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String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

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Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#21

Post by s1artibartfast »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #18
s1artibartfast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

define insane here. I think modern social acceptability hinges more on the degree to which personal beliefs infringe on others, at least in the west. If someone refuses to personally eat pasta because they believe in the great spaghetti monster, they can knock themselves out for all I care.

To the extent that your neighbors believe in false or unprovable things that don’t exist in our tangible reality, that should concern you. This can absolutely lead to horrifying violence, and has repeatedly done so in the past. The good thing about most major organized religions is that they’ve developed (some) guardrails against murdering the non-believers based on the theory that some intangible being requires this…

All first principles are unprovable. Theism does not have a monopoly on violence, so I don't see why I should be more concerned about it then anything else.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#22

Post by MrLeap »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #18
s1artibartfast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

define insane here. I think modern social acceptability hinges more on the degree to which personal beliefs infringe on others, at least in the west. If someone refuses to personally eat pasta because they believe in the great spaghetti monster, they can knock themselves out for all I care.

To the extent that your neighbors believe in false or unprovable things that don’t exist in our tangible reality, that should concern you. This can absolutely lead to horrifying violence, and has repeatedly done so in the past. The good thing about most major organized religions is that they’ve developed (some) guardrails against murdering the non-believers based on the theory that some intangible being requires this…

I can't prove it, but I believe that everyone on this planet believes at least one thing false or something that can't be proven.

I'm concerned, but not about that. Division concerns me. Balanced compassion for self and others is the only solution I can think of.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#23

Post by potato3732842 »

teachrdan wrote: post #20
tolerance wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up Joshua Citarella’s coverage of the ideological milieus that Generation Z cultivated during COVID on platforms like Discord. And then check out the term “metairony” or “postirony” and this story make more sense…at least as much sense as the absurdity of it all will allow you to make of it.

We seem to live in a post-ironic moment. Look no further than the Boogaloo Boys. They want to start a second American civil war and are named after the 1984 movie "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo". It would be a joke except they've engaged in violent attacks up to and including murder in the service of trying to start that aforementioned civil war. Are they serious or a joke? I think their embrace of a ridiculous name…

Jokingly referring to something as " 2: Electric Boogaloo" was a very common turn of phrase on certain parts of the internet in the early-mid 2010s. It sounds like a joke because it grew out of a joke.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#24

Post by s1artibartfast »

teachrdan wrote: post #20
tolerance wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up Joshua Citarella’s coverage of the ideological milieus that Generation Z cultivated during COVID on platforms like Discord. And then check out the term “metairony” or “postirony” and this story make more sense…at least as much sense as the absurdity of it all will allow you to make of it.

We seem to live in a post-ironic moment. Look no further than the Boogaloo Boys. They want to start a second American civil war and are named after the 1984 movie "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo". It would be a joke except they've engaged in violent attacks up to and including murder in the service of trying to start that aforementioned civil war. Are they serious or a joke? I think their embrace of a ridiculous name…

>almost more frightening because it shows their contempt for reasonableness, for lack of a better term.

I think another way to look at it is willful nonconformance and rejection of mainstream values (and judgement). Not unlike gutter punks dressing the way they did.

I think counter culture has a long history of this, from men wearing their hair long to people dressing up as literal clowns.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#25

Post by s1artibartfast »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #17
thehappyfellow wrote: post #13

For related background read the (horrifying) description of Leverage, a “research” institution with links to Zizians: https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-res... There’s an undercurrent of cults and cult-like institutions in the rationalist crowd (think: lesswrong.com folks) and this is one instance of this.

I think it’s worth discussing the fact that many folks in EA- and rationalist-adjacent circles are deeply panicked about developments in AI, because they believe these systems pose a threat to human existence. (Not all of them, obviously. But a large and extraordinarily well-funded contingent.) The fear I have with these organizations is that eventually panic - in the name of saving humans - leads to violent action.…

I think this is a variant of Walter Russell Mead's abrahamic bomb [1].

when you remove the theology from Psychology based on Judeo Christian Morality, it recreates it's facsimile In this case, AI judgment Day precedes either eternal damnation or salvation. Ziz, like other "radical rationalists" even believe that the singularity AI will punish people retroactively for their moral failings, such as eating meat.

https://www.hudson.org/domestic-policy/abraham-bomb-walter-r...

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#26

Post by s1artibartfast »

tolerance wrote: post #19
rdtsc wrote: post #2

> self-described “vegan Sith” ideology Had it not been in a serious article I would have believed it had to a parody or a joke of some sort. “We are just like Darth Maul, but we like salads and drink soy milk instead of regular milk… and then kill people while dressed in tactical black outfits”? What is even going on? Real life now sounds like some kinda of a broken LLM hallucination.

Look up Joshua Citarella’s coverage of the ideological milieus that Generation Z cultivated during COVID on platforms like Discord. And then check out the term “metairony” or “postirony” and this story make more sense…at least as much sense as the absurdity of it all will allow you to make of it.

This post came to mind for me

https://moonmetropolis.substack.com/p/antioch-the-first-food...

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#27

Post by pavel_lishin »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #16
Neonlicht wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

define insane here. I think modern social acceptability hinges more on the degree to which personal beliefs infringe on others, at least in the west. If someone refuses to personally eat pasta because they believe in the great spaghetti monster, they can knock themselves out for all I care.

> If someone refuses to personally eat pasta because they believe in the great spaghetti monster, they can knock themselves out for all I care.

But that doesn't make them sane.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#28

Post by joe_the_user »

rdtsc wrote: post #2

> self-described “vegan Sith” ideology Had it not been in a serious article I would have believed it had to a parody or a joke of some sort. “We are just like Darth Maul, but we like salads and drink soy milk instead of regular milk… and then kill people while dressed in tactical black outfits”? What is even going on? Real life now sounds like some kinda of a broken LLM hallucination.

"Vegan Sith"?

For just one thing, when you have a broken education system and omnipresent media franchises, you have a significant percentage of the population who know more about the Star Wars backstory structure and theories of diet than about history, civics or conventional morality.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#29

Post by s1artibartfast »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #27
s1artibartfast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

define insane here. I think modern social acceptability hinges more on the degree to which personal beliefs infringe on others, at least in the west. If someone refuses to personally eat pasta because they believe in the great spaghetti monster, they can knock themselves out for all I care.

> If someone refuses to personally eat pasta because they believe in the great spaghetti monster, they can knock themselves out for all I care. But that doesn't make them sane.

Like I said above, define insane.

I don't think it's possible to act as a human without irrational belief, and everyone harbors them because there is no rational answer to the question "why?".

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#30

Post by mnky9800n »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
mnky9800n wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people can and do have mental illness. it doesn't absolve them from knowing right from wrong however.

We really need a phrase for "appears to behave normally in regular matters and is capable of independent living, does not match other DSM symptoms, but believes insane things". It's a very common component in mass shootings.

I think diagnosis is mostly made up jargon that doesn’t capture the complexity of the human experience. It is designed to itemize the human experience for bureaucratic consumption. Autism diagnosis gives access to school resources whereas weird child that prefers their own thoughts does not. Schizophrenia lets you lock up people with antisocial beliefs. ADHD lets you medicate away the natural hyperactivity of 7 year olds. Diagnosis is a form of societal control. This is different from modern schema therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy which focus on the individual experiences a person has such as their actions and thought patterns that allows them to disentangle themselves from patterns of behavior that harm them such as paranoid delusions, alcoholism, unhealthy sex, etc. but those things require lots of one on one work with a therapist.
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