Eliezer Yudkowsky examines why our kind can’t cooperate — meaning his kind, the atheist, libertarian, technophile, sf-fan, early-adopter, programmer, etc. crowd — which leads him to ask, How do things work on the Dark Side?
The respected leader speaks, and there comes a chorus of pure agreement: if there are any who harbor inward doubts, they keep them to themselves. So all the individual members of the audience see this atmosphere of pure agreement, and they feel more confident in the ideas presented — even if they, personally, harbored inward doubts, why, everyone else seems to agree with it.(“Pluralistic ignorance” is the standard label for this.)
If anyone is still unpersuaded after that, they leave the group (or in some places, are executed) — and the remainder are more in agreement, and reinforce each other with less interference.
(I call that “evaporative cooling of groups“.)
The ideas themselves, not just the leader, generate unbounded enthusiasm and praise. The halo effect is that perceptions of all positive qualities correlate — e.g. telling subjects about the benefits of a food preservative made them judge it as lower-risk, even though the quantities were logically uncorrelated. This can create a positive feedback effect that makes an idea seem better and better and better, especially if criticism is perceived as traitorous or sinful.
(Which I term the “affective death spiral“.)
So these are all examples of strong Dark Side forces that can bind groups together.
And presumably we would not go so far as to dirty our hands with such…
Therefore, as a group, the Light Side will always be divided and weak. Atheists, libertarians, technophiles, nerds, science-fiction fans, scientists, or even non-fundamentalist religions, will never be capable of acting with the fanatic unity that animates radical Islam. Technological advantage can only go so far; your tools can be copied or stolen, and used against you. In the end the Light Side will always lose in any group conflict, and the future inevitably belongs to the Dark.
There’s much more. Read the whole thing.