Continuing the discussion from Project: Part 0: Considering major life choices:
One reason people leave: Lots of people like something about the idea of philosophy and rationality, and may have some mixed ideas. But they basically don’t want to be challenged or criticized in an open-ended way that raises doubts about the rationality or morality of their life or what they choose to spend their time on. When they are so challenged, they leave.
Another: What people actually want to find is a social community where they can make friends, be mostly conventional, and dabble in philosophy as a hobby they can make in-jokes about. CF isn’t really a good place for that, so they find it “cold” and go find something more like what they want.
Another: People see that CF implies changing how they live their life but don’t really get the part where they’re supposed to build up step by step understanding of why any reforms they might make to their current life make sense. So they cargo cult and flame out under the pressure of suppression, or they just arbitrarily decide it’s a cult and say to hell with it.
Another: people misinterpret the meaning of some criticism and get triggered by it and go nuclear (I did this one :( ).