WEBVTT - Who are the Zizians? 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.920 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.600 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:15.840 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:21.120 should know. This is I guess, a timely topical true 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:22.599 crime edition The Three. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:29.200 T's CooA Alert. Yeah, I feel I should sound the 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:32.360 clacks on on this one. Yeah, we'reishing a CoA on 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:34.920 this one, A pretty a pretty robust one because a 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:36.920 this is something we don't do a lot, which is 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:42.320 tackle true crime and almost real time. As far as 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:47.080 the fact that none of this is settled, the alleged crimes, 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.120 We're probably gonna say alleged a lot because there's not 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.239 even been court dates a lot of times for some 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.080 of these cases where we're you know, we're talking about 0:00:56.120 --> 0:01:01.160 potentially six murders in three states by a group that 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:02.880 may or may not have done it, that may or 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.800 may not be a cult. So just a big CoA there. 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:08.039 This is one of the true crimes where like neither 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:09.399 one of us are going to be like, well, here's 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.000 my theory on this, because just who knows, this has 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:14.960 got to play out first, And the other big CoA 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:19.160 is a lot of the sort of a disproportionate amount 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.880 of members of the Zizians who are going to be 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.400 talking about are members of the trans community. And it's 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:27.080 just one of the sort of facts of the case. 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:30.480 It's obviously no suggestion or judgment on our part of 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.440 the trans community, but it seems to be a big 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.880 sort of part of this group of people who got together. 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:39.520 So just kind of keep all that in mind as 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:40.520 we lay all this out there. 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.600 Right, Nice word, Chuck, Thanks for that. Yeah, So, like 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:46.440 you said, we're talking about the Zizzians. How do you 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:49.160 hear about this? This is your pick, you know what. 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:51.520 I have no idea and even went to look to 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:53.600 see if somebody has suggested it, and no one had. 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:55.560 I think I might have just seen a news story 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.960 and been like, wait a minute, this is this is 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:02.520 something that hasn't been attend Netflix series yet, right, so 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:04.960 it must be super super current, which it is. 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.800 My theory is that the Great Gazoo said doe on 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:13.240 the Zizian's dome dome, and you were like, I should 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:14.280 do one on the Zizzians. 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:16.519 Yeah, thanks for bringing a joke into this thing. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:21.680 So the Zizians are called such because they center around Zizz, 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.680 a trans woman who is often portrayed as the leader 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.800 of this cult, and I mean you can make a 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:31.800 pretty fair case that at the very least she's the 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:34.520 leader of the most influential member, because the whole thing's 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:38.640 named after her. Although we should say that this group 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.160 of people do not call themselves the Zizians. That was 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.040 a name that was given to them by somebody who's 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.160 critical of them, an anonymous person who's critical of them. 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:48.480 Yeah. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.760 But Zizz herself, we know, was born in nineteen ninety 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.120 one in Fairbanks, Alaska, And like the other people that 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:00.760 she attracts into her orbit, she was brilliant, I mean, 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:04.120 very precocious as far as like working on computers goes, 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.760 as far as mathematics goes. I think by the time 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:11.120 she was at the University of Fairbanks in Alaska, she 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:15.240 had internships at both Oracles, the cloud computing company, and NASA. 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:20.000 So I mean like she had pretty great resume, I guess, 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:21.760 is what you'd say if you're on LinkedIn. 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:23.960 Yeah, for sure. And like you said, this is going 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:25.760 to be sort of a common thing with everyone who 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.000 got together with Ziz and the others. So in college, 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.280 Ziz started learning about what's called the rationalist movement or 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.200 the rationalist community, which were also very science minded people. 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.720 They kind of gathered around Silicon Valley. And one of 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.600 the big things with rationalism is and a lot of 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:48.200 this stuff makes sense, like a lot of the stuff 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.560 that they're laying down, like, Hey, let's use logical tools 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:55.640 to just always question ourselves. Let's not get set in 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.720 our way of thinking about anything. Let's always revise what 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.040 we're thinking about everything. And one of the key people here, 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.440 one of the names you'll heal early and then later on, 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.520 as a guy named Eliezer Yudkowski, who is an AI 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:13.440 researcher who is kind of doing something different than what 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.040 a lot of AI researchers are doing in that he 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.239 has devoted much of his career to basically saying, hey, warning, 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.320 this could really go wrong, and I'm going to do 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:24.720 everything i can to make sure it goes down in 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:25.320 the right way. 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:25.920 Yeah. 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.839 He dedicated himself to solving the AI alignment problem, which is, 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:34.520 how do you create an artificial intelligence whose motivations are 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.599 totally aligned with humans and we don't accidentally wipe ourselves 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:40.680 out with the AI we create. Yeah, and like you said, 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:42.680 it kind of flies in the face of especially what's 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:44.680 going on these days, which is like, hurry up and 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:46.479 build an AI or else China's going to do it 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:48.680 first and we're going to lose out, and there's so 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.160 much money to be made off of AI. And Eliezer 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:57.000 Yukowski is a very very interesting duties self taught AI researcher, 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.960 incredibly brilliant and just by happenstance. I got an email 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:05.839 yesterday from somebody at a publishing house that mentioned that 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.400 he has a new book coming out in September with 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.800 Nate Soors, one of his collaborators. It's called If Anyone 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.839 Builds It, Everyone Dies, and it's about AI. 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.159 Right, which doesn't have a whole lot to do with 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:20.920 the Zizzians, but that just sets up kind of who 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.480 this guy is. In two thousand and nine, he founded 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:28.040 a blog called less Wrong, as in let's do less wrong, 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:30.840 and I mean, I assume that's what it means. 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.760 It means so it's about overcoming your biases, like you 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:39.240 want to be less wrong kind of, it's all about 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.839 thinking clearly and not letting your bias as guide you're thinking. 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:43.919 I think, yeah. 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:48.360 So they started gathering, as I guess, a de facto 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.640 sort of community of rationalists. A lot of this, again 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:55.120 is taking place in and around Silicon Valley in northern California, 0:05:55.760 --> 0:06:00.960 and he founded a couple of Berkeley, California based organizations 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:05.599 that'll come into play. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute or MARY, 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.960 and again that's about, you know, minimizing the risks of AI, 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.000 and then the Center for Applied Rationality or ce FAR, 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.400 and again same deal. Clear unbiased thinking is what they're after, 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:20.560 never getting too set in your ways and always trying 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:22.440 to revise how you think about things right. 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:26.440 They're also very closely tied with effective altruism, which is 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:31.400 essentially using rational thinking to donate your money to the 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:33.920 greatest good. We did an episode on that, if I'm 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:35.200 not mistaken. 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:36.159 We did my friend. 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.920 All of this attracted Ziz to move from Alaska down 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:46.040 to the Bay Area in San Francisco, and she got 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:52.000 involved with SEFAR, got involved with MIRY, and dedicated herself 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.160 also to trying to figure out this AI alignment problem too. 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:00.719 And she the thing about this rationalist community is they 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:03.279 are as open as you can be. You can be 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:05.400 a Nazi and show up and be like, I'm a 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.600 Nazi and here's what I think about everything, and they 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.920 will engage you in debate because that's just what they do. 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:16.280 They like no thought processes off the table, and that 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:21.280 attracted a lot of interesting people who were the average 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:24.720 normy would probably not necessarily feel comfortable sitting in a 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.320 room with just because you know, of awkwardness, but also 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.320 because they probably wouldn't have much to converse about because 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:33.720 the people were talking about in this rationalist community are 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.520 so brilliant that they probably would not be able to 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:38.800 relate to the average person and vice versa. 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:41.920 Yeah, or at the very least on some of the 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:47.240 radical fringes of whatever movement that they're in. Zizz is 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:49.680 one of those people and was started writing on the 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.200 less wrong side and her own blog and writing about again, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:55.520 stuff that's on the more radical end of the spectrum, 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.480 like hey we got a you know, sort of a 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:01.520 twelve Monkeys kind of stuff, like hey, we got to 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.880 do whatever it takes. Some people might think, you know, 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.160 something we're doing is evil, but if it's in the 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.600 service of what we think has a good end, then 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.680 that's what we should do. Sometimes she calls herself a 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:17.440 scyth as in you know, star Wars, and apparently the 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.280 name Zizz comes from a speculative fiction story called Worm 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.840 that a lot of rationalists love, in which Zizz in 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:29.080 the story is a villainous entity that if they listen 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.200 to for too long, you will go crazy. And so 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:33.960 Zizz is all of a sudden hanging around the Bay 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:39.480 Area go into these rationalists hangouts and meetings wearing black robes, 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:41.160 as in sort of dressed like a syth. 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:45.600 So all this is what around twenty sixteen seventeen, that 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.319 this is all starting, that Ziz is showing up. And again, 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.760 like I said, this community is very open, so even 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:55.079 those Ziz would show up wearing black robes, declaring yourself 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.440 as Sith Lord and that that's her religion is Sith. 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.360 But despite the community being open, she still stood out, 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:04.960 not necessarily because she wore black robes and call herself 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.640 the scyth, but more because she was more intensely devoted 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.520 and dedicated than even the average rationalist, right, so she 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.080 did stand out some. One of the other things that 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:20.160 she was radically dedicated to was veganism and animal rights, 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.680 and this would actually end up separating her from the 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:27.800 rationalist community eventually, and that you can kind of make 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.040 a case it seems like is the initial schism that 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:34.559 causes wedge that led to all the events that would follow. 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:38.680 Yeah, like basically, hey, you're trying to protect human life, 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.720 like what about the animals? Like every sentient animal is 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:46.520 a person, and that these are resisious words, and you know, 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:50.520 so we gotta kick up the the intensity on the 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.920 animal front as well. The problem with all of this 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.240 is that this was around San Francisco and Silicon Valley, 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:01.959 where it's really really expensive to live. If you're someone 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:05.600 like Zizz, You're not going out and getting some big 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.320 tech job where you're making tons of money to afford 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.280 that condo downtown. So you got to live somewhere. And 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.480 this is when Zizz meets up with somebody named Gwen Danielson. 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.240 Had a lot in common, another rationalist, another trans woman, 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.080 another person who was very much into animal rights. And 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.200 Gwen happened to live on a sailboat in Berkeley Marina 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.120 and said, Hey, this is a much cheaper rent here. 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:31.560 Why don't you just come and live on this boat 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:33.840 with me. I'm also into math, I'm also into science, 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.760 and I'm also have some pretty radical ideas about stuff. 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:39.439 Yeah, and so the point of this was if you 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:44.120 and this is Zizz's belief, if you could free yourself 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:46.360 from things like paying rent, especially the high rent of 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:49.160 San Francisco, and keep your cost down to as minimal 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:52.520 as possible, you could devote that much more time to 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.800 figuring out the AI alignment problem, figuring out how to 0:10:56.120 --> 0:11:00.120 push Sea Far and Miri into protecting animal rights too. 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:04.720 Like just thinking and learning to think better. That was 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.960 kind of the point. And so I think Ziz initially 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.040 moved into the sailboat with Gwen Danielson, found that they 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.720 were not quite exactly compatible roommate wise, but still friends, 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:18.560 and so Ziz bought her own sailboat and docted it 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:23.040 the same marina in Berkeley, and they became what was 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:27.040 called the Rationalist Fleet. This they invited more and more 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.200 people to come join them at the marina, and they 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.920 actually went so far as to buy an old tugboat 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.840 that by this time was in its seventies or eighties. 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:41.040 Maybe they not a good age for a tugboat, and 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.640 they actually bought it from Alaska and tugged it down 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.520 or sailed it down all the way to San Francisco. 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:49.480 Yeah, the name of the boat was Caleb. So now 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.480 It's in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. And 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.760 Caleb was a problem though. Cabb, like you said, was 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.840 an old boat, an old World War Two era tugboat, 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:02.520 So it wasn't like, you know, even like a a 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.200 mid seventies houseboat would have been a better option. Probably 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.760 this thing they couldn't. Had a hard time anchoring it. 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.280 It was too expensive to maintain. It would drift out 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.080 of control and hit other boats. So it was not, 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:18.720 you know, everything they thought it was going to be, 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:20.120 so just you know, sort of park that for now, 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:21.679 I'm going to say that a lot through me parking 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.640 a lot of things. As this jumps around is at 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:26.840 this point, we have to introduce some new characters to 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.800 the scene. Again, had a lot in common with Ziz 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:34.000 and Gwenn in that they were very very smart, very 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.240 much into math and science. Some were trends and some 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:41.240 were non binary. And the first player here is someone 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:45.440 named Emma Baranian, a programmer worked at Google but left 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.400 Google because they thought the company was corrupt. 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:52.800 Yes, and we should say these people fell into Ziz's 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:59.200 orbit because Thisiz was a prolific blogger and blogged in 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:01.960 a way that like a lot of the language and 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:06.440 thoughts and ideas were impenetrable to all but a certain 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.120 group of people. And these were the people that she 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.160 ended up attracting through her blog. There's a really great 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:17.200 Guardian article about all of this written by Alliver Conroy, 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:21.840 and Conroy says that there was a glossary that somebody 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:26.280 gave him that one of Zig's blog followers created of 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:28.800 Zig's words, and that when he printed it out it 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.760 was forty eight pages long. So like, she had a 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.800 certain thing going on that attracted a certain kind of 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:39.520 person and these were the people who were falling into 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.240 their into her orbit at this time. And we should 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:45.000 also say all of these people were in their early 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:49.120 to mid twenties. I think Ziz was the oldest maybe 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:53.359 at the time, at twenty six. So they were all disaffected, brilliant, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:59.520 often trans vegan twenty somethings who were living very close 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:04.720 to homelessness in San Francisco in the late two thousand teams. 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:09.400 Yeah, So the second person was Alex Leatham, occasionally known 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.880 as Somny, a mathematician in this case went to the 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.880 UCLA study at UC Berkeley as well. Then we have 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:22.360 Michelle Zashko biometrics researcher, another Smarty Pants, and then someone 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.640 named Alice Munday who was Zoshko's girlfriend and a bit 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:30.440 of a mentor apparently according to Ziz to Ziz, and 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.000 they started sort of just getting together talking about their ideas. 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.160 They came up with a name for one of their 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:41.880 theories or sort of their overarching theory called vegan an 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:46.200 Arco transhumanism, and gwyn Danielson developed this idea that the 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.600 hemispheres of the brain were basically separate and they could 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.520 operate independently from one another. You can be different genders 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:55.960 at the same time. You can be good and evil, 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.320 or good or evil at the same time. And they 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:02.600 started these experiments called un una hemispheric sleep where they 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.480 were saying, you can be asleep and awake at the 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:07.480 same time. One can be asleep and then one can 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:11.280 be active and awake. And we say this because there 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.960 are people that have accused Ziz and others in the 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:19.360 group of basically keeping you sleep deprived through these experiments, 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.360 potentially leading to a couple of suicides that we'll talk about. 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.080 And again, I have no judgment on whether or not 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:28.960 they are a cult or not at this point, but 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:31.920 if you're making a case for cult. Sleep deprivation is 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:35.080 a very big hallmark of something that oftentimes happens. 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.400 Yeah, that's like chapter two in the cult Leader's playbook. Yeah, 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:42.400 we should say also that una hemispheric sleep theoretically as possible. 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.280 Humans don't do it, but dolphins do, whales do, migratory 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:49.080 birds too. So it's sound like it just doesn't exist. 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:51.440 It's humans trying to figure out how to do it 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.320 themselves so they could think longer, more hours in a 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:55.160 day essentially. 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.840 Yeah, so this group is getting a little more upset 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:04.880 and aggressive toward the official rationalist movement and community. They 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.400 think again that Mary and c far you're not doing 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:12.440 enough for the animals. You need to expand your I 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.680 guess viewpoint on sentient beings and what that means. And 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:18.480 you're also biased against trans people. 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.360 Yeah. And there was another thing too that Ziz got 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.280 really upset about. She came to believe that Mary paid 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:28.040 off a blackmailer. Another way to put it is that 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:33.200 somebody accused people at MIRI of sexual assault or statutory 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:35.840 rape I think it was, and that they paid the 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:38.840 person to go away. Some people call it a settlement. 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.920 To Ziz, it was a blackmail paying off a blackmailer, 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:44.040 and that you just did not do that, that that 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.320 violated some of the basic tenets of the rationalist community 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:51.840 and the way of solving problems that they use. So 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:57.240 that with the ethical veganism combined, really separated her from 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:00.840 this rationalist community. And with this growing group around her, 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:04.000 they decided that they were going to show up go 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:07.760 to the Seafar seminar conference that was being held in 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:12.320 twenty nineteen, and they were going to present their problems 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:16.119 and their issues in a very rational way, just like 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:19.679 Seefhar would want them to. And the people who organized 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:23.359 Sefar were like, you guys are way too aggressive for 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:26.080 our tastes. You can't come to the Seafar retreat. 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:28.680 And one of them said, you've got a Nazi in there. 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:36.200 So four of them ziz Gwyn Danielson, Emma Baranian and 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.160 it gets a litt confusingly all names and Alex Leatham. 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:43.200 They went anyway, and they had their guy Fawkes masks 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.000 on and they had their black hooded robes on. They 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:48.520 blocked the exits with their vehicles and they were like, 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:50.359 here you're going to listen to us. Here's our flyers 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.440 here's our problems and our issues, and the staff didn't 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:55.040 know what was going on. They called in a report 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.680 of a possible active shooter and the cops came. They 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.040 did not have arms on them or anything like that, 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.879 but they were arrested on charges of false imprisonment and 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.280 child endangement because there were kids there. It was a 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.120 campground where they met north of San Francisco, and the defendance, 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:12.919 we should point out, the four of them did end 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.359 up filing a suit against the police alleging mistreatment. 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.960 Yeah, so the rationalist community is like, that's it. Not 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:22.440 only can you not come to Seafire retreats, you can't 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.840 even hang out on the Less Wrong blog. You can't 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:31.239 come to our cocktail meetups that we have, which are 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:33.480 a lot of fun. So you're probably going to be upset. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.960 They just got booted out. So now this wedge was 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:41.639 a gulf. It was a break in communication between the 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:44.240 group that would come to be known as Sizians and 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:48.680 the rationalist community. And with that that group became more 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:54.080 and more isolated and their ideas got a little weirder 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.480 and a little more far out and a little more aggressive. 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.520 Because they were all similar people who were eating off 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:05.480 one another in this isolated situation. There weren't people on 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.520 the outside coming and be like, whoa, let's let's rethink 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:10.880 what you're saying. It was like, Yeah, that's a really 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.639 good idea, and it just kept going from there. 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:16.280 All right, I think that's a good You can kind 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:18.160 of park all that stuff for now because this story 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.560 kind of jumps around the country a bit, and when 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:22.920 we come back, we're gonna pick up with part two 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.560 a little north of San Francisco in Ballejo, California. 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:50.200 Stop you know, stop stop stopping here? Should know no, 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:52.560 stop you. 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:57.679 Know, So Chuck. One of the outcomes of being like 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.679 pushed out of the rationalist community somebody, he launched a 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:04.679 website called zizzians dot info, still around today, and they 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:08.679 basically chronicled all the things that they accused the Zizians 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.439 of being a cult or that backs up their accusation 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:14.399 of the Zizzians being a cult. And two of the 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:19.000 things are something you referenced earlier. There were two suicides 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.800 by people who were said to have gone through this 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:28.679 una hemispheric sleep I guess boot camp, and it resulted 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:33.639 in their suicides allegedly, so d Zizzeans just have a 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.760 really bad name. At this point, the marina thing is 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.800 not working out. The Rationalist Fleet is kind of sinking, 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.560 as it were, and they just happened to meet somebody 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.720 at the marina named Curtis Lynde, who is a seventy 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:49.879 something guy who loved people, loved artists and had a 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:53.960 bunch of land down in Vallejo and said, Hey, I 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.200 want artists to come live down there. You guys seem 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:58.440 kind of artsy and odd. Why don't you come live 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:02.240 there for really cheap rent? And the Zizzians were like, heck, yeah. 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:02.840 All right. 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:07.040 So Curtis Lynn offers, you know, them, the chance to 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.600 go live. You know, they paid rent, but I don't 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:12.600 imagine it was very much. And in this, you know, 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:14.520 we're going to be introduced to some more players at 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:17.399 this point. One of the members of the group that 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:19.680 had joined up at this time, her name was Suri 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:23.600 dal and she was fresh out of high school and 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.080 a leftist blogger and just sort of put a pin 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.200 in this. At one point in a discord chat, she 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:33.080 said that she had had very dramatic fantasies about becoming 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.520 a knife murderer, and there's you know, up to twenty 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:40.640 people at this time on Curtis Lyn's property. The neighbors 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:43.959 get a little freaked out. They're like, hey, they're walking 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:48.840 around naked. Sometimes they're wearing gas masks. Lynd eventually was like, 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:52.080 you guys aren't even paying rent anymore, and they said, yeah, 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.040 well there's a COVID eviction moratorium, so what are you 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:56.680 going to do about it? So everything just starts going 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.680 really pear shaped, as you say, in like. 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:03.400 Yeah, also check I saw that they would carry katanas 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:06.560 around like samurai swords. So imagine seeing your neighbor walking 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.960 around naked, wearing a gas mask and carrying a samurai sword, 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.760 and there's twenty of them. It would be hard, especially 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:14.960 in the context of California, to not be like, I 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:16.200 think they might be a cult. 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:17.520 Good point. 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:20.919 So in twenty twenty two, like you said, things just 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:25.560 really start to take a terrible shape. In August, Zizz's 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:28.320 sister and Emma Baranian went to the police and said, 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.960 our friend Zizz fell over while boating. So Ziz died 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:36.960 during in a boating accident. The Coastguard launched a huge search, 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.560 and I guess after eighteen hours they said there's no 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:43.240 way that she could have survived, and she was. Although 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:45.680 they didn't have the body, they still declared her legally 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:49.639 dead and her sister was given a death certificate. And 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:53.199