Hi! Author here - thanks for the feedback. I added the following footnote to the article to clarify:
> I use the term "hazing" broadly to mean any way of excluding members from joining an organization. For example, a job interview is a form of "hazing".
In response to "How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met?" I'll provide a personal example: I recently travelled to a different city, and asked a friend of mine for sightseeing recommendations because he used to live there. During the conversation, he mentioned that his ex-girlfriend still lives there, and offered to put me in touch with her. I then asked his ex-girlfriend (who I had only one prior interaction with!) to be my emergency contact while I was on my trip, which she agreed to, because of the shared trust they had established in their prior relationship, and their familiarity with me in our mutually overlapping social circles. This is what I mean that a person's entanglements are more important than their attributes.
> I use the term "hazing" broadly to mean any way of excluding members from joining an organization. For example, a job interview is a form of "hazing".
I agree that whiteboarding is ritualized hazing. ;-)
But otherwise, you can't just take a term that everyone understands in a certain way and then claim that it means something completely different. Job interviews aren't ritualized hazing, they're part of the hiring process.
[Insert reference to Wittgenstein's private language argument.]
> I use the term "hazing" broadly to mean any way of excluding members from joining an organization. For example, a job interview is a form of "hazing".
In response to "How can you trust and be loyal to someone you just met?" I'll provide a personal example: I recently travelled to a different city, and asked a friend of mine for sightseeing recommendations because he used to live there. During the conversation, he mentioned that his ex-girlfriend still lives there, and offered to put me in touch with her. I then asked his ex-girlfriend (who I had only one prior interaction with!) to be my emergency contact while I was on my trip, which she agreed to, because of the shared trust they had established in their prior relationship, and their familiarity with me in our mutually overlapping social circles. This is what I mean that a person's entanglements are more important than their attributes.