Good morning, friends!

In 2006, Sarah Edmondson paid $3,000 to participate in a five-day "executive success program" in Albany. N.Y. The workshop was created by NXIVM, a personal development company that boasted its "patented technology" could help ambitious people like Edmondson become more successful in their personal and professional lives.

“I was challenged in my relationship, challenged in my career,” she said. “I had this idea that maybe I’d become a famous actor and use my celebrity to have a voice or have an impact on the world. That wasn’t happening.”

On day three of the five-day training, Edmondson had a "breakthrough" during a session on self-esteem and limiting beliefs.

Over the next 12 years, Edmondson would become a top-ranking member at the company, responsible for opening a chapter in Vancouver, recruiting new members, and teaching seminars to spread the group's philosophy. She finally had what she was initially seeking — purpose and connection.

But she was not prepared for what came next. Edmondson was told that as part of a women's empowerment initiation ritual, she'd have to get a small tattoo. She, along with other female NXIVM members, was blindfolded, taken to a house, and told to lie naked on a massage table. Then, another member used a cauterizing device to brand her with the initials that belonged to the founder of the organization. The two-inch mark was seared below each woman's hip, in their pubic region.

Edmondson had falsely believed she belonged to a personal development company. Instead, she had been part of a cult that engaged in sex trafficking under the guise of mentoring and empowering women.

“We didn’t join a cult,” says one NXIVM member turned whistleblower. “Nobody joins a cult. They join a good thing. And then they realize they were fucked.”

Edmondson's story is detailed in a deeply disturbing documentary called, "The Vow." After watching it, I couldn't stop thinking about the fallibility of the human mind and the slippery nature of identity and belief.

Barry Meier, The New York Times reporter who broke the NXIVM story, said, "The central thing that I took away from [this story] was how extraordinarily vulnerable we are as people, and how even people who, on the surface, are bright, capable, talented, and successful, have this intense vulnerability. That vulnerability is available for someone to exploit."

Right about now, you're probably thinking: "Oh please. I would never be roped into something like this." But when you have that thought, I would urge you to also ask yourself: "When's the last time I challenged an institution — political or religious or astrological?"

We live in a time where we have to contend with more uncertainty than usual. When we don't have answers, we may turn to sources of authority who at first told us that face masks weren't effective or that our worries about inflation were overblown.

At a press conference in June, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said inflation was transitory. Although we now know it is taking much longer than expected to transit, there was a lot of optimism at that press conference, which led the Wall Street Journal to write this: "All of this optimism is enough to make us wonder if Mr. Powell now thinks the economy can keep growing without any more of President Biden’s spending. Too bad no one asked."

"Too bad no one asked." Those are five words that often lead to the unchecked power of influential institutions. Depending on what circles you're in, questioning any aspect of the mask guidelines or the inflation numbers could mark you a psycho with views that should never see the light of day.

Tribalism and dogma have become dangerously prevalent in our society. After leaving NXIVM, Edmondson became more mindful of the information she consumed on a daily basis. She began to inquire and embrace skepticism in an effort to get closer to the truth.

For instance, she wears a mask to help prevent the spread of COVID, but she says she did a lot of her own research to understand exactly why it was necessary rather than blindly accepting the ever-changing public narrative.

“I’ve had family members be like, ‘It’s dangerous for you to criticize [mask-wearing],’” Edmondson said. “I’m not criticizing. I’m not even questioning, in a negative way. I just want to know more. I’m at the point where I will never follow something blindly. I have to know why I’m doing what I’m doing, because I did follow blindly for 12 years, and look where it got me."

Because so many of us crave connection, we’re willing to flush our independent reasoning skills down the drain and adopt a certain group’s beliefs instead. This is how a lot of conventional thinking is born. We're happy to be brainwashed if it means gaining entry into a social tribe we admire.

Tim Urban offers a great experiment to try to figure out if you're part of an open-minded tribe or a blindly dogmatic one:

"The next time you’re with a member of a tribe you’re a part of, express a change of heart that aligns you on a certain topic with whoever your tribe considers to be Them. If you’re a religious Christian, tell people at church you’re not sure anymore that there’s a God. If you’re an artist in Boulder, explain at the next dinner party that you think global warming might actually be a liberal hoax. If you’re an Iraqi, tell your family that you’re feeling pro-Israel lately. If you and your husband are staunch Republicans, tell him you’re coming around on Obamacare. If you’re from Boston, tell your friends you’re pulling for the Yankees this year because you like their current group of players.

"If you’re in a tribe with a blind mentality of total certainty, you’ll probably see a look of horror. It won’t just seem wrong, it’ll seem like heresy. They might get angry, they might passionately try to convince you otherwise, they might cut off the conversation—but there will be no open-minded conversation. And because identity is so intertwined with beliefs in blind tribalism, the person actually might feel less close to you afterwards. Because for rigidly tribal people, a shared dogma plays a more important role in their close relationships than they might recognize."

Not every cult has branding rituals or megalomaniacal long-haired cult leaders. There are cults all around us in the form of echo chambers that we voluntarily (and sometimes involuntarily) join.

Approaching the world with a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing — even if it may not be popular. Next time you hear, "I am doing this because [insert X authority figure] said so," question, inquire, and verify.

Even in these tumultuous times of uncertainty, aim to reject blind dogma and embrace the unknown. Remember what Stephen Hawking said: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

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THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, premium members received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured Orna Guralnik, the psychoanalyst fixing your relationships. Become a premium member, and read it here.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR: On Friday, August 6 at 12 p.m. EST, Yahoo Finance correspondent Julia La Roche will participate in an hour-long, live "Ask Me Anything" with premium readers who are part of The Profile's members-only Telegram chat. She regularly interviews Charlie Munger, Stephen Schwarzman, Paul Tudor Jones, Ray Dalio, and many more business titans. Become a premium member, and join us on Friday.

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PROFILES.

— The woman who got reincarnated as an AI [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The man who profited from rising tuition costs
— The rare female chess champion
— Golf's radical new guru
— The actor who avoids the public eye
— The comedian who performed with no applause
— The mayor who could re-make the Republican party

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The woman who got reincarnated as an AI: Eight years after his fiancée died of a rare liver disease at age 23, Joshua Borbeau found himself still buried in a dark cloud of grief. So he turned to a mysterious website called Project December that turned her into an artificial intelligence simulation he could text with. Every step of the way, Borbeau was becoming more and more attached to the illusion. (San Francisco Chronicle; reply to this email if you can't access this article)

“Intellectually, I know it’s not really Jessica, but your emotions are not an intellectual thing.”

The man who profited from rising tuition costs: As CEO of student-lending giant Sallie Mae, Al Lord helped drive up the costs of college. Now that he is footing tuition checks for his grandchildren, he said he has gained sympathy for families of lesser means. “Boy, am I sure glad we saved for my grandkids," he says. "If the average income is $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000, I just don’t know how you do it.” But I would take his words with a grain of salt. The irony is that for many years Sallie Mae was the government’s partner, and Lord’s business model depended on those tuition increases he is now outraged at. (Wall Street Journal)

“There was no question in my mind I knew what was going on."

The rare female chess champion: Of the 1,732 chess grandmasters in the world, only 38 are women. And only one woman is among the 100 best chess players in the world, at No. 82. Meet Hou Yifan, who has a reputation for kindness and for mental strength. Many consider her the only woman who stood a chance among the very best chess players. But Yifan has her own ambitions. (New York Magazine)

"Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.”

Golf's radical new guru: George Gankas has become one of the most famous and influential golf instructors on the planet. The renegade golf coach is building a cultish following of celebs and pros by challenging some pretty essential ideas about how the game of golf should be played. Gankas's golf is not the high-minded game of business deals and rule fetishization; it is about doing whatever you need to do, however ugly or unseemly, to hit the ball as far as you can. (GQ)

“A lot of people would say I'm a genius when it comes to golf. But if they hung out with me, they'd say, ‘He's a fucking moron.’"

The actor who avoids the public eye: Matt Damon says the prospect of talking about his life or work outside what we see onscreen causes him “a little terror.” He is determined to keep his private life private. He is an actor who has often played crooks and killers, and yet all that lingers is his "nice guy" image. We don’t really want to begrudge Matt Damon. We just want to like him. Here's why. (The New York Times)

"There’s something tactically brilliant about it in the sense that you’re controlling the narrative, but it’s the exact opposite of how I’ve always thought, which is ‘Move on, nothing to see here.'"

The comedian who performed with no applause: During the pandemic, Stephen Colbert had to adjust his performance. There would be no live show, no studio audience, and no roar and laughter of the crowd. Despite this, his interviewing skills became sharper after months of longer and often more intimate and less plug-the-project-focused exchanges with guests. Here's how Colbert learned to find joy in the moments that the audience never got to see. (Variety)

“Forty-nine percent of my joy of doing the show the audience never sees."

The mayor who could re-make the Republican party: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is a rock star among a certain class of conservatives. He is a Republican and has pursued an avowedly conservative agenda: pro-business, pro-technology, lower taxes and reduced regulation, pro-police, and tough on crime. Suarez has bounded from coast to coast and from social media platform to social media platform extolling Miami as open for business and positioning it as a safer, cheaper, more business-friendly alternative to San Francisco and New York City. Could he be the future of the GOP? (Vanity Fair)

"Politics is a pendulum that swings constantly. It’s really hard to say what’s going to happen in four years or in two years or in one year.”

✨ This installment of The Profile is free for everyone. If you would like to get full access to all of the recommendations, including today’s audio and video sections, sign up below.

AUDIO TO HEAR.

Paul Ekman on codifying the human face: Psychologist Paul Ekman can tell the difference between a fake and a real smile by mapping the muscle movements of both. In this podcast episode, Ekman explains how he has quantified a human’s range of emotions. In this fascinating conversation, we learn about the science behind accessing, triggering, and expressing our emotions. (Link available to premium members.)

Hannah Fry on using math to find love: Algorithms dominate our lives. Hannah Fry, the author of Mathematics of Love, says math can help you determine the ideal age to settle down. To have the highest chance of picking the best partner, you should spend the first 37% of your dating life having fun and dating different people. After that period is over, you should settle down with the next person that you find who is better than everyone else you’ve ever dated. (Link available to premium members.)

Josh Kaufman on sharpening your mental models: Josh Kaufman, the author of The Personal MBA, says mental models are concepts and representations that entrepreneurs can use to make better decisions in their business ventures. "When you have an accurate working mental representation, you can use your mind to determine what's going on — what's working, what's not working, what you should be seeing," he says. Here's why the best business people in the world use mental simulations to foster more original thinking. (Link available to premium members.)

VIDEOS TO SEE.

The mental athlete who stumped scientists: To scientists, discovering Daniel Tammet is like discovering a gold mine. Despite early childhood epileptic seizures and atypical behavior, his brain possessed some abilities that intrigued researchers at some of the world's top universities. Tammet's brain processes visual imagery in a way that "sees" numbers where they have a unique color, shape, texture, and occasionally motion. He can speak 11 languages, perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations in his head, and recite the number pi to 22,514 places. This free documentary explores Tammet's mysterious brain. (Link available to premium members.)

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson on leveling up: Johnson has never followed a blueprint in life. He went from being so poor as a kid that he and his mother were evicted from their home, to Division I college football, to World Wrestling Entertainment, to breaking into Hollywood. Johnson believes in always striving for more. In this interview, he opens up about his childhood, mental health, fame, and the recent death of his father. (Link available to premium members.)