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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'

#681

Post by sublimefire »

mikhmha wrote: post #579
emmelaich wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G.K.Chesterton knew it, 100 years ago: "... insanity is often marked by the dominance of reason and the exclusion of creativity and humour. Pure reason is inhuman. The madman’s mind moves in a perfect, but narrow, circle, and his explanation of the world is comprehensive, at least to him."

So did Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Yes, exactly, “Crime and punishment” or ”Demons” or others. Some of the dialogues are exactly about the ideologies and how different characters think and apply them, how reason manifests in violence.

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

#682

Post by watwut »

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.

Historically, good 90% of times I have seen what you say, the person or group in question turned out to actually be fascists later on. They just packed their fascism to nicer words at the time of the accusation. It kind of happened that those saying "everything I don't like is fascist" either a.) assumed the claim can not be true without bothering to think about what they read or b.) actually liked fascist arguments and not wanted to have them called what they are.

There is long history of "no one is fascist until they actually nazi salute and literally pay extremists" and "no one is sexist even after they literally stated their opinions on female inferiority again and again" and "no one is racist even as they literally just said that".

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

#683

Post by adastra22 »

Muromec wrote: post #668
adastra22 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nobody is literally Hitler because the man is for sure dead. Also nobody is literally nazi, as the party was disbanded, so we are all here somewhere on the spectrum between being and not being Hitlers, nazis, fascists or what not, if nothing else, by the fact of being humans (or other sort of sentient next-token-predictors).

Why did you bring up Hitler? Blood libel predates that man. Blood libel is the baseless accusation dating to pre-modern tomes that Jews were/are murderers.

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

#684

Post by adastra22 »

subsistence234 wrote: post #673
kelseyfrog wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. Rationalists are also known for updating[changing] their beliefs. They do this under the guise of "doing" Bayesian reasoning. It may be that susceptibility to cults is an edge case of this meta-congnitive position. Or in other words, stubbornness of beliefs may be a defense mechanism against cults.

let's stigmatize admitting when you were wrong. never changing your mind is the only way to avoid joining a murder cult!

That’s what “rationalist” should mean. It is not what they do in practice.

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

#685

Post by watwut »

loanedempathy wrote: post #679
sunshowers wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are your utterances here helping the cause of trans liberation, or hurting it?

> Are your utterances here helping the cause of trans liberation, or hurting it? I get that it's been a rough couple of weeks for trans people, and immigrants, and people who due import and export, and grant-writers--but perhaps you should take a moment to reflect on how comments like this reflect on you and trans people to the general populace (which is adjacent to the point made by the comment you were replying to)…

> I get that it's been a rough couple of weeks for trans people

Trans people are the most hated subgroup and were for years. Literal physical attack against them were going up for years now. It was not rough couple of weeks, it is systematic campaign of hate again and again and again.

> Trans people (the ones that are clockable) are a relative novelty outside of urban areas, and most of the voting public

The reason for that is violence they are and were targets of in those areas. It is also that if a kid outs itself as trans, they will likely be kicked off out of house. If not kicked, they will be mocked in those areas all the time.

> The trans friends and partners I've had that are decent and capable of relating on a normal level are vastly outnumbered by the catty, annoying, neurotic transgendered men and women I've encountered in my career and schooling.

And it did not helped those people at all. The hate is preexisting and has nothing to do with how trans actually act.

> If you want to know why the popular support for trans people isn't great, look in the mirror and consider if you want to double down on a losing strategy for behavior.

Hate for trans has nothing to do with what trans to. Conservative people feel massive disgust over crossing gender lines. It is that bad feeling they have when they hear the idea itself. And literal campaign of hate they themselves feed.

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

#686

Post by red_admiral »

novok wrote: post #611
ericd wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

A lot of rationalists that go deep are on the autistic spectrum. Their feedback loops are often classic autistic thought traps of people who end up "committing to the bit". Add anxiety to it and you get autistic style rumination loops that go nuts. Edit: Funny enough, when I wrote "autistic thought traps", I thought I just made it up to describe something, but it is common terminology. An AI summary of what they are:…

> autistic

A lot of people say this, but I think it's the wrong word in an important way.

I'll give you P(autistic|rationalist) > P(autistic), but beware the base rate fallacy. My guess is you're focussing on a proxy variable.

To show some important counter-examples: Temple Grandin, famously autistic and a lot of people's idea what autism means - not a rationalist in the sense you mean. Scott Alexander - fairly central example of the rationalist community, but not autistic (he's a psychiatrist so I trust him on that).

EDIT: also P(trans|rationalist) > P(trans), but P(rationalist|trans) I'd say is fairly small. Base rate fallacy and something something Bayes. Identifying these two groups would definitely be a mistake.

EDIT2: maybe this series (1 post so far) is worth bookmarking: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/what-do-effective-altru...

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

#687

Post by close04 »

IshKebab wrote: post #664
stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the person responding to meant - attempts to make human systems "rational" often involves simplifying dependent probabilities and presenting them as independent. The rationalist community both frequently makes this reasoning error and is aware they frequently make this error, and coined this term to refer to the category of reasoning mistake.

> coined this term to refer to the category of reasoning mistake. That's not at all what the Wikipedia article for it says. It presents it as an interesting paradox with several potential (and incorrect!) "remedies" rather than a category of basic logical errors.

The “quadrillion days of happiness” offered to a rational person gives away that such allegories are anthropomorphized just for the sake of presentation. For the sake of what the philosophers mean, you should probably imagine this as an algorithm running on a machine (no AGI).

It’s a mental tease, not a manual on how to react when faced with a mugger who forgot his weapon at home but has an interesting proposition to make.

Similarly the trolley problem isn’t really about real humans in that situation, or else the correct answer would always be “do nothing”.

It’s what the comment here [0] says. If you try to analyze everything purely rationally it will lead to dark corners of misunderstanding and madness.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902931

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

#688

Post by thrance »

zmgsabst wrote: post #516
thrance wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of what exactly? I haven't claimed any conspiracy, that's all stuff Trump bragged about on the news. Bringing up the "criminality of the Biden family" is a legitimately insane thing to do when defending Trump.

Any of these things: - passing budgetary laws without congress - has been made untouchable by the supreme court - pardoned the violent Jan 6 rioters (despite claiming to be "pro-order") - constantly scape-goats minorities - colludes with foreign fascists Im unaware of those happening and would like to see a source. > Bringing up the "criminality of the Biden family" is a legitimately insane thing to do when defending…

If you genuinely haven't seen any of it, then you are extremely uninformed and I doubt you should engage in politics at all.

- budgetary laws without congress: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/does-trump-administrations-...

- total immunity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)

- pardoned jan 6 rioters (even the criminal ones): https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5276336/donald-trump-ja...

- Trump claims Jan 6 was antifa: https://www.axios.com/2021/01/12/trump-falsely-blames-antifa...

- Trump blames the DC plane crash on DEI: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvmdm1m7m9o

- And everything else as well: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/trump-blames-dei-for-e...

- Trump praises Putin, Xi, Kim: https://www.semafor.com/article/08/13/2024/trump-praises-xi-...

Now give me a source on Biden's. And it's only been two weeks, Trump's approval is bound to plumet once the tariffs kick in and stat destroying the economy, we're still supposed to be in the honey moon.

Can't you fathom me dismissing what the relative majority was led to believe about the guy, in the light of the massive evidence of his corruption, incompetency and bigotry?

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

#689

Post by yawboakye »

shadowgovt wrote: post #599
lostdog wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what a perfect description of why their probability-logic leads to silly beliefs. I've been wondering how to argue within their frame for a while, and here's what I've come up with: Is the likelihood that aliens exist, are unfriendly, and AGI will help us beat them higher or lower than the likelihood that the AGI itself that we develop is unfriendly to us and wants to FOOM us? Show your work.

Much of philosophy throughout history seems to operate this way. I think philosophy is a noble pursuit, but it's worth noting how often people drew very broad conclusions, and then acted on them, from not very much data. Consider the dozens of theories of the constitution of the world from the time of the Greek thinkers (even the atomic theory doesn't look very much at all like atoms as we now understand them), or th…

very few philosophers dared to live by their theories. the famous failures of aristotle (in the case of alexander) and plato in syracuse (where he saw firsthand that the philosopher-king is at best a book character) are good examples. seneca didn’t live stoically: he was avaricious and didn’t bother to incite civil war over unpaid debt, if ancient sources are to be believed. he failed horribly with nero, who later instructed him to commit suicide for treasonous crimes. again, if ancient sources are to be believed, he fumbled his suicide out of raw fear.

the cynics, though, made a good life but that’s not because they had a better philosophy. it’s because cynicism is base/primitive logic available to the brute as well as the civilized man.

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

#690

Post by mintplant »

zmgsabst wrote: post #516
thrance wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of what exactly? I haven't claimed any conspiracy, that's all stuff Trump bragged about on the news. Bringing up the "criminality of the Biden family" is a legitimately insane thing to do when defending Trump.

Any of these things: - passing budgetary laws without congress - has been made untouchable by the supreme court - pardoned the violent Jan 6 rioters (despite claiming to be "pro-order") - constantly scape-goats minorities - colludes with foreign fascists Im unaware of those happening and would like to see a source. > Bringing up the "criminality of the Biden family" is a legitimately insane thing to do when defending…

In all sincerity: pick up a newspaper.
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