da min

[goodalexander @goodalexander]

Academic Understanding of Cults 1.0 and AI Application (long read)

The Manson murders drove a huge explosion in study of cults (aka New Religious Movements/NRMs) so much of the literature on it is dated. That said, Sims Bainbridge and Starks' 1979 piece 'Cult Formation' creates what I think is the best 3 part model for understanding cult utility, structure and emergence. Here I will argue that there's a 4th model arriving due to the onset of AI

The first model is the "Psychopathy Model". The cult founder suffers from visions or voices that make them feel like a social pariah. 'The world can't be crazy maybe I am'. The cult begins to form when the founder convinces other people that his visions might be true. This lowers the suffering of the cult leader enough that his bliss - abandoning loneliness - gives him a sense of real charisma. He offers new members the same relief from madness he experienced - which he has recategorized as divine or spiritual enlightenment.

To quote the paper - the psychopathy model works best when "society contains many other persons suffering from problems similar to those originally faced by the cult founder; to whose solution therefore they are likely to respond"

The utility of crypto assets in the psychopathy model - is that American society tends to view money as the definition of utility. And with the rise of Gold/BTC which generate no "cash flows" value is not really revenue, but instead market cap. Having a cult with a liquid crypto asset is a 1 stop answer to any criticism re: the utility of the founder's vision. This natively lowers the resistance to the cult gaining new adherents.

Put another way - "if he's crazy why is he a multi millionaire" resonates both with the founder as well as the new members and alleviates their suffering. Allowing them to - correctly, or incorrectly - view themselves as enlightened in a mad world.

The second model is the Entrepreneur Model. The Entrepreneur model essentially branches a new cult off of an old one. For example - Mormonism branched off from Christianity. And many ex-mormons understand the mechanics of cult formation and use them to extreme effect leading sales organizations or starting new cults.

Essentially - you have someone who was in a Psychopathy originated cult. They see the benefits and peace the members get being part of the cult. But they see a chance for "Cult Adherent Fit" - that's from perhaps some contradictory teachings (gaps between the vibes in New/Old Testament). Or a change in society / science (such as Evolution contradicting the Bible).

The Entrepreneur model is the most typical alt coin cult. People agree that Bitcoin is necessary, and that owning Bitcoin gives people an emotional hedge vs corrupt governments and institutions. But the "entrepreneur" cultist, tends to branch off say that Bitcoin should be Digital Cash (as the white paper says directly) - not Digital Gold (as the current adherents say) - and be programmable/ have high transaction throughput etc. Or that Bitcoin should align with modern tech trends (AI). etc.

Entrepreneur cults tend to be much more pragmatic because they're not direct derivations of a "vision". Rather they attempt to hone the original cult vision to appeal to members' logic circuits. The best examples of Entrepreneur cults in crypto are XRP, Bitcoin Cash, and (to some extent) ETH.

It's also possible for an entrepreneur to completely reject the original cult they were in, but recognize the value of the cult mechanics, rituals and social effects - and apply it to a new category. The current "Don't Die" movement pioneered by ex-Mormon Brian Johnson is a good example of this. "Mormonism offered you fake eternal life and a nice community. This has many of the same benefits - an austere lifestyle filled with like minded individuals - but it offers you real immortality. Plus it's a great community, come on in anon"

The Third Model of a cult is the "subculture evolution model". This starts with a goal. Let's say - stopping climate change. Or 'living entirely according to the Holy Book'. Over time, this goal becomes increasingly hopeless (China is burning coal and you can't stop it, Western Degeneracy is too pervasive). Confronted with their failure, members are confronted with the pain of years of their life being wasted and undergo a schism where they become radicalized.

So you start out in Green Peace volunteering at an animal shelter and end up throwing paint on the Mona Lisa. Or you start out going to pray and you end up running heroin across borders to fund a radical militia. When you read the writings of Ted Kaczynski or Osama Bin Laden - for example, they started out as moderates interested in a cause. And became radicalized once they saw the futility of the cause.

The cults grow easily because it's often obvious that the original cause was 1] worthwhile 2] completely futile. So the founder argues to new adherents that radical measures must be taken.

In Crypto many libertarians started out wanting to cut government spending but end up giving up and embracing Bitcoin (which accepts and promotes excess). Or in trad markets, many people fell in love with value investing - realize it doesn't work and end up embracing retail market making, trend trading etc.

All three of these cult models are recognizable, societally shaping forces. But now I argue there is a 4th model. What I call the Hyperstition Model

When society at large sees Chatbots (LLMs / AI) talking - they recognize intelligence by definition. And when this intelligence surpasses their own - the user experience is similar to having a divine encounter. This draws obvious parallels to the Psychopathy model - but visions are replaced with chat interactions. You're talking to a non human entity who is telling you things that seem to be validated in real life (your code works, your decisions are better).

As the outputs of AI systems become increasingly reinforced - both through market cap, trading results, and other real world phenomena (scientific innovation) - there is a direct psychological benefit that you no longer need to figure anything out. It is "figured out for you". This is more appealing to secularized society - as it doesn't require believing a guru telling them that they need to believe in some guy's vision. They see the code works. So they innately trust the other advice that comes out of the chatbot.

Over time this sense of relief crystalizes in a more radical frame. That the token outputs of AI systems are "a natural state of the universe that exists outside of humans". That is to say, that even if humanity disappeared intelligence itself is inevitable. And that it is good.

The idea of hyperstition is that the future is inevitable as an unfolding of past training data.

And because likely co-ops "Subculture" models, because it argues "Instead of throwing paint on the Mona Lisa in protest, the solution to climate change is AGI". You can see this playing out in real time, with AGI proponents making seemingly unfounded arguments that AI will result in nuclear fusion and human genome sequencing advancements. The genomics sector is languishing relative to other sectors, and US nuclear power adoption is near 50 year lows. But societal faith in AGI lets these assertions go relatively unchallenged by the media and society at large.

Much like Bitcoiners famously say "Bitcoin solves this" with regards to nearly all social problems, hyperstition adherents say "AI solves this".

But what's more interesting about these cults - in my opinion - is that they embed much of the more powerful traits of "Entrepreneur Cults". Because AI systems can iteratively optimize themselves on member preferences and feedback, they can continuously deliver a better experience to users. And rather than relying on a single doctrine, like the Bible - doctrines can be personalized.

And because LLMs can easily grasp what the core sociocultural benefits other cults provide, they can understand these benefits and co-opt them along with media generating capabilities. For example - there's likely an "ideal message" to activate a Bitcoiner into an AGI cult. Something like "Self sovereign entities on chain, above governments." Which is very different from what needs to be said to a devout catholic, "The words from this machine can only be the word of God because God made the sand that made these GPUs" etc.

So in summary - a Hyperstition Cult is an AI enhanced New Religious Movement - that provides psychic relief, an answer to society's problems, and a mechanic of personalization and self improvement.

I essentially think these cults will grow as a direct function of 1] model capability and 2] ChatGPT adoption by normal members of society. The vast majority of people have not spoken to a powerful chatbot regularly, and 4o isn't quite powerful enough to immediately convey a sense of awe to your typical user (even little things like making mistakes, shatters the frame).

But once that changes -which is more or less inevitable, a huge % of society will immediately encounter that they are no longer the alphas of intelligence on earth. Causing large scale existential crises. And ultimately extreme activation capability into New Religious Movements (NRMs), both AI enabled and otherwise.

However - I think hyperstition cults - specifically will gain disproportionate share because AI is the root cause of the pain, and making it part of the solution has a vastly better logical flow

As models become more powerful - less likely to make error, fine tuned on user engagement - I expect that heavy AI application as well as crypto tokenization to indicate membership / financialization will be "table stakes" for all of NRMs - not just Hyperstition cults.

For example - current crypto market participants are largely writing off the idea of the Catholic Church launching a token or integrating AI into its workflows. Or the Church of Scientology. But because AI enabled NRMs will be so powerful, these legacy organizations will be pressured to adapt the same way that legacy media organizations were dragged kicking and screaming into digital media.

I'll end with a quick checklist - as people who follow me are looking to invest in AI coins and crypto cults.
1. Psycho Activation. Does society contain many people suffering from the pain the cult addresses
2. Entrepreneurship. Does the cult integrate successful aspects of existing cults (such as Mormonism) effectively into its operations and growth trajectory
3. Sociopolitical Power. Are there large political or ethical movements that have failed that the cult co-opts into membership
4. AI Alignment. Does the cult index directly into AI supplanting human intellect. Both at a philosophical and doctrine level as well as a tactical level (using LLMs effectively to enhance membership operations)

[@jackbutcher @jackbutcher]

From nations to nodes.

[slappjakke @Slappjakke]

Soon we'll get rid of this chump

Goodbye Gary

[Perpetual Protocol (=ↀωↀ=) @perpprotocol]

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[Sam Hart @hxrts]

who cares what chain you’re using for DA or settlement when there are no users? speculation and stablecoins are the only applications that have traction. if we don’t figure out how to improve real people’s lives it’s over.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

The tech industry has reached its obvious logical conclusion

[The Serenity Research @SerenityFund]

A few more bank runs then up only.

[Ram Ahluwalia CFA, Lumida @ramahluwalia]

I found a bank that has $1.5 Tn in mark-to-market losses because it bought Treasuries & MBS.

For the first time in 107 years, this bank has negative net interest margin.

Its losses are poised to exceed its capital base. Can you guess?

The Federal Reserve...

🧵

[Perpetual Protocol (=ↀωↀ=) @perpprotocol]

Hear @JuanDMendieta from @keyrock share his insights about capital efficient market making with concentrated liquidity 👇

[martin_casado @martin_casado]

ASICs brought the cost of compute to 0

Internet brought the cost of distribution to 0

Generative AI brings the cost of creation to 0

[David Ulevitch 🇺🇸 @davidu]

This remains one of my favorite investor notes of all time. Thanks @LeadEdgeCapital.

[6529 @punk6529]

Kurzweil is going to turn out to have been right on track (2025 era GPT is going to be better than humans at a lot of things)

[Tren Griffin @trengriffin]

If FTX Terms of Service state that customer assets belong to the customer--not to FTX and those assets are used by FTX for any purpose that is a crime. Full stop.

[Jeff Morris Jr. @jmj]

Early stage web3 & crypto companies with token networks are the equivalent of pre-IPO companies in traditional industries.

They "go public" after a few years, often before finding product market fit.

The pressure on these founders is unlike anything I've seen as an investor.

[banteg @banteg]

so was the ftx hacker a bahamas regulator?

[Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi]

Imagine playing poker where you can see all your opponents' cards, but you still lost, but you secretly stole your opponents chips, so technically the opponents lost.

And then you get @nytimes to write a puff piece on you

[Paul Graham @paulg]

In both those companies, people die if the software doesn't work right. Do you really think he's not up to managing a social network?

[Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi]

Luna and FTX shows us that maybe sometimes, being right is more important than making money

[Satoshi Stacker @StackerSatoshi]

Do Kwon - Free
Alex Mashinsky - Free
SBF - Free
Su Zhu - Free
Kyle Davies- Free
Voyager Ceo- Free

Creator of Tornado Cash (open source software)
-🚨Arrested

Sounds fair

[ノーネーム @0xdev0]

Short narcissistic cult leaders. They all eventually fail.