the old one is three weeks old, let’s start another
You must log in or register to comment.
Behind the Bastards just wrapped their four-part series on the Zizzians, which has been a fun trip. Nothing like seeing the live reactions of someone who hasn’t been at least a little bit plugged into the whole space for years.
I haven’t finished part 4, but so far I’ve deeply appreciated Robert’s emphasis on how the Zizzian nonsense isn’t that far outside the bounds of normal Rationalist nonsense, and the Rationalist movement itself has a long history as a kind of cult incubator, even if Yud himself hasn’t fully leveraged his influence over a self-selecting high-control group.
Also the recurring reminders of the importance of touching grass and talking to people who haven’t internet-poisoned themselves with the same things you have.
I listened to parts 2—4 today and even with an above-average familiarity with rationalist weirdness it was a wild fucking ride.
Kinda wild to have a community of vegan trans women whose most notable victims are a border patrol agent and a landlord and who are still the baddies in this situation.
The HPMOR/LW parts and to a lesser extent bits of CFAR were absolutely familiar (and all the more cringeworthy for it). Never quite realized exactly how obviously psychologically torturous cult shit CFAR event were about.
I’m a Vermonter and this shit is so insane. I wanna know what the people caught up in shooting the vermont border patrol agent were up to. What were they planning on doing in VT? Why were they armed to the teeth? Why did they have surgical equipment? What is the nature of their ties to Peter fucking Thiel?
I can’t quite comprehend what it is they even believe in. When I read that this cult had ties to Peter Thiel all my alarm bells in my head went off. He’s arguably one of the most powerful and dangerous men in America.
Technically he doesn’t have connections to Thiel directly. They have connections to the lesswrong Rationalists (note, rationalwiki is not associated with the lesswrong Rationalists, and they don’t like each other, this place is also on team rationalwiki). However enough Rationalists are (or are friends with) neoreactionaries (for a long time LW was one of the few places where they were sometimes welcome, or even talked about). But this is one of the places where (through heavy layers of snark and derision) you could learn about these groups.
However, as the lore is deep, very annoying, quite bad (A lot of IQ-anon type people), I suggest you don’t start reading up on this. Ignorance once lost cannot be regained (There are also some very small (small as on low risk, but if you are one of the rare people high effect) mental health risks if you believe very specific things about skynet style AI and a few other silly beliefs). And you already got the important parts (Thiel and people close to him suck).
Technically he doesn’t have connections to Thiel directly.
minor nit: known connections. while “thielbucks laundered through 17 cutouts get used to fund useful idiots for stochastic terrorism to whip up an anti-trans panic” is a hypothetical I just pulled out of my ass for demonstration, it’s also too fucking plausible in the current state of affairs
I have no idea how likely that scenario is, and just to be clear I’m not saying that anything like it did happen. more pointing towards thielbucks are in so of the bad places doing harm atm, that sort of thing. so much so that I’d be hesitant to concretely exclude anyone/anything from that without some data to back it up
fund useful idiots for stochastic terrorism to whip up an anti-trans panic
In 2025 this is completely believable.
