Carl-Richard

Leo is the one riling people up by enforcing a single-sided narrative on the issue, insisting to call "cult" a bad thing, and then that concept being applied to him is his own creation, because his minions beg you to point out those features in him (and they happen to fit in some places). Had Leo been open to a more pluralistic narrative (or if he had insisted that cult was not necessarily a bad thing), you would probably not think we would be riling people up, because people are so obedient to Leo that when the cult concept is (as a baseline) removed all controversy, that is most likely what will permeate the discussion. That you suggest we not use words because they are controversial, yet Leo is here using words like manipulation and mind control, heck solipsism (and also "cult"; that's a word he uses), as if he is trying to keep discourse civil over his desire to call something for what it is, that's the kind of double standard you would expect a cult member to enforce on his fellow members. Words are useful, they have meaning, and if we decide to use them, that may belie their usefulness more than an attempt to "rile people up". Except if you view all discussion as a means to rile people up, which if you do, all power to you. I have actually been pointing out the narcissism without explictly invoking the term for quite a while, but it's because it's so obvious that is what it is, I didn't feel like I had to or that it added much value (as it would "rile up" people like you, add more noise than signal), but when other people start using the term, I won't deny that is what it is. Again, narcissists can be cognitively open and complex in a multitude of ways in ways that can be consistent with and even feed into their narcissism. Anything that can be seen as virtuous a narcissist can identify with and use to feed their need for feeling superior. It's hard for me to remember if I've ever seen a person online say "I'm the most awake person in the entire world". So this is called a "double standard". That's a controversial word that can rile people up, but it also carries meaning.

It's based seemingly entirely on the anti-cult movement, an outrage and money-making machine. Go to literally any other source, academic ones. Most of them will take a huge dump on the anti-cult movement (and the cult concept itself) and use terms like "new religious movement". It's a farce considering his purported status as epistemic God numero uno that he doesn't make clear the underlying assumptions of his chosen view or present alternative views. That's epistemology 101. It would've been yet more evidence of ulterior motives / motivated reasoning if it weren't for the fact that it's actually fairly common for Leo and not limited to these series of videos. I'm trying to limit my cynicism here but it makes you want to ask more questions. Nevertheless, it underlies the one-sided engagement with the issue by his followers, and that anything else would be a result of self-education or other education.

I've never thought about this. "So you think pop music and rock does not hold the same standards as classical music? Well, guess what? The classical music you revere so much is pop music." Quick and succint as usual. People thought this guy had 170 IQ (not that it would be accurate or anything). "Genius is seeing things nobody else sees".

I would guess the non-doership could deepen more until you get truly terrified that you are literally not moving or creating a single thing in your experience, just floating like an empty void passing through space, like something else is moving your body entirely. That would coincide with having to let go of yourself, being confronted with your non-existence.

@Joseph Maynor I listened to Uncle Meat and One Size Fits All for the first time when I was 17 and I had brought two weed joints to this farmhouse in the country in the summer. Sparked one of them in the woods during midday, got super paranoid, went inside and laid down on the couch lights off in the living room and put on the music on my earsbuds. Truly out of body experience. The experimental and jammy music and weird off-the-wall samples of peculiar conversations, and of course the compositions, was like tapping into a new dimension of experience, like unlocking a new part of musical experience.

Well, then it's insane to say that I'm schizotypal for exactly the same reason. I said (to myself, at that time before testing myself) I'm schizotypal essentially for believing in 90% of the shit that is entertained here (and sprinkle some psychic phenomena in there too which is a bit more fringe). Remember, I'm psychologically educated, I have to keep the normie mindset in mind when making such judgements. For normies, you guys are wacked out crazy crackpots (unless perhaps you're exclusively hanging out in the society and politics sub-forum or you're literally always disagreeing about everything in the other sub-forums). But again, I might be misdefining what is meant by odd beliefs/thinking, it might be referring to something more specific, in which case I would (probably?) not be within that symptom either (if it's like "I was a car once, and it smelled fantastic"). EDIT: let's have an expert weigh in on the question (a transcript of a Robert Sapolsky lecture): And interestingly:

😂 The reason I thought it was the odd beliefs/thinking part. I didn't think about the other symptoms, and according to the probably shit internet test, those symptoms do not match as much. And it's funny, again depending on how you define odd beliefs/thinking, all of us here are schizotypal in that sense (compared to the rest of society). And that's the reason for calling it a cult in my definition. Cults are schizotypal in that sense. And by the way, if you think you just scored some points by thinking you landed a DSM-5 category on me (which you probably didn't), I think virtually all these things are spectrums. We're all on the schizophrenia, autism, OCD, anxiety, etc., spectrum. And if you have an actual diagnosis from a professional, there is a spectrum within that as well, and depending on the diagnosis and the severity, I couldn't give a fuck if you have it (especially ADHD, you can "buy" one of those if you really want).

That's such a weird thing to do, and weird thing to assume is impacting this thread in particular (maybe you're the schizotypal one), and I don't quite see the point, as you maybe have intuited. Anyways, I admired him for the intuitive impact his posts had (especially when directly addressing me), how it seemed to hit something deep inside me, not always knowing exactly how. Truly mystical. Fun fact: I once thought I was schizotypal/schizoid, then I took an online (probably shit) DSM-5 personality test, and I scored close to zero on those but I maxed out hypomaniac and obsessive-compulsive. That actually recontextualized a lot of things for me. As for the symptoms, I probably score most on "odd thinking" (depending on how it's defined), but I wouldn't say I talk weird. The other symptoms do not really fit, at most marginally.

Exactly the sociopathic engagement I would expect. No, because as I said earlier, I have given posts upon posts of detail on the exact topic (definitions, examples, comparisons), as the one you quoted just now. Again, I was not simply bitching about giving individual points. I was bitching about giving nothing but individual points; individual points not grounded in the context of a detailed fleshed out position. Yeah, hyperbolically put "equivalent" in structure (the right word is "analogous"), but they were two different events (they happened years apart). Why do you mention it?

I had a feeling this weird apologizing and backtracking were just rhetorical quips (as they made no sense), maybe I was right. Nevertheless, I find your conversation/debate style sociopathic and not worth my time, but I will engage with you one last time before I put you on my ignore list. I mean, if you want to call the fact that the leader was entertaining thoughts of a Manson situation "dramatic", sure, it was kinda dramatic. Not sure how you think it's "exploitative" though. Anyways, if one of the members had taken the thoughts seriously and harmed the person in question, would it be a cult then? Good you finally started taking some stances. Is a doomsday cult a cult if there is no exceptional amount of manipulation and control over its members? Why do you mention Nahm? You think it was him who led the Discord?

Lol. Let's try recapping: I think it's a cult, Leo doesn't, and you seemed to initially be skeptical it was a cult (because you were seemingly pulling rope for Leo's definition), but then you seemed to start calling it a cult after I explained more in-depth the "ills" of the cult (as if that is relevant; it's not, in my definition). Then you just recently mistook me and Elliott talking about Actualized.org while we were actually talking about the Discord and I had to correct you on that (you said "I don't think it's a cult by the way", mistakenly thinking we were referring to Actualized.org). Or you were just suddenly jumping out of that discussion and you wanted to talk about Actualized.org without qualifying what "it" means or without finding a relevant to quote to quote and instead you just @-ed me.

I forgot, but also, you did seem to talk to the whole thread at one point: But you will maybe backtrack and say "I said I was maybe asking rude questions; I did not ask a question there", as if there is a salient difference between asking questions and addressing someone in that way with respect to the potential rudeness of being inconsiderate of their personal cult experience. I don't think you quite managed to a roll a six with this one just yet (but you can always find more poison fish in the sea, for example "I was specifically referring to some questions I asked, not the act of asking questions"). That's a convenient poison tuna assertion for you that I can't be asked challenging. Anyways, I got baited again. As if asking questions to someone who is discussing that very thing at length with others is rude. Suggesting that just comes off like rhetorical waffling.

Nooo the Discord cult, you called that a cult. You said I was in a cult. "Personal cult history may colour his readiness to see cult history here." Elliot: "he was in a cult?". You: "Yes, it was discussed a bit earlier in this thread. (p14)" Here I emphasize the "religious" aspect of the definition (and depending on how you define religion, many social groups with deviant beliefs would fall under that perhaps in a way that would be less obvious to most people). Nevertheless, it's definitionally safer and more straightforward to say "social group with deviant beliefs compared surrounding society, often religious in nature".

Bruh what even. No, because if we're all in a cult here (which I think according to my definition, which by the way does not involve exploitation or harm as a necessary criteria, which is also not to say this place is harmless either), you're being "rude" to everyone you've been talking to in this thread, not just me. And even if you were just being "rude" to me, you leaving the thread just for me would be weird anyway.

But you said 'I' was in a cult 🤪 That's what we were talking about. I gave a "one-line definition" after a multi-page thread of going into detail (I started off with long posts), and I also elaborated when you asked about it. The issue wasn't that you gave one line in itself, it was that you didn't go into detail on it, at as far as I can remember any point. I asked you to elaborate on it and you said "I'm not an expert on cults. You asked Leo for his definition of mind control. This is what google says about mind control in cults :" and then it was back to talking about us purportedly accusing Actualized of being a cult.

How did we get here from this: You can't even hold the notion that it's a debate consistent. Man, we're out here at Zul-Andra poison waste fishing for toxic red herrings.

My elephant hippocampus is calling me, I've heard this before. Interesting that what I identify as a shallow debate method you identify as a lack of care.

It's a structural problem mostly related to how you haven't presented your own comprehensive take and given your own definitions of what you think a cult is or what you think narcisissm is, etc. (Wilhelm started off the same way and I had to eventually ask him what he thought a cult is and even then he just gave a one-sentence answer which we later discovered was clearly inadequate). Feel free to argue against that, find flaws in the consistency of that. I think the AI at times just assumed people's arguments and framings and put that in someone's blindspot section without going much in depth into the reasoning itself (i.e. it gave more of a summary of points rather than a critical evaluation of points); I hold that for your "1-point argumentation" line as well. And that's to be expected as AI ironically also has trouble with identifying relevance at deeper layers (see me and @zurew's breaking of a 3-times double-checked Claude deep research query in my thread about GDPR and EU AI Act). I'm a bit schizo but I interpret that as a patronizing "poor thang, his brain is broken". Leo's definition doesn't consider it a cult, Wilhelm also didn't think it was a cult but apparently he changed his mind after our discussion. Maybe you wouldn't think it's a cult either if you gave your own definition of a cult.

Even if it might seem like it's not a big issue and people practice it often, it's not actually good debate to have someone who hasn't presented a position arguing against your position (notice how no official debates use this format), it's not good to have someone who doesn't have a goal of evaluating their own position but only seeking what they think is consistency in a local and usually irrelevant linguistic structure. And when that local consistency is dealt with, you find another based on not a goal of arriving at a larger point, but defeating yet another more local point. A bit rambly but: it's engagement at a low level of complexity. It doesn't hold large amounts of data in mind at once. It's a quintessentially "Orange" way of debating, getting caught in consistency testing rather than refining relevance. It's in a sense sociopathic as it's short-sighted, only focused on the immediate present, not a larger structure of meaning. It's a larger problem of epistemology. You are rolling the dice again and again waiting to get a six. Just by probability, you will likely get a six at some point if you roll the dice enough times. Trouble is that six will likely not be very relevant in the larger scheme of the discussion, because you're fishing for sixes in waters where relevance is low. You're like a guy fishing in a polluted lake trying very hard to catch toxic fish that no one will eat. Solution is give your own comprehensive well-thought through take on the entire thing and we can respond to that within our own comprehensive well-thought out take. That's a fair discussion when we're working on two comparable fronts. (Weird analogy, the others were worse): It's like two big lego figures trying to stick together rather than a little one encircling the bigger one and finding any and every possible place to stick to. And it tethers you to your own comprehensive take so you must be consistent to it and you can't go on wild fishing trips trying to roll the dice in the wildest of places.

I've very clearly laid out my issues with Leo's conduct in this thread and other threads I've linked. If you want to create a dramatized movie romantic tragedy disposition of that, that's your prerogative. By the way, this is more of "the method" ("let's forget about this very core trait associated with narcissism and let's discuss other traits as if that will take us anywhere"), and asking a different question like above in tandem is too. If you had an overall grasp of narcissism or simply an overall position on the matter you would just give us your take. The method is ad-hoc, it's p-hacking, it's theoretically undergrounded fishing for significant results (unrefuted arguments). If Integral feeds your posts to his Integral bot debate analyzer, you will get the same result as Wilhelm, that's my highly plausible hypothesis. That's why I get "flippant". I've been taught by the very "master of psychology" to be highly critical of this.

What do you mean exactly? 🙂

I'm sorry, sometimes the method of forum interaction I described makes your responses go under the radar.

Do it then, you're missing out.

Do the ChatGPT response already, we have been dry on AI slop in this thread for the last half an hour.

As I said, we're not in a psychologist office. Nobody is laying on a chair. We're just shooting the shit. If you can't register grandiosity on your personal non-professional non-on-the-job-psychologist symptom chart, then fine, us others can. This is the Elliot and Wilhelm playbook of forum interactions: enter a thread while having no prior overarching principles on the topic, ask a question about a highly minute point, play logic roulette until the point gets refuted, and move on the next minute point, repeat ad nauseum. I'm being flippant the way an elephant flips its ears with its photographic memory. Perhaps I'm being a bit extra spicy today, yes.