François CholletVerified account

Side note: cults love cosmic thinking. "Here's the destiny of our universe / here's an evil threat that will destroy the Milky Way / we're descended from an alien race of Angels that lived millions of years ago in a different galaxy". You can never be grandiose enough.

The bigger the claim, the more disconnected from reality, the easier it is to believe it (and the harder it is to refute it)

Yeah, it's a fascinating dynamic. Are contrarians less likely to be in cults, do you think?

Much broader than cults, unless you define any ideology as a cult. And what kind of ideology doesn't have a strongly believed theory of the end times?

There's a reason "doomsday cult" is a phrase. Eschatology is a major trope of cults. There must always be a rising threat that will lead the world to the end times, and a hero figure (cult leader) that stands between us and the tide of darkness.