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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'

#491
post #144

Rationalism? The term has been used a lot of times since Pythagoras [0], but the combination of Bay Area, Oxford, existential risks, AI safety makes it sound like this particular movement could have formed in the same mold as Effective Altruism and Long-Termism (ie, the "it's objectively better for humanity if you give us money to buy a castle in France than whatever you'd do with it" crowd that SBF sprung from). Can…

It bothers me also how the word “rationalist” suddenly means the LW crowd, while I keep thinking Leibniz

Their sneers are longer than their memories

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They self-identify as such. I call them "anti-Christians" because it's more biblically accurate.

The problem with this approach is that there are also parts of the mainstream Christian doctrine (both modern and historical) that don't have Biblical basis, Trinity being one prominent example. One could go further still and reasonably argue that most of mainstream Christianity is basically teachings of Paul rather than Jesus. And yes, there are also valid arguments against either one of those points. But to meaning…

Eh, I don't think the "it's all based on Paul" can be a reasonable argument at all. Even when people do argue it, they only ever allege the same 2 points, which even assuming those points are valid would only be a tiny fraction of Christian belief, both theoretically and practically; you don't need theology for this. Of course, to those whose sole exposure to Χianity is Internet arguments this might not be obvious.

The whole focus on "Trinity" is weird but makes a little more sense if you realize it was originally developed to stand against certain heresies, but later mutated (often re-entering those same heresies again). This one is indeed theological ... or perhaps we need a word that is to theology as historiography is to history.

But this is diverging quite far from this thread.

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

#493
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow what a blast from the past. Sounds like /r/Tulpas. I've always thought it was a purely rhetorical trick + disassociation, and obvious what is happening and why. Sleep deprecation has always been part of it since that makes it harder to notice the errors at the edge of your perception. It goes back to at least the 2010s I think. There is some precedent; the Twin Flame cult coerced transition in some members if I r…

The specific technique here is unihemispherical sleep. Stimulating one side of the body while resting the other (one eye closed) to get one hemisphere to fall asleep. I think Gwen originally developed this trick to probe the mind and see if behavior was altered when one hemisphere was asleep versus the other.

However, it turns out that when you do this, the brain as a whole does not get adequate sleep, even if you alternate hemispheres. People had symptoms of sleep deprivation while still being semi-functional. Ziz took if a step further and had some sort of secret initiation process where both hemispheres were trained differently to produce multiple personalities. At least that was the assumption from those of us on the outside gathering scraps of info being dropped.

Get you 8 hours of sleep everyone. Sleep is important.

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never seen that happen here.

It happens, but in a more subtle way. Usually direct comparison's don't happen, but rather is expected to be inferred by the quality of arguments, whether they can prevail with their line of thinking and so on. In a sense, that variant of 'rationalist' is rather crude in comparison. I am trying to think of an appropriate example, but I am struggling a little. Make no mistake, there are egos at play here too.

[deleted]

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

My best friend in college knew she was a woman when she was a small child (though her mom and her birth certificate disagreed.) Nobody was going to talk her out of it. She got kicked out of the Air Force Academy on account of it. The nation's loss was my gain because she was the most awesome engineering student and science fiction fan and after working in many military-industrial complex jobs she's working on a proje…

> He's taking a cocktail of drugs that gets prescribed via telemedicine and was telling us about the serious side effects he was suffering: one of these drugs, spironolactone, is primarily a drug that alters your mineral metabolism but has the effect of suppressing testosterone if you take 20x the normal dose. (My doc gives it to me for my blood pressure.) He has insatiable cravings for salt as a result.

It's worth noting that while Spironolactone can be used to suppress testosterone, that's not really what it's used for. Rather it weakly blocks androgen receptors so it makes the body act like the testosterone isn't there or is lower than it actually is. And this is effective at a far lower dose than the testosterone "suppression".

This is why it's sometimes prescribed to women for hair loss, improper hair growth, and/or acne.

It's for that purpose that it's normally prescribed in trans healthcare and it's generally only temporarily (~3-9 months) prescribed while an estradiol regimen suppresses testosterone production. After that it can be dropped with the estradiol doing the rest of the work.

And outside the US it's far less commonly prescribed for this purpose with other androgen antagonists generally being preferred but US doctors tend to be more weary of those other medications and therefore prefer spironolactone.

So while said kid may be a bit "weird" in your eyes, nothing about this really seems unusual. At worst they probably just need to ask their doctor to prescribe a different androgen antagonist instead of spironolactone.

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

#496
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…

The Post Millennial is a right-wing rag from an anticommunist sex cult and any assertion by Ngo should be discarded out of hand.

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

#497
post #144

Rationalism? The term has been used a lot of times since Pythagoras [0], but the combination of Bay Area, Oxford, existential risks, AI safety makes it sound like this particular movement could have formed in the same mold as Effective Altruism and Long-Termism (ie, the "it's objectively better for humanity if you give us money to buy a castle in France than whatever you'd do with it" crowd that SBF sprung from). Can…

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…

What puzzles me about Eliezer Yudkowsky is this:

He has no formal education. He hasn't produced anything in the actual AI field, ever, except his very general thoughts (first that it would come, then about alignment and doomsday scenarios).

He isn't an AI researcher except he created an institution that says he is one, kind of as if I created a club and declared myself president of that club.

He has no credentials (that aren't made up), isn't acknowledged by real AI researchers or scientists, and shows no accomplishments in the field.

His actual verifiable accomplishments seem to be having written fan fiction about Harry Potter that was well received online, and also some (dodgy) explanations of Bayes, a topic that he is bizarrely obsessed with. Apparently learning Bayes in a statistics class, where normal people learn it, isn't enough -- he had to make something mystical out of it.

Why does anyone care what EY has to say? He's just an internet celebrity for nerds.

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a big George W Bush fan but this quote of his has stuck with me for years: > Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions

The more readily a group tries to restrict some behaviours, the more it implicitly endorses behaviours it doesn’t attempt to restrict.

[flagged]

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

#499
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 ab…

It’s not “like blood libel.” It is blood libel. It is literally the same thing.

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

#500
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]

… i can’t think of a faster way to lose support from others.
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