“The rationalist movement strikes me as, in many ways, not part of the cultic milieu qua community. We don’t read the blogs of UFOlogists or sovereign citizens; we read the blogs of economists and historians. But the fundamental personality type is the same.

I was long puzzled about why rationalists keep becoming traditional Catholics, or getting really into chakras, or trying to summon demons, or joining the alt-right. You would think, given all the learning how to think good training we’re allegedly getting, we wouldn’t do that stuff! I think, given the “cultic milieu” concept, this observation is exactly what you would expect. While rationalists are more right than UFOlogists or for that matter people who believe in chakras, people do not become rationalists because they are especially good at thinking. People become rationalists because they are attracted to the cultic milieu—that is, people who distrust authority and want to figure things out for themselves and like knowing secrets that no one else knows. People who are attracted to the cultic milieu are attracted to stigmatized knowledge whether or not it is in fact correct. The members of the conventional cultic milieu drift smoothly from astrology to aliens. It is to be expected that some rationalists do the same.“

—Ozy Brennan, “Rationalists and the Cultic Milieu” (2022)