How I infiltrated the Raëlians (and was hugged by their leader)

I hardly think you "infiltrated"

This was tongue-in-cheek of course.

but I caution against going back

I'm not planing to, even though I'm very very very sure about not getting fooled (I've been through Chrisitanity too in my youth, I've escaped with my own strength without external help or inspiration, and have since converted a few people to atheism).

I don't plan to go back because it would be a waste of my emotional energy that I could use to work on rationality communities (that I actually care about). Pretty much what you are trying to tell me, I guess. Thanks for worrying :) I'm fine :)

Note: this is a neat example of how the economy/"investing a limited resource" viewpoint can generate better life decisions than asking "does this seem like a good idea?" about individual things.

Good question!

As you rightly suspect, one of their strongly professed goals is the "viral" aspect, i.e. "we have been given a mission to spread the wonderful/enlightening message from the benevolent aliens that suspiciously look like a bunch of French dudes in jumpsuits".

Besides that, they care a lot about:

• Science

This may sound funny, but yes, they think of themselves as supporters of "science" and "scientific" views (versus religion). And in their cheering/repeating phrases heard from the scientific crowd, they even got a few things right, especially those that were well established at the time when their "message" book was written.

• World peace

They consistently put emotional effort into thinking about this, but I do not know of any instances when they achieved an outcome in the world.

• Polyamory

This one seems to be a pretty real positive effect, especially in the context of Japan, with its overly rigid social rules that cause a lot of anxiety and unhappiness all around.

• Emotional well-being of humans

While their epistemology is abhorrent, the methods they use for this are pretty efficient, and this aspect provides clear value to members.

I personally use "take a deep breath and feel grateful" as a primitive action, which is perfectly compatible with rationality, and has measurable effect on quality of life (especially in case of countering SNS responses). Most cults and religions know that it works, and use it in a "package deal" with brainwashing. But regardless of how often they are misused, techniques like this are valuable, and so is spreading their practice in communities.

Note: I kind of sound like I'm defending them, but please keep in mind that I only take this stance because it's opposed to the default LW reaction, and therefore more likely to produce non-tautological conversations.

Being someone quite involved in EA, I can tell you that EA should grow as fast as possible, or that the priority is to make anyone who willing to become passionate about it to feel as welcome as possible, isn't worth it if the expense is the quality culture of the movement, to the extent it has a quality culture of epistemic hygiene.

Sounds like effective is being cast aside for epistemically pure. EPA? Epistemically Pure Altruism.

If we look at mistakes of other groups and learn not to repeat them, it's not a "wrong lesson".

Also, I think you too easily assume that they don't do anything that belongs to the light side. The whole trick in creating a group like that is, I guess, mixing the dark side stuff in between enough of the good stuff that it becomes hard to notice.

This may not be the best example, but what if you can get better PR for EA by choosing the more attractive people to do the public speaking, where's the harm in that? That's how human psychology likely works.

On the contrary, I assign a higher prior probability to movements based on sensible ideas rising to prominence, versus movements based on total nonsense.

(How many failed/successful flying saucer cults? How many failed/successful nonprofits and charities? I don't have real data, but my gut feeling says saucer cults are worse off on average.)

This means that success of a movement based on total nonsense requires a higher burden of proof in the quality of its organisation. For example good leadership, consistent message, effort in PR etc.

The factors you mention might make it easier in some respects to run a cult, but I think they do not on average outweigh the costs. If they do, we should see this reflected in the amount of functioning cults versus charities.

Quite the opposite view from the sentence you quoted!

I learned that some of the people there were really high-profile, but I don't know the percentages. On the other hand, some others were perfectly ordinary folk, so if there is a preference it's not exclusive.

For example I remember that one guy (they said) had a company selling electronics, and gave others lots of expensive presents ("presents"?) like Alienware gaming hardware etc.

the other Japanese people

Rael is French, not Japanese.

Of these three, only love bombing was prominently present, but I think it was actually genuine feeling in the "low rank" members (and I've talked to quite a few). Of uniforms, I think they all had unassuming trinkets/medalions hung from their necks. Food sharing was not present and the mentioned lunch was not more special than any other lunches I went to with other groups of people.

I think there were quite a few other interesting factors at play, and that's why I suggested we could all learn something from a discussion about it. I don't have anything like a complete analysis ready myself, but I detected significant amounts of:

• casual, friendly touch - there's nothing wrong with it and I would like to see more of it in other communities,

• making good use of good looking people and sexual attractiveness - subtle enough to not be pretentious,

• telling people to think for themselves (but I guess on meta-level, you already know the conclusion you are supposed to think of),

• scripted/planned/predictable ways to evoke positive emotions,

• honesty about emotions and subjective experience, and full acceptance of this by other members,

• generally positive atmosphere of friendliness and helpfulness that carries over to the rest of the world, not just the in-group,

• excellent stage/public speaking/PR skills of the top ranking members,

• mixing in genuinely worthy/morally sound cases, like stopping wars (but from LW point of view it looks mostly like cheering than taking action).