[jlehman]

Your central point is "A is a cult, because X is a characteristic of cults and A has X characteristic, therefore A is a cult." By that reasoning, all domains that have a need to use precise language to describe their concepts are cults. Like physics. Quark? Definitely a cult.

[lisper]

You've lost the plot. My central claim is not so much that Urbit is a cult as that it is a waste of time (in part because it's a cult, but that is really neither here nor there). Part of my initial argument turned out to be based on the mistaken assumption that the reference to "teraforming Mars" was literally a reference to teraforming Mars when in fact it was part of Urbit's secret lexicon. But this mistake doesn't weaken my argument because the argument never turned on this either way.

[NealEDavis]

For someone who claims to mistake the objective of the Urbit project as literally “terraforming Mars”, your other comments on this post show a remarkable degree of outsider familiarity with the project. One suspects that this “mis”understanding shows less than a good-faith reading of the text.

[lisper]

I have no idea what you're talking about. I saw this text:

> We’re running a cohort class of App School to teach you how to terraform Mars.

and thought they were literally talking about terraforming Mars. I was (apparently) mistaken, but I don't see how you can accuse me of reading the text in bad faith if I took it at its literal word. There are people who seriously talk about terraforming Mars, and so it is not at all unreasonable to think that some Urbit users are among them.