelled to help cover for the leader's failings!
But this, too, is an act. Remember, as Sasha said, such people are always being strategic, and strategic vulnerability is part of how they operate.
(1) All pathos are healthy behaviors "gone wrong" - wrong time, or, wrong place, or (mostly), wrong magnitude.
(2) I wondered for a very long time: what's the difference between being convinced, and being manipulated? Stumbled across something on the 'net that finally gave an answer: Manipulation begins with diminishment, and (bringing it back to cults), "isolation" is one of the powerful forms of manipulation.
(3) Recently been thinking about "responsibility" in terms of the physics of a 'bounce' -
Drop a ball on sand, it goes thud; the force involved is the weight of the ball. Drop a bouncy ball on concrete, the force is ~2x (stopping the downward motion, then enough for the upward motion).
When someone comes to you and says: "This thing you did had this negative impact on [me/them/us]", if someone rejects any possible responsibility for it, that's a "bounce". It ends up looking like any of the forms of "pushing your reality onto others" - "you do this to me", gaslighting, etc etc etc.
> Drop a ball on sand, it goes thud; the force involved is the weight of the ball. Drop a bouncy ball on concrete, the force is ~2x (stopping the downward motion, then enough for the upward motion).
The force in both scenarios is exactly the same. In the first the force goes into displacing the sand while in the second - since the concrete is a rigid lattice - the force goes into deforming the ball, which causes it to bounce back due to its elasticity. Objects with no elasticity (like another piece of concrete) will not bounce.
No, we judge people by actions, not by random categorizations or 'fits type' or 'Polarizing Charisma'. Here's how to Spot Cult Leader proper: They manipulate people and exploit them by taking their money. Otherwise it's not a cult leader.
There is post-facto judgment of those who have done harm, and then there are heuristics we can use to help us avoid people who would do harm before it's been done.
My impression is this is a common phenomenon in the software engineering community, probably mainly because a significant fraction of the community are young and/or inexperienced (e.g. number of programmers double every 5 years, which means 50% of programmers have less than 5 years experience).
There are plenty of examples from streamers to serious programmers but the most common is probably the benevolent dictator for life personalities for numerous software projects.
> There are plenty of examples from streamers to serious programmers but the most common is probably the benevolent dictator for life personalities for numerous software projects
Can you provide any examples from either of these?
I feel like you may be confusing "people with strong opinions" with "narcissistic cult leader."
Not sure if it should be on the list but I think that epistemic certainty should be on the list as something distinct from personal humility. You can command a room by saying something like "I'm not all that smart, smart people overcomplicate this, but this is so simple..."
I tend to be a "only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" sort of guy, but when I run into someone who isn't like that, who seems to have it all figured out and says it with conviction, it definitely pulls at me. It does one of these:
1. Makes me think that I've overcomplicated it
2. Makes me think I have to convince him he's wrong (which is very hard to do unless you're as laser-focused as he is and he's engaging in good faith)
3. Makes me think it's not worth the effort because of what the other two options are
If you follow 1 or 3, you're ceding the argument. 2 is hard to do well.
Reminds me of "One weird trick." Really they're two specimens of the same phenomenon. Some people essentially spam and clickbait the world with ads for themselves.
This just comes across to me as a nice description of the dark triad of personality traits which actually exist in all types of organisations and social situations, which is not very exclusive to cult leaders at all. Below are some interesting resources on this topic that I have read as I have an interest in this subject. You may have read them already, but I thought I would pop them below as there were no resources in the article.
Hogan, J., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2011). Management derailment. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (vol. 3, pp. 555–575). American Psychological Association.
Tourish, D. (2018). Dysfunctional leadership in corporations. In P. Garrard (Ed.), The Leadership hubris epidemic: Biological roots and strategies for prevention (pp. 137–162). Palgrave Macmillan.
Tourish, D. (2013). The dark side of transformational leadership: A critical perspective. Routledge.
Chapter 3: Coercive persuasion, power and corporate cults
Alvesson, M., & Blom, M. (2019). Beyond leadership and followership: Working with a variety of modes of organizing. Organizational Dynamics, 48(1), 28–37.
However, as was pointed out in the post it is never just a cult leader, there are always those who are complicit, and additionally there are those who just want someone to follow, which is really what gives cult leaders their "power" or their "authority". This is where the concept of relational leadership is interesting:
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2014). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Chapter 1: What do we mean by leadership
Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2016). Rethinking the psychology of leadership: From personal identity to social identity. Daedalus, 145(3), 21–34.
Cunliffe, A. L., & Eriksen, M. (2011). Relational leadership. Human Relations, 64(11), 1425–1449.
I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the traits described here, but rather there can be a problem with the way certain people abuse their power once they have it. The burning question that bugs me in life, is why do so many humans just follow the leader, even when the leader is a total piece of shit.
Context is very important. With close friends anyone can say anything and it’s brushed off. In a tense business meeting where the difference in big money is how two groups speak and act, it makes sense to be calculating.
It's not talking about people who are "calculating," it is talking about people who switch between negging you and complementing you in a way that causes you to think about them too much.
I was confused reading this. Is the author talking about literal suicide cult leaders like Jones, Koresh, and Applewhite, or "cult of personality" types like Jobs and Elon?
I have a LOT of problems with Koresh and the Branch Davidians, but he def wasn't leading a "suicide cult." They were actually the opposite...they believed that in the End Times they needed to stick it out on their property as long as possible even if it came to violence. They stockpiled weapons believing that it would come down to a final showdown between them and the antichrist's forces. Obviously they were unbiblical, and the child abuse is absolutely unforgiveable, but I take issue with people calling the Branch Davidians a suicide cult when that was against their beliefs.
That being said, I think the author is talking about cult of personality types. People with a personality that gears towards being the leaders of a cult, or getting a cult-like status. That is how it reads to me anyway.
It's obviously an n-dimensional space. I know a lot of the people that Sasha knows, so I can guess some of the people he was talking about here, and it's more like Jared Leto and his handful of weird groupies who are in a deeply unhealthy social and intellectual dynamic. So not really suicide cults, but uncomfortably close, not successful or mainstream enough to be Jobs, not really growth oriented or external facing enough to be Scientology. But a dubious social bubble around certain personality types.
..."cult of personality" types like Jobs and Elon?
I haven't met Elon, but the impression I got from videos is very different to Jobs. He has a cult following indeed, but is it really because his magnetism or PUA tricks like in the article?
I’ve always been fascinated by personality, and spent a decent amount of time in and out of school studying it.
One thing that gets me about the way this author talks is it’s condescending. As though he’s an enlightened observer staring down over his spectacles at this type of person. (Like the final quote about cult leaders being mundane or boring…) Sorry to say, but that person you’re talking down on is probably way more clever and motivated than you are. He’s putting you in the bucket not the other way around!
But the thing that fascinates me is how personalities evolved in general. Like why do people have these set ways of being?
The apparent answer is that personalities evolved as a symbiotic trait. If I have a few people in my village: one’s an asshole to defend from enemies, one’s passionate and emotional to rear children, one’s a narcissist who wants to unite and lead us (under him), one’s a thinker who will improve our hunting and killing tools, and a few people just don’t think that much and view life as hard and are willing to “just go along with things”…
Before you know it we have a mini society. A village of people who work together automatically bc it’s just who they are and it works for (most of) them
So the question is: are cult leaders actually something that thousands of years ago was a benefit? Has society changed so that now they just don’t fit like they otherwise would in a healthy village? Or do parasitic personalities also evolve that have always been a detriment to the rest of us?
I feel like this is something where everyone does it to some extent I don't know. To me it makes more sense to focus on propensity towards behaviors that you find undesirable rather than labelling someone a bad name.
It's interesting how many of these traits line up perfectly with the actions of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Especially the parts about lacking humility to the point where they think their ideology will save the universe from certain doom. Or making people who follow his words say that everyone who thinks he's crazy just "doesn't get it" and is tragically unable to absorb the wisdom or goodness.
Keep in mind that a lot of tech-adjacent writing these days is just AI debates (and this is why he is not engaging with the actual cult literature or providing examples); this is not the place to debate the object-level arguments, but I will say I disapprove of Chapin writing like this, and not owning up to the real purpose of this essay and the Bay Area dynamics he's criticizing. It is deceptive in precisely the way you inadvertently illustrate.
* His use is wrong, incidentally, both in the original abstruse decision-theory sense of the phrase as coined by Yudkowsky, ironically enough, and in the vulgarized sense of 'you should ignore small probabilities of very bad things' (because we are now far beyond some 'small' probability of AI, and AI risk is now considered so probable people like Geoff Hinton are quitting their jobs so they can speak out about it https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bLvc7XkSSnoqSukgy/a-brief-co... )
I didn’t read it that way at all, and felt that section ring particularly true. “Joust” really just seems like another word for willing to engage in well-intentioned debate. The realization the author likely made was that the so-called “cult leaders” were not at all engaging in good faith, despite them and their followers insisting otherwise. Some really great examples of this would be Jordan Peterson or Eric Weinstein. The moment you think you can engage with these sorts in good faith is the moment you’ve fallen into their trap.
zzzeek|2 years ago
What's wrong with this blog post is that the author does not seem to have read any books at all on the subject, which IMO is fairly irresponsible considering how much there is to read about it and how critical it is that "cult behavior" is widely understood in order for society to progress. Seems to be off the cuff musings about the topic, alarmingly even considering that some "cult leaders" are "good" (no) or that they can be "reformed" (irrelevant, but also REALLY doubtful considering what it means to be a cult leader; cult leaders generally remain such leaders well after they've been sentenced to prison for decades, their followers show up to visit, etc., there is no "reform" here, sorry), and overall a lot of muddy, uninformed and made-up thinking that will only get more people into cults.
dnissley|2 years ago
I imagine we've all had the experience of meeting such magnetic personalities, but probably only a tiny percentage have met an actual cult leader.
Lammy|2 years ago
jasmer|2 years ago
I think that most of our 'great leaders' (good one's) that we look up to, flirt with this mindset for periods of time in their lives.
Not all cult leaders maintain their disposition after being arrested.
The author was fairly concise actually in identifying core attributes, and especially with the meta cognition bit.
maCDzP|2 years ago
If you wouldn’t mind sharing what you found most interesting while reading the books you mentioned.
neilk|2 years ago
However, it's not true that cult leaders are always grandiose. They can be strategically vulnerable too!
When confronted -- especially by someone too smart to be fooled by their facade -- they can take that critic aside, in a private setting, and suddenly express vulnerability, maybe even fragility. The critic is taken aback, maybe even worries that they've gone too far, but also feels honored to have become a confidant of the leader. The critic may now even feel compelled to help cover for the leader's failings!
But this, too, is an act. Remember, as Sasha said, such people are always being strategic, and strategic vulnerability is part of how they operate.
RangerScience|2 years ago
(1) All pathos are healthy behaviors "gone wrong" - wrong time, or, wrong place, or (mostly), wrong magnitude.
(2) I wondered for a very long time: what's the difference between being convinced, and being manipulated? Stumbled across something on the 'net that finally gave an answer: Manipulation begins with diminishment, and (bringing it back to cults), "isolation" is one of the powerful forms of manipulation.
(3) Recently been thinking about "responsibility" in terms of the physics of a 'bounce' -
Drop a ball on sand, it goes thud; the force involved is the weight of the ball. Drop a bouncy ball on concrete, the force is ~2x (stopping the downward motion, then enough for the upward motion).
When someone comes to you and says: "This thing you did had this negative impact on [me/them/us]", if someone rejects any possible responsibility for it, that's a "bounce". It ends up looking like any of the forms of "pushing your reality onto others" - "you do this to me", gaslighting, etc etc etc.
akiselev|2 years ago
The force in both scenarios is exactly the same. In the first the force goes into displacing the sand while in the second - since the concrete is a rigid lattice - the force goes into deforming the ball, which causes it to bounce back due to its elasticity. Objects with no elasticity (like another piece of concrete) will not bounce.
Beware of physical metaphors.
Loveaway|2 years ago
tomjakubowski|2 years ago
kelipso|2 years ago
There are plenty of examples from streamers to serious programmers but the most common is probably the benevolent dictator for life personalities for numerous software projects.
bityard|2 years ago
Can you provide any examples from either of these?
I feel like you may be confusing "people with strong opinions" with "narcissistic cult leader."
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
Brendinooo|2 years ago
I tend to be a "only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" sort of guy, but when I run into someone who isn't like that, who seems to have it all figured out and says it with conviction, it definitely pulls at me. It does one of these:
1. Makes me think that I've overcomplicated it
2. Makes me think I have to convince him he's wrong (which is very hard to do unless you're as laser-focused as he is and he's engaging in good faith)
3. Makes me think it's not worth the effort because of what the other two options are
If you follow 1 or 3, you're ceding the argument. 2 is hard to do well.
rdiddly|2 years ago
Reminds me of "One weird trick." Really they're two specimens of the same phenomenon. Some people essentially spam and clickbait the world with ads for themselves.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
infogrind|2 years ago
dijit|2 years ago
I think politics only works for people with these traits.
thefourthchime|2 years ago
pawelduda|2 years ago
switch007|2 years ago
Quinzel|2 years ago
Hogan, J., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2011). Management derailment. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (vol. 3, pp. 555–575). American Psychological Association.
Tourish, D. (2018). Dysfunctional leadership in corporations. In P. Garrard (Ed.), The Leadership hubris epidemic: Biological roots and strategies for prevention (pp. 137–162). Palgrave Macmillan.
Tourish, D. (2013). The dark side of transformational leadership: A critical perspective. Routledge. Chapter 3: Coercive persuasion, power and corporate cults
Alvesson, M., & Blom, M. (2019). Beyond leadership and followership: Working with a variety of modes of organizing. Organizational Dynamics, 48(1), 28–37.
However, as was pointed out in the post it is never just a cult leader, there are always those who are complicit, and additionally there are those who just want someone to follow, which is really what gives cult leaders their "power" or their "authority". This is where the concept of relational leadership is interesting:
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2014). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Chapter 1: What do we mean by leadership
Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2016). Rethinking the psychology of leadership: From personal identity to social identity. Daedalus, 145(3), 21–34.
Cunliffe, A. L., & Eriksen, M. (2011). Relational leadership. Human Relations, 64(11), 1425–1449.
I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the traits described here, but rather there can be a problem with the way certain people abuse their power once they have it. The burning question that bugs me in life, is why do so many humans just follow the leader, even when the leader is a total piece of shit.
monero-xmr|2 years ago
whatshisface|2 years ago
hn8305823|2 years ago
danjoredd|2 years ago
That being said, I think the author is talking about cult of personality types. People with a personality that gears towards being the leaders of a cult, or getting a cult-like status. That is how it reads to me anyway.
pmichaud|2 years ago
narag|2 years ago
I haven't met Elon, but the impression I got from videos is very different to Jobs. He has a cult following indeed, but is it really because his magnetism or PUA tricks like in the article?
nonethewiser|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
beerpls|2 years ago
One thing that gets me about the way this author talks is it’s condescending. As though he’s an enlightened observer staring down over his spectacles at this type of person. (Like the final quote about cult leaders being mundane or boring…) Sorry to say, but that person you’re talking down on is probably way more clever and motivated than you are. He’s putting you in the bucket not the other way around!
But the thing that fascinates me is how personalities evolved in general. Like why do people have these set ways of being?
The apparent answer is that personalities evolved as a symbiotic trait. If I have a few people in my village: one’s an asshole to defend from enemies, one’s passionate and emotional to rear children, one’s a narcissist who wants to unite and lead us (under him), one’s a thinker who will improve our hunting and killing tools, and a few people just don’t think that much and view life as hard and are willing to “just go along with things”…
Before you know it we have a mini society. A village of people who work together automatically bc it’s just who they are and it works for (most of) them
So the question is: are cult leaders actually something that thousands of years ago was a benefit? Has society changed so that now they just don’t fit like they otherwise would in a healthy village? Or do parasitic personalities also evolve that have always been a detriment to the rest of us?
doctormanhatten|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
j3s|2 years ago
BaculumMeumEst|2 years ago
alexb_|2 years ago
dang|2 years ago
A substantive discussion of this topic isn't going to work if it veers into dissecting particular personalities.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
gwern|2 years ago
Keep in mind that a lot of tech-adjacent writing these days is just AI debates (and this is why he is not engaging with the actual cult literature or providing examples); this is not the place to debate the object-level arguments, but I will say I disapprove of Chapin writing like this, and not owning up to the real purpose of this essay and the Bay Area dynamics he's criticizing. It is deceptive in precisely the way you inadvertently illustrate.
* His use is wrong, incidentally, both in the original abstruse decision-theory sense of the phrase as coined by Yudkowsky, ironically enough, and in the vulgarized sense of 'you should ignore small probabilities of very bad things' (because we are now far beyond some 'small' probability of AI, and AI risk is now considered so probable people like Geoff Hinton are quitting their jobs so they can speak out about it https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bLvc7XkSSnoqSukgy/a-brief-co... )
kiachnish|2 years ago
[deleted]
imwillofficial|2 years ago
I found the last section shocking. Wanting to joust, jealous of this personality type? That’s.. really strange.
mattw2121|2 years ago
seattle_spring|2 years ago