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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'

#401

Post by hollerith »

EA-3167 wrote: post #390
hollerith wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like HN grew around the writing of Paul Graham, the "rationalist community" grew around the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Similar to how Paul Graham no longer participates on HN, Eliezer rarely participates on http://lesswrong.com anymore, and the benevolent dictator for life of lesswrong.com is someone other than Eliezer. Eliezer's career has always been centered around AI. At first Eliezer was wholly optimist…

A great example of superficially smart people creating echo chambers which then turn sour, but they can't escape. There's a very good reason that, "Buying your own press" is a cliched pejorative, and this is an extreme end of that. More generally it's just a depressing example of how rationalism in the LW sense has become a sort of cult-of-cults, with the same old existential dread packaged in a new "rational" form.…

My explanation for why Eliezer went from vocal AI optimist to AI pessimist is that he became more knowledgeable about AI. What is your explanation?

I've seen the explanation that AI pessimism helped Eliezer attract donations, but that does not work because his biggest donor when he started going public with his pessimism (2003 through 2006) was Peter Theil, who responded to his turn to pessimism by refusing to continue to donate (except for donations earmarked for studying the societal effects of AI, which is not the object of Eliezer's pessimism and not something Eliezer particularly wanted to study).

I suspect that most of the accusations to the effect that MIRI or Less Wrong is a cult are lazy ad-hominems by people who have a personal interest in the AI industry or an ideological attachment to technological progress.

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

#402

Post by Aurornis »

llm_trw wrote: post #339
scarmig wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat odd to represent a community as being right wing when the worst thing to come from it was a trans vegan murder cult. Most "rationalists" vote Democrat, and if the franchise were limited to them, Harris would have won in a 50 state landslide. The complaint here seems to be that rationalists don't take progressive pieties as axiomatic.

>The complaint here seems to be that rationalists don't take progressive pieties as axiomatic. A trans vegan gang murdering police officers is what's come out of this milieu. I don't see how anyone can say they aren't taking "progressive pieties as axiomatic". The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion. Up next: Stalin actually a Nazi.

> The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion.

The right-wing rationalist community (The Motte) arose when Slate Star Codex finally banned culture war topics. Scott Alexander wrote about it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

There's also a long history of neoreactionary factions of the rationalist community as well as a fascination with fascist ideals from the likes of Curtis Yarvin.

There's some major retconning going on in this thread where people try to write all of this out of the history of rationalist communities. Either that or people weren't aware, but are resistant to the notion that it could have happened.

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

#403

Post by umeshunni »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #385
anon84873628 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling them a roaming band or "tactical death squad" is giving far too much credit. It is a handful of crazy people who convinced themselves that a couple murders would solve their problems. In particular the attack on border patrol was obviously random and illogical. And the fact that no one was convicted of the Pennsylvania murders seems to reflect more on the police and prosecutors than the intelligence of the pe…

Speaking of random and illogical, what prompted the Border Patrol to stop their car in the first place, I wonder? None of the news stories have elaborated on that.

The FBI report says it was a traffic stop. The milemarker 168 seems to be about 10 miles from the Canadian border.

https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/albany/news/fbi...

More information from the police report:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wycOK3UbaQ9JWZuvo2gpZiDT-0t...

On January 20, 2025, at approximately 3:00 pm, an on-duty, uniformed United States Border Patrol (USBP) Agent initiated a stop of a blue 2015 Toyota Prius Hatchback with North Carolina license plate number KLA2040 to conduct an immigration inspection as it was driving southbound on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont. The registered owner of the vehicle, Felix Baukholt, a citizen of Germany, appeared to have an expired visa in a Department of Homeland Security database. YOUNGBLUT was driving the Prius, and Baukholt was the lone passenger in the Prius. Multiple uniformed Border Patrol Agents were present at the stop in three USBP vehicles with emergency lights illuminated.

(later in the same document)

Investigators had been performing periodic surveillance of Baukholt and YOUNGBLUT since on or about Tuesday, January 14, 2025. A concerned citizen-an employee of a hotel in Lyndonville, Vermont--contacted law enforcement after a male and a female had checked into the hotel to report concerns about them, including that they appeared to be dressed in all-black tactical style clothing with protective equipment, with the woman, later identified as YOUNGBLUT, carrying an apparent firearm in an exposed-carry holster. Investigators with VSP and Homeland Security Investigations attempted to initiate a consensual conversation with Baukholt and YOUNGBLUT, but they declined to have an extended conversation, claiming that they were in the vicinity to look at purchasing property. After the contact with law enforcement, the pair checked out of the Lyndonville hotel on the afternoon of January 14, 2025. Investigators later observed the pair in similar tactical dress on Sunday, January 19, 2025, walking in downtown Newport; YOUNGBLUT was observed carrying a handgun at that time.

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

#404

Post by adastra22 »

adastra22 wrote: post #90
zozbot234 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost all the members of this group are trans. The Zizians.info site (linked by one of the HN posts re: this story) mentions that the Zizians did target people who identified as transgender for indoctrination, so this is not really surprising. People who are undergoing this kind of stress and marginalization may well be more vulnerable to such tactics.

The Ziz method of indoctrination involves convincing his minions they are trapped inside a mental framework they need to break free of. Trans people already feel trapped in a body not aligned with who they are, and are naturally susceptible to this message (and therefore natural targets for recruitment).

Following on because the edit window elapsed, the specific method of indoctrination used by ziz (but invented by Gwen) involved in novel method of sleep deprivation to induce split personalities. It’s been called “installing demons.” I wouldn’t be surprised either if the causality is the other way around: Ziz reworked these people to be trans. Ziz certainly seems to have treated the minds of the people around him/her as malleable putty.

I actually met Gwen and spent a weekend with him sometime ago. They were a roommate of my friend for a while. The person I knew doesn’t resemble the lunatic in the news article articles at all, but I have no doubt is physically/legally them. Cult indoctrination is a hell of a thing.

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

#405

Post by wesapien »

iamthepieman wrote: post #59

This story happened in my backyard. The shootout was about 40 minutes from me but Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt were reported by a hotel clerk dressed in tactical gear and sporting firearms in a hotel a few blocks from me. Weird to see a community I followed show up so close to home and negatively like this. I always just read LW and appreciated some of the fundamentals that this group seems to have ignored. Stuff li…

After seeing this news, I recall watching a video by Julia Galef about "what is rationality". Would it be fair to say that in this situation, they lack epistemic rationality but are high in instrumental rationality?

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

#406

Post by ericd »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #232
ericd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant summary, thanks. I'm interested in #4, is there anywhere you know of to read more about that? I don't think I've seen that described except obliquely in eg sayings about the relationship between genius and madness.

I don't, that one's me speaking from my own speculation. It's a working model I've had for a while about the nature of a lot of kinds of mental illness (particularly my own tendencies towards depression), which I guess I should explain more thoroughly! This gets a bit abstract, so stick with me: it's a toy model, and I don't mean it to be definitive truth, but it seems to do well at explaining my own tendencies. ----…

Thanks very much for typing all that out!

>These external forcing functions tend to be pretty similar among people of a comparable environment. But the internal equilibria seem to be quite different. So when the external forcing is strong, it tends to pull people in similar directions, and people whose innate tendencies are extreme tend to get pulled along with the majority anyway. But when external forcing is weak (or when people are decoupled from its effects on them), internal equilibria tend to take over, and extreme people can get caught in feedback loops.

Yeah, this makes sense, an isolated group can sort of lose the "grounding" of interacting with the rest of society and start floating off in whatever direction, as long as they never get regrounded. When you say feedback loops, do you mean obsessive tendencies tending to cause them to focus on and amplify a small set of thoughts/beliefs, or something else?

I like the ML/temperature analogy, it's always interesting watching kids and thinking in that vein, with some kids at a super high temp exploring the search space of possibilities super quickly and making tons of mistakes, and others who are much more careful. Interesting point on nerds maybe having lower temp/converging more strongly/consistently on a single answer. And I guess artist types would be sort of the opposite on that axis?

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

#407

Post by CamperBob2 »

umeshunni wrote: post #403
CamperBob2 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of random and illogical, what prompted the Border Patrol to stop their car in the first place, I wonder? None of the news stories have elaborated on that.

The FBI report says it was a traffic stop. The milemarker 168 seems to be about 10 miles from the Canadian border. https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/albany/news/fbi... More information from the police report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wycOK3UbaQ9JWZuvo2gpZiDT-0t... On January 20, 2025, at approximately 3:00 pm, an on-duty, uniformed United States Border Patrol (USBP) Agent initiated a stop of a blue…

Right, a traffic stop, but by the Border Patrol? For an "immigration inspection?"

Not to put too fine a point on it, these people don't look like the sort who might get "randomly" stopped by the Border Patrol for an "immigration inspection."

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

#408

Post by LeoPanthera »

all2 wrote: post #322
sterlind wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

> any evil one trans person does, is used to stain all trans people. recognize this tendency; don't let this become like blood libel. As a Christian, I can empathize. The wrongs and hypocrisies of so many are heaped on those who have no relation to the actions.

[flagged]

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

#409

Post by joenot443 »

mickelsen wrote: post #37

Some bookmarks from early 2023 that seem relevant now: https://zizians.info https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/ https://aiascendant.substack.com/p/extropias-children-chapte... I do not engage with any of those people nor their weird communities.

Sneer Club is one of the most nasty, uncharitable, and bad-faith subs out there these days. They generally hate HN, as well. I think any community which exists solely to make cheap shots at another community is poison at its core, SC’s parasocial relationship with LW is a perfect example.

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

#410

Post by umeshunni »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #407
umeshunni wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FBI report says it was a traffic stop. The milemarker 168 seems to be about 10 miles from the Canadian border. https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/albany/news/fbi... More information from the police report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wycOK3UbaQ9JWZuvo2gpZiDT-0t... On January 20, 2025, at approximately 3:00 pm, an on-duty, uniformed United States Border Patrol (USBP) Agent initiated a stop of a blue…

Right, a traffic stop, but by the Border Patrol? For an "immigration inspection?" Not to put too fine a point on it, these people don't look like the sort who might get "randomly" stopped by the Border Patrol for an "immigration inspection."

edited my comment to add some other details I found
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