Live data from Hacker News

String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

sfgate.com

701–710 of 952 posts

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

#701
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submitter of this story inserted 'rationalist' into the title; it's not in the headline and IMO it's calumny. Would you take it back out?

Sure. Edit: I think "death cult" is linkbaity though, so I replaced it with "Zizians". I hope that's neutral enough for everybody because I'll be offline soon. (Replacing a general-sensational term with a proper noun is often a good debaiting trick.)

Thanks!

Neat term, debaiting -- though I misread it for a moment.

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

#702

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…

Many people were curious here that the perpetrators were using Vim or Emacs.

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

#703
post #605

[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…

I noticed years ago too that AI doomers and rationalist type were very prone to (infinity * 0 = infinity) types of traps, which is a fairly autistic way of thinking. Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 for very good practical reasons.

Reminds me of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_problem_(cosmology).

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

#704
post #238
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had some rather… negative vibes, for lack of a better term, from some of the American bits I've encountered online; but for what it's worth, I've not seen what you described in the German community. There is, ironically, no escape from two facts that was well advertised at the start: (1) the easiest person for anyone to fool is themselves, and (2) politics is the mind-killer. With no outwardly visible irony, t…

The problem with "politics is the mind-killer" is that it seems to encourage either completely ignoring politics (which is mostly harmless but also results in pointlessly ceding a venue for productive action in service of one's ideals) or engaging with politics in a very Machiavellian, quasi-Nietzschean way, where you perceive yourself as slicing through the meaningless Gordian knot of politics (which results in the…

Someone who follows politics to anticipate possible consequences is considered 'rational' think of the 25% tariffs trump enacts. You dont even need to have an opinion on the matter but you shouldn't be suprised when the bill comes around. What I think people consider political destruction of the mind is when someone is consumed by the actions of a character that does not and should not have influence over their behaviour.

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

#705

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…

Many people were curious here that the perpetrators were using Vim or Emacs.

Wait, OR?!

Clearly this is a poorly organized movement, with wildly different beliefs. There is no unity of purpose here. Emacs or vi, used without core beliefs being challenged?!

And one does not form a rationalist movement, and use emacs after all.

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

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that you need evidence to justify your beliefs is a philosophical position.

It's a pretty good one.

Anything about the self bumps into an immediate problem here. For instance I cannot prove to you that I'm conscious and not simply an automaton who's not actually thinking. My evidence for such is strictly personal - I can personally testify to my own experience of consciousness, but you have no reason to believe me since that's not evidence.

And in fact even for myself - perception is not necessarily valid evidence since perception can be distorted. If I am in a compelling VR game I might be more than willing to swear to the fact that I'm flying (if I wasn't otherwise aware of the situation) - while you simply look at me acting a fool standing still while vigorously flapping my arms.

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

#707

[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…

Another thing I'll add after having spent a few years in a religious cult: It's all about the axioms. If you tweak the axioms you can use impeccable logic to build a completely incorrect framework that will appeal to otherwise intelligent(and often highly intelligent) people. Also, people are always less rational than they are able to admit. The force of things like social connection can very easily warp the reasonin…

Succinct. This should be handed out as a “Signs you’re being manipulated” flyer to young people.

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

#708
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Vegan Sith"? For just one thing, when you have a broken education system and omnipresent media franchises, you have a significant percentage of the population who know more about the Star Wars backstory structure and theories of diet than about history, civics or conventional morality.

These kids were very well educated and went to some of high end schools according to the article

You can still have a great education, but in one direction. And be clueless about everything else.

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

#709
post #623
post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed years ago too that AI doomers and rationalist type were very prone to (infinity * 0 = infinity) types of traps, which is a fairly autistic way of thinking. Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 for very good practical reasons.

> Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 I'm guessing you don't mean this in any formal mathematical sense, without context, infinity multiplied by zero isn't formally defined. There could be various formulations and contexts where you could define / calculate something like infinity * zero to evaluate to whatever you want. (e.g. define f(x) := C x and g(x) := 1/x, What does f(x) * g(x) evaluate to in t…

It's true in the informal sense. Normal people, when considering an "infinitely" bad thing happening (being killed, losing their home, etc) with a very low probability will round that probability to zero ("It won't happen to ME"), multiply the two and resultantly spend zero time worrying about it, planning for it, etc.

For instance, a serial killer could kill me (infinitely bad outcome) but the chance of that happening is so tiny I treat it as zero, and so when I leave my house every day I don't look into the bushes for a psycho murderer waiting there for me, I don't wear body armor, I am unarmed, I don't even think about the chance of being killed by a serial killer. For all practical intents and purposes I treat that possibility as zero.

Important to remember that different people gave different thresholds at which they round to zero. Some people run through dark parking garages and jump into their car because they don't round the risk of a killer under their car slashing their achilles tendons down to zero. Some people carry a gun everywhere they go, because they don't round the risk of encountering a mass shooter to zero. Some people invest their time and money pursuing spaceflight development because they don't round a dino-killing asteroid to zero. A lot of people don't round the chance of wrecking a motorcycle to zero, and therefore don't buy one even though they look like fun.

The lesswrong/rationalist people have a tendency to have very low thresholds at which they'll start to round to zero, at least when the potential harm would be met out to a large portion of humanity. Their unusually low threshold leads them to very unusual conclusions. They take seriously possibilities which most people consider to be essentially zero, giving rise to the perception that rationalists don't think that infinity * 0 = 0.

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

#710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If marginalization were the main cause I think they're crazy first, trans second. They were marginalised for being crazy. Then they found each other because they're trans. Many cults have random attributes shared by the members, whether it be race or sexual preferences. Their race or sexual preference didn't cause them to join a cult, they had other things going on that drove that. But when it came time to join one…

As rachofsunshine suggested, there are quite a few factions and splinter groups within the larger "rationalist" subculture, not just people who happen to be trans and were recruited because of it. My takeaway after spending a few hours down the rabbit hole is that they all seem to be composed of very smart people who have a screw or three loose. I'm afraid that at some point, some of these people are likely to talk t…

This is a wild thing to read 8O
Post reply on HN