"Rationalism"
String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
821–830 of 952 posts
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#822Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_cognitive_imperat... “ Such ridicule typically will not occur after a religious conversion brings a previous non-conformist into the fold of the culture’s dominant religion.”
What point of mine is that replying to?
"None of you think the major religions teach some insane things? Okay then."
I was on the phone so couldn't type much, but my point is the concept of the collective cognitive imperative (much better explained in the book than in Wikipedia, to be fair) would answer your question by saying "it's not that nobody thinks that: it's that enough people accept those insane things to the point that 1) they don't think they're insane things, 2) you'd be an outsider (or even considered insane) if you point out the fact that they're insane things.
I'll try to give an example that would work in my cultural context (South America): someone making a rain dance during a drought would be considered by most to be something from harmlessly silly to crazy. Someone praying to the christian god for guidance or help would be seen as normal.
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#823Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think astral codex ten did a survey recently and the majority of respondents were politically left
What kind of political leftist would you say resonates most acutely with Scott Alexander's January paean to the scientific racism of Emil Kirkegaard and Richard Lynn ("How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn's National IQ Estimates")?
"Elites are making it taboo to talk about intelligence in order to preserve their position at the top of the social hierarchy. They're doing genetic engineering for their kids in secret, while making the topic of intelligence radioactive so the masses can't follow suit. If we reduce the taboo around intelligence, we can decrease global inequality, by improving access to maternal interventions for IQ in the developing world."
(Granted, that's not a common leftist position. But maybe it should be.)
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#824Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's correct. Why is that an interesting conclusion? Trump is a neo-nationalist (with or without the appended socialist, take your pick), not a conservative. It's notable that the only remaining resistance against Trump in the Republican Party (represented by, e.g. Nikki Haley) are a coalition of conservatives.
Nikki Haley strongly endorsed Trump at the RNC in 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/16/politics/nikki-haley-trump-rn... So we can agree that there is no remaining resistance to Trump in the Republican Party and that conservatives are indeed Trumpers.
Did we forget the vicious campaign she waged in the primaries?
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#825In addition to the tragedy of the killings, I worry that this will give rationalism _as a concept_ a bad name. Deep thought is so important to progress, and already is somewhat stigmatized. My church underwent a nasty split when I was a kid, and the reason I heard was “pastor Bobby read too many books”. Obviously it wasn’t as simple as that, but the message was clear — don’t read too many books. I suspect this will i…
> ...our world has a resurgence of anti-intellectual...
That's the US, not the world. There has always been an anti-intellectual strain in American culture.
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#826[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…
>They have, in the past, responded to criticism with statements to the effect of "anyone who would criticize us for any reason is a bad person who is lying to cause us harm". Which leader said anything like that? Certainly not Eliezer or the leader of the Center for Applied Rationality (Anna Salamon) or the project lead of the web site lesswrong.com (Oliver Habryka)!
Hello, can confirm, criticism is like the bread and butter of LW, lol. I have very extensively criticized tons of people in the extend rationality ecosystem, and I have also never seen anyone in any leadership position react with anything like this quote. Seems totally made up.
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#827Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conservatism is a movement dating back to the French Revolution, arguably further back, didn't originate in America, and isn't defined by or limited to the Democratic Party / Republican Party divide. Trumpism is not conservatism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
Language evolves. Saying that today’s conservatives are not true conservatives is the literal definition of the no true Scotsman fallacy.
It's like the distinction between "liberal" and "liberalism." The former being a dirty slur word in American politics, and the latter being an entire field of economic and political philosophy dating back to the enlightenment. The latter definition is still in use among the educated. So too, with "conservative," at least outside of your American news bubble.
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#828The HN title added the word "rationalist", which isn't in the source article. This is editorializing in a way that feels kind of slander-y. Their relationship to the bay area rationalist community is that we kicked them out long before any of this started.
Can you tell us more about how they were kicked out? Are there other groups that have been kicked out?
I mean, they seemed kind of visibly crazy, often saying threatening things to others, talking about doing crazy experiments with their sleep, often insinuating violence. They were pretty solidly banned from the community after their crazy "CFAR Alumni Reunion" protest stunt, and before then were already very far into the fringes.
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#829Earlier 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…
I know I sound crazy saying what I'm about to say but it is the truth as I understand it and I think it's important. It appears to me that there is a certain modality of thought that occurs much more often in people with hEDS, specifically those with TNXB SNPs. If you're super deep into type theory the odds substantially increase that you have hEDS - it's how I found out that I had it. And this same group is far more…
could you please contact me on Discord or email (in my profile)? I have also investigated the connections between hEDS, being trans and a specific kind of autism, along with TNXB.
Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'
#830Head of LessWrong and generally active rationality community leader here. Happy to answer any questions people have. These people haven't been around the community for a long time, but I am happy to answer questions with my best guesses on why they are doing what they are doing.
They've been banned on LW and practically all in-person things for like 5+ years now. My guess is the reason why they hung around the rationality community this much years ago is just that it's a community with much higher openness to people and ideas than normal, especially in the Bay Area. IMO in this instance that was quite bad and they should have been kicked out earlier than they did end up getting kicked out (which was like 4 years ago or so).