WEBVTT - The Story: The Silicon Valley “Death Cult” w/ Evan Ratliff 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:16.320 Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story. Each week 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.799 on Wednesdays, we bring you an in depth interview with 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:21.200 someone who has a front row seat to the most 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:26.320 fascinating things happening in tech today. A conversation with Evan Ratliffe, 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:31.560 an investigative journalist and podcast host. He's reported for two 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:34.880 years on a fringe group of young tech people who 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:39.159 became obsessed with the dangers of AI, and he believes 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.560 that the best entry point to their story is November 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:47.720 twenty nineteen, when police in Sonoma County received a nine 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.400 to one one call from a tranquil wilderness camp and 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:55.320 a retreat center tucked into the redwoods of northern California. 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.040 They had a protest, so that there are only four 0:00:58.080 --> 0:00:59.920 people really involved at this point. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:01.320 This is Evan Ratliffe. 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.200 They showed up wearing black robes, which they would describe 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.800 as sith robes. They wear a guy fowx masks. They 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.039 parked their cars in a way that seemed to block 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:15.520 the entrances and exits of this center called Westminster Woods, 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:17.280 where the reunion was supposed to be held. 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.440 Evan says that day the camp was hosting two groups 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:25.120 of visitors. One was a gathering for a nonprofit called 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:30.120 the Center for Applied Rationality or CFAR. The members of 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:34.600 this group described themselves as rationalists, people who believe pure, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.920 unbiased rational thinking is not only possible, but the key 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:44.399 to preventing artificial intelligence from destroying humanity. The protesters in 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.880 the woods north of San Francisco had belonged to CFAR themselves, 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.520 at least up until very recently. 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.560 They were becoming disaffected with that Center for Applied Rationalities 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:57.760 people called SEAFAR. They were going to present on some 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:00.520 of their complaints. They were then disvi to the reunion 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:04.960 because people were becoming concerned with some of their aggressiveness, 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.239 and they brought these flyers which had these incredibly obscure 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:13.720 complaints about this group that no one could understand who 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:15.640 wasn't sort of like, directly involved in. 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:19.880 This invitation or not. The former rationalists wanted to make 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.960 their voices heard and their presence felt. But the problem 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.760 was another group of visitors at the Westminster Woods. 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:29.799 So in addition to the reunion that was supposed to 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:31.960 be taking place, there was a bunch of kids who 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:36.040 were there for a ropes course. And when these people 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:38.960 in masks and robes showed up out of nowhere and 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.880 blocked the interests in exosues. They called the police. The 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.280 police believed that this could be like an active shooter 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.280 type of situation, a hostage situation, so they came in 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.960 with the SWAT team. They came in guns drawn, and 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.799 they took down these four protesters, and then they had 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:57.520 helicopters they had I mean, it was a very very 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.520 dramatic situation, and that kind of set off a long 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:03.320 string of these events. 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:07.600 A long string of confounding increasingly violent events that would 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.880 eventually capture the world's attention, at first in the tech 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:15.240 community and then beyond. These protesters became known to the 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.600 general public as the Zizians. 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.320 Violence potentially linked to members of a Bay Area born 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:26.560 cult like group known as the Zizians. The Zizians a 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.320 radical death cult known as the Zizians. Six people have 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.000 been killed in some way associated with this collection of people, 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.840 and that includes the shooting of a Border Patrol agent 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.480 in Vermont and the stabbing of a man in Vallejo 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.720 who was once their landlord, the double murder of one 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.440 of their parents. So this violence has sort of surrounded them, 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.480 and it's not entirely clear. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:52.120 What it all adds up to. 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.000 Complicating the picture is the media frenzy that's been surrounding 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.560 this group. The Zizians have been described as a trans 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.600 vegan cult or a trans death cult in headlines all 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:07.760 over the world. But behind these culture war buzzwords and 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.520 odd details about the group and its members, there's a 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.600 larger story to tell about Silicon Valley, its culture, and 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.560 what happens to a community that's grappling with the future 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:23.039 of humanity head on. It's a community Evan Ratliffe knows 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.760 well the essence of which he captured in his article 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:31.880 for Wired titled the Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:35.599 the Zizians. Evan has been reporting on Silicon Valley for 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.200 more than two decades, and he told us that his 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.520 first exposure to the germ of this story was actually 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:43.919 back when he was a researcher for Wide Magazine. 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.080 I worked on this story called Why the Future Doesn't 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.800 Need Us by Bill Joy, and it was a hugely 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.080 influential and popular story. It was probably the most popular 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:56.800 story that Wired Magazine had ever done to that date 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:57.760 for sure, and. 0:04:57.680 --> 0:04:59.599 I don't know, maybe since what year is this? 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.200 This was two thousand. I believe the premise of the 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:07.000 story was that humans were developing this technology that potentially 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.920 could cause our own destruction, and one of the technologies 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.719 was sort of robotics and artificial intelligence. And so at 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:17.920 that time I started researching and paying attention to people 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.279 who were having discussions around this issue. 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.040 Could artificial intelligence develop in such. 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.680 A way that it could eliminate the need for humans, 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.240 It could accidentally destroy humans, it could intentionally and malevolently 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:33.560 destroy humans. I was very interested in this topic, and 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:38.359 some of the figures at that time ended up starting 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.160 a kind of movement to understand and solve the problem 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:46.040 of what they call the AI singularity and AI alignment. 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:49.240 So the idea that AI could become super intelligent, and 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.159 if it's going to become super intelligent, we have to 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.240 align it. We have to make sure it's aligned with 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:57.640 our human desires, otherwise it will leave us behind, intentionally 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:02.920 or accidentally. So that's what became rationality, which is the 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.320 ideology that the Zizians emerged from. 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:08.880 What role does Yakowski playing all of this. 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.680 Eliezer Judkowski is the founder of the organizations that have 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:19.680 sort of most committed to these ideas. Now I want 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:21.880 to be very careful to say like he not only 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.720 does he have nothing to do with the Zizians per se, 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.839 Like you know, I would say he's like anti zizion 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:31.440 As everyone in the rationality community like they're afraid. They 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.479 were afraid of these people, like they're truly afraid, literally 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.720 afraid for their lives. They had to have extra security 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:41.520 at their meetups because these people were at large throughout 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.560 twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. So Eliezer Judkowski 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.839 started something called the Machine Intelligence Research Institute but let's 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.919 just call it Miry and Mary was essentially developed to 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.960 research the question of will AI eventually destroy us? And 0:06:57.960 --> 0:06:59.640 what can we do about it? How can we align 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:03.800 AI and this? It kind of attracted very very smart 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.480 people around it. It attracted a good bit of funding, 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.880 including from Peter Teel, and then also they sort of 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.880 developed this ideology called rationalism, which sort of spun out 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.000 of it. And Eliezioedkowski was also involved in founding this, 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.040 you know, Center for Applied Rationality, where their idea was, well, 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.080 not only should we think about this question AI, we 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.440 should also think about everything through this rational lens, this 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.920 lens where we kind of strip away both emotion and 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.000 societal pressure and we just try to think about things 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:37.520 more logically and rationally. And that became almost like a 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.080 movement in and of itself that attracted. 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:40.600 People to the Bay Area. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.560 And so the philosophy rationalism has been influential in Silicon Valley. 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:47.760 But I think when it comes to like aligning AI, 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:50.840 I would think even the people associated with MIRI and 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:54.000 these organizations would say like they haven't been particularly effective, 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:55.280 if at all. 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:57.320 In creating alignment. 0:07:57.440 --> 0:07:59.880 I mean, there are some people inside Open AI and 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.360 other companies that believe in this stuff, but a lot 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.680 of times they're just resigning because they can't get any 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:07.880 traction in the organization. The organization just wants to get 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.160 bigger and frankly make more money. 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.080 Who exactly are the Zizians and what can you tell 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:15.960 us about zis Lesota. 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:19.600 So zizz Lesda is you know, nominally the leader of 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.920 the group, the Zizians. If you read their own writings, 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:25.680 you know she says, I'm not the leader of the 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:29.120 group like I lead without authority, is what she writes. 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:33.840 But she she is a as many of the members are. 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.840 She's a technically gifted person, she's trained as a computer 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:43.160 engineer and then got into this world of rationalism and 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.280 effect of altruism, which is the sort of putting your 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.480 money towards sort of utilitarian causes where you're trying to 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:50.480 benefit the most people. 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:54.880 This was Sam bankman Fried's purported crusade exactly. 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:58.760 Sam bankatried both made effective altruism more famous and also 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:03.360 you know, caused it untold damage to its reputation. But 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.480 I mean there were maybe half a dozen, maximum twelve 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.000 people you could say were sort of like the Zizians. 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:13.960 Now new people emerged early this year who no one 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.440 had known about, including myself, So there could be more 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.320 people who are influenced by this ideology or involved in 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.000 some way that no one knows about. But for the 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.600 time being, we sort of have a handle on the 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.520 people who were involved. As far as the ideology, I 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:30.520 spent a long time in the ideology. First of all, 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.120 I don't think it's completely coherent. The things you could 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:37.679 say clearly about the ideology is that there's a belief 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:43.400 in veganism the value of all life or sentient life. 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.040 And you know, one of the big complaints was that 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:49.959 people who were focused on AI alignment were not focused 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:54.160 on aligning the AI to be friendly towards humans and animals, 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:59.160 just humans. And there's a belief, I think in sort 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:04.560 of like the moral absolutism around those issues. So the 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:09.280 people involved believe that they have the moral authority to 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.480 sort of pursue those issues in the world. So that's 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:16.000 what's so baffling about this situation is they have the ideology, 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:18.480 they've written many hundreds of thousands of words of the ideology, 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.120 but if you look at the people who have died, 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.079 it's very hard to connect it to the ideology. They 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.679 seem like random people connected to the group. And that's 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:28.160 why I sort of go back to this sort of 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.360 moral absolutism that you know, allegedly if they were involved 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.680 in these violent acts. When you adopt a stance that 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:37.840 all of humanity is at risk and you are the 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:42.880 person who has the moral fortitude to solve that problem, 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.520 it can open you up to all sorts of acts 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.480 that you're kind of like allowed by your moral code 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:49.560 to carry out. 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:02.560 When we come back us how Zizla Sota's disappointment in 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.439 the rationalist community led to the formation of the Zizians. 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.439 Welcome back to a conversation with Evan Ratliffe about the Zizians, 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.280 a confounding group of young tech people who got their 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:28.240 start in the rationalist movement. Some media outlets have gone 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.520 so far as to call the Zizians a cult, which 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.560 would imply a level of recruitment on the part of 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:38.480 Zizla Sota, the nominal leader of the group. But to Evan, 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:41.920 the recruitment process seemed more like disenchantment. 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:44.559 I think people just kind of gravitated. There were other 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.520 disaffected people, some of whom were also trans women, and 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:52.000 I think they just kind of gravitated towards this group. 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.040 They felt a little outcast, and so they kind of 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:57.920 ended up here. Now, I think many people in rationality 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:01.000 would say like they all had a variety of potentially 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:05.400 mental health conditions that were contributing to this. I think 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.800 people in the group would say they were neurodiverse and 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.960 that was something that maybe brought them together. Part of 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.840 what I would say happened with the Zizians speculating, we 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.360 can't say for sure, but if as a person who's 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.199 consumed a lot of their writings is that they showed 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:25.280 up and they ended up sort of like disappointed with 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.520 the social situation, and also like what these people were 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.000 doing to solve the problem that they're so religious about, 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.640 so they were disaffected by that. So you have all 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:37.880 of these people saying like AI is going to change 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:41.040 the world, but the people who are trying to restrain 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.840 AI are completely failing at doing that. So it's not 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.920 terribly surprising that some people would come to join that, 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.680 you know, if we call it like a religious religious 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:52.960 idea and then say like, oh, you're not. 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:54.680 None of you were actually living it, So we're going 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:55.280 to go live it. 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.920 We're going to be the real people who can really 0:12:58.000 --> 0:12:59.760 do what you're saying you're. 0:12:59.600 --> 0:12:59.920 Going to do. 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:05.160 So it's a swirl. It's a swirl of different potential reasons. 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:07.199 But it wasn't like a cult where someone's like actively 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.640 going out and like trying to pull people in. 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:11.640 I wouldn't say. 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.160 That swirl of disaffectation. The first kind of like dramatic 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.840 manifestation of that was the scene you described with the 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:22.439 guy Fawkes mask and syth cloaks. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.520 Yes, I mean that was the place where they really 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.200 broke from the organization, the Center for Applied Rationality, and 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.760 also sort of demonstrated that they were up to something else. 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.600 And after that, after the arrests, did that make this 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.680 small group closer or did it push them apart? And 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.040 what were the years between the arrests in twenty nineteen 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.120 at the protest and the first murders that are allegedly 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.000 connected to the group, what happened between those times. 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:55.040 I think the arrests really did bring them together slash 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.320 push them further outside of society. You know, they were 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.640 facing these sort of ongoing legal charges. Then they were 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:06.920 filing a federal lawsuit for abuse and torture by the police. 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:09.840 And they also, you know, they had our hard time 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:11.959 finding a place to live. You know, they had been 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:14.800 they had tried living on boats in the Bay Area 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.240 for a while and then that didn't work out, and 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.280 so then they were moving from sort of airbnbs one 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.360 to another. But you know, if you stayed at an 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:25.800 Airbnb and you're wearing black sith robes all day and 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.720 acting very strangely, like, pretty soon you're gonna kicked out 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:30.440 of that Airbnb. So they ended up living on this 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.960 property in Vallejo where they were sort of semi squatters 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.240 with these trailers, and so I think partly it was 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:39.800 getting arrested. And then partly it was this they were 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.000 just kind of falling out of society more and more 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:48.160 because the combination of their behavior and their reputation was 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.280 causing them to not be able to find like a 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:53.040 proper place to live, and then that was making the 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:54.880 problem worse, and it sort of compounds itself. 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:57.440 And how did the alleged Mudis begin. 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.000 Well, the first incident of real violent was when they 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.920 were living on this property in Vallejo and the landlord 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.400 was in the process of trying to evict them. So 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.320 basically the landlord had taken them on the property. Then 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:13.360 during COVID they had stopped paying any rent. A lot 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:16.640 of rent back rent had accrued, and then by twenty 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:19.200 twenty two they were continue to not pay rent, and 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.280 he went to the authorities. 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:22.920 And was going to get them evicted. 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.440 And then allegedly one of their number lured him to 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:29.920 one of their trailers saying there was a water leak, 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.160 and they started stabbing him with knives. One of them 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.840 stabbed him with a samurai sword, and he had a gun. 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:39.680 He pulled out the gun, he shot and killed one 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.040 of them, and he survived that stabbing. 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:44.120 He shot another one who survived. 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.000 One of them died, so two of the members, two 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:49.840 of the people associated with it, were arrested at that 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:51.440 time and had been in jail ever since and have 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.960 never gone to trial. And then he survived, only to 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:57.760 later be murdered by another member of the group earlier 0:15:57.760 --> 0:15:58.160 this year. 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:00.880 And one of the other things that comes across you 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:04.800 reporting is that people affiliated with the group started to 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:08.400 get very scared for their own lives because of Ziz, 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.400 and also that Ziz was putting pressure on them to 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:12.640 commit murders. 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.680 Yes, there was a person named Michelle Zagko who was 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.400 sort of loosely involved with this collection of people. 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:20.000 Out in the Bay area. 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.520 Then she moved to Vermont with a friend possibly kind 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.240 of partner of hers, and then but she was in 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.360 communication with Ziz and there and blogging about it, and 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.240 they're both they're all they're always writing on Tumblr and blogging, 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:34.920 and you know, a lot of this is public because 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.800 they wrote about what was happening at the time, and 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.880 Michelle wrote about how Ziz was saying that she should 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.640 kill the person that she was with, that she was 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:49.160 living with to prove her loyalty or to prove what 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:51.200 kind of person she was, and they had this like 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:53.400 back and forth about it, and if, of course, as 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:55.080 an outsider, if you read this, you think, well, this 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:55.640 is insane. 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:56.360 These people have just. 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:59.720 Lost their minds, like this, this is not real. But 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:04.040 that you know, not that long after that, Michelle's Ashco's parents, 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.760 Richard and Rita Zajko, were brutally murdered in their own 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:12.960 home in Pennsylvania, and shortly after the murder, three people 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.159 in the group, including ziz Lasota, the nominal leader, were 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:21.159 detained in Pennsylvania. One of them was the daughter of 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.000 the couple who had been murdered. It's a strange thing 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.040 to follow, I guess, I would say, because you see 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:29.840 intimations of violence and then suddenly there is real violence, 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.280 and it's like not totally clear how they're exactly connected 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:35.840 or why one may have allegedly led to the other. 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:38.239 And the border patrol as what was that stand up? 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:40.760 Do we know what the allegations are as to why 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:41.920 that shooting could. 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:46.320 The basic facts, according to prosecutors in the court documents 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:50.120 so far, are that there were two people whose names 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:54.560 are Ophelia Baucolt and Teresa Youngblud, who were in Vermont. 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:59.000 They were walking around wearing all black, often wearing tactical 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.240 gear and carrying guns or at least carrying a gun. 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.560 So naturally someone at a hotel where they were staying 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.800 just called it in to the police. The police and 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:13.240 Homeland security agents started sort of monitoring them, following them around, 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.960 and then eventually a border patrol agent pulled them over. 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:19.560 And when they were pulled over, they just they came 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.400 out firing and this one border Portroyjan was killed. It's 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.359 not actually clear who fired the shot that killed the 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:29.080 border Platajian. One of the two, Aphelia Alcoult, was also 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:33.240 killed in the shootout and the other one survived. Teresa Youngblutt, 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:37.040 so she is facing trial for potentially for the shooting 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.680 of the border Portrayjan who tragically died. 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.800 And Ophelia in Theresa. As far as we can define 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:45.440 them Zizzians in so far as they follow the writings 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:46.480 of Ziz. 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:51.240 Yeah, I mean as loosely conceived Zizzians. They connected with Zizz. 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.080 They were known to have stayed in a property in 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.479 North Carolina prior to this incident, where Ziz also seemed 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.159 to be staying, so they seemed to be connected to 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:04.240 the group, but again, these are the two that no 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:06.680 one knew for many years, including people in the rationalist 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:09.280 community who knew them, had no idea that they were 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:15.119 being influenced by these ideas of Zizilsoda, much less that 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:18.520 they were like directly connected to people in the group. 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.399 Coming up, what the Cizians can tell us about the 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:39.959 current moment in Silicon Valley and tech existentialism stay with us, 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:43.480 I guess going back to where we began and the 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:47.040 kind of rationalists in the Bay Area. Grace Byron wrote 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.440 in the Nation that the group is quote an offshoot 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:53.880 of the tech adult libertarian politics of Silicon Valley. Has 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:59.760 this group and his actions paused Silicon Valley libertarians ration 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.640 is to kind of inspect their own beliefs and question 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.840 how this level of extremism was able to emerge from 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:10.640 that set of ideas, or is it mol being dismissed 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.440 as a group of kind of fringe figures who say 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:14.320 she goes to their minds. 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:15.879 I think you see a bit of both. 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.040 I think there are people who just say well, and 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.440 any large group of people, there are some people who 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:24.199 have mental health issues, and these people happen to have 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.480 been very extreme versions of that On the other hand, 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:31.040 one of the things that I admire about the best 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.600 of the rationalists is that they're constantly self reflecting. I mean, 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.399 that's partly what they do is they can't stop writing 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:41.120 about their own philosophy and like how it's changing and 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.960 what it means and different cases where it could be applied, 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:47.000 and has this gone wrong or has that gone wrong? 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:48.920 So I think you can find a lot of self 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.320 reflection around the Zizians and sort of like, what is 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.960 it about our philosophy that attracts this sort of person 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:59.120 I mean, they're not the first extreme group to emerge 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:00.680 out of the rationalists either. There have been a couple 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.359 of other ones, not to the extent of violence, but 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:05.920 you know, a couple of ones that people loosely. 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:06.479 Describe as cults. 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.840 So I think there has been some reflection on that. Now, 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.800 whether or not that sort of filters into any change 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:17.160 in their outlook in the world, I'm not sure. 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:17.919 I think it might be. 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:20.600 It's always time for a moment reflection when a lot 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.080 of people get killed by people who are in your group, 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:25.639 But I don't know if it's going to lead to 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:27.720 sort of fundamental changes in how they view the world. 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.080 And you've wrote that the Zizians are a culture wolf, 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.199 funhouse mirat for all times. I guess, A, what do 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.120 you mean by that? And B how did you deal 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:40.160 with that challenge in your porting on them? 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:44.959 What I meant was that, I mean, being for instance, 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:51.000 pronominantly trans women in the group. You could see honestly, like, 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:56.000 let's be clear, like the gleefulness with which the right 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:59.960 wing media, for instance, embraced this story. Like I don't 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:01.840 I can't think of another way to describe it except 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.720 like borderline gleefold. The excitement around being able to call 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:09.359 something a trans called just seeks just like the thrill. 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:11.320 I mean, I don't want to project onto them, but 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:14.480 like if you read the stories, it's always sort of 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.880 trans culled Trantifa. It's almost like they willed it into existence. 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.200