Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 952 posts

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

#291

Post by dgfitz »

xereeto wrote: post #284
jl6 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes unmentioned because there is an unwritten rule in progressive media that marginalized groups must never be perceived as doing wrong, because that will deepen their marginalization. In practice it creates a moral blind spot where the worst extremists get a pass, in the name of protecting the rest. Non-progressive media are all too happy to fill in the gap. Cue resentment, cue backlash, cue Trump. Way to go, gu…

I think that’s a drastic oversimplification.

And yet trump is president.

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

#292

Post by concordDance »

cvalka wrote: post #260
nataliste wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sophistry is actually really really old: >In the second half of the 5th century BCE, particularly in Athens, "sophist" came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. Nicholas Denyer observes that the Sophists "did ... have one…

I don't think Eleizer Yudkowsky has anything meaningful to say. He is a doomsday cult leader who happens to be fashionable in some circles.

While I won't claim he currently has much of interest to say, he definitely explained a lot of important ideas for thinking more clearly to people who would not otherwise have encountered them, even if he didn't invent any of them.

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

#294

Post by DonHopkins »

cvalka wrote: post #278
wat10000 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t say it’s any worse or better than the original. It basically just swaps some names around.

It's late by hundreds of years. It introduces a lot of unnecessary complexity. The most sophisticated variation of the Wager I've encountered is the Taleb's diatribe against GMO.

[flagged]

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

#295

Post by sterlind »

nkurz wrote: post #49

Most of the news coverage I've seen of this story is omitting what some might consider a relevant detail: almost all the members of this group are trans. This is a divisive topic, but failing to mention this makes me worry a story is pushing a particular agenda rather than trying to tell the facts. Here's what the story looks like if the trans activism is considered central to the story: https://thepostmillennial.com…

it's been an exhausting couple of weeks for me, as a trans person. one executive order after another, explicitly attacking us. scrambling to update all my documents, navigating a Kafkaesque bureaucracy with constantly shifting rules.

now this.

there are like six Zizians. there are millions of trans people. I'm sure that many of the Zizians being trans says something about the Ziz cult, but Ziz doesn't say anything about "trans activism."

any evil one trans person does, is used to stain all trans people. recognize this tendency; don't let this become like blood libel.

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

#296

Post by romaaeterna »

meowface wrote: post #198
romaaeterna wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That zizians.info page makes several claims about their beliefs in regards to being trans, and both articles make claims about the number of trans people involved in the events described that, if true, seem to indicate large trans representation. But all of this may be false information. I would like to hear specifics, if so.

There is, but, for example, the cult member accused of murdering the landlord isn't trans. So transness isn't intrinsic to the cult, and the violence also isn't related to trying to fight for/against anything to do with being trans. (These aren't actually ideologically motivated killings, oddly enough: in practice they just murder people who slight them, even if "it is imperative and the greatest good that you murder…

Are the reports true that the two who first attacked the landlord were trans? And the two in the border patrol attack were trans? And the suspect in the Zajko killings is trans? And the leader of the cult is trans?

And also that the person whom you mention, who was accused of the landlord killing, was in fact married to one of the trans persons above?

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

#297

Post by Muromec »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #189

This whole rabbit hole of rationalism, less wrong, and ziz feels like a fever dream to me. Roaming trans veganist tatical death squads shooting border officers and stabbing 80 year olds with swords. This is the kind of thing where it is warranted that the feds gets every single wiretap, interception, and surveillance possible on everyone involved in the zizian movement.

>This whole rabbit hole of rationalism, less wrong, and ziz feels like a fever dream to me. Roaming trans veganist tatical death squads shooting border officers and stabbing 80 year olds with swords.

I don't exactly see how it's different from a group of habitual alcoholics discussing politics and having a fatal disagreement, which is a normal day of the week in any police department with enough demographics to have this sort of low-effort low-gain crime. It's more scandalous because of details and people involved are more interesting, but everyone will forget about it after a week, as they don't matter.

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

#298

Post by concordDance »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

> They have, in the past, responded to criticism with statements to the effect of "anyone who would criticize us for any reason is a bad person who is lying to cause us harm". That kind of framing can't help but get culty.

I have never seen this and I've been active around this around for almost two decades now.

> isolation

Also very much doesn't match my experience. Only about a quarter of my friends are even rationalists.

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

#299

Post by DonHopkins »

Barrin92 wrote: post #281
wat10000 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hilarious to me that Roko’s Basilisk maps perfectly to Pascal’s Wager, but they just can’t see it. It’s like any other exclusive religion: your god is made up, ours is real.

>Roko’s Basilisk maps perfectly to Pascal’s Wager The entire thing maps 1:1 onto Millenarian theology, including the singularity and literal doomsday rhetoric. I think it was Charles Stross who called it duck typed Evangelicalism at one point

Down to the walks and quacks.
Post reply on HN