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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'

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because you can't reason with someone who doesn't employ reason. That doesn't mean they won't kill you - it just shuts down one avenue by which you might talk them out of it.

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

#32
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.

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

#33
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it’s a group so wonder if a group mental illness would make sense. I guess it could work for the court “look how out of touch with reality my client is, sith vegans, clearly they didn’t know what they were doing!”

I’m sure the court juge will look further that the funny dichotomy in their brand name. Understanding their motivations for the murders, understanding their motivation to call themselves vegan (perhaps it’s a joke for them too, perhaps they’re really vegan) and their motivation to call themselves sith (I would bet for fun joke but it may be branding : and army of determined warriors, or mental illness if their really…

> I’m sure the court judge will look further that the funny dichotomy in their brand name

Oh sure, and the jury. One can do both - mock murderers and their ridiculous ideology and study it seriously to, perhaps, prevent others from taking the same path. One doesn't preclude the other, though.

To a certain degree I think these group enjoy being taken seriously, being in the news, fawned over, their writings analyzed by people going over their "deep" and "insightful" ideas. So that direction could be playing into their hands to a certain extent. For now, I'll go the "ridicule" path, I think.

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

#34
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.

A far more likely possibility is that their ideology is actually centered around "Sith who happen to originate from Vega (a.k.a. α Lyrae)", not "Sith who abstain from animal products".

(A residual possibility is "Sith from Las Vegas, Nevada".)

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

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?".

There is an immense difference between "Every human being believes things that are irrational, and is not rational" and "The very first step in nearly every major religion is insisting that WE have the answers as long as you `have faith` in us and follow what we tell you to do"

It was trivial for southern baptist sermons to convince white southerners that black people being slaves was "as god wants it", and therefore should be defended with their very lives, precisely because in Christianity at least, god asks you to do pretty awful things all the time.... At least if you listen to your preacher".

Look at the religious right insisting that jesus is "woke" and that Trump should deport an american citizen because she preached peace. There's only so many words said by jesus in most bibles, not a single one about trans people, so why do they insist so ferociously that trans people are evil?

This goes double for all those "great awakening" neo-"Christian" ~cults~ religions in the US that insist that the bible is not just inerrant, but trivially understandable by even the dumbest human beings, which is just fundamentally false.

30 million american adults explicitly say that the earth was created within the past 10k years by god exactly as it is now. They believe that evolution is not just wrong, but a hoax that most of science is in on. They believe that science is a conspiracy by Satan to keep them from god's light.

People on this very forum espouse these beliefs. Just the other day someone posted Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis as a resource, despite it being an organization that spreads outright lies, and is still trying to get evolution out of schools, and they are winning.

These are the same organizations, groups, families, etc that created the Scopes Monkey trial back in 1925. Understand that they considered it a success. 100 years later and we might very well see creationism back in US schools, despite overwhelming and conclusive evidence of evolution as the means of speciation.

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

#36
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.

These kids were very well educated and went to some of high end schools according to the article

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

#38
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure the court juge will look further that the funny dichotomy in their brand name. Understanding their motivations for the murders, understanding their motivation to call themselves vegan (perhaps it’s a joke for them too, perhaps they’re really vegan) and their motivation to call themselves sith (I would bet for fun joke but it may be branding : and army of determined warriors, or mental illness if their really…

> I’m sure the court judge will look further that the funny dichotomy in their brand name Oh sure, and the jury. One can do both - mock murderers and their ridiculous ideology and study it seriously to, perhaps, prevent others from taking the same path. One doesn't preclude the other, though. To a certain degree I think these group enjoy being taken seriously, being in the news, fawned over, their writings analyzed b…

Fair points! Both that taking them seriously is probably the direction they aim, and that we shouldn’t forget to have fun and laugh!

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

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?".

There is an immense difference between "Every human being believes things that are irrational, and is not rational" and "The very first step in nearly every major religion is insisting that WE have the answers as long as you `have faith` in us and follow what we tell you to do" It was trivial for southern baptist sermons to convince white southerners that black people being slaves was "as god wants it", and therefore…

My point is that bad ideas, values, and ideas are not exclusive to religion, but orthogonal. I see plenty of secular lies and misinformation posted every day as well.

The very first step in nearly every human group is insisting that WE have the answers as long as you `have faith` in us and follow what we tell you to do.

That goes for Republicans, communists, Nazis, or the DNC. Bullshit and unthinking conformance transgresses the boundary of secular and religious ideology.

Do you think the zizan rationalists are free from bullshit because they Atheist? Meanwhile they claim that AI from the future will put people into torture simulations as punishment if they aren't vegan, and that the only rational thing to do is kill your landlord with a katana.

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

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because you can't reason with someone who doesn't employ reason. That doesn't mean they won't kill you - it just shuts down one avenue by which you might talk them out of it.

But religious people can be reasonable and atheist can be unreasonable.
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