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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'

#851
post #327
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole food chain is encapsulated in “the world” in this case. I don’t think your point stands.

> I don’t think your point stands. Elaborate?

> This isn't a counterpoint to "fix the world," because those "at the top of the social food chain" are, of course, partners in an oppressor/oppressed dynamic that prevents both parties from realize their full human potential.

You described the human condition. This is “the world” we all live in today. Isolating the people at the top as somehow not part of “the world” doesn’t work.

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

#852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it can often be trauma that causes the auto immunes. Seeing everything from a chemical standpoint only looks at half the picture. It’s hard to find a not traumatized autistic person for example.

> It’s hard to find a not traumatized autistic person for example. This is an extraordinary claim and needs evidence. Do you have a source for this?

This is not an extraordinary claim; it's an obvious one. Autistic sensory processing deficits make many everyday interactions traumatic, especially in childhood. It infuriates me that this isn't obvious to you and yet you posted a comment anyway.

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

#853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reductive to say that it's one or the other. I can say personally my feeling thermometer went from maybe 75 to 15 as a result of being on Mastodon and other online forums in the last tow years. I like trans people as individuals but I hate the movement. It's not the only place where that kind of negativity leaks out. For instance the men's rooms in my building are stuffed with menstrual products for "men who men…

> It seems to me that this sucks all the air out of the room to discuss anything else. You understand that this state of affairs has been created by the bigoted side? I just want to live in peace and build stuff that makes the world better, not worry about the federal government coming after me and pretending I don't exist. Please try not to get so fooled next time.

No. This is the black and white thinking that I'm talking about. Yes, the federal government has deteriorated, but some of that is that progressives haven't had a message that reconciles the rights of 0.6% of people with many concerns that the 99.4% have

Start taking responsibility. Bigotry is a real thing but you can have a large impact on how other people treat you based on how you behave.

Organized transgenderists in my view have a reducivist, moralist, my-way-or-the-highway approach that initially exploited 'progressive' people who were inclined to think they were acting in good faith but are in the process of driving those people away. (I was really inclined to think of transsexual people positively because my best friend in college was a really awesome person who happened to be transsexual)

J.K. Rowling picked an issue where public opinion was far away from what transgenderists wish it was. (Where do violent sex offenders in prison get housed?) She thought the vast majority of transgender prisoners were safest in prisons that corresponded to their identity but that authorities had to have some latitude for people acting in bad faith.

She got jumped on because she agreed with them in most cases but not all.

Normal people will call you an ally if you agree on 7 out of 10 issues but organized transgenderists come across as people who will treat you as an enemy if you disagree about anything.

On some issues (workplace discrimination) public opinion is on the side of trans people. On other issues (sports participation) public opinion is the other ways. A year ago questions involving access to health care tended to split down the middle, the one recent poll I looked at seems to have moved far to the right in the last year on the issue of transgender care for minors.

A healthy political movement accepts that it's won on certain issues, that it can't win on other issues, and that there are some issues in the middle where you can persuade people and win.

On top of that there is the whole "egg hatcher" thing where you find there are people who are looking for people who "march to the beat of a different drummer" and sell transgenderism as an answer to their problems, almost certainly a false answer. If somebody knew their gender identity of a child I'm inclined to believe them (e.g. they certainly aren't going to change their mind based on whether people 'affirm' them or not) but if somebody discovered a variant identity as a teen I'm skeptical. As a schizotype

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy

I am already frustrated with the bandwagoning of 'neurodivergence' by an autism industrial complex and an ADHD industry that pushes addictive medicine. Neurodivergent people are already 'bully magnets' and the last thing they need is to take on an identity which will get them further targeted and be surrounded by people who will reinforce their feelings of victimhood. (see 'impulsive nonconformity' in the article I link above)

I see the current movement as something that centers the activism of its enemies as a template for its own activism [1] [2] and that thrives on bigotry. It looks like a pernicious cult that is all about 'othering' other people and sees any and all pushback they get from people whether it is primary preexisting feelings of disgust, fear and hatred or the learned feelings of exasperation you might see on the face of a otherwise bleeding heart socially progressive HR manager who has just dealt with too many people who see a fascist under every bush and wants the whole cake yesterday.

[1] see anti-fascism

[2] transgenderists say it was OK to treat J. K. Rowling the same way Kiwi Farms treats them

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

#854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gwen, not Gwern. Gwen Danielson, if he is still alive, is wanted for his possible involvement in multiple homicides related to the Ziz cult. Not Gwern. And unihemispheric sleep (Gwen’s word for what they do; they like to invent their own terms) is one of the techniques the Ziz cult uses.

Thanks for correcting that mixup! So there's no source whatsoever for this bizarre notion other than the Zizian death cult itself. That makes it even crazier that some people (whether here or in the news media) seem to be taking it at face value, though.

Generally I think it's good to take people's reports of their unusual mental experiences at face value, even when they're crazy. Not that they never lie, but that you learn more by assuming they're probably telling the truth.

I haven't attempted unihemispheric sleep, and it sounds like a phenomenon that isn't represented in the literature, but it also sounds like it wouldn't get past an IRB anytime in the last decades, so I assume it's probably real.

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

#855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

N-gate was among the only things that made this website worth reading. They solely existed to make "cheap shots" at HN. If that's "poison", than I don't want an antidote!

What happens if you feed the n-gate archive to an LLM and ask it to generate commentary on current HN posts in the same style?

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

#856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly the trolley problem isn’t really about real humans in that situation, or else the correct answer would always be “do nothing”. The correct answer in case of it being about real people, of course, is to switch immediately after the front bogey makes it through. This way, the trolley will derail and make a sharp turn before it runs over anyone, and stop. The passengers will get shaken, but I don’t remember…

The scenario is set up by an evil philosopher though, so they can tie up the people arbitrarily close to the split in the rails, such that your solution doesn’t work, right?

In this case, it won’t matter, I’m afraid, which way the trolley goes as it will at least mangle both groups of people, and the only winning move is to try to move as many people as possible away from the track.

An Eastern European solution is to get a few buddies to cut the electrical wire that powers the trolleys and sell it for scrap metal, which works on all electrical trolleys. (After the trolley stops, it can be scavenged for parts you can sell as scrap metal, too.)

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

#857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what the heck does any of this mean??

Sadly, I completely understand after reading all the links in this thread tonight. The specific theory they're speaking in: https://zizians.info/ Backstory (7 chapters): https://aiascendant.substack.com/p/extropias-children-chapte...

Could you offer us a translation of the first two or three sentences? Apparently this comment was interpreted as a threat of murder.

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

#858
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet trump is president.

I follow the thread and can agree in large parts. But given multiple news anchors, news programs, both traditional and online, in combination with social media, content creators and late night TV, I am wholly exhausted by Trump somehow being a magical monster responsible for (just as you’ve demonstrated) in some way every ill in modern society. If he is a narcissist and we are aware narcissists feed on attention and…

The other shoe has been on the verge of dropping for years. The pendulum has swung the other way, it was always going to happen. I read a comment on this forum today asking why it was relevant that the group of people in SF associated with a string of murders consisted of a majority trans people. Asked why this was a relevant point.

It’s relevant because for years and years the mainstream left has been pushing and pushing to normalize behavior that has been historically been considered deviant. I have no opinion on the matter, I don’t care at all if someone wants to make their genitalia look different than it did when they were born. Do it up.

Most males have a really fucking hard time contemplating rearranging their penis into a vagina. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t seem right. It isn’t something that can register for most people.

Which of course lead to the situation we have now. “They don’t feel like a man/woman, they feel the opposite! They are depressed and discouraged and you MUST accept them for who they are!”

That doesn’t work. And instead of pivoting, the messaging just got louder and louder. Now we see the repercussions.

Trump was given power by people who didn’t realize they gave it to him, and they’re shellshocked.

I don’t like trump or approve of his moves. I did not vote for him. Ironically, he’s doing what he said he would do, which isn’t common amongst politicians, and he’s doing it quickly.

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

#859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happe…

> 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. Is this the kind of thing that is part of the Less Wrong cult? I see this "multiply" word being u…

> "I don't know what talking about "Infinity * 0" means in an informal sense means"

I'm not a rationalist, I'm only using their language to make the mapping to their ideology simpler. A comet striking earth would be "infinitely bad". The chance of that happening is, as far as I'm concerned, zero (its not zero, but I round it down.) If you multiply the infinitely bad outcome by the zero percent chance of it happening, you result is that you shouldn't waste your time and emotional resources worrying about it.

Normal people don't phrase this kind of reasoning with math terminology as rationalists do, but that terminology isn't where the rationalists go wrong. Where the rationalists go wrong isn't the multiplication, it's the failure to ignore very unlikely outcomes as normal people would. They think themselves too rational to ignore the possibility of unlikely things, but ironically it is normal people who don't spend their time dwelling on extremely unlikely bullshit have a more rational approach to life.

The rationalists spend hours discussing scenarios like "What if a super AI manipulates people into engineering a super virus that wipes out humanity? Its technically possible; there's no law of physics which prevents this!", to which a normal person would respond by wondering if these people are on drugs, why would they spend so much time worrying about something which isn't going to happen?

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

#860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one chooses to be anything. There is no free will and there never has been. I think this is a very confused remark. You are mixing up the existence of choices with the philosophical question of the nature and existence of "free will". I had a real choice as to what to eat for breakfast this morning. There were several live options and I chose one of them and discarded the others. Was that choice of mine "free"?…

Sapolsky's book Determined is really the counter to your post. I don't want to believe what that book says but it is quite a strong argument. It is really too sweeping and complicated to discuss in this format though. It really would need an entire counter book to it that dissects each point.

I don't agree.

The point of my comment was not whether free will exists or not – it was whether choices exist or not.

I haven't read Salopsky's book myself, but I don't believe it argues that choices don't exist, only that they aren't free. And the comment to which you are replying wasn't expressing any stance on the question of whether our choices are "free" or not, only distinguishing it from the separate question of whether they exist at all.

That said, the impression I've gathered of his book – e.g. the review in The Atlantic by Kieran Setiya (a professor of philosophy at MIT) – doesn't impress me – Sapolsky largely ignores the philosophical literature on the topic, despite its essentially philosophical nature. "Free will" is more fundamentally a question of philosophy than neuroscience, because a big part of the debate is how the phrase "free will" should even be defined – and that kind of definitional question is one in which neuroscientists have no special competence, but for philosophers it is their bread and butter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kieran_Setiya

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