Combating cult mind control

What Hacker News says

1. deepfriedchokesApr 2025
   Hey Bud, anyone who claims this kind of “deep understanding” without evidence is running a cult. Always trust but verify; if you can’t verify you can’t trust and it’s just faith. The desire to have faith can come from a place of love but that desire is often exploited by those seeking power over others.

   Check out this book: Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan.

   Keep an open mind. I enjoyed reading your ideas of the universe but without evidence it’s just a fun idea. Science, empirical evidence, is what turns ideas into understanding.

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2. pc2g4dMay 2019
   Cults fill important human needs for human connection, structure, seemingly-legitimate authority, existential meaning and a driving purpose for life. To the degree these aren't provided by healthier structures in our society, individuals will be drawn to these organizations. And many things which we do not often think of as cults in many ways fit into the broader conception thereof: militaries, political parties, yoga studios, etc. have all been known to fall into that classification.

   Steve Hasan's BITE model is a great framework for thinking about these things. In many ways, control of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions is what all human organizations do, so it's more of a cost/benefit analysis than an either/or analysis that's called for. There are varying degrees of "cultiness". Recommended reading: "Combating Cult Mind Control".

   An evolutionary analysis of these sorts of social structures is also fascinating. If you treat a cult like a superorganism that must compete for resources with other organizations in the culture, you can understand many of the pressures driving them. Jonathan Haidt has shown how "morality binds and blinds", and this is nowhere stronger than in cults whose distinct moral code both binds people together into a unit, and blinds them to the true nature of the group.

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3. nis0sSep 2025
   The upside is that there are more video game players on average than video game players who do something violent. But it’s helpful to keep people aware of cult-like behaviors and cult-like recruitment techniques.

   Here’s one place to start some research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combating_Cult_Mind_Control

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4. raidicyMar 2022
   He's also got a book out, "Combating Cult Mind Control", although it looks to have been published before this. I'm curious of the differences.
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