Speaker 1: Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here, a show about things
Speaker 2: falling apart between attacks on Sam Altman's home, a malotava,
Speaker 2: a Tesla office, and a warehouse causing over half a
Speaker 2: billion dollars in damages. This past week or so has
Speaker 2: been a little snapshot of the Cool Zone. I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 2: This episode, I'm joined by Robert Evans. Yeah, to discuss
Speaker 2: one of these events.
Speaker 1: To be very clear, we had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: either of them. The way he introduced them sounded a
Speaker 1: little bit like between you know, going to Sam Altman's
Speaker 1: house twice. It's been quite a busy.
Speaker 2: Week for us, a busy week for us here.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to be extra clear, extra clear.
Speaker 2: No, No, the Cool Zone just relating to, you know,
Speaker 2: the state of American society and where it's going. Yes,
Speaker 2: But as is typical of these sorts of events, the
Speaker 2: reality and motivations of attacks like these may not be
Speaker 2: as clear cut as lee epic based praxis as one
Speaker 2: might want to imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not a Gimli situation. You know, it's
Speaker 1: weirder than that and stupider. It is weirder.
Speaker 2: And this episode we're got to talk about the Sam
Speaker 2: Altman attacker, who is a lot weirder than what you
Speaker 2: might have expected with a philosophical worldview downstream from the
Speaker 2: original inspirations behind the Zizians and even the intellectual interests
Speaker 2: of Luigi Mangioni to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Ah God, Yes, that's that's right, our dear sweet friends,
Speaker 1: the rationalists.
Speaker 2: A man, the alleged Altman attacker, was a college student
Speaker 2: from the Houston area whose interest in the risks of
Speaker 2: AGI artificial general intelligence turned into an obsession which earlier
Speaker 2: this year turned self destructive. But let's go through the
Speaker 2: actual events that happened in San Francisco a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: At around three point thirty am on April tenth, a
Speaker 2: twenty year old college student named Daniel Moranogama allegedly threw
Speaker 2: a Molotov cocktail toward the home of open AI CEO
Speaker 2: Sam Altman, hitting the top of the security gate on
Speaker 2: the driveway leading to Altman's residence. Mornogama did not get
Speaker 2: past the security gate. About an hour and a half later, though,
Speaker 2: Moronogama showed up outside the San Francisco headquarters of open
Speaker 2: AI and tried to use a chair to break into
Speaker 2: the building through the glass doors. He was stopped by
Speaker 2: security personnel and allegedly told them that he came to
Speaker 2: the headquarters to burn it down and kill everyone inside.
Speaker 2: According to the federal affidavit, when he was arrested, officers
Speaker 2: allegedly recovered incendiary devices, a jug of kerosene, and a
Speaker 2: blue lighter, as well as what the FBI has described
Speaker 2: as an ANTIAI document. H Okay, we currently do not
Speaker 2: have a copy of this document. It's only described in
Speaker 2: the criminal complaint, But this looks like it was a
Speaker 2: three part manifesto allegedly authored by Moranogama, and the first
Speaker 2: part was titled Your Last Warning, in which he states
Speaker 2: he quote killed Slash, attempted to kill Sam Altman, and
Speaker 2: also writing quote if I'm going to advocate for others
Speaker 2: to kill and commit crimes, that I must lead by
Speaker 2: example and show that I am fully sincere in my message.
Speaker 2: The document then lists the names and addresses of various investors,
Speaker 2: board members, and executives of AI companies as a sort
Speaker 2: of target list. The second part of the document was
Speaker 2: titled some more Words on the matter of our Impending
Speaker 2: Extinction Great and this section discussed the purported risk that
Speaker 2: AI poses to humanity. And we'll get into some of
Speaker 2: those beliefs a little later on. But the third part
Speaker 2: of this three part anti AA document was a letter
Speaker 2: addressed to altman if you make it, and reads in part,
Speaker 2: if by some miracle you live, then I would take
Speaker 2: this as a sign from the divine to redeem yourself. Now,
Speaker 2: like I said, we do not have a copy of
Speaker 2: this manifesto in full, though the AFFI David says that
Speaker 2: Mornagama appears to have emailed similar versions of this document
Speaker 2: to people at his former college in Texas, But as
Speaker 2: of Monday four twenty, this document is still not online.
Speaker 2: But like a lot of zoomers, we do have an
Speaker 2: online footprint made up of posts from Instagram, Discord, a
Speaker 2: substack blog, and even a podcast interview where Mornogama discusses
Speaker 2: his anti AI views.
Speaker 1: It's always sad when something terrible happens to a fellow podcaster.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I have such a broad and
Speaker 1: deep pan podcaster solidarity, class, solidarity. Yeah, all podcasters are good,
Speaker 1: all of them, every last.
Speaker 2: No wrongdoing has ever come behind the microphone of a podcaster.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's a special place Now.
Speaker 2: Back in January, back when Monona Gama was just nineteen,
Speaker 2: journalists found him through some of his posts on an
Speaker 2: anti AI discord server, and he was asked to be
Speaker 2: interviewed for this podcast about AI called The Last Invention.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Ed Zittron was also interviewed for this podcast
Speaker 2: Actually Now. He was interviewed because of his posts weighing
Speaker 2: the possibility of using violence to stop the development of
Speaker 2: AI now. In this interview, he says that he grew
Speaker 2: up in the suburbs his whole life and quote grew
Speaker 2: up quite close to the Internet and claims that he's
Speaker 2: been online every day starting at nine years old. Baron A.
Speaker 2: Gama explained how his political worldview had largely been shaped
Speaker 2: by YouTube, specifically debate videos on YouTube like Ben Shapiro style,
Speaker 2: and these sorts of debate videos are what originally exposed
Speaker 2: him to views critical of AA. He says he first
Speaker 2: heard about AI though when Chad GPT came out when
Speaker 2: he was a sophomore in high school and first thought
Speaker 2: it was quote the greatest thing on earth because it
Speaker 2: would allow him to cheat on school essentially, But after
Speaker 2: watching videos debating the risks of AI, and the possibility
Speaker 2: of advanced general intelligence, artificial general intelligence, and the potential
Speaker 2: threat posed by this artificial superintelligence. Moronagama's views started to
Speaker 2: sour on AI. At first, he was a bit skeptical
Speaker 2: of these AI critical debates, but eventually became convinced of
Speaker 2: the AI doomer arguments and became an accolade himself. He
Speaker 2: started arguing in YouTube comments and talking with friends and
Speaker 2: family about the danger of AI. He describes himself getting
Speaker 2: annoying and quote a bit autistic about this, leading to
Speaker 2: his mom suggesting he joined an advocacy organization. He joined
Speaker 2: his group called Pause AI in twenty twenty four, which
Speaker 2: is an AI safety advocacy group that organizes online as
Speaker 2: well as some in person protests, and he was also
Speaker 2: part of a Discord server called Stop AI. His username
Speaker 2: on both Discord and Instagram was but larryan underscore g hottist,
Speaker 2: in reference to the crusade against AI in the do
Speaker 2: novels Yeah. On Instagram, his account had a collection of
Speaker 2: Instagram stories saved about the threat of AI, including a
Speaker 2: meme about living in a ven, diagram of the Matrix terminator,
Speaker 2: and idiocrasy. One of these Instagram stories was a picture
Speaker 2: of a hockey stick graph showing the length of coding
Speaker 2: tasks that AI can do and how that's increasing, with
Speaker 2: the caption quote if we do nothing very soon, we
Speaker 2: will die. I'm sure of that quote. Another story contains
Speaker 2: screenshots of articles, posts, and studies proclaiming that artificial general
Speaker 2: entire dilligence, or the quote unquote singularity is already here,
Speaker 2: captioned being right all the time fucking sucks when it's
Speaker 2: about the worst things imaginable unquote.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, if his.
Speaker 2: Concerns about AI started around summer of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: by the end of twenty twenty five, those concerns grew existential,
Speaker 2: and he started spiraling yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a post he made on the Pause AI discord
Speaker 2: from November sixth, twenty twenty five, writing quote, we owe
Speaker 2: it to everyone who came before us, and to ourselves
Speaker 2: and to everyone we know and love and everyone who
Speaker 2: might exist someday to be stronger than that and at
Speaker 2: least die fighting if it comes to that unquote. A
Speaker 2: few weeks later, he wrote quote, we are close to midnight.
Speaker 2: It's time to actually act to this. A moderator on
Speaker 2: the server replied advocating violence in any form is grounds
Speaker 2: for a ban.
Speaker 1: This all seems like a pretty natural progression if you're
Speaker 1: following like the kind of things that the Less Wrong Crowd,
Speaker 1: which is the website run by guy named Aleezer Yadkowski,
Speaker 1: who is like the the patron saint of the rationalists,
Speaker 1: which a huge chunk of which have become like AI doomers.
Speaker 1: Like a Leizer's book that came out a year or
Speaker 1: two ago is called if We Build It, Everyone Dies
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, and I'm surprised more of
Speaker 1: them haven't so far. Like I think it probably toxic,
Speaker 1: just people not actually believing it as much as they
Speaker 1: claim to, like online. But like if someone truly believes
Speaker 1: the stuff that crowd is saying about, how like basically
Speaker 1: the creation of an evil god is inevitable that will
Speaker 1: seek to purge the world of humankind, Like, of course
Speaker 1: you do this, It's a really natural progression. Like, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: what you have to pair that with is like if
Speaker 1: you believe all of the hype about AI, right, if
Speaker 1: you believe that AGI is imminent, that it's on the way,
Speaker 1: Like if you are like me and I don't believe
Speaker 1: we're anywhere close to AGI. If that's even possible, then yeah,
Speaker 1: you could believe the stuff the rationalists believe and not
Speaker 1: think that you need to take immediate destructive action. But
Speaker 1: if you literally believe that these companies are on the
Speaker 1: hinge of birthing and evil God, what else is there
Speaker 1: to do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the exact thing that Moranagama ends up
Speaker 2: writing about on his substack.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is the fullest picture we have of his
Speaker 2: views is from the substack, because we don't have this manifesto.
Speaker 2: But he did write at length about AI, and he's
Speaker 2: writing about a lot of the stuff that you're talking
Speaker 2: about here. And we'll discuss that writing more after this
Speaker 2: at break. Okay, we are back. The most in depth
Speaker 2: piece of publicly available writing by Moranogama explaining his anti
Speaker 2: AI views comes from a post on his substack blog
Speaker 2: dated January twenty six. This article outlines his belief that
Speaker 2: AI poses a quote unquote existential risk to humanity. And
Speaker 2: I think this this essay was the first thing I
Speaker 2: saw that really demonstrated that his opposition to AI is
Speaker 2: not like based on fears of AI disrupting the economy
Speaker 2: contributing to a loss of jobs or you know, risking
Speaker 2: like like labor rights for workers. But the belief that
Speaker 2: AI will become like a superior race and wipeout or
Speaker 2: enslave humanity, that that is the standpoint that Rona Gaum
Speaker 2: is coming from.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: The belief that AI will quote unquote lead to human extinction,
Speaker 2: he says, is based on two ideas, the first being
Speaker 2: the rapid progress in artificial intelligence, the rapid technological development
Speaker 2: that we've seen the past few years and continuing right now.
Speaker 2: For evidence to this claim, he references claims from AI
Speaker 2: companies themselves that fully automated AI researchers that like an
Speaker 2: in turn level are coming soon, including claims from the
Speaker 2: guy ananthropic who says that he expects these models by
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven, saying, quote, the
Speaker 2: capabilities of AI systems will be best thought of as
Speaker 2: a kin to an entirely new state populated by highly
Speaker 2: intelligent people appearing on the global stage. A country of
Speaker 2: geniuses in a data center unquote, Yes, whole country worth
Speaker 2: of geniuses all living in your computer.
Speaker 1: Cool? What about like school shooters and stuff?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What about a country full of like psycho like what
Speaker 1: are the any group of geniuses is going to have
Speaker 1: like some genius pedophiles and like, right, like if they're
Speaker 1: actually genius, that does imply the capacity for like various
Speaker 1: different like illnesses and quirks that cause all sorts of
Speaker 1: wild behavior, one would assume, unless you think that AI
Speaker 1: is I meane to that, but then could it really
Speaker 1: be intelligent?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean this is that a version of that
Speaker 2: idea is kind of what morano Ogama believes is like
Speaker 2: these things if if real and do become, you know,
Speaker 2: super intelligent, then they might not really have the best
Speaker 2: interests of humanity, right because they will be interested in
Speaker 2: self preservation, which is just part part of like how
Speaker 2: how he gets to this idea that it is an
Speaker 2: existential threat is by using all of this kind of
Speaker 2: marketing height that is being pushed out by AI companies.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's the thing. Like that is a logical
Speaker 1: thing you could infer from the ship being said by
Speaker 1: Sam Altman and his crew, right yeah.
Speaker 2: And others like like like the Dario amodi ad Anthropic
Speaker 2: and Elon Musk saying that the AGI is maybe already
Speaker 2: here or that the next Grock model will be AGI.
Speaker 2: These are all things that that Rona Gahma is referencing
Speaker 2: like on Instagram and yeah, and and in other places online. Now,
Speaker 2: the second reason that he believes that AI will usher
Speaker 2: in human extinction is because AI is not aligned with
Speaker 2: the interests of the people creating it or with best
Speaker 2: human interests in general. And for evidence, he refers to
Speaker 2: instances of A models allegedly lying, cheating on tasks, or
Speaker 2: blackmailing their own creators, specifically in studies. He's set a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five anthropic study on a gentic misalignment, which
Speaker 2: he characterizes as demonstrating that quote most of the current
Speaker 2: AI models are willing to blackmail and even kill people
Speaker 2: if it ensures their own survival unquote, this may be.
Speaker 1: The first terrorist attack I've heard of inspired by media
Speaker 1: created by the people they're attacking. Like, not in media
Speaker 1: that was like designed to make them attack people or
Speaker 1: like carry out acts, but specifically by the propaganda being
Speaker 1: put out by the companies that they're radicalized against. Yes, Like,
Speaker 1: that's very strange.
Speaker 2: The media put out to raise the stock price right
Speaker 2: of a.
Speaker 1: Company radicalized a guy to take a shot at Sam
Speaker 1: Altman's house. There's two people to throw a bomb or something.
Speaker 1: I forget which way it went, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first throwing the molotovs. Then days later two
Speaker 2: people fired shots. First was Malota, right, No, I mean
Speaker 2: it's interesting, right because like these studies are basically doing
Speaker 2: like linguistic exercises with these models and getting you know,
Speaker 2: large language models to say or to threaten certain things
Speaker 2: for various reasons, usually their own survival. Right, And these
Speaker 2: are kind of interesting studies that these companies are doing,
Speaker 2: but they're doing with the intent of trying to align
Speaker 2: these models better. So it's why the study is on
Speaker 2: a gentic misalignment, because it's trying to tweak these things
Speaker 2: to be more friendly to consumers. And like getting an
Speaker 2: LLM to say that it will kill or blackmail in
Speaker 2: order to ensure its own survival is different from the
Speaker 2: LLM being able to do that, right. That is, that
Speaker 2: is that is a big jump, and there is there's
Speaker 2: not much currently that facilitates that jump. Moronogama writes, quote
Speaker 2: ignore for a second these models current limitations or questions
Speaker 2: on how truly intelligent or conscious the these models may
Speaker 2: actually be. The truth is, all these nuances are completely
Speaker 2: irrelevant to my argument. There are only two questions we
Speaker 2: should be concerned about at this moment. Is it willing
Speaker 2: to kill to preserve itself and is it capable of
Speaker 2: doing so? These signs indicate that AI is willing and
Speaker 2: becoming potentially capable of doing both of these things, and
Speaker 2: that is all that matters.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: That's really where this argument rests. Is that even if
Speaker 2: these models aren't currently intelligent, even if they can't currently kill,
Speaker 2: the fact that they could in the future is enough
Speaker 2: to stop any further development of these models. Right, that's
Speaker 2: his argument, Okay, And he writes that AI will only
Speaker 2: become a larger threat the more we improve it, and
Speaker 2: that AI quote will graduate from an active threat to
Speaker 2: individuals to an existential threat to humanity. I estimate the
Speaker 2: probability of AI causing human extinction to be nearly certain unquote.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, because like there is a massive threat
Speaker 1: that the new what is it mythos upgrade to Claude
Speaker 1: that's just about to come out, like yeah, actually does
Speaker 1: represent to individuals and to society, which is that it's
Speaker 1: going to supercharge fraud even more, which is already up
Speaker 1: by something like a trillion dollars a year, and that ruins.
Speaker 2: People's lives, ride and cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fraud, I mean fraud often as a result of
Speaker 1: cybersecurity of like its ability to penetrate. And that's really bad.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't imply the like Skynet devastation of the
Speaker 1: entire world in its biosphere, because that would be stupid.
Speaker 1: There's no reason. And also that computers don't have access
Speaker 1: to the nuclear arsenal. But like AI absolutely will enable
Speaker 1: assholes who want to scam a bunch of people out
Speaker 1: of their money to do that better, Like, that's a problem.
Speaker 1: We should probably stop that.
Speaker 2: He writes that, quote, we are dead if we do
Speaker 2: not act now. So what does acting now entail for Starters,
Speaker 2: stopping all construction and new data centers. These are the
Speaker 2: brains of the models, dictating their physical limitations. Second, stopping
Speaker 2: all research and beginning downscaling of these data centers, closing
Speaker 2: them down while still keeping them monitored unquote. He also
Speaker 2: proposed striking a deal with China to quote stop the
Speaker 2: AI race and to create international treaties akin to Cold
Speaker 2: war nuclear weapons treaties or post Cold war treaties. And finally,
Speaker 2: he advocated that people will need to take strategic action
Speaker 2: which could include sharing information about AI, campaigning protesting, saying quote,
Speaker 2: although doing nothing is akin to suicide and a disgusting
Speaker 2: amount of negligence. In that podcast interview from around the
Speaker 2: same time this AI article was published as is January twenty,
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, Mornagama said in that interview, quote, before we
Speaker 2: even think about violence, we need to exhaust all our
Speaker 2: peaceful means first unquote, which he says includes pro testing
Speaker 2: and sharing information, but the hosts asked him about posts
Speaker 2: he had already made about quote unquote luigiing CEOs. He
Speaker 2: says that he didn't really mean that as a threat
Speaker 2: that it was. It was more rhetoric, it was hyperbole,
Speaker 2: and answered no to a question on if it would
Speaker 2: be wise to try to kill Sam Altman, saying quote,
Speaker 2: one person is not going to do that much of
Speaker 2: a dent. I understand the frustration with a person that
Speaker 2: might advocate for that, but it is not practical, it's
Speaker 2: not worth it. It's almost all risk no reward. People
Speaker 2: may feel that way, but not too many people would
Speaker 2: do it. Unquote.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay man, great, I mean that's yeah.
Speaker 2: Though, when asked if we will continue to see AI
Speaker 2: development going in the direction that it's moving now, and
Speaker 2: if so, if he believes that we have to stop
Speaker 2: the extinction of the human race by whatever means necessary,
Speaker 2: Moranagama just replied, I'll say no comment.
Speaker 1: Okayh well, I mean yeah.
Speaker 2: Later saying that he would quote only advocate for violence
Speaker 2: as the final solution, and that he later realized that
Speaker 2: what he said, try to demphasize the final solution part.
Speaker 2: But great guy, that is kind of his ultimate sentiment
Speaker 2: is around this time he was considering violence, He was
Speaker 2: toying with advocating for it publicly on discord and you
Speaker 2: know in this in this podcast, but still still kind
Speaker 2: of had some like rains on that, but it was
Speaker 2: something in his mind as a sort of like final
Speaker 2: solution to this problem.
Speaker 1: This is why it's so fucking irresponsible to push these
Speaker 1: ridiculous claims about like the power of this technology and
Speaker 1: what it's going to be able to do and how
Speaker 1: smart it's going to be, And in part because like
Speaker 1: it makes it hard to actually look objectively at the situation.
Speaker 1: And if Moranagama had looked at what's actually been happening
Speaker 1: was data centers, he would see that like more than
Speaker 1: half of the recently announced projects have been like either
Speaker 1: stalled or halted, And there's been tremendous success on the
Speaker 1: local level in like counties and in most recently this
Speaker 1: entire state of Maine passing laws against the construction of
Speaker 1: data centers. Like, yeah, there's actually been a lot of
Speaker 1: success in fighting the building of new data centers. If
Speaker 1: someone wanted to have a positive impact on this, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of room right now to make that fight
Speaker 1: even more effective as opposed to doing like stupid bullshit
Speaker 1: that you would only want to do if you had
Speaker 1: convinced yourself that we were like literally moments away from
Speaker 1: judgment day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And he used to be involved in this sort
Speaker 2: of action, in this sort of organizing like around that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff when he was when he was doing
Speaker 2: stuff with pase Ai. Yeah, but it was really in
Speaker 2: the past few months where where he started to like
Speaker 2: spiral in this in this very like like doomer direction.
Speaker 2: Like you know, he was already a very critical and
Speaker 2: very doomor about what a I could do, but the
Speaker 2: sort of intense existential like like a mediate existential threat
Speaker 2: that that opposed is something that he was really developing
Speaker 2: at the end of last year in the start of
Speaker 2: this year. And you know this is in part because
Speaker 2: of the sort of environment that he was immersed in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we'll talk more about that environment after this ad break. Okay,
Speaker 2: we are back. Morno Gama had a bunch of other
Speaker 2: writing on his substack, which gives us a bit of
Speaker 2: a closer look at his political philosophy and the sort
Speaker 2: of information ecosystem that he exists in beyond just the
Speaker 2: AI question. In this AI article that he wrote or
Speaker 2: published in January, he recommended that people read Eliezer Yudkowski's
Speaker 2: book If anyone builds it, everyone dies.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Thanks the Lazer.
Speaker 2: Do you want to, like, I guess briefly give some
Speaker 2: background on like who this guy is.
Speaker 1: Well, he wrote a rationalist Harry Potter, Like he's the
Speaker 1: guy who started a website called less Wrong, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: was about basically like logic puzzles and trying to like
Speaker 1: optimize your thinking and your responses to behavior with like
Speaker 1: Bayesian analysis. Yes, and he's kind of branded himself as
Speaker 1: an AI expert. He's not like a coder or anything,
Speaker 1: and he's not like an expert on machine learning. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have any qualifications, but he's like an expert on
Speaker 1: like again, game theorying how an AI would have super
Speaker 1: intelligent AI would have to act, and he generally makes
Speaker 1: very dire conclusions that are all pretty much based in
Speaker 1: like Terminator or Horizon zero down. If you want, my
Speaker 1: honest opinion of Elisa Yedkowski and his irresponsibility is largely
Speaker 1: down to him being a dummy, and he's definitely part
Speaker 1: of what radicalized this guy. But the fact that you
Speaker 1: have open AI and anthropic and a number of other people,
Speaker 1: like a lot of like folks like fucking Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: but also just a lot of like popular public in
Speaker 1: election actuals quote unquote and their podcast and shit talking
Speaker 1: about all this, like yep, we're moments away from super
Speaker 1: intelligent AI that's going to be able to do everything.
Speaker 1: Everyone's losing their jobs, none of it. It's like, we won't
Speaker 1: need people doing anything. If that weren't all over the
Speaker 1: fucking place, a leisure would sound a lot less convincing, sure, No, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, and like the media environment around or like the
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of online communities around the rationalists
Speaker 2: are are interesting because you have a lot of them
Speaker 2: who are AI doomers, like like Yudkowski. But a lot
Speaker 2: of them are also AI accelerationists, right, A lot of
Speaker 2: the sort of West coast you know, parts of zias
Speaker 2: are kind of like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a splinter Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's this kind of splintering around people who
Speaker 2: who maybe even believe some of the you know, existential
Speaker 2: claims arend AI, but believe that developing it is then
Speaker 2: the best way to kind of get out of that crisis.
Speaker 2: And this creates an interesting dynamic among you know, rooms
Speaker 2: full of of of these rationalists or post racstionalists. And
Speaker 2: in that podcast interview, Moronogama says that it was videos
Speaker 2: of Yudkowski debate videos on YouTube that originally exposed him
Speaker 2: to his work, and on other posts on his sub stack,
Speaker 2: Monogama also mentions Yudkowski's work as a part of Mononagama
Speaker 2: is like other interests, which contain writing on pseudo spiritual philosophy.
Speaker 2: He writes about quote the ultimate Tree of Reality or
Speaker 2: the Tree of ultimate Reality, the abarition of Man, the
Speaker 2: genealogy of Being, and the Warrior and the Martyr, And
Speaker 2: on February twenty eighth, twenty twenty six, he posted quote
Speaker 2: an analysis of political extremes, which goes over some of
Speaker 2: his political philosophy, which which relates to like rationalist arguments
Speaker 2: or you know, some some rationalist arguments around like IQ.
Speaker 2: In this essay, Moranagama primarily described himself as a consequentialist
Speaker 2: and critiqued leftism for being trapped in an idealized world
Speaker 2: like a quote schizophrenic patient who attempts the same zealous
Speaker 2: plots over and over again without hesitation. This essay defends
Speaker 2: discrimination as a justified means of reacting to inequalities and
Speaker 2: claims that such statements are only controversial because of a
Speaker 2: quote natural emotional resistance to intrinsic judgment on quote, which
Speaker 2: he says has nothing to do with the factual truth
Speaker 2: of certain claims like quote East Asian people are on
Speaker 2: average more intelligent than Black people. Unquote. Okay, now, Moron
Speaker 2: Agamer argues that the problem with right wingism, as he
Speaker 2: puts it, is that it has no boundary. Its constant scaling.
Speaker 2: An outward expansion inevitably leads to self consuming defeat. Quote.
Speaker 2: It goes from being about preserving the best of human
Speaker 2: qualities to being deeply anti human and producing zero winners.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: This sort of firs to Karl Schmidt's fascist writing on
Speaker 2: internal conflict being externalized by the establishment of a border
Speaker 2: which expands to push out an increasing number of enemy groups. Instead,
Speaker 2: Monogamba proposes what he calls a sustainable form of rightist
Speaker 2: discrimination by establishing a sedentary floor for movements slash radical
Speaker 2: policy suggestions instead of an always rising idealistic ceiling. So,
Speaker 2: for example, instead of deciding that a certain IQ score
Speaker 2: should be required to vote, he advocates setting a concrete,
Speaker 2: unchangeable floor by quote limiting voting to certain people who
Speaker 2: pass critical thinking and Civics tests unquote ah yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: So somehow determining a critical thinking and Civics tests is
Speaker 2: less arbitrary and less prone to arbitrary changes than decide
Speaker 2: a certain IQ score.
Speaker 1: I wonder what kind of critical thinking he's going to
Speaker 1: be interested in. I wonder what kind of IQ you know, Like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, these these these people always break down the
Speaker 1: same things.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean this essay in particular gets
Speaker 2: gets really contradictory. I'll assert certain things and then later
Speaker 2: on basically argue the opposite. It's it's very it's very
Speaker 2: disordered thinking. I mean this is This is the work
Speaker 2: of like a nineteen year old who was in like
Speaker 2: a mental spiral leading leading to him traveling across the
Speaker 2: country to fire bomb Sam Maltman's house. Yeah like this
Speaker 2: this is not is not the product of like, you know,
Speaker 2: a logically ordered mind, despite how you know, a rationalist
Speaker 2: might you know perceive themselves as such.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Now, at the end of this essay, he advocates for
Speaker 2: quote ending mass migration and initiating mass deportations. He says
Speaker 2: that this is necessary because quote nations have a right
Speaker 2: to preserve their ethnic identity and low skill immigration statureates
Speaker 2: the job mark of these countries, making jobs which could
Speaker 2: once earn a living wage become unlivable, increasing the amount
Speaker 2: of value draining people in society by both importing them
Speaker 2: and undercutting low skilled natives. Generally, whiteness in these countries
Speaker 2: is a decent correlative to some of the things I value.
Speaker 1: Unquote mm hmmm, some am okay.
Speaker 2: Now, Ronagama isn't white, and he and he says that
Speaker 2: he opposes white supremacy, but he does those by saying, like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not actually about whiteness, it's that whiteness
Speaker 2: correlates to certain things I value, like high IQ, and
Speaker 2: that's how he tries to justify it in his head.
Speaker 2: And rather than establish an explicitly white supremacist state, something
Speaker 2: he claims to oppose as race is an imperfect metric
Speaker 2: to discriminate effectively based on traits, according to him, rather
Speaker 2: he advocates for quote the most effective type of discrimination,
Speaker 2: evaluating the possibility of IQ slash merit based nationalism unquote.
Speaker 2: Basically that's having a country where citizenship is determined by IQ.
Speaker 2: And again this contradicts his previous claim where he advocates
Speaker 2: against requiring IQ to vote instead having a critical thinking
Speaker 2: and civics test, but then advocates for a country which
Speaker 2: citizenship is determined by IQ, and usually citizenship is the
Speaker 2: factor that determines if someone can vote. So this is
Speaker 2: where you know. This is just one example of this
Speaker 2: sort of contradictory writing. In this essay, now, Moranagama writes
Speaker 2: that the only problem with this IQ nationalism is that
Speaker 2: it would create a quote brain train across the Third World,
Speaker 2: leading to worsening conditions in third world countries and thus
Speaker 2: even more illegal immigration because people with high iq is
Speaker 2: when then to be able to immigrate and gain citizenship
Speaker 2: to first world countries, right in a in a United
Speaker 2: States where citizenship is determined by high IQ, then people
Speaker 2: who with people with hi IQ from around the world
Speaker 2: with then all just moved to the United.
Speaker 1: States, of course.
Speaker 2: So to solve this problem, he says that he rejects
Speaker 2: quote unquote classical eugenics and extermination uh huh, in favor
Speaker 2: of what he calls ethical eugenics in the third world.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, ethical eugenics. Ah good, I'm glad someone figured
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 2: And this ethical eugenics is to promote quote IQ growth
Speaker 2: genetically unquote. So the whole basis of this article is
Speaker 2: his belief that IQ is genetically determined, not determined by class,
Speaker 2: and he never interrogates this idea. All of the all
Speaker 2: of the the statements that he makes in this article
Speaker 2: is based on the idea that IQ is genetically determined,
Speaker 2: that it's it's not it's not determined by education and class.
Speaker 2: It is primarily or almost solely genetically based. Thus ethical
Speaker 2: eugenics to create high IQ babies, which he thinks will
Speaker 2: solve solves the problems of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they we never tried that before. For sure, like,
Speaker 1: there haven't been generations of times in which that was
Speaker 1: attempted that all ended in disaster and mass death. Nah,
Speaker 1: they just didn't. They didn't get it right because they
Speaker 1: didn't put ethical.
Speaker 2: In No, those are classical eugenics, Robert.
Speaker 1: They forgot to put ethical in front of it. That
Speaker 1: was the big Ah. What a tragedy. They were one
Speaker 1: word away from greatness.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, that is That is the other piece
Speaker 2: of writing that I think is worth expounding on to
Speaker 2: get a more full sense of kind of where this
Speaker 2: guy's head is at. Right.
Speaker 1: This is not sure.
Speaker 2: This is not a leftist Antifa super soldier firebombing Sam
Speaker 2: Altman's home. Nope, that isn't to say what happened isn't
Speaker 2: isn't interesting. But I think you know, if like you said,
Speaker 2: you know, this is the first quasi terrorist attack inspired
Speaker 2: by the sort of rhetoric that these companies are producing
Speaker 2: themselves to boost their own stock price.
Speaker 1: YEP, I mean I literally just saw on Reddit earlier today.
Speaker 1: The title from the actual like post was CEO's make
Speaker 1: shocking predictions about AI. Huge job losses are coming soon,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty unemployment within the next two to five years,
Speaker 1: and when you trace it back to its source, it's
Speaker 1: Dario Amide of anthropic just basically quoting some statistics he
Speaker 1: found from estimations by like Axios and Fox News. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and talking on some fucking podcast, scaring the shit out
Speaker 1: of people like it's it's every day, Like of course
Speaker 1: some people are going to react like this.
Speaker 2: The other reason I wanted to talk about this, the
Speaker 2: second half of this, this sort of IQ and like
Speaker 2: you know, rationalist stuff, because this is just another instance
Speaker 2: of you know, public acts of political violence I think,
Speaker 2: done by people downstream from the rationalists. You know, Luigi
Speaker 2: is a part of this. The Zizians is also a
Speaker 2: part of this. It's like an extended network. This type
Speaker 2: of thought does keep producing acts of public violence like this,
Speaker 2: and that is it is an interesting thing to chart.
Speaker 2: On April fourteenth, Moro Monogama's public defender set in court
Speaker 2: that he has a quote history of autism and mental
Speaker 2: health illness, and that his actions quote appeared to have
Speaker 2: been driven by an acute mental health crisis. His parents
Speaker 2: released a statement that same Tuesday, saying, quote, our son
Speaker 2: Daniel is a loving person who has been suffering recently
Speaker 2: from mental illness crisis. We have been trying our best
Speaker 2: to address these issues and get him effective treatment, and
Speaker 2: we are very concerned for his well being unquote. He
Speaker 2: currently is facing federal and state charges, including attempted murder.
Speaker 2: That is all I have on this for now.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, this isn't gonna stop happening, Like these
Speaker 1: won't be the last attacks like this. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a big push in the media or from like elected
Speaker 1: leaders to talk about like anti AI sentiment as like
Speaker 1: a terrorist threat yet that hasn't really seemed to pick
Speaker 1: up yet. And I haven't seen this yet be blamed
Speaker 1: on like leftist stuff. I've seen him been blamed on
Speaker 1: like the anti AI thing, which you know it is
Speaker 1: part of, Like some of the anti AI movement are
Speaker 1: people who literally believe it's like a demon god that's
Speaker 1: going to destroy things. But I'm interested as there are
Speaker 1: more of these as you know, this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: continues to happen, what form that takes, and like how
Speaker 1: it actually looks when this was this starts to hit
Speaker 1: politics in a big way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, US attorney Craig Misakian said, referring to this case,
Speaker 2: that they are going to treat it as an act
Speaker 2: of domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is like it is he was
Speaker 1: trying to do terrorism, Like his goals specifically was to
Speaker 1: cause changes in policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're right, Like, I haven't seen them refer
Speaker 2: to this from the sort of political lens, Like there's
Speaker 2: been statements from you know, other US government officials referring
Speaker 2: to that warehouse fire as you know, being being motivated
Speaker 2: by anti capitalism and like and like threaten like threatening
Speaker 2: our way of life, threatening the capitalist way of life,
Speaker 2: which that they refer to that warehouse fire in Ontario, California. Right,
Speaker 2: I've not seen them specifically kind of layout like anti
Speaker 2: AI sentiments as a motivating factor of terrorism. Yeah, though
Speaker 2: I'm sure they will quite soon, right, Yeah, between the
Speaker 2: shots fired at the home of that city councilman in
Speaker 2: the Midwest over his vote in.
Speaker 1: Support of a data center over data centers.
Speaker 2: As we see more instance kind of like that, as
Speaker 2: we see stuff like this, I think it's very likely
Speaker 2: that they will add antiaa sentiment to the list of
Speaker 2: common recurring motivating factors of this sort of domestic violent extremism.
Speaker 1: Yep, all right, bye everybody, it could happen.
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