Thank you for your detailed post on how to compare these kinds of organisations. I have the feeling that EA doesn’t spend as much time as I would have expected (for a longtermist movement) on figuring out how to actually build a memeplex that’s sticky for possibly millennia.
There is a book by John Dickie called The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World. Having only read the Economist’s review (pay-walled)¹ it looks like a good starting point if somebody wants to go more in depth on how the Freemasons came to exist for so long and recruit quite a few influential people. Apparently they have around 6 million members worldwide and no central governing body.
Maybe there is also an argument to be made that their influence as a movement, and their success in spreading their values might actually be quite limited, although some of their members have a lot of influence (in some cases through the Italian mafia).
So basically: only creating a good label, that’s perpetuated through rituals and associated with a lot of famous people might work well to attract conspiracy fantasies, but doesn’t necessarily help improve the long term future.
Thank you for your detailed post on how to compare these kinds of organisations. I have the feeling that EA doesn’t spend as much time as I would have expected (for a longtermist movement) on figuring out how to actually build a memeplex that’s sticky for possibly millennia.
There is a book by John Dickie called The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World. Having only read the Economist’s review (pay-walled)¹ it looks like a good starting point if somebody wants to go more in depth on how the Freemasons came to exist for so long and recruit quite a few influential people. Apparently they have around 6 million members worldwide and no central governing body.
Maybe there is also an argument to be made that their influence as a movement, and their success in spreading their values might actually be quite limited, although some of their members have a lot of influence (in some cases through the Italian mafia).
So basically: only creating a good label, that’s perpetuated through rituals and associated with a lot of famous people might work well to attract conspiracy fantasies, but doesn’t necessarily help improve the long term future.
1: also readable here: https://outline.com/82hYaU