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They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

theguardian.com

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Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#31

Post by fc417fc802 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #28
CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #21

The cult elements of isolation (boat/van life), alienation from self (trans, split brain), false moral superiority (vegan), demands for purity in action (vegan), sense of false higher purpose (AI basilisk), false possession of method for empowerment (rationalism) are there. The hatred of landlords et al (anarchism) and use of drugs (psychedelic, others?) seems to be my guess for the violence part. Lots of highly expl…

I think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manson_Family but I know a lot of people use psychedelic drugs and don't resort to violence. With the hyperbolic rhetoric about false threats, I'm surprised we haven't seen more violence from "rationalists"; if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

Well if we're being rational about it - how confident are we in the accuracy of that assessment, how likely is our attack to succeed, and how likely is our attack to have a positive impact? Worse, what is the probability that our attack instead has a negative impact?

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#33

Post by js2 »

ryao wrote: post #3

The article is drama piece that makes you go on a scavenger hunt for the Five Ws. I stopped reading as soon as I noticed the pattern. I would ask AI to summarize, but my enthusiasm for learning anything from this kind of article has waned dramatically over the years.

Here's some shorter reporting for you if that's what you want:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-cultlike-z...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/02/15/northern-california-z...

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#35

Post by lupusreal »

PaulHoule wrote: post #28
CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #21

The cult elements of isolation (boat/van life), alienation from self (trans, split brain), false moral superiority (vegan), demands for purity in action (vegan), sense of false higher purpose (AI basilisk), false possession of method for empowerment (rationalism) are there. The hatred of landlords et al (anarchism) and use of drugs (psychedelic, others?) seems to be my guess for the violence part. Lots of highly expl…

I think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manson_Family but I know a lot of people use psychedelic drugs and don't resort to violence. With the hyperbolic rhetoric about false threats, I'm surprised we haven't seen more violence from "rationalists"; if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

> if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

That's what these guys figured. But if we're being rational and realistic, all it accomplishes is getting your group killed or imprisoned.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#36

Post by somenameforme »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #31
PaulHoule wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manson_Family but I know a lot of people use psychedelic drugs and don't resort to violence. With the hyperbolic rhetoric about false threats, I'm surprised we haven't seen more violence from "rationalists"; if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

Well if we're being rational about it - how confident are we in the accuracy of that assessment, how likely is our attack to succeed, and how likely is our attack to have a positive impact? Worse, what is the probability that our attack instead has a negative impact?

Is it even rational to assume one is rational? Of course I think I am, but I also think basically nobody else is. Yet I'm sure they think the are, and similarly doubt I am. So is the issue that I'm a snowflake and everybody else is wrong, or is the issue that rationality does not really exist (though that does not mean it's not worth striving towards)?

It seems only rational to doubt ones rationality.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#40

Post by mistrial9 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #30
9283409232 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literacy rates have fallen in the past 20 years and something tells me that Dickens is not responsible.

The point is, that when Charles Dickens came out, people also blamed him on lowering the literacy rate. Called something different back then. But maybe, it's not population wide. More people were reading Dickens, so rate of reading in population was increasing. But the elites that thought everything should be in Greek/Latin, thought everyone reading Dickens was a downgrade. Every generation argument. Weren't Egyptian…

my elderly neighbor sometimes mistakes the difference between one hundred thousand and one hundred million. The point is, she thinks they are similar numbers. So when "people who are capable of reading Dickens blame Dickens for being less literate" and "people who read Twitter/X blame Twitter/X for being less literate" .. perhaps there really is a difference in those two despite the claim being similar.
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