iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Dr. Joseph Laycock's article "A Cult by Any Other Name: Is "High Demand Group" a Useful Category?" in the journal Nova Religio available at a local sci hub near you! A key take-away from the essay:

*highlighted text*When someone calls a group a “cult,” it is not clear whether they object to the group’s theology, have concerns about its social structure, are unimpressed by the size of its membership and the date of its founding, or if they simply do not like it.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

At the same time that the modern US is in a period of high apocalyptic fervor across political, religious, and economic spectra, we're also in a period of moral panic about "cults". Every group we don't like is "cult-like" from MAGA to trans people and none of this helps us understand real problems.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Real problems are verifiable harms shown with evidence on real people and real environments. "AI alignment" doesn't have this and neither does "cult" discourse which mixes actually coercive and harmful with people we disagree with and have been unable to win over.

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