They don't want to make a population level impact on demographics, they want their kids to be the new aristocracy

In the Going Clear documentary an author says that because Scientology was built by and for L. Ron Hubbard, people who follow Scientology are gradually moulded in his image and pick up his worst traits and neuroses. LessWrong was founded by a former child prodigy.....

I recently got The Secret Public on CD and spent yesterday evening listening to it. Plenty of interesting LGBT+ history and there are some really great songs on there - the 60s songs really appeal to me, especially the girl groups, but there's also some good tough 70s funk and disco.

I don't know if I've been listening to anything that's relevant to Sneer Club.

Actually back in the 60s I think one of these skull-measuring types came to Ireland. He gave IQ tests to kids and concluded that we were a dysgenic, low-IQ people. So there's another "data point"

Great to hear that. I did hear about the recent election but wasn't sure where things were, what Tusk's views are etc.

Is this the "flying saucer fails to land" moment for him? AIs (large language models, ai-generated images, etc etc) are now within the experience or understanding of more and more people, and he can't just make stuff up about it anymore?

Think you're right, sorry

A moment of silence for the people of Honduras, who have to live with these weirdos.

Christ, Próspera is another planned city? What is it with these maniacs and planning ideologies that went out of fashion in the thirties?

it's not a great slogan. In the summer of 2020 there was a mad rush to find a slogan that was radical enough to be credible but not too radical to be popular. It was a bodge.

That drug science webpage that PJ Coffey linked above notes that:

Long-term amphetamine use is associated with anhedonia; a general difficulty in finding pleasure in life without the drug, which may persist for some time after quitting the drug.

They're specifically referring to recreational amphetamine use here, I think. Needing to use a substance just to make you feel normal? Needing to use higher and higher doses of the same substance to feel the same effect? Aren't those the classic symptoms of addiction, and the drivers of the negative behaviours people associate with addiction?

What? I was describing how cults/high-control groups react to criticism. I wasn't trying to assess how accurate their beliefs are. Cults rely on having some beliefs which reasonable people might agree with. Those are the beliefs they present to the public. Cult literature often sounds plausible or benign even if it's not factually accurate.

Before there was greater awareness of what cults are and how they work, it wasn't uncommon for early press about cult groups to conclude that while some of the cult's beliefs were strange, they had good values and were doing good things for their communities so they were probably harmless. It was only later that stories begin to emerge about the extreme levels of control that cults were exercising over their members, how that control led to the exploitation and abuse of members, and how limited and transactional their "good works" were.

If a group with that model of control and exploitation claimed to have access to a source of genuinely new and scientifically significant knowledge, they are the worst people to be in control of it, because: a) Cults keep back the larger part of their beliefs from the public in order to extract as much in money, volunteer time and other resources from their members. If a cult did have a direct line to Xenu, it would be directly in their interests to strictly limit how much other people can know about Xenu without paying exorbitant fees and submitting to cult authority. b) Cults are run by people whose ethics are compromised. Cult leaders believe above all else in their right to power and/or wealth and everything else including the health and safety of others comes second. They bully and indoctrinate their subordinates until cult members believe that there is no good and bad so much as there are things that are good for the cult and things that are bad for the cult. If people with such compromised ethics gain access to Xenu's special information (why are we assuming Xenu will be wise and helpful anyway? In Scientology mythos, Xenu is evil. And also dead.) they will use it to improve the position of the cult and impose their beliefs on as many people as possible. c) due to the above mentioned, it will be extremely difficult for non-members to assess the accuracy of information provided by the cult.

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