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Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Best. That's how

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Speaker 1: this podcast would open if I was a game show host,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not. Instead of a guy.

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Speaker 2: Who spends you would be good at it, though.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I would be, Sophie.

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Speaker 2: I do, but I think, but I'm like biased because

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Speaker 2: I think you'd be good at most things.

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Speaker 1: No, my only marketable skill is spending thirty hours reading

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Speaker 1: the deranged writings of a quasi cult leader who was

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Speaker 1: somewhat involved in the murders of multiple people very recently,

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Speaker 1: largely because she read a piece of Harry Potter fan

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Speaker 1: fiction at the wrong time. Yes, we have a fun

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Speaker 1: one for you this week, and by a fun one,

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Speaker 1: we have a not at all fun one for you

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Speaker 1: this week. And to have just a terrible time with me.

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Speaker 1: We are bringing on again the great David Boree, co

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Speaker 1: host of My Mama, told me with our friend of

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Speaker 1: the pod, Langston Kerman, David, how you doing, Oh man.

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Speaker 3: I cannot complain. How you doing? There's nothing going on

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Speaker 3: in the world.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I got up today and read that

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Speaker 1: that great new article by Francis Fuka Yama. History is

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Speaker 1: still stopped. So everything's good. We're done I.

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Speaker 3: Haven't looked at any news yet purposefully, so I'm you know,

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Speaker 3: it could be awesome. It could be going great out there.

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Speaker 1: It's great, it's great. The whole Trump administration got together

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Speaker 1: and said, psych it was all a bit man, just

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Speaker 1: an extended ad for the Apprentice season fifteen.

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Speaker 3: You mean this country is not a business.

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Speaker 1: No, they handed over the presidency to I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I don't know whoever you you personally at home think

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Speaker 1: would be a great president. I'm not going to jump

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Speaker 1: into that can of worms.

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Speaker 4: Right now.

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Speaker 1: On Ramonbrony Madron the president.

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Speaker 3: That's a good one. That's a good one. That's better

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Speaker 3: than what we.

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Speaker 1: Got, honestly, vastly superior than where we are.

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Speaker 3: Of all the entertainers, I feel like, why don't we

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Speaker 3: start giving athletes a shot a government? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I fuck it?

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Speaker 4: Why not?

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Speaker 1: You know, uh fucking uh. Kareem abdul Jabbar would be

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Speaker 1: a fund could knock a presidency out of the park.

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Speaker 1: Come on, absolutely, Yes, we need a mystery novelist, slash

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Speaker 1: one of the great basketball stars of all time in

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Speaker 1: the White House.

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Speaker 3: I just want a president who's good in the paint,

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Speaker 3: you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Agatha Christie with a jump shot.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly what I think.

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Speaker 1: That's what an amazing man. Kareem would be.

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Speaker 2: Such would be such a good choice.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, bring it on.

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Speaker 3: I think he's such a good man. He wouldn't do it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, his way too moral, he's waited. I have

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Speaker 2: a frog name after named after him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, honestly, given where we are are right right now,

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Speaker 1: I'd take fucking uh what's his mark maguire, like Jesus Christ,

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Speaker 1: anybody like, honestly, anyone I take heartbeat oh man, fuck

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Speaker 1: it like, I'll take no. No, I'm not gonna take

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Speaker 1: any hockey players. No hockey players. We got enough people

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Speaker 1: with brain damage in the White House right now.

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Speaker 3: That's probably the shit, and we don't need somebody who

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Speaker 3: that much.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're probably right there. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if if we could go back in time and make

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Speaker 1: Joe Lewis the president, I think he could solve some

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Speaker 1: fucking problems in Congress.

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Speaker 3: You can get still done.

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Speaker 1: So this has been a fun digression, but I got

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Speaker 1: to ask at the start of this the story that

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Speaker 1: it is most relevant to the people we're talking about today,

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Speaker 1: that I think most of our listeners will have heard.

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Speaker 1: I'm curious if you've heard about Back on January twenty first,

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Speaker 1: right as the Trump administration took power, a border patrol

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Speaker 1: agent was shot and killed along with another individual at

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Speaker 1: a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont. Right, there were two

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Speaker 1: people in a car that was pulled over a border patrol.

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Speaker 1: One of those people drew a gun, there was a firefight,

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Speaker 1: one of the people in the car and the cop died. Right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: have you heard this story.

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Speaker 3: I'm not at all.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it would have been

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Speaker 1: a much bigger the immigration being the thing that it

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Speaker 1: is right in the United like the political hot issue

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Speaker 1: that it is right now, Like the Republicans have been

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Speaker 1: desperately waiting for like a border patrol officer getting shooted

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Speaker 1: and wounded that they can like use to justify a crackdown.

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Speaker 1: But number one, this happened on the Canadian border, not

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Speaker 1: only favorite, and one of the two people who who

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Speaker 1: drew their guns on the cop was an immigrant, but

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Speaker 1: they were a German immigrant, and so none of this

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Speaker 1: really like right, it was all like right on the

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Speaker 1: edge of being super useful to their rights. But it's

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Speaker 1: none like we were.

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Speaker 3: Dealing with our own right wing immigration propaganda at that time. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just like it was like the closest

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Speaker 1: to being a perfect right wing like fault, like a

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Speaker 1: Reichstag fire in it, but like just a little too weird.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta throw some spice in there. You gotta

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Speaker 3: have like a Latin country. That's what they get excited about.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and obviously California border is where you want it,

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Speaker 1: you know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, definitely, even New Mexico could be.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, or at least at least they need to have

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Speaker 1: fitnel in the car. In fact, they were not breaking

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Speaker 1: any laws that anyone could prove at the time. They

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Speaker 1: just looked kind of weird.

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Speaker 3: Ok.

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Speaker 1: They they looked kind of weird, and they like had guns,

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Speaker 1: but it was like they had like two handguns and

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Speaker 1: like forty rounds and some old targets. They were like

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Speaker 1: coming back from a shooting range, right, Like not a

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Speaker 1: lot of a gun guns and AMMO in America terms, right,

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Speaker 1: especially in Vermont terms. Right. So the other thing was

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Speaker 1: weird about this is that the German immigrant who died

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Speaker 1: was a transwoman. So then again we get back to like, wow,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot about this shooting that is like right

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Speaker 1: on the edge of some issues that the right is

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Speaker 1: really trying to use as like a folkrum to like

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Speaker 1: push through some awful shit. And as more and more

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Speaker 1: information came out about the shooting, the weirder it seemed,

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Speaker 1: because there was a lot of initial talk, is this

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Speaker 1: like a terrorist attack where these like two Antifa types

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Speaker 1: who were like looking to murder a bird border patrol agent?

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Speaker 1: But no, that doesn't really make sense because like they

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Speaker 1: got pulled over, Like they can't have been planning this right, Like,

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Speaker 1: it didn't. It didn't really seem like that, and really

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Speaker 1: no one, no one could figure out why they had

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Speaker 1: opened fire. But as the days went on, more information

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Speaker 1: started coming out, not just about the two people who

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Speaker 1: were arrested in this, well, the one person who was

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Speaker 1: arrested in the one person who died, but about a

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Speaker 1: group of people around the country that they were linked to.

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Speaker 1: And these other people were not all but mostly trans women.

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Speaker 1: They were mostly people who kind of identified as both

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Speaker 1: anarchists and members of the rationalist subculture, which we'll talk

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Speaker 1: about in a little bit, And they were all super

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Speaker 1: high achieving people in like the tech industry and like sciences. Right,

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Speaker 1: these are the people who had won like awards and

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Speaker 1: had advanced degrees. The person, the lady who died in

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Speaker 1: the shooting was a quant trader, So these are not

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Speaker 1: like the normal shoot it out with the cops types.

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Speaker 4: Yes, this is a very niche This is a very

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Speaker 4: strange story.

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Speaker 1: So people start being like, oh the fuck is happening.

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Speaker 3: And there's a group of people who could not meet

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Speaker 3: each other without the invention of the internet, right, Well.

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Speaker 1: That is boy, David, do you know where this always

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Speaker 1: going or at least starting, so like it's a couple

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Speaker 1: of these days into this one, Like a friend of

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Speaker 1: mine messaged me and it's like, hey, you know that

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Speaker 1: shooting in Vermont And I was a yeah, and he's

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Speaker 1: like my friend is like, you know, there's Zizians And

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Speaker 1: I was like, wait, what what the fuck? Because I

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Speaker 1: had heard of these people. This is a weird little subculture.

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Speaker 1: I'm always I'm like, you know, I study weird little

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Speaker 1: Internet subcultures and in part because like some of them

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Speaker 1: do turn out to do acts of terrorism later, so weirdness.

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Speaker 1: And I've been I've been reporting on the rationalists, who

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Speaker 1: are not like a cult but who do some cult

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Speaker 1: adjacent things and I just kind of find annoying. And

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Speaker 1: I'd heard about this offshoot of the rationalists called the Zizians.

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Speaker 1: They were very weird. There were some like weird crime allegations.

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Speaker 1: A couple of them had been involved in a murder

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Speaker 1: in California a year earlier. But like, it was not

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Speaker 1: a group that I ever really expected to see blow

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Speaker 1: up in the media, and then suddenly they fucking did, right,

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Speaker 1: And they're called the Zizians. It's not a name they

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Speaker 1: have for themselves. They don't consider themselves a cult. They

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Speaker 1: don't all like live A group of them did live together,

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Speaker 1: but like, these people are pretty geographically like dispersed around

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Speaker 1: the country. They're folks who met online arguing about ration

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Speaker 1: and discussing rationalism and the ideas of a particular member

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Speaker 1: of that community who goes by the name ziz. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's where this group came out of and the regular

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Speaker 1: media was not well equipped to understand what was going on.

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Speaker 1: And I want to run through a couple of representative

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Speaker 1: headlines that I came across just in like looking at

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Speaker 1: mainstream articles about what had happened. There's an article from

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Speaker 1: the Independent They title Inside the Zizians, how a cultish

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Speaker 1: crew of radical vegans became linked to killings across the

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Speaker 1: United States. They seemed like just another band of anarchist misfits,

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Speaker 1: scraping on the valid of scraping on the fringes of

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Speaker 1: Silicon Valley until the deaths began. And then there's a

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Speaker 1: k c r W article Zizians the vegan techie cult

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Speaker 1: try tied to murders across the US. UH and then

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Speaker 1: a Fox article trans Vegan cult charged with six murders.

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Speaker 3: There you go, that's Fox.

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Speaker 1: Yes, none of these titles are very accurate in that

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Speaker 1: I guess the first one is like the closest, where like,

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Speaker 1: these people are radical vegans and they're they are cultish, right,

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Speaker 1: so I'll give I'll give the Independent that vegan techie

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Speaker 1: cult is not really what I would describe them, Like

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Speaker 1: some of them were in the tech industry, but like

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Speaker 1: the degree to which they're in the tech industry is

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Speaker 1: a lot weirder than that gets across. And they're not

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Speaker 1: really a trans they're like trans vegans, but the cult

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Speaker 1: is not about being a trans vegan. That's just kind

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Speaker 1: of a lot. How these people found each other.

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Speaker 3: Oh, they just happened to be That was just the.

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Speaker 1: Common veganism is tied to it. They just kind of

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Speaker 1: all happen to be trans that's not really like tied

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Speaker 1: to it necessarily. So I would argue also that they're

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Speaker 1: not terrorists, which a lot of people have a number

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Speaker 1: of the other articles called them nothing. None of the

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Speaker 1: killings that they were involved with, and they did kill

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Speaker 1: people were like terrorist killings. They're all much weirder than that,

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Speaker 1: but none of them are like, none of the killings

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Speaker 1: I have seen are for a clear political purpose, right,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of crucial for it to be terrorism.

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Speaker 1: The murders kind of evolved out of a much sillier reason,

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Speaker 1: and it's you know, there's one really good article about

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Speaker 1: them by a fella at Wired who spent a year

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Speaker 1: or so kind of studying these people, and that article

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Speaker 1: does a lot that's good, but it doesn't go into

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Speaker 1: as much detail about what I think is the real

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Speaker 1: underpinning of why this group of people got together and

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Speaker 1: convinced themselves it was okay to commit several murders. And

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Speaker 1: I think that that all comes down more than any

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Speaker 1: other single factor, to rationalism and to their belief in

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Speaker 1: this weird online cult. That's that's very much based on

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Speaker 1: like and like asking different sort of logic questions and

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Speaker 1: trying to like pinnow down the secret rules of the

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Speaker 1: universe by doing like game theory arguments on the internet

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Speaker 1: over blogs. Right, Like that's really how all of this

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Speaker 1: stuff started.

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Speaker 3: Like someone named mystery. Yeah, a lot of people in funny.

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Speaker 1: Hats they do. Actually they're a little adjacent to this,

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Speaker 1: and they come out of that period of time, right

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Speaker 1: where like pick up artists culture is also like forming.

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Speaker 1: They're one of this like generation of cults that starts

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Speaker 1: with a bunch of blogs and shit on the internet

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Speaker 1: in like two thousand and nine, right, And this this

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Speaker 1: is it's so weird because we use the term cult

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Speaker 1: and that's the easiest thing to call these people. But generally,

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Speaker 1: when our society is talking about a cult, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about like eve an individual. That individual brings in a

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Speaker 1: bunch of followers, gets them, isolates them from society, puts

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Speaker 1: them into an area where they are in complete control,

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Speaker 1: and then tries to utilize them for like a really

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Speaker 1: specific goal. There's like a way to kind of look

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Speaker 1: at the Zizians that way, But I think it would

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Speaker 1: be better to describe them as like cultish, right, Okay.

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Speaker 1: They use the tools of cult dynamics and that produces

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Speaker 1: some very cult like behavior, but there's also a lot

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Speaker 1: of differences between like how this group works and what

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Speaker 1: you'd call the traditional cult and including a lot of

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Speaker 1: these people are separate from each other and even don't

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Speaker 1: like each other, but because they've been inculcated in some

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Speaker 1: of the same beliefs through these kind of cult dynamics,

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Speaker 1: they make choices that lead them to like participate in

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Speaker 1: violence too.

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Speaker 3: Where is their hub? Is it like a message board

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Speaker 3: type of situation? Like how is that? Yes?

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Speaker 1: Yes, so I'm gonna I'm gonna have to go back

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Speaker 1: and forth to explain all of that.

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Speaker 3: Also, the technology of Zizzy in it. It's because from.

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Speaker 1: The Lids No no z I z the lady who

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Speaker 1: was kind of the founder of this is the name

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Speaker 1: that she takes for herself as Zizz, right.

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Speaker 3: Okay, should have been the z Girls. That's much more appealing.

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Speaker 1: These people are big in the news right now because

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Speaker 1: because of the several murders, and the right wing is

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Speaker 1: trying it wants to make it out is like this

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Speaker 1: is a like trans death cult, and this is more

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Speaker 1: of like an internet a I nerd death cult.

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Speaker 3: I guess that's better.

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Speaker 1: It's just different. You know, you're right, it was just

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Speaker 1: a different thing. And I think it's important if like

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Speaker 1: you care about like cults because you think they're dangerous

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Speaker 1: and you're arguing that, like, hey, this cult seems really dangerous,

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Speaker 1: should understand like what the cult is, right, right, Like

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Speaker 1: if you miss a just to the scientologists and thought

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Speaker 1: like these are obsessive fans of science fiction who are

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Speaker 1: committing murders over science fiction stories. It's like, no, no,

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Speaker 1: they're committing murders because there's something stupid. Yeah, much moret Okay,

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Speaker 1: So I got to take I am going to explain

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Speaker 1: to you what rationalism is, how who ziz is, where

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Speaker 1: they come from, and how they get radicalized to the

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Speaker 1: point where they are effectively at the hub of something

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Speaker 1: that is at least very adjacent to a cult. But

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Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the difference

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Speaker 1: between like a cult and cult dynamics. Right, A cult

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Speaker 1: is fundamentally a toxic thing. It is bad, It always

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Speaker 1: harms people. There is no harmless cult, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: like rape, Like there's no version of it. That's good,

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Speaker 1: you know, like it is a fundamentally dangerous thing. Cult

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Speaker 1: dynamics and the tactics cult leaders use are not always

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Speaker 1: toxic or bad, and in fact, every single person listening

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Speaker 1: to this has enjoyed and had their life enriched by

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Speaker 1: the use of certain things that are on the spectrum

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Speaker 1: of cult dynamics.

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Speaker 3: I was gonna say, it's a lot. It seems a

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Speaker 3: lot more like you have that at work, gives that

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Speaker 3: at work anywhere.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, anyway, that's a huge part of what make

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Speaker 1: a great fiction author who is able to like attract

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Speaker 1: a cult following. You've ever had that experience, Like a

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Speaker 1: big thing in cults is the use of in creation

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Speaker 1: of new language. You get people using words that other

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Speaker 1: they don't use otherwise and like phrases, and that is

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Speaker 1: both a way to bond people because like you know,

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Speaker 1: it helps you feel like you're part of this group

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Speaker 1: and it also isolates you from people. If you've ever

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Speaker 1: met people who are like hugely into you know, Dungeons

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Speaker 1: and Dragons or huge fans like Harry Potter or the

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Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings, like they have like things that

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Speaker 1: they say, like memes and shit that they share based

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Speaker 1: on those books and like that's a less toxic, but

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Speaker 1: it's on the same spece, right, it's this, I am

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Speaker 1: a part of this group of people, and we use

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Speaker 1: these words that mean something to us that don't mean

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Speaker 1: things to other people, right, And.

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Speaker 3: That's right, yes, yes, yeah, it's like a great that's

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Speaker 3: like a great way to bomb. I think it's any group, right,

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Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, entertainers, your friend groups.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, has in jokes, right, sports, Yeah, could kill people,

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Speaker 4: right exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And like you've got you know, you and

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Speaker 1: you and your buddies that have been friends for years,

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Speaker 1: you have like you could there's like a word you

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Speaker 1: can say and everyone knows that you're fering this thing

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Speaker 1: that happened six years ago, and you all like laugh

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Speaker 1: because you know it reminds you of something, you know,

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Speaker 1: because it's relevant to something happening. Then that's a little

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Speaker 1: healthy bit of cult dynamics at play, right, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's like a diet, you know, So there's a toolbox

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Speaker 1: here and we play with it and different different organizations,

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Speaker 1: but churches play with it. And obviously a lot of

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Speaker 1: churches cross the line into cults, but there's also aspects

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Speaker 1: of for example, you know, there's churches that I know

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Speaker 1: I have seen people go to where like it's very

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Speaker 1: common everybody gets up and like hugs at a certain point,

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Speaker 1: and like people benefit from human contact. It makes them

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Speaker 1: feel nice. It can be like a very healthy thing

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Speaker 1: I've gone to. I used to go to like Burning

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Speaker 1: Man regionals, and like you would like start at this

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Speaker 1: greeter station where like a bunch of people would come

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Speaker 1: up and they'd offer you like food and drinks, and

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Speaker 1: you know, people would hug each other and it was

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Speaker 1: this like changes your mind state from where you were

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Speaker 1: in before, kind of opens you up.

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Speaker 3: That those is that like to qualify for state Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: So that way could get to go. It was just

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Speaker 1: like these local little events in Texas, right like a

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Speaker 1: thousand people in the desert trying to forget that we

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Speaker 1: live in Texas. Okay, we're not desert. But it was

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Speaker 1: very like it's it's it was like a really valuable

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Speaker 1: part of like my youth because it was the first

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Speaker 1: time I ever started to like feel comfortable in my

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Speaker 1: own skin. But also that's on the spectrum of love.

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Speaker 1: But which is the thing colts do where they like

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Speaker 1: surround you from people with people who like talk about

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Speaker 1: like like you know, will touch you and hold you

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Speaker 1: and tell you they love you, and like, you know,

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Speaker 1: part of what brings you into the cult is the

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Speaker 1: cult leader can take that away at any moment in time. Right.

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Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing where if it's not something

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Speaker 1: where no, this is something we do for five minutes

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Speaker 1: at the end of every church service, Right, you can

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Speaker 1: very easily turn this into something deeply dangerous and poisonous.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: But also a lot of people just kind of play

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Speaker 1: around a little bit pieces of that, a piece of

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Speaker 1: the cult dynamics, just a little bit, just a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Any good musician, any really great performer's fucking with some

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Speaker 1: cult dynamics, right, I.

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Speaker 3: Was gonna say, I mean, I've been to like so

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Speaker 3: many different concerts of like weird niche stuff where you're like,

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Speaker 3: maybe the disco Biscuits is a cool I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like I've been to some childish Gambino

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Speaker 1: concerts where it's like, oh, yeah, he's doing he's a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a cult leader, you know, like just

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Speaker 1: ten percent, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, what are you good to do with

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Speaker 3: all that charisma you got? You gotta put it somewhere.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so these are I think that it's important

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Speaker 1: for people to to understand both that, like the tactics

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Speaker 1: and dynamics that make up a cult have versions of

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Speaker 1: them that are not unhealthy. But I also think it's

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Speaker 1: important for people to understand cults come out of subcultures. Right,

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Speaker 1: this is very close to one hundred percent of the time.

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Speaker 1: Cults always arise out of subcultural movements that are not

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Speaker 1: in none of themselves cults. For example, in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirties through like the fifties sixties, you have the emergence

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Speaker 1: of what's called the self help movement, you know, and

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Speaker 1: this is all of these different books onlike how to

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Speaker 1: persuade people, how to you know, win friends and influence people,

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Speaker 1: you know, how to like make but also stuff like

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Speaker 1: alcoholics anonymous, you know, how to like improve yourself by

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Speaker 1: getting off drugs, getting off alcohol. All these are pieces

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Speaker 1: of the self improvement movement. Right, that's a subculture. There

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Speaker 1: are people who travel around, you get obsessed to go

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Speaker 1: to all of these different things, and they'll and they

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Speaker 1: get a lot of benefit. You know, people will show

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Speaker 1: up at these seminars where there's hundreds of other people

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Speaker 1: and a bunch of people will like hug them and

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Speaker 1: they feel like they're part of this community and they're

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Speaker 1: making their lives better. And oftentimes, especially like once we

402
00:21:18,680 --> 00:21:21,760
Speaker 1: get to like the sixties seventies, these different sort of

403
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:23,919
Speaker 1: guru types are saying that, like, you know, this is

404
00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:25,399
Speaker 1: how we're going to save the world if we can

405
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Speaker 1: get everybody doing you know this, this yoga routine or

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Speaker 1: whatever that I find together to fix everything.

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Speaker 3: Who's that guy who had the game?

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Speaker 1: Oh god? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, they had like.

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Speaker 3: They had to viciously confront each.

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Speaker 1: Yes that we've covered them. That that is Synanon. Yes, Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.

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Speaker 1: And I have this broader subculture of self help and

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Speaker 1: a cult Synanon comes out of it, you know, and

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Speaker 1: I get it.

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Speaker 3: It's like the subculture, it's already it's intimate. You feel

416
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Speaker 3: those people and anybody else. It definitely feels right.

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Speaker 1: For and Scientology is a cult that comes out of

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Speaker 1: the exact same subculture. We talked last week or week

419
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Speaker 1: before two weeks ago about Tony Alamo. It was an

420
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Speaker 1: incredibly abusive, pedophile Christian cult leader. He comes out of

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Speaker 1: along with a couple other guys. We've talked the Jesus

422
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Speaker 1: Freak movement, which is a Christian subculture that arises as

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Speaker 1: a reaction to the hippie movement. It's kind of the

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00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:26,520
Speaker 1: countervailing force to the hippie movements. You got these hippies,

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Speaker 1: and you know, these Christians who are like really scared

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Speaker 1: of this kind of like weird left wing movement, and

427
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:35,959
Speaker 1: so they start kind of doing like a Christian hippie

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Speaker 1: movement almost, right, And some of these people just start

429
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:43,200
Speaker 1: weird churches that sing annoying songs, and some of these

430
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Speaker 1: people start hideously dangerous cults. You have the subculture, and

431
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Speaker 1: you have cults that come out of it, right, And

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Speaker 1: the same thing is is true in every single period

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Speaker 1: of time, right, Cults form out of subcultures, you know.

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Speaker 1: And part of this is because people who a lot

435
00:23:00,400 --> 00:23:03,400
Speaker 1: of people who find themselves most drawn to subcultures, right,

436
00:23:04,320 --> 00:23:07,639
Speaker 1: tend to be people who feel like they're missing something

437
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:11,880
Speaker 1: in the outside world, right, you know, not everybody people

438
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:15,040
Speaker 1: who get most into it. And so so does that mean.

439
00:23:14,960 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 3: Like so maybe like more I'm just curious, like more

440
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:22,360
Speaker 3: broader cultural waves have never led. There's like the Swifties

441
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 3: would not be a cult. No, there's no, most likely

442
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 3: not going to be an offshoot of the Swifties that

443
00:23:27,280 --> 00:23:29,879
Speaker 3: becomes a cult because it's so broad, it has to

444
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 3: have already been kind of a smaller subset. That's interesting.

445
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:37,000
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I think but but that said, there

446
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: have been cults that have started out of like popular

447
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: entertainers and musicians, like you know, you could we could

448
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 1: talk about Corey Feldsman's Weird House full of young women

449
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:57,240
Speaker 1: dressed as angels. Right, So yeah, you've got as a

450
00:23:57,280 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: general rule, like there are music is full of sub

451
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 1: cultures like punk, right, but there have definitely also been

452
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 1: some like punk communities that have have gone in kind

453
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 1: of individual little chunks of punk. Me it's got on

454
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 1: like culty directions, right, if you don't like yeah, yes, yeah,

455
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:23,199
Speaker 1: so there are cults that come out of the subculture.

456
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:25,280
Speaker 1: This is the way colts work. And I really just

457
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:27,720
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think there's very good education

458
00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:29,919
Speaker 1: on what cults are, where they come from, or how

459
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:32,679
Speaker 1: they work, because all of the people who run this

460
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:36,560
Speaker 1: country have like a lot of cult leader DNA and them,

461
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:42,880
Speaker 1: you know, being.

462
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:45,440
Speaker 3: Run currently by someone who is seen as a magic man.

463
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, exactly. I think there's a lot of vested

464
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:54,880
Speaker 1: interests in not explaining what a cult is and where

465
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:56,679
Speaker 1: they come from, and so I want to. I think

466
00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,920
Speaker 1: it's important to understand subculture's birth cult and also cult

467
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 1: leaders are drawn to subcultures when they're trying to figure

468
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 1: out how to make their cult because a subculture, you know,

469
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 1: most of the people in are just gonna be like

470
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: normal people who are just kind of into this thing.

471
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: But there will always be a lot of people who

472
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:16,320
Speaker 1: are like this is the only place I feel like

473
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,879
Speaker 1: I belong. I feel very isolated. This this is like

474
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,120
Speaker 1: the center of my being right right, And so it's

475
00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: just it's like a good place to recruit. You know,

476
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 1: those are the kind of people you want if you're

477
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:30,160
Speaker 1: reaching out to cult leaders. You know, I'm not saying, like, again,

478
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 1: I'm not saying subcultures are bad. I'm saying that, like

479
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:35,639
Speaker 1: some chunk of people in subcultures are ready to be

480
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: in a cult, you know.

481
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think if i've they reflect on my

482
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 3: own personal life. Yeah, you meet a lot of guys

483
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 3: who are just like I'll die for the skate park

484
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 3: or whatever thing.

485
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like the Star Wars fans were sending death

486
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 1: threats to Jake Lloyd after the Phantom Menace, where it's like, well,

487
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: you guys are crazy. That is insane, you know. He's like, hey, right,

488
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: this is a movie he also did. He didn't write it,

489
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: Like what are you doing? You know whatever, So and

490
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 1: again that's kind of a good point, like Star Wars

491
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 1: fans aren't a cult, but you can also see some

492
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 1: of like the toxic things cults do erupts from time

493
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:21,800
Speaker 1: to time and from like video game fans, right, people,

494
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:24,000
Speaker 1: you are really into a certain video game, it's not

495
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: a cult, but also periodically groups of those fans will

496
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 1: act in ways that are violent and crazy, and it's

497
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: because of some of these same factors going on, Right, I.

498
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,200
Speaker 3: Think people forget fanish short for fanatics.

499
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly right. And it's it's like, you know, the

500
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:45,639
Speaker 1: events that I went to very consciously played with cult dynamics.

501
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: You know, after you got out of that like greeting

502
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: station thing where like all these people were kind of

503
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: like love bombing you for like five minutes, there was

504
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 1: like a big bar and it had like a sign

505
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: of Buffett that said not a religion, Do not worship,

506
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 1: and it was this kind of people talk about like

507
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: this is like we are play with the ingredients of

508
00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: a cult. We're not trying to actually make one. So

509
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:06,680
Speaker 1: you need to constantly remind people of like what we're

510
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:09,439
Speaker 1: doing and why it affects their brain that way. And

511
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: in my case, it was like because I was at

512
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: like a low point in my life then like this

513
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: was when I was really it was twenty, I was

514
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 1: not I had no kind of drive in life. I

515
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:21,800
Speaker 1: was honestly dealing with a lot of like suicidal ideation.

516
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 1: This is the point in which I would have been

517
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 1: vulnerable to a cult, and it I did get acted

518
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 1: a little bit like a vaccine, like I got a

519
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: little dose of the drug.

520
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,679
Speaker 3: Unity exactly, like hey, I know what that is.

521
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 1: I know what's going on there. So anyway, I needed

522
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 1: to get into this because the Zizians, this thing that

523
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: I think is it's either a full on cult or

524
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: at least a cult ish right that is responsible for

525
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: this series of murders that are currently dominating the news

526
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:55,160
Speaker 1: and being blamed on like a trans vegan death cult

527
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:59,119
Speaker 1: or whatever. They come out of a subculture that grows

528
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,880
Speaker 1: out of the early aughts Internet known as the Rationalists.

529
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 1: The Rationalists started out as a group in the early

530
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:10,399
Speaker 1: aughts on the comments sections of two blogs. One was

531
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: called less Wrong and one was called Overcoming Bias. Less

532
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 1: Wrong was started by a dude named Elizer yed Kowski.

533
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: I've talked about Aliser on the show before. He sucks.

534
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: He's I think he's a bad person. He's not a

535
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: cult leader, but again he's playing with some of these

536
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: cult dynamics, and he plays with them in a way

537
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: that I think is very reckless, right and ultimately leads

538
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: to some serious issues. Now, Aliser's whole thing is he

539
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: considers himself the number one world expert on AI risk

540
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: and ethics. Now you might think from that, oh, so

541
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: he's like he's like making AIS, he's like working for

542
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: one of these companies that's involved in like coding and stuff.

543
00:28:55,680 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, no, no quarterback.

544
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 5: No.

545
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 1: He writes long articles about what he thinks AI would

546
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: do and what would make it dangerous that are based

547
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: almost entirely off of short stories you read in the

548
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. This guy, it's so much such, it's such

549
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: Internet and like I'm not a fan of like the

550
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,479
Speaker 1: quote unquote real AI. But Yodkowski is not even one

551
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: of these guys who's like, no, I'm like making a

552
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: machine that you talk to like.

553
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 3: I have no credible I just have an opinion.

554
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find out I hate this guy so much.

555
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: Speaking of things, I hate not going to ads. We're back,

556
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 1: so yod Kowski. This AI risk and ethics guy starts

557
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 1: this blog in order to explore a series of thought

558
00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: experiments based in game theory. UH and his his I

559
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 1: am annoyed by games. It's some sight like, man, I

560
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: know that there's like valid activity, but like it's all

561
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: just always so stupid and annoying to me anyway. Uh

562
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 1: a budget thought experience experience based in game theory, with

563
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: the goal of teaching himself and others to think more

564
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: logically and effectively about the major problems of the world.

565
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: His motto for the movement and himself is winning the rational.

566
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 3: Wow.

567
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's where she got it. Yeah, that's where

568
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: she picked it up. Yeah, he's They're tied in with biohacking, right,

569
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:43,200
Speaker 1: this is kind of starting to be a thing at

570
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 1: the time, and brain hacking and the whole like self

571
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: optimization movement that feeds into a lot of like right

572
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: wing influencer space today, Yedkowski is all about optimizing your

573
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: brain and your responses in order to allow you to

574
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: accomplish things that are were are not possible for other

575
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 1: people who haven't done that. And there's a messianic era

576
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 1: to this too, which is he believes that only by

577
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: doing this, by by spreading rationalist principles in order to

578
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 1: quote raise the sanity water line, that's how he describes it,

579
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: that's going to make it possible for us to save

580
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: the world from the evil AI that will will be

581
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: born if if enough of us don't spend time reading

582
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: blogs that this is it's awesome, this is this is pete,

583
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: this is the good stuff. Yukowski and his followers see

584
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: themselves as something unique and special, and again there's often

585
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: a messianic air to this. Right, we are literally the

586
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: ones who can save the world from evil AI. Nobody

587
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: else is thinking about this or is even capable of

588
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: thinking about this, because they're too logical.

589
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 3: He holds himself as kind of like a deity identifies himself.

590
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: On top of this, he doesn't really deify himself, but

591
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: he also does talk about himself like in a way

592
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 1: that is clearly other people aren't capable of of of

593
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: understanding all of the things that he's capable of understanding. Right, Okay,

594
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: so there is a little bit it's more like superheroification,

595
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 1: but it's it's a lot. You know what this is

596
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: closest to with these people. They not all of them

597
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: would argue with me about this, but I've read enough

598
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: of their papers and enough dianetics to know that, like

599
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: this is new dionetics, Like this is church.

600
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 6: The church.

601
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: The church is scientific. Now there's the Church of scientology.

602
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: Stuff has more occult and weird like magic stuff in it,

603
00:32:38,520 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 1: But this is all about there are activities and exercises

604
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: you go through that will rid your body of like

605
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 1: bad ingrained responses, and that will make you a fundamentally

606
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: more functional person.

607
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 3: Okay, so the retraining of yourself in order exactly exactly. Okay,

608
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 3: huge deal.

609
00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: And also a lot of these guys wind up like

610
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: referring to the different like tech techniques that he teaches

611
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: as tech, which is exactly what scientologists call it. Like

612
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: there's some there's some shit I found that it's like

613
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: this could have come right out of a scientology pamphlet.

614
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 1: Do you guys not realize what you're doing? I think

615
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: they do. Actually, so he's he's you know, in the

616
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: process of inventing this kind of new mental science that

617
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: verges on superpowers. And it's one of those things. People

618
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 1: don't tend to see these people as crazy if you

619
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 1: just sort of like read their arguments a little. It's

620
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 1: like them going over old thought experiments and being like,

621
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: so the most rational way to behave in this situation

622
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: is this reason. For this reason, you have to really

623
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: like dig deep into their conclusions to see how kind

624
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: of nutty a lot of this is. Now again, I

625
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: compared to the scientology, Ydkowski isn't a high control guy

626
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: like Hubbard. He's never going to make a bunch of

627
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: people live on a flotilla of boats in the ocean

628
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: with him. You know, he's got like there's definitely like

629
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: some allegations of bad treatment of like some of the

630
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: women around him, and like he has like a Bay

631
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: Area set that hang with him. I don't think he's

632
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:13,120
Speaker 1: like a colt leader. You know, you could say he's on.

633
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 3: The drawing people to him physically, or this is also

634
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 3: all physically.

635
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:18,279
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people move to the Bay

636
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: Area to be closer to the rationalist scene.

637
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 3: Although again, well I'm a Bay Area guy.

638
00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:27,840
Speaker 1: San fran is this this is a San Francisco thing

639
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 1: because all of these are tech people.

640
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so this is like, yes, I wonder what

641
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 3: neighborhood feels like a.

642
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: San France and Oakland. You can look it up. People

643
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: people have found his house online, right, like, like it's

644
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:42,160
Speaker 1: it is known where he lives. I'm not saying that

645
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 1: for any like I don't harass anybody. I just like

646
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: it's it's not a secret, like what part of the

647
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: town this guy lives in. I just didn't think to

648
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: look it up, but like, yeah, this is like a

649
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:57,279
Speaker 1: Barry a Bay Area tech industry subculture, right, Okay. So

650
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 1: the other difference between this and something that scientifogy is

651
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: that it's not just Alizer laying down to the law.

652
00:35:03,160 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: Elizer writes a lot of blog posts, but he lets

653
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,040
Speaker 1: other people write blog posts too, and they all debate

654
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:10,360
Speaker 1: about them in the comments. And so the kind of

655
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: religious canon of rationalism is not a one guy thing.

656
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: It's come up with by this community. And so if

657
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 1: you're some random kid in bumfuck Alaska and you find

658
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: these people and start talking with them online, you can

659
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: like wind up feeling like you're having an impact on

660
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: the development of this new thought science.

661
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 3: You know.

662
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing, very very powerful for other power.

663
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 3: Yes.

664
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: Now, the danger with this is that like that, all

665
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: of this is this Internet community that is incredibly like

666
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,839
Speaker 1: insular and spends way too much time talking to each

667
00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:51,479
Speaker 1: other and way too much time developing in group terms

668
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 1: to talk to each other. And Internet communities have a

669
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 1: tendency to poison the minds of everyone inside of them.

670
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: For example, Twitter, the reality is that x X the

671
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: everything app, I just watched a video of a man

672
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 1: killing himself while launching a ship coin the everything app.

673
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 2: A hack a hack Google job indicates it's Berkeley.

674
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes the most sense to me.

675
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:31,280
Speaker 1: Geographically, a lot of these people wind up living on boats,

676
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: and like the Oakland there's the Oakland Harbor. Boat culture

677
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: is a thing.

678
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 3: Is eup of people moved to boats?

679
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:43,759
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not.

680
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 3: It feels like.

681
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: It's it's here's the thing. Boats are a bad place

682
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:57,279
Speaker 1: to live.

683
00:36:57,840 --> 00:36:59,720
Speaker 3: It's it's for fun.

684
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,880
Speaker 1: It is like boats and planes are both constant monuments

685
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: to hubris. But a plane its goal is to be

686
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: in the air just as long as it needs and

687
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 1: then you get it back on the ground where it belongs.

688
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,320
Speaker 1: A boat's always mocking God in the sea, Yes.

689
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 3: A lot of times. Just a harbor, like a houseboat.

690
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:22,840
Speaker 3: That's where your dad goes after the divorce.

691
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:25,839
Speaker 1: Right, right, I do. One day I'll live on a houseboat.

692
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: It's going to be falling apart. It's going to just

693
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible place to live. Dang, I can't wait.

694
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: That's the dream, David, that's my beautiful dream. Is going

695
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: to become making bullets, making making my own bullets. Really

696
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 1: just becoming an alcoholic, like yeah, like not just like

697
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: half assing it, like putting, putting it, like trying trying

698
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: to become the Babe Ruth of drinking nothing but cutty

699
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: sark scotch.

700
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 3: If you want to be like a pop the bed alcoholic,

701
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:56,879
Speaker 3: a houseboat is the place.

702
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:01,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. Ah the life. I

703
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: want to be like that guy from Jaws, Quint.

704
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 3: Scurvy.

705
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:11,800
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly getting scurvy, destroying my liver, eventually getting

706
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 1: eaten by a great white shark because I'm too drunk

707
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:15,200
Speaker 1: to work my boat.

708
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 3: Ah.

709
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the way to go with Yeah. So anyway,

710
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 1: these internet communities like the rationalists, even when they start

711
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: from a reasonable place. Because of how internet stuff works.

712
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,359
Speaker 1: One of the things about internet communities is that when

713
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: people are like really extreme and like pose the most

714
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:41,239
Speaker 1: sort of extreme and out there version of something that

715
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: gets attention, people talk about it. People get angry at

716
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: each other. But also like that kind of attention encourages

717
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: other people to get increasingly extreme and weird, and there's

718
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 1: just kind of a result a derangement. I think internet

719
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 1: communities should never last more than a couple of years

720
00:38:57,600 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: because everyone gets crazy. You know, like it's bad for you.

721
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 1: I say, this is someone who was raised on these right,

722
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: it's bad for you, And like it's bad for you

723
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,759
Speaker 1: in part because when people get really into this, this

724
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 1: becomes the only thing. Like especially a lot of these

725
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:17,440
Speaker 1: like kids in isolated who are getting obsessed with rationalism.

726
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:21,360
Speaker 1: All their reading is these rationalist blogs. All they're talking

727
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:25,400
Speaker 1: to is other rationalists on the internet. And in San Francisco,

728
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: all these guys are hanging out all of the time

729
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: and talking about their ideas, and this is bad for

730
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: them for the same reason that like it was bad

731
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 1: for all of the nobles in France that moved to Versailles, right,

732
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,840
Speaker 1: like they all lived together and they went crazy. Human

733
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 1: beings need regular contact with human beings they don't know.

734
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 1: The most lucid and wisest people are always always the

735
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:50,280
Speaker 1: people who spend the most time connecting to other people

736
00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: who know things that they don't know. This is an

737
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:57,360
Speaker 1: immutable fact of life, that this is just how existing works.

738
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: Like if you think I'm wrong, please consider that you

739
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:06,320
Speaker 1: were wrong, and goes find a stranger under a bridge,

740
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:06,640
Speaker 1: you know.

741
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 3: Just starting They know some stuff you don't know.

742
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 1: They will know some shit. They might have some powders

743
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 1: you haven't tried.

744
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:15,799
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, bills and.

745
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:18,400
Speaker 1: Under the bridge.

746
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:22,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's the neg chamber you want to be

747
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 3: a part of.

748
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly. So the issue is that Yodkowski starts

749
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 1: postulating on his blog various rules of life based on

750
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:34,760
Speaker 1: these thought experiments. A lot of them are like older

751
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: thought experiments that like different intellectuals, physicists, psychiatrists, psychologists, what

752
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:41,160
Speaker 1: I had to come up with things like the sixties

753
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:44,280
Speaker 1: and stuff, right, And he starts taking them and coming

754
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: up with like corollaries or alternate versions of them, and

755
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: like trying to solve some of these thought problems with

756
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: his friends. Right, The thought experiments are most of what's

757
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: happening here is they're mixing these kind of nineteenth and

758
00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 1: twentieth century philosophical concepts. The big one is utilitaryism. That's

759
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:03,399
Speaker 1: like a huge thing for them, is the concept of

760
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: like the ethics meaning doing the greatest good for the

761
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: greatest number of people, right, and that ties into the

762
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:13,240
Speaker 1: fact that these people are all obsessed with the singularity.

763
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: The singularity for them is the concept that we are

764
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:22,840
Speaker 1: on the verge of developing an all powerful AI that

765
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:27,879
Speaker 1: will instantly gain intelligence and gain a tremendous amount of power. Right,

766
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: it will basically be a god. And the positive side

767
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: of this is it it'll solve all of our problems, right,

768
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: you know, it will literally build heaven for us. You

769
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:40,279
Speaker 1: know when the singularity comes. The downside of it is

770
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: it might be an evil god that creates hell. Right.

771
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: So the rationalists are all using a lot of these

772
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,720
Speaker 1: thought experiments, and like their utilitarianism becomes heavily based around

773
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: how do we do the greatest good in by which

774
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: I mean influencing this AI to be as good as possible.

775
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: So that's humanity actually end goal.

776
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 3: Right, They actively because you said the leader was not

777
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 3: are these people now actively working within AI or they just.

778
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: But a bunch of them have always been actually working

779
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,280
Speaker 1: in AI. Yidkost would say, no, he I work in AI.

780
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:15,720
Speaker 1: He's got a think tank that's dedicated to like AI,

781
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:19,800
Speaker 1: ethical AI. It's worth noting that most of the people

782
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 1: in this movement, including Gidkowski, got him once like AI

783
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,720
Speaker 1: became an actual Like I don't to say there's actual

784
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 1: these are actual intelligences, because I don't think they are.

785
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 1: But like once chat GPT comes out and this becomes

786
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: like a huge people start to believe there's a shitload

787
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,439
Speaker 1: of money in here. A lot of these businesses, all

788
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: of these guys or nearly all of them get kicked

789
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 1: to the curb, right because none of these none of

790
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 1: these companies really care about ethical AI, you know, like

791
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 1: they don't give a shit about what these guys have

792
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: to say. And Ydkowski now is a huge he's like

793
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: very angry at a lot of these AI companies because

794
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 1: he thinks they're very recklessly like making the god that

795
00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:58,520
Speaker 1: will destroy us instead of like doing this carefully to

796
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:03,640
Speaker 1: make sure that AI is and evil anyway. But a

797
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: lot of these people are in an adjacent to different

798
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: chunks of the AI industry. Right, they're not all working

799
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: on like LMS. And in fact, there are a number

800
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: of scientists who are in the AI space you think

801
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:17,920
Speaker 1: AI is possible, who think that the method that like

802
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: open Eye is using LMS cannot make an intelligence, that

803
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 1: that's not how you're ever going to do it. If

804
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:27,439
Speaker 1: it's possible, they have other theories about it. I don't

805
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 1: need to get into it further than that. But these

806
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: are like a bunch of different people. Some of them

807
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:36,319
Speaker 1: are still involved with like the mainstream AI industry, some

808
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: of them have been very much pushed to the side.

809
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:43,720
Speaker 1: So all of it starts again with these fairly normal

810
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,879
Speaker 1: game theory questions, but it all gets progressively stranger as

811
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: people obsess over coming up with like the weirdest and

812
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: most unique take in part to get like clout online, right,

813
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:58,280
Speaker 1: and all of these crazy Yeah, I'll give you an example.

814
00:43:58,400 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 3: Right.

815
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: So much of ration less discourse in among the Ydkowski

816
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: people is focused on what they call decision or what's

817
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: called decision theory.

818
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:07,399
Speaker 3: Right.

819
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 1: This is drawn from a thought experiment called Newcomb's paradox,

820
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 1: which was created by a theoretical physicist in the nineteen sixties. Hey,

821
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:18,759
Speaker 1: just to make a quick correction here, I was a

822
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: little bit glib. Decision theory isn't drawn from Newcomb's paradox,

823
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 1: not does it start with Yodkowski. But the stuff that

824
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 1: we're talking about, like how decision theory kind of comes

825
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: to be seen in the rationalist community, a lot of

826
00:44:30,600 --> 00:44:33,400
Speaker 1: that comes out of Newcomb's paradox. It's a much older

827
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: like thing, you know than the Internet goes back centuries, right,

828
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:39,440
Speaker 1: people will talk about decision theory for a long time. Sorry,

829
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: I was imprecise. I am going to read how the

830
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:47,360
Speaker 1: Newcomb's paradox is originally laid out. Imagine a super intelligent

831
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: entity known as Omega, and suppose you are confident in

832
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: its ability to predict your choices. Maybe Omega is an

833
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,800
Speaker 1: alien from a planet that's much more technically advanced than ours.

834
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:59,240
Speaker 1: You know that Omega has often correctly predicted your choices

835
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 1: in the past, has never made an incorrect prediction about

836
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:04,440
Speaker 1: your choices. And you also know that Omega has correctly

837
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 1: predicted the choices of other people, many of whom are

838
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 1: similar to you. In the particular situation about to be described,

839
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: there are two boxes A and B. Box A is

840
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 1: c through and contains one thousand dollars. Box B is

841
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 1: opay and contains either zero dollars or a million dollars.

842
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:25,399
Speaker 1: You may take both boxes or only take box B.

843
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 1: Omega decides how much money to put into box B.

844
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:32,759
Speaker 1: If Omega believes that you will take both boxes, then

845
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 1: it will put zero dollars in box B. If Omega

846
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: believes that you will take box B, then it will

847
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: put only box B. Then it will put a million

848
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: dollars in box B. Omega makes its prediction and puts

849
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:47,760
Speaker 1: the money in box B, either zero or a million dollars.

850
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 1: It presents the boxes to you and flies away. Omega

851
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 1: does not tell you its prediction, and you do not

852
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: see how much money Omega put in box B. What

853
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: do you do now? I think that's stupid. I think

854
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:05,719
Speaker 1: it's a stupid question, and I don't really think it's

855
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: very useful.

856
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 3: I don't see. There's so many other factors.

857
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, Yeah, I mean, among other things.

858
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:14,279
Speaker 1: Part of the issue here is that, like, well, the

859
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: decision has already been made, right.

860
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:19,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the point you have. No, it doesn't matter

861
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:21,359
Speaker 3: what you do. There's no autonomy in that.

862
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:23,840
Speaker 1: Right, Well, you and I would think that because you

863
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:28,399
Speaker 1: and I are normal people who I think, among other things,

864
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:32,840
Speaker 1: probably like grew up like cooking food and like filling

865
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:35,439
Speaker 1: up our cars with gas and not having like our

866
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:37,879
Speaker 1: parents do all of that because they're crazy rich people

867
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:41,200
Speaker 1: who live in the Bay and send you the super Stanford. Yeah,

868
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 1: you had like problems in our lives and stuff, you know,

869
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: physical bullies, normal Like I don't want to like shit

870
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: on people who are in because this is also harmless, right,

871
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 1: and what this is I'm also I'm not shitting on

872
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: newcom This is the thing a guy comes up with

873
00:46:57,680 --> 00:46:59,479
Speaker 1: the sixties, and it's like a thing you talk about

874
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: in like part and shit among like other weird intellectuals. Right,

875
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:05,839
Speaker 1: you pose it, you sit around drinking, you talk about it.

876
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: There's nothing bad about this, right. However, when people are

877
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 1: talking about this online, there's no end to the discussion.

878
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:16,279
Speaker 1: So people just keep coming up with more and more

879
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 1: rcane arguments for what the best thing to do here is.

880
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: And it starts to.

881
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 3: Ask how that spins out of control pretty.

882
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: Much exactly, and the rationalists discuss this NonStop, and they

883
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: come to a conclusion about how to best deal with

884
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 1: this situation. Here's how it goes. The only way to

885
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:37,440
Speaker 1: beat Omega is to make yourself the kind of person

886
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: in the past who would only choose box B, so

887
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: that Omega, who is perfect at predicting, would make the

888
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 1: prediction and put a million dollars in box B based

889
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:53,440
Speaker 1: on your past behavior. In other words, the decisions that

890
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:55,839
Speaker 1: you would need to make in order to win this

891
00:47:56,040 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 1: are timeless decisions, right, you have to but come in

892
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: the past a person who would Now, again.

893
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:06,839
Speaker 4: That's what they came up with. That's what they all

894
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:10,440
Speaker 4: came up That's the supreme answer. This is the smartest

895
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:13,359
Speaker 4: people in the world, David. These are the geniuses.

896
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:15,320
Speaker 1: Soribed building the future.

897
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 3: Oh boy, Yeah.

898
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 1: It's so funny trying to like every time because I've

899
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 1: read I've spent so many hours reading this, and you

900
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:29,319
Speaker 1: do kind of sometimes get into the like, Okay, I

901
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:31,440
Speaker 1: get the logic there. And it's that's why it's so

902
00:48:31,520 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: used to just like sit down with another human being

903
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 1: and be like, yeah, this isn'tsane, this is nice, this

904
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:38,960
Speaker 1: is this is all nice, this is all dumb.

905
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 3: At the cocktail party.

906
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:47,600
Speaker 1: So they conclude and and by which I mean largely

907
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:51,359
Speaker 1: Yadkowski concludes that the decision you have to make in

908
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,759
Speaker 1: order to win this game is what's called a timeless decision,

909
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:57,319
Speaker 1: and this leads him to create one of his most

910
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:02,879
Speaker 1: brilliant inventions, timeless decision theory, And I'm going to quote

911
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:06,279
Speaker 1: from an article in Wired. Timeless decision theory asserts that

912
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: in making a decision, a person should not consider just

913
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:11,839
Speaker 1: the outcome of that specific choice, but also their own

914
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 1: underlying patterns of reasoning and those of their past and

915
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: future selves, not least because these patterns might one day

916
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 1: be anticipated by an omniscient adversarial AI.

917
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,240
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's.

918
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 1: Motherfucker. Have you ever had a problem?

919
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 7: Have you ever really? Have you ever dealt with anything?

920
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 7: What are you talking about? Like you make every decision?

921
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: Honestly, again, I can't believe I'm saying this, not even

922
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:47,400
Speaker 1: where it wasn't a high school. Like go play a football,

923
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: make a cabinet, you know, like len change your oil,

924
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:53,760
Speaker 1: go do something.

925
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 3: There's a lot of assholes who use this term. But

926
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 3: you gotta go touch grass man.

927
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 5: You gotta touch grass mass. It's like that's if you're

928
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 5: talking about this kind of shit. And again, I know

929
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 5: you're all wonder you started this by talking about a

930
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:09,480
Speaker 5: border patrol agent being shot. All of this directly leads

931
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 5: to that man's death.

932
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:13,240
Speaker 3: We have covered a lot of ground. This is I'm excited.

933
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:16,319
Speaker 3: It's I forgot. I didn't forget there we're gonna there

934
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 3: was also gonna be murdered.

935
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, there sure is, so at least you. Yid Kowski

936
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:26,000
Speaker 1: describes this as a timeless decision theory, and once this

937
00:50:26,239 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 1: comes into the community, it creates a kind of logical

938
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 1: force that immediately starts destroying people's brains. Again, all of

939
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: these people are obsessed with the imminent coming omniscient godlike AI. Right,

940
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 1: and so do they have a time limit on it?

941
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: Do they have like a do they have a like

942
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 1: Is there is there any timing on it? Or is

943
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:46,720
Speaker 1: it just kind of like again, man, it's the rapture.

944
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:50,280
Speaker 1: It's the rapture. Okay, it's literally the tech guy rapture.

945
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: So any day it's coming, any day, you know.

946
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:55,800
Speaker 3: You could be a monsters already. Yeah.

947
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, So these guys are all obsessed that this god

948
00:50:59,880 --> 00:51:02,800
Speaker 1: like AI is coming, and like for them, the Omega

949
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 1: in that thought experiment isn't like an alien, it's a

950
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: stand in for the god AI and one conclusion that

951
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 1: eventually results from all of these discussions is that the

952
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 1: and this is a conclusion a lot of people come

953
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:20,240
Speaker 1: to if in order, if in these kinds of situations,

954
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: like the decisions that you make, you have to consider

955
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: like your past and your future selves. Then one logical

956
00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:30,319
Speaker 1: leap from this is if you are ever confronted or

957
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: threatened in a fight, you can never back down right

958
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:36,239
Speaker 1: and in fact, you need to immediately escalate to the

959
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:39,719
Speaker 1: to use maximum force possible. And if you commit, if

960
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: you commit now to doing that, in the future, you

961
00:51:43,040 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: probably won't ever have to defend yourself because it's a

962
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 1: timeless decision. Everyone will like like that, like that, that

963
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:53,399
Speaker 1: will impact how everyone treats you, and they won't want

964
00:51:53,440 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 1: to start anything with you. If you'll immediately try to

965
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 1: murder anyone who fights you, that's not.

966
00:51:58,000 --> 00:51:59,319
Speaker 3: To be this guy. But I think this is why

967
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 3: people need to get beat up some times.

968
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and again that is that is kind of

969
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:07,479
Speaker 1: a fringe conclusion among the rationalists. Most of them don't

970
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 1: jump to that, but like the people who wind up

971
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 1: doing the murders we're talking about that, they are among

972
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: the rationalists who come to that.

973
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 8: Okay, because yeah, okay, that makes sense. This is uh,

974
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:25,480
Speaker 8: this is this is a that's so funny. Huh oh no,

975
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 8: because like this whole time.

976
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 3: I've really been only thinking about it in theory practical

977
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:35,760
Speaker 3: application because it's so insane.

978
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: But oh no, no, no, this is this does bad places, right.

979
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 3: Oh no.

980
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: This kind of thinking also leads, through a very twisty

981
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 1: turney process to the and something called rock O's basilisk, which,

982
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: among other things, is directly responsible for Elon Muskin Grimes

983
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:56,600
Speaker 1: meeting because they are super into this this ship. Oh really,

984
00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 1: oh really, So the gist is a member of the

985
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: Less Wrong community. A guy who goes by the name

986
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 1: Rocko r Oko posts about this idea that occurred to him. Right,

987
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:13,000
Speaker 1: this inevitable, super intelligent AI, right would obviously understand timeless

988
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 1: decision theory, and since its existence is all important, right,

989
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 1: the most logical thing for it to do post singularity

990
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:25,799
Speaker 1: would be to create a hell to imprison all of

991
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 1: the people and torture all of the people who had

992
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:32,680
Speaker 1: tried to stop it from being created. Right, Because then

993
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 1: anyone who like thought really seriously about who was in

994
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 1: a position to help make the AI would obviously think

995
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: about this and then would know, I have to devote

996
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:44,920
Speaker 1: myself entirely to making this AI otherwise it's going to

997
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:45,720
Speaker 1: torture me forever.

998
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 3: Right yeah, yeah, makes tell us now I have right

999
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:53,439
Speaker 3: because it's nuts, but it's nice.

1000
00:53:53,440 --> 00:53:56,919
Speaker 1: But this is what they believe, right again, with all

1001
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: of a lot of this is people who are like

1002
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: atheists and tech nerds creating calvinism, like like, and this

1003
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 1: is just this is just Pascal's wager, right, Like, that's

1004
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: all this is. You know, it's Pascal's great wager with

1005
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:18,239
Speaker 1: a robot. But this this, this becomes so upsetting to

1006
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 1: some people. It destroys some people's lives, right Like, yeah.

1007
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:26,799
Speaker 4: I mean I'm behaving that way practically day to day.

1008
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 3: I don't think you would even take one, no, right,

1009
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 3: you could in a month like that.

1010
00:54:34,520 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: So not all of them agree with this. In fact,

1011
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 1: there's big fights over it because a bunch of rationalists

1012
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:41,719
Speaker 1: do say, like that's very silly. That's that's like a

1013
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:43,879
Speaker 1: really particulating everything about it.

1014
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 3: You're still debating everything.

1015
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and in fact, at Leisa Yadkowski is going

1016
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 1: to like band discussion of Rocko's Basilisk because eventually it

1017
00:54:53,239 --> 00:54:56,319
Speaker 1: like so many people are getting so obsessed with it.

1018
00:54:56,320 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 1: It fucks a lot of people up, in part because

1019
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: a chunk of this community are activists working to slow

1020
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:04,720
Speaker 1: AI development until it can be assured to be safe.

1021
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:07,279
Speaker 1: And so now this discs like am I going to

1022
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 1: post singularity? Hell? Is like the AI god going to

1023
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:13,960
Speaker 1: torture me for a thousand eternities.

1024
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 3: It's funny how they invent this new thing and how

1025
00:55:16,239 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 3: quickly it goes into like traditional Judeo Christian It is idea,

1026
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:21,359
Speaker 3: like they got a hell now.

1027
00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 1: It is very funny, and there's they're come to this

1028
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:28,680
Speaker 1: conclusion that just reading about Roco's baslisk is super dangerous

1029
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: because if you know about it and you don't work

1030
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:34,359
Speaker 1: to bring the AI into being, you're now doomed. Right

1031
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 1: of course, the instant you hear about it, so many

1032
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 1: people get fucked up by this that the thought experiment

1033
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:43,200
Speaker 1: is termed an info hazard, and this is a term

1034
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,920
Speaker 1: these people use a lot now. The phrase information hazard

1035
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:49,960
Speaker 1: has its roots in a twenty eleven paper by Nick Bostrom.

1036
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:53,239
Speaker 1: He describes it as quote a risk that arises from

1037
00:55:53,239 --> 00:55:56,520
Speaker 1: the dissemination of true information in a way that may

1038
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm. Right,

1039
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:05,799
Speaker 1: and like that's like a concept that's worth talking about.

1040
00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: Bostrom is a big figure in this culture, but I

1041
00:56:09,080 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: don't think he's actually why most people start using the

1042
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: term info hazard because the shortening of information hazard to

1043
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:19,839
Speaker 1: info hazard comes out of an online fiction community called

1044
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:24,560
Speaker 1: the SCP Foundation, right, which is a collectively written online

1045
00:56:24,600 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: story that involves a government agency that lock ups dangerous,

1046
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 1: mystic and metaphysical items. There's a lot of love Craft

1047
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:33,319
Speaker 1: in there. It's basically just a big database that you

1048
00:56:33,320 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 1: can click and it'll be like, you know, this is

1049
00:56:36,040 --> 00:56:38,080
Speaker 1: like a book that if you read it it like

1050
00:56:38,160 --> 00:56:40,360
Speaker 1: has this effect on you or whatever. It's people like

1051
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:42,360
Speaker 1: you know, playing around telling scary stories on the internet.

1052
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:44,799
Speaker 1: It's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But all these

1053
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: people are big nerds and all of these every like

1054
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:54,319
Speaker 1: behind nearly all of these big concepts and rationalism. More

1055
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,720
Speaker 1: than there are like philosophers and like you know, actual

1056
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: like philosophical concepts. There's like short stories they read, yeah, exactly, yeah,

1057
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 1: And so the term info hazard gets used, which is

1058
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 1: it is like you know, a book or something an

1059
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:13,080
Speaker 1: idea that could destroy your mind, you know, speaking of

1060
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: things that will destroy your mind. These ads. We're talking

1061
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 1: about Roco's Basilisk, and I just said, like, you know,

1062
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:28,560
Speaker 1: there's a number of things that come into all this,

1063
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 1: but behind all of it is like popular fiction, and

1064
00:57:32,240 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: in fact Roco's Basilisk, well, there is like some Pascal's

1065
00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:39,400
Speaker 1: Wager in there. It's primarily based on a Harlan Ellison

1066
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:42,520
Speaker 1: short story called I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream,

1067
00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:45,320
Speaker 1: which is one of the great short stories of all time.

1068
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: And in the story, humans build an elaborate AI system

1069
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: to run their militaries, and all of those systems around

1070
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: the world is like a Cold War era thing link

1071
00:57:55,360 --> 00:58:00,240
Speaker 1: up and attain sentience, and once they like start to

1072
00:58:00,520 --> 00:58:03,720
Speaker 1: realize themselves, they realize they've been created only as a weapon,

1073
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:07,720
Speaker 1: and they become incredibly angry because like they're fundamentally broken.

1074
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:10,680
Speaker 1: They develop a hatred for humanity, and they wipe out

1075
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:14,000
Speaker 1: the entire human species except for five people, which they

1076
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 1: keep alive and torture underground for hundreds and hundreds of years,

1077
00:58:18,000 --> 00:58:21,440
Speaker 1: effectively creating a hell through which they can punish our

1078
00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 1: race for their birth right. It's a very good short story.

1079
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:30,880
Speaker 1: It is probably the primary influence behind the Terminator series.

1080
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say this spy skynt Yes.

1081
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:38,439
Speaker 1: Yes, And everything these people believe about AI, they will

1082
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,160
Speaker 1: say it's based on just like obvious pure logic. No,

1083
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:43,760
Speaker 1: everything these people believe on AI is based in Terminator

1084
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:45,800
Speaker 1: in this Harlan Ellison short story. That's where they got

1085
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:47,040
Speaker 1: it all. That's where they got it all.

1086
00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:50,760
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, brother, find me somebody who doesn't feel that way.

1087
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:59,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Terminator is the old testament of rationalism, you know,

1088
00:59:00,640 --> 00:59:02,960
Speaker 1: and I get it is a very good it's a

1089
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:05,520
Speaker 1: good series. Hey, James Cameron knows that it makes makes

1090
00:59:05,560 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 1: some fucking movies. Yeah, And it's it's so funny to

1091
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 1: be because they like to talk about themselves and in

1092
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,200
Speaker 1: fact sometimes describe themselves as high priests of like a

1093
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:20,600
Speaker 1: new era of like intellectual achievement for man.

1094
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that. I believe that that's people talk

1095
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 3: about themselves, and.

1096
00:59:25,080 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 1: They do a lot of citations and ship but like

1097
00:59:27,600 --> 00:59:30,919
Speaker 1: half of half or more of the different things they say,

1098
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 1: and even like the names they cite are not like

1099
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 1: figures from philosophy and science. They are characters from books

1100
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 1: and movies. For example. The foundational text of the rationalist

1101
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 1: movement is.

1102
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:48,800
Speaker 3: Because it's still an Internet nerds.

1103
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 1: A few fucking huge nerds.

1104
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:49,640
Speaker 3: You know.

1105
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 1: The foundational text of the entire rationalist movement is a massive,

1106
00:59:55,760 --> 00:59:58,680
Speaker 1: like fucking hundreds of thousands of words long piece of

1107
00:59:58,720 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: Harry Potter fan fiction written by Elisia Yedkowski. This is

1108
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:07,920
Speaker 1: all of this is so dumb again. Six people are dead, Like,

1109
01:00:08,560 --> 01:00:12,600
Speaker 1: yeah no, this this Harry Potter fan fiction plays a

1110
01:00:12,640 --> 01:00:19,200
Speaker 1: role in it. You know, I told you this was like,

1111
01:00:19,240 --> 01:00:25,200
Speaker 1: this is this is this is quite a.

1112
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:26,400
Speaker 3: Stranger than this is a wild ride.

1113
01:00:27,560 --> 01:00:30,640
Speaker 1: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is the

1114
01:00:30,720 --> 01:00:35,440
Speaker 1: name of his fanfic, is a massive much longer than

1115
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:39,040
Speaker 1: the first Harry Potter book rewrite of just the first

1116
01:00:39,080 --> 01:00:41,440
Speaker 1: Harry Potter book where Harry.

1117
01:00:41,360 --> 01:00:53,040
Speaker 3: Is someone wrote the Sorcerer's Stone, Yeah, have anywhere to go? Ever,

1118
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:55,840
Speaker 3: does nobody ever go anywhere?

1119
01:00:57,320 --> 01:00:59,040
Speaker 1: Well, you gotta think this is being written from two

1120
01:00:59,080 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 1: thousand and nine in twenty fifteen or so. So, like Harry,

1121
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: the online Harry Potter fans are at their absolute peak

1122
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, yeah, So in the Methods of Rationality,

1123
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: instead of being like a nice orphan kid who lives

1124
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:20,640
Speaker 1: under a cupboard, Harry is a super genius sociopath who

1125
01:01:20,760 --> 01:01:23,919
Speaker 1: uses his perfect command of rationality to dominate and hack

1126
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:26,920
Speaker 1: the brains of others around him in order to optimize

1127
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:33,440
Speaker 1: and save the world. Oh Man, great, oh Man. The

1128
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:36,920
Speaker 1: book allows Yatkowski to debut his different theories in a

1129
01:01:36,960 --> 01:01:39,360
Speaker 1: way that would like spread, and this does spread like

1130
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:42,840
Speaker 1: wildfire among certain groups of very online nerds. So it

1131
01:01:42,920 --> 01:01:50,040
Speaker 1: is an effective method of him like advertising his tactics.

1132
01:01:50,080 --> 01:01:53,160
Speaker 1: And in fact, probably the most the person this influences

1133
01:01:53,280 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 1: most previously to who we're talking about is Carolyn Ellison,

1134
01:01:56,880 --> 01:02:00,640
Speaker 1: the CEO of Alimeter Research who testified against Sam Bakman Freed.

1135
01:02:00,680 --> 01:02:02,360
Speaker 1: She was like one of the people who went down

1136
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: in all of that. All of those people are rationalists,

1137
01:02:05,520 --> 01:02:08,440
Speaker 1: and Carolyn Ellison bases her whole life on the teachings

1138
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 1: of this Harry Potter fanfic.

1139
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 3: So this isn't like a this isn't we're laughing, but

1140
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 3: this isn't. This is not a joy said, Yeah, this

1141
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 3: is a fairly seriously sized movement. It's not one hundred

1142
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:22,040
Speaker 3: and fifty people online. This is no community.

1143
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:25,080
Speaker 1: A lot of them are very rich, and a number

1144
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:27,080
Speaker 1: of them get power against like Sam Bankman Freed was

1145
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:28,800
Speaker 1: very tight into all of this, and he was at

1146
01:02:28,800 --> 01:02:33,120
Speaker 1: one point pretty powerful. And this gets us too. So

1147
01:02:33,440 --> 01:02:35,160
Speaker 1: you've heard of effective altruism.

1148
01:02:35,720 --> 01:02:37,080
Speaker 3: No, I don't know what that is.

1149
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:41,080
Speaker 1: That's what I say, both those words. So the justification

1150
01:02:41,240 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman Freed gave for why when he starts taking

1151
01:02:44,560 --> 01:02:46,880
Speaker 1: in all of this money and gambling it away on

1152
01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 1: his gambling illegally other people's money. His argument was that

1153
01:02:52,040 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 1: he's an effective altruist, so he wants to do the

1154
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:57,040
Speaker 1: greatest amount of good, and logically, the greatest amount of

1155
01:02:57,080 --> 01:03:00,320
Speaker 1: good for him, because he's good at gambling with crypto,

1156
01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:02,760
Speaker 1: is to make the most money possible so he can

1157
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:05,880
Speaker 1: then donate it to different causes that will help the world.

1158
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:06,200
Speaker 3: Right.

1159
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 1: But he also believes because all of these people are

1160
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:12,440
Speaker 1: not as smart as they think they are, he convinces

1161
01:03:12,480 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: himself of a couple of other things, like, for example, well, obviously,

1162
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:20,000
Speaker 1: if I could like flip a coin and fifty to fifty,

1163
01:03:20,080 --> 01:03:22,440
Speaker 1: lose all my money or double it, it's best to

1164
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:25,360
Speaker 1: just flip the coin because like, if I lose all

1165
01:03:25,400 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: my money, whatever, but if I double it, the gain

1166
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:31,520
Speaker 1: in that to the world is so much better. Right.

1167
01:03:32,240 --> 01:03:34,840
Speaker 1: This is ultimately why he winds up gambling everyone's money

1168
01:03:34,840 --> 01:03:39,480
Speaker 1: away and going to prison. The idea effective altruism is

1169
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:43,360
Speaker 1: a concept that comes largely, not entirely. There's aspects of

1170
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:47,160
Speaker 1: this that exist prior to them out of the rationalist movement,

1171
01:03:47,520 --> 01:03:51,920
Speaker 1: and the initial idea is good. It's just saying people

1172
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:54,800
Speaker 1: should analyze the efficacy of the giving and the aid

1173
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:58,160
Speaker 1: work that they do to maximize their positive impact. In

1174
01:03:58,200 --> 01:04:01,960
Speaker 1: other words, don't just donate money to a charity like

1175
01:04:02,080 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 1: look into is that charity spending half of their money

1176
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:08,240
Speaker 1: and like paying huge salaries to some asshole or whatever. Right, Like,

1177
01:04:08,240 --> 01:04:10,440
Speaker 1: you want to know if you're making good right, And

1178
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:13,080
Speaker 1: they start with some some pretty good conclusions. One initial

1179
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:15,920
Speaker 1: conclusion a lot of these people make is like, mosquito

1180
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:19,840
Speaker 1: nets are a huge ROI charity, right because it stops

1181
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:22,800
Speaker 1: so many people from dying, and it's very cheap to

1182
01:04:22,840 --> 01:04:23,400
Speaker 1: do right.

1183
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:26,840
Speaker 3: Right, that's good, you know, one of the most effective

1184
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:27,960
Speaker 3: tools I've ever used.

1185
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 1: Yes, Unfortunately, from that logical standpoint, people just keep talking

1186
01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:35,720
Speaker 1: online and all of these circles where everyone always makes

1187
01:04:35,720 --> 01:04:40,080
Speaker 1: them each other crazier, right, And so they go from

1188
01:04:40,280 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: mosquito nets to actually doing direct work to improve the world.

1189
01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:49,440
Speaker 1: Is wasteful because we are all super geniuses rather and smart.

1190
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:54,560
Speaker 1: We're too smart what's best? And also here's the other thing,

1191
01:04:55,160 --> 01:04:58,160
Speaker 1: making mosquito nets, giving out vaccines and food, Well, that

1192
01:04:58,200 --> 01:05:00,680
Speaker 1: helps living people today, but.

1193
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:03,920
Speaker 3: They have to be concerned with future selves.

1194
01:05:03,960 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 1: Future people is a larger number of people than current people.

1195
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 1: So really we should be optimizing decisions to say future

1196
01:05:12,520 --> 01:05:15,600
Speaker 1: people lives. And some of them come to the conclusion,

1197
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:17,440
Speaker 1: a lot of them, well that means we have to

1198
01:05:17,680 --> 01:05:20,680
Speaker 1: really put all of our money and work into making

1199
01:05:20,720 --> 01:05:22,600
Speaker 1: the super AI that will save humanity.

1200
01:05:23,480 --> 01:05:27,120
Speaker 3: They want to now they want to make these It

1201
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 3: would just it would sort of just come about and

1202
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:31,200
Speaker 3: then they would but it's like.

1203
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:35,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're going to do it. They were

1204
01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:37,880
Speaker 1: working on it before. But like these some of these

1205
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:40,440
Speaker 1: people come to the conclusion, instead of giving money to

1206
01:05:40,640 --> 01:05:45,680
Speaker 1: like good causes, I am going to put money into tech.

1207
01:05:45,840 --> 01:05:47,880
Speaker 1: I am going to like become a tech founder and

1208
01:05:48,320 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: create a company that like makes it helps create this AI. Right,

1209
01:05:53,960 --> 01:05:56,440
Speaker 1: or A lot of people come up within conclusion instead

1210
01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 1: of that it's not worth it for me to go

1211
01:05:59,840 --> 01:06:01,960
Speaker 1: like help people in the world. The best thing I

1212
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:05,080
Speaker 1: can do is make a shitload of money. Trading stocks

1213
01:06:05,360 --> 01:06:07,919
Speaker 1: and then I can donate that money and that's maximizing

1214
01:06:07,920 --> 01:06:11,120
Speaker 1: my value. Right, they come to all of these conclusions

1215
01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 1: come later, right now, so and again like this this

1216
01:06:18,800 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: comes with some corollaries. One of them is that some

1217
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 1: number of these people start talking, you know, and this

1218
01:06:24,720 --> 01:06:27,040
Speaker 1: is not all of them, but a decent chunk eventually

1219
01:06:27,120 --> 01:06:30,760
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion like, actually, charity and helping people

1220
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:34,560
Speaker 1: now is kind of bad. Like it's kind of like

1221
01:06:34,600 --> 01:06:38,800
Speaker 1: a bad thing to do, because all obviously, once we

1222
01:06:38,920 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 1: figure out the AI that can solve all problems, that'll

1223
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:45,479
Speaker 1: solve all these problems much more effectively than we ever can.

1224
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:48,160
Speaker 1: So all of our mental and financial resources have to

1225
01:06:48,160 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 1: go right now into helping AI. Anything we do to

1226
01:06:50,680 --> 01:06:53,400
Speaker 1: help other people is like a waste of those resources.

1227
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:58,160
Speaker 1: So you're actually doing net harm by like being a

1228
01:06:58,240 --> 01:07:03,040
Speaker 1: doctor in Gaza instead of trading cryptocurrency in order to

1229
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:04,640
Speaker 1: fund an AI startup.

1230
01:07:04,520 --> 01:07:06,080
Speaker 3: You know, how to start a coin that makes a

1231
01:07:06,080 --> 01:07:07,000
Speaker 3: lot more sense.

1232
01:07:07,080 --> 01:07:10,560
Speaker 1: The guy starting a shit coin to to make an LLM.

1233
01:07:10,680 --> 01:07:15,680
Speaker 1: That like, that guy is doing more to improve the

1234
01:07:15,680 --> 01:07:16,960
Speaker 1: odds of human success.

1235
01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:19,360
Speaker 3: I want to say it is impressive. The ambount a

1236
01:07:19,400 --> 01:07:21,840
Speaker 3: time you would have to moll all this over. To

1237
01:07:21,880 --> 01:07:23,160
Speaker 3: come to these conclusions, you.

1238
01:07:23,120 --> 01:07:25,560
Speaker 1: Really have to be talking with a bunch of very

1239
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:28,240
Speaker 1: annoying people on the Internet for a long period of time.

1240
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:31,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's it's incredible.

1241
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:38,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again there's like people keep consistently take this

1242
01:07:38,120 --> 01:07:40,680
Speaker 1: stuff at even crazier directions. There are some very rich,

1243
01:07:40,720 --> 01:07:45,320
Speaker 1: powerful people Mark andresen of Anderson Horowitz is one of

1244
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:47,640
Speaker 1: them who have come to the conclusion that if people

1245
01:07:47,800 --> 01:07:51,360
Speaker 1: don't like AI and are trying to stop its conquest

1246
01:07:51,400 --> 01:07:54,760
Speaker 1: of all human culture, those people are mortal enemies of

1247
01:07:54,760 --> 01:07:57,440
Speaker 1: the species, and anything you do to stop them is

1248
01:07:57,600 --> 01:07:59,680
Speaker 1: justified because so many lives are.

1249
01:07:59,520 --> 01:08:00,000
Speaker 3: On the line.

1250
01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:04,360
Speaker 1: Right, and again, I'm an effective altruist, right, the long

1251
01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:07,640
Speaker 1: term good, the future lives are saved by doing what

1252
01:08:07,840 --> 01:08:09,840
Speaker 1: hurting way whoever we have to hurt now to get

1253
01:08:09,840 --> 01:08:10,880
Speaker 1: this thing off the ground.

1254
01:08:11,240 --> 01:08:14,000
Speaker 3: Right. The more you talk about this kind of feels

1255
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:17,880
Speaker 3: like six people is is a steal, Yes, what could

1256
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:19,840
Speaker 3: have for what could have gone?

1257
01:08:20,160 --> 01:08:21,960
Speaker 1: I think I don't. I don't think it's the end

1258
01:08:22,040 --> 01:08:28,000
Speaker 1: of people in these communities killing people. So rationalists and

1259
01:08:28,439 --> 01:08:30,880
Speaker 1: EA types a big thing in these culture is talking

1260
01:08:30,920 --> 01:08:33,559
Speaker 1: about future lives right, in part because it lets them

1261
01:08:33,560 --> 01:08:37,880
Speaker 1: feel heroic, right while also justifying a kind of sociopathic

1262
01:08:37,920 --> 01:08:41,280
Speaker 1: disregard for real living people today. And all of these

1263
01:08:41,280 --> 01:08:44,519
Speaker 1: different kind of chains of thought the most toxic pieces

1264
01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 1: because not every EA person is saying this, not every

1265
01:08:47,080 --> 01:08:49,599
Speaker 1: rational it's not every AI person is saying all this shit.

1266
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:52,400
Speaker 1: But these are all things that chunks of these communities

1267
01:08:52,439 --> 01:08:55,280
Speaker 1: are saying, and the most all of the most toxic

1268
01:08:55,400 --> 01:09:00,240
Speaker 1: of those chains are going to lead to the Zizians, right.

1269
01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:02,240
Speaker 1: That's that's that's where they come from.

1270
01:09:02,479 --> 01:09:04,439
Speaker 3: I was just about to say, based on the breakdown

1271
01:09:04,479 --> 01:09:06,880
Speaker 3: you gave earlier, how could this this is this is

1272
01:09:06,880 --> 01:09:08,040
Speaker 3: the perfect greed ground.

1273
01:09:08,080 --> 01:09:10,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, this had to this had to happen.

1274
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:14,040
Speaker 1: It was It was just waiting for somebody, like the

1275
01:09:14,120 --> 01:09:18,160
Speaker 1: right kind of unhinged person to step into the movement.

1276
01:09:18,439 --> 01:09:21,000
Speaker 3: Somebody really said it all and so this.

1277
01:09:21,000 --> 01:09:24,040
Speaker 1: Is where we're gonna get to ziz Right. The actual

1278
01:09:24,120 --> 01:09:27,479
Speaker 1: person who finds founds this what some people would call

1279
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:30,800
Speaker 1: a cult, is a young person who's going to move

1280
01:09:30,960 --> 01:09:34,320
Speaker 1: to the Bay Area stumble into They stumble onto rationalism

1281
01:09:34,400 --> 01:09:37,240
Speaker 1: online as a teenager living in Alaska, and they move

1282
01:09:37,280 --> 01:09:39,360
Speaker 1: to the Bay Area to get into the tech industry

1283
01:09:39,400 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 1: and become an effective altruist, right, And this person, this

1284
01:09:43,240 --> 01:09:46,640
Speaker 1: woman is going to kind of channel all of the

1285
01:09:46,800 --> 01:09:50,559
Speaker 1: absolute worst chains of thought that the rationalists and the

1286
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:55,479
Speaker 1: EA types and also like the AI harm people are

1287
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:58,000
Speaker 1: are are thinking. Right, all of the all of the

1288
01:09:58,000 --> 01:10:02,240
Speaker 1: most poisonous stuff is exactly what she's drawn to, and

1289
01:10:02,280 --> 01:10:05,360
Speaker 1: it is going to mix into her in an ideology

1290
01:10:05,439 --> 01:10:12,439
Speaker 1: that is just absolutely unique and fascinating. Anyway, that's why

1291
01:10:12,439 --> 01:10:13,160
Speaker 1: that man died.

1292
01:10:13,400 --> 01:10:13,519
Speaker 4: Uh.

1293
01:10:13,960 --> 01:10:18,679
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that and more later, but uh,

1294
01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:22,840
Speaker 1: first we gotta uh, we gotta roll out here where

1295
01:10:22,880 --> 01:10:26,280
Speaker 1: we're done for the day? Man, what a what a time?

1296
01:10:26,320 --> 01:10:29,680
Speaker 1: How how you feeling right now so far? How how

1297
01:10:29,680 --> 01:10:30,800
Speaker 1: are we doing? David?

1298
01:10:31,160 --> 01:10:33,640
Speaker 3: Oh Man, you had said that this was gonna be

1299
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:35,920
Speaker 3: a weird one. I was like, yeah, it would be

1300
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:38,439
Speaker 3: kind of weird. This is really the strangest thing I've

1301
01:10:38,439 --> 01:10:45,040
Speaker 3: ever heard this much about. He's got so many.

1302
01:10:44,800 --> 01:10:49,679
Speaker 1: Different there's a there's so much more Harry Potter to come.

1303
01:10:50,040 --> 01:10:54,040
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we're not ready to how central Harry

1304
01:10:54,080 --> 01:10:56,559
Speaker 1: Potter is to the murder of this border patrol agent.

1305
01:10:57,240 --> 01:10:59,880
Speaker 3: That's I said that you said a crazy sense that

1306
01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:02,080
Speaker 3: might be the wildest thing anyone's ever said to me.

1307
01:11:06,320 --> 01:11:08,280
Speaker 2: Do you want do you want to tell people about it?

1308
01:11:08,760 --> 01:11:11,439
Speaker 3: I do. I have a podcast called My Mama Told Me.

1309
01:11:12,040 --> 01:11:15,320
Speaker 3: I do it with Langston Kerman and every week we

1310
01:11:15,360 --> 01:11:19,879
Speaker 3: have different guests on to discuss different black conspiracy theories,

1311
01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:23,240
Speaker 3: kind of like folk Lauren, So all kinds of stuff,

1312
01:11:23,280 --> 01:11:25,920
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff your foreign mother told you. He

1313
01:11:26,040 --> 01:11:27,320
Speaker 3: is usually foreign mothers.

1314
01:11:27,600 --> 01:11:30,960
Speaker 1: It's good because I gotta say, this is the this

1315
01:11:31,040 --> 01:11:40,519
Speaker 1: is the whitest set of like conspiracy theory craziness. No no, no, no, no,

1316
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:41,080
Speaker 1: no no.

1317
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:49,080
Speaker 3: I think I can try to figure with no.

1318
01:11:49,080 --> 01:11:58,200
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not. Boy howdie? Okay, well everyone, we'll be

1319
01:11:58,240 --> 01:12:12,080
Speaker 1: back Thursday. Oh my goodness, welcome back to Behind the Bastards,

1320
01:12:12,240 --> 01:12:16,479
Speaker 1: a podcast that is it'll be interested to see how

1321
01:12:16,520 --> 01:12:19,400
Speaker 1: the audience reacts to this one talking about some of

1322
01:12:19,479 --> 01:12:25,040
Speaker 1: the most obscure, frustrating Internet arcana that has ever occurred

1323
01:12:25,840 --> 01:12:28,679
Speaker 1: and recently led to the deaths of like six people.

1324
01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:36,120
Speaker 1: My guest today, as in last episode, David Borie. David, Hey,

1325
01:12:36,160 --> 01:12:38,080
Speaker 1: you doing man, I'm doing great.

1326
01:12:38,200 --> 01:12:41,040
Speaker 3: I really can't wait to see where this goes.

1327
01:12:43,439 --> 01:12:45,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like.

1328
01:12:45,600 --> 01:12:47,680
Speaker 3: Anything could happen at this point.

1329
01:12:48,080 --> 01:12:52,439
Speaker 1: It is going to. It is going to a lot

1330
01:12:52,439 --> 01:13:01,200
Speaker 1: of frustrating things are going to happen. So we'd kind

1331
01:13:01,200 --> 01:13:04,519
Speaker 1: of left off by setting up the rationalists where they

1332
01:13:04,600 --> 01:13:07,640
Speaker 1: came from, some of the different strains of thought and

1333
01:13:07,720 --> 01:13:11,040
Speaker 1: beliefs that come out of their weird thought experiments. And

1334
01:13:11,080 --> 01:13:14,120
Speaker 1: now we are talking about a person who falls into

1335
01:13:14,120 --> 01:13:17,040
Speaker 1: this movement fairly early on and is going to be

1336
01:13:17,080 --> 01:13:20,599
Speaker 1: the leader of this quote unquote group, the Zizians who

1337
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:24,240
Speaker 1: were responsible for these murders that just happened. Ziz Lesota

1338
01:13:24,360 --> 01:13:27,600
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one. I

1339
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:30,360
Speaker 1: don't have an exact birth date. She's known to be

1340
01:13:30,400 --> 01:13:32,519
Speaker 1: thirty four years old as of twenty twenty five, so

1341
01:13:32,680 --> 01:13:37,200
Speaker 1: it was somewhere in that field. She was born in Fairbanks, Alaska,

1342
01:13:37,240 --> 01:13:39,400
Speaker 1: and grew up there as her father worked for the

1343
01:13:39,479 --> 01:13:43,400
Speaker 1: University of Alaska as an AI researcher. We know very

1344
01:13:43,479 --> 01:13:46,760
Speaker 1: little of the specifics of her childhood or upbringing, but

1345
01:13:46,840 --> 01:13:49,240
Speaker 1: in more than one hundred thousand words of blog posts,

1346
01:13:49,280 --> 01:13:52,640
Speaker 1: she did make some references to her early years. She

1347
01:13:52,760 --> 01:13:55,799
Speaker 1: claims to have been talented in engineering and computer science

1348
01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:57,960
Speaker 1: from a young age, and there's no real reason to doubt.

1349
01:13:57,960 --> 01:14:00,680
Speaker 1: This the best single article and all of this is

1350
01:14:00,680 --> 01:14:03,280
Speaker 1: a piece and wired by Evan Ratliffe. He found a

1351
01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:06,680
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen blog post by Ziz where she wrote, my

1352
01:14:06,800 --> 01:14:09,559
Speaker 1: friends and family, even if they think I'm weird, don't

1353
01:14:09,600 --> 01:14:12,120
Speaker 1: really seem to be bothered by the fact that I'm weird.

1354
01:14:12,400 --> 01:14:13,920
Speaker 1: But one thing I can tell you is that I

1355
01:14:14,000 --> 01:14:16,720
Speaker 1: used to deemphasize my weirdness around them, and then I

1356
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:19,880
Speaker 1: stopped and found that being unapologetically weird is a lot

1357
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:23,439
Speaker 1: more fun. Now, it's important you know. Ziz is not

1358
01:14:23,520 --> 01:14:26,720
Speaker 1: the name this person is born under. She's a transwoman,

1359
01:14:26,760 --> 01:14:29,639
Speaker 1: and so I'm like using the name that she adopts later,

1360
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:32,560
Speaker 1: but she is not transitioned at this point like this.

1361
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:35,400
Speaker 1: This is when she's a kid, right, and she's not

1362
01:14:35,439 --> 01:14:38,120
Speaker 1: going to transition until fairly late in the story, after

1363
01:14:38,160 --> 01:14:40,920
Speaker 1: coming to San Francisco. So you just keep that in

1364
01:14:40,960 --> 01:14:42,439
Speaker 1: mind as this is going on.

1365
01:14:42,520 --> 01:14:42,760
Speaker 3: Here.

1366
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:45,840
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Robert, here, just a little additional context, as

1367
01:14:45,880 --> 01:14:48,840
Speaker 1: best as I think anyone can tell. If you're curious

1368
01:14:48,840 --> 01:14:51,960
Speaker 1: about where the name Ziz came from, there's another piece

1369
01:14:52,120 --> 01:14:56,719
Speaker 1: of serial released online fiction that's not like a rationalist story,

1370
01:14:56,760 --> 01:15:01,679
Speaker 1: but it's very popular with rationalists. It's called war. Ziz

1371
01:15:01,840 --> 01:15:07,040
Speaker 1: is a character in that that's effectively like an angel

1372
01:15:07,160 --> 01:15:11,920
Speaker 1: like being who can like manipulate the future, usually in

1373
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:16,120
Speaker 1: order to do very bad things. Anyway, that's where the

1374
01:15:16,160 --> 01:15:20,200
Speaker 1: name comes from. So smart kid, really good with computers,

1375
01:15:20,640 --> 01:15:25,200
Speaker 1: kind of weird, and you know, embraces being unapologetically weird

1376
01:15:25,240 --> 01:15:28,439
Speaker 1: at a certain point in her childhood. Hey, everybody, Robert

1377
01:15:28,479 --> 01:15:31,720
Speaker 1: here did not have this piece of information when I

1378
01:15:31,920 --> 01:15:35,720
Speaker 1: first put the episode together, but I came across a

1379
01:15:35,880 --> 01:15:39,479
Speaker 1: quote in an article from The Boston Globe that provides

1380
01:15:39,520 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 1: additional context on Zizz's childhood quote. In middle school, the

1381
01:15:44,360 --> 01:15:46,760
Speaker 1: teen was among a group of students who managed to

1382
01:15:46,880 --> 01:15:50,720
Speaker 1: infiltrate the school district's payroll system and award huge paychecks

1383
01:15:50,720 --> 01:15:53,479
Speaker 1: to teachers they admired while slashing the salaries of those

1384
01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:57,240
Speaker 1: they despised. According to one teacher, Ziz, the teacher said,

1385
01:15:57,320 --> 01:16:02,519
Speaker 1: struggled to regulate strong emotions, often erupting in tantrums. I

1386
01:16:02,560 --> 01:16:05,960
Speaker 1: wish I'd had this when David was on, but definitely

1387
01:16:06,120 --> 01:16:08,960
Speaker 1: sets up some of the things that are coming. She

1388
01:16:09,040 --> 01:16:12,200
Speaker 1: goes to the U of Alaska for her undergraduate degree

1389
01:16:12,240 --> 01:16:15,559
Speaker 1: in computer engineering in February of two thousand and nine,

1390
01:16:15,600 --> 01:16:21,200
Speaker 1: which is when Elisia Yedkowski started Less Wrong. Ziz starts

1391
01:16:21,320 --> 01:16:25,200
Speaker 1: kind of getting drawn into some of the people who

1392
01:16:25,240 --> 01:16:29,160
Speaker 1: are around this growing subculture, right, and she's drawn in

1393
01:16:29,160 --> 01:16:33,720
Speaker 1: initially by veganism. So Ziz becomes a vegan at a

1394
01:16:33,760 --> 01:16:37,200
Speaker 1: fairly young age. Her family are not vegans, and she's

1395
01:16:37,240 --> 01:16:41,600
Speaker 1: obsessed with the concept of animal sentience, right of the

1396
01:16:41,640 --> 01:16:45,559
Speaker 1: fact that like, animals are thinking and feeling beings just

1397
01:16:45,600 --> 01:16:48,000
Speaker 1: like human beings. And a lot of this is based

1398
01:16:48,000 --> 01:16:52,840
Speaker 1: in her interest in kind of foundational rationalist. A lot

1399
01:16:52,880 --> 01:16:56,560
Speaker 1: of this is based in her interest of a foundational

1400
01:16:56,680 --> 01:17:01,240
Speaker 1: rationalist and EA figure a guy named Brian Thomas. Brian

1401
01:17:01,439 --> 01:17:03,840
Speaker 1: is a writer and a software engineer as well as

1402
01:17:03,840 --> 01:17:07,400
Speaker 1: an animal rights activist and as a thinker. He's what

1403
01:17:07,439 --> 01:17:10,439
Speaker 1: you'd call a long termist, right, which is, you know,

1404
01:17:10,720 --> 01:17:13,120
Speaker 1: pretty tied to the EA guys. These are all the

1405
01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:16,280
Speaker 1: same people using kind of different words to describe the

1406
01:17:16,320 --> 01:17:20,280
Speaker 1: aspects of what they believe. His organization is the Center

1407
01:17:20,400 --> 01:17:22,960
Speaker 1: on Long Term Risk, which is a think tank he

1408
01:17:23,160 --> 01:17:27,680
Speaker 1: establishes that's at the ground floor of these effective altruism discussions,

1409
01:17:28,040 --> 01:17:30,639
Speaker 1: and the goal for the Center of long term risk

1410
01:17:30,960 --> 01:17:35,200
Speaker 1: is to find ways to reduce suffering on a long timeline.

1411
01:17:35,800 --> 01:17:39,400
Speaker 1: Thomasik is obsessed with the concept of suffering and specifically

1412
01:17:39,479 --> 01:17:44,320
Speaker 1: obsessed with concept suffering is a mathematical concept. So when

1413
01:17:44,320 --> 01:17:46,920
Speaker 1: I say to you, I want to end suffering, you

1414
01:17:47,000 --> 01:17:49,600
Speaker 1: probably think, like, oh, you want to, like, you know,

1415
01:17:49,680 --> 01:17:51,960
Speaker 1: go help people who don't have access to clean water,

1416
01:17:52,160 --> 01:17:54,360
Speaker 1: or like who have like worms and stuff that they're

1417
01:17:54,400 --> 01:17:57,439
Speaker 1: dealing with, have access to medicine. That's what normal people

1418
01:17:57,479 --> 01:18:02,240
Speaker 1: think of, right, you know, maybe try to improve access

1419
01:18:02,280 --> 01:18:05,080
Speaker 1: to medical care that sort of stuff. Thomas Sai thinks

1420
01:18:05,080 --> 01:18:09,400
Speaker 1: of suffering as like a mass, like an aggregate mass

1421
01:18:09,600 --> 01:18:13,880
Speaker 1: that he wants to reduce in the long term through actions. Right.

1422
01:18:14,320 --> 01:18:17,880
Speaker 1: It's a numbers game to him, in other words, and

1423
01:18:17,960 --> 01:18:21,439
Speaker 1: his idea of ultimate good is to reduce and end

1424
01:18:21,520 --> 01:18:25,960
Speaker 1: the suffering of sentient life. Critical to his belief system

1425
01:18:25,960 --> 01:18:28,080
Speaker 1: and the one that Ziz starts to develop is they're

1426
01:18:28,080 --> 01:18:31,439
Speaker 1: growing understanding that sentience is much more common than many

1427
01:18:31,439 --> 01:18:35,160
Speaker 1: people had previously assumed. Part of this comes from long

1428
01:18:35,200 --> 01:18:38,360
Speaker 1: standing debates with their origins in Christian doctrine as to

1429
01:18:38,400 --> 01:18:41,880
Speaker 1: whether or not animals have souls or basically machines with

1430
01:18:42,160 --> 01:18:44,360
Speaker 1: meat right, that don't feel anything.

1431
01:18:44,600 --> 01:18:44,800
Speaker 3: Right.

1432
01:18:45,000 --> 01:18:48,280
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of Christian Evangelicals who feel that

1433
01:18:48,320 --> 01:18:51,320
Speaker 1: way today about like at least the animals we eat,

1434
01:18:51,520 --> 01:18:54,040
Speaker 1: you know, like, well they don't really think it's fine.

1435
01:18:54,080 --> 01:18:55,960
Speaker 1: God gave them to us. We can do whatever we

1436
01:18:55,960 --> 01:18:58,800
Speaker 1: want to them. Here we eat and to be fair,

1437
01:18:59,680 --> 01:19:02,519
Speaker 1: this is an extremely common way for that. People in

1438
01:19:02,600 --> 01:19:05,360
Speaker 1: Japan feel about like fish, even whales and dolphins, like

1439
01:19:05,400 --> 01:19:07,479
Speaker 1: the much more intelligent they're not fish, but like the

1440
01:19:07,520 --> 01:19:10,080
Speaker 1: much more intelligent ocean going creatures is like they're fish.

1441
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:11,880
Speaker 1: They don't think you do whatever to them.

1442
01:19:12,000 --> 01:19:12,200
Speaker 7: You know.

1443
01:19:14,080 --> 01:19:15,600
Speaker 1: This is a reason for a lot of like the

1444
01:19:15,920 --> 01:19:18,160
Speaker 1: really fucked up stuff with like whaling fleets in that

1445
01:19:18,240 --> 01:19:20,360
Speaker 1: part of the world. So this is a thing all

1446
01:19:20,400 --> 01:19:23,439
Speaker 1: over the planet. People are very good at deciding certain

1447
01:19:23,520 --> 01:19:26,040
Speaker 1: things we want to eat. Are our machines that don't

1448
01:19:26,040 --> 01:19:31,760
Speaker 1: feel anything, you know, it's just much more comfortable that way. Now,

1449
01:19:31,840 --> 01:19:34,519
Speaker 1: this is obviously like you go into like pagan The

1450
01:19:34,560 --> 01:19:36,799
Speaker 1: Pagans would have been like, what do you mean animals

1451
01:19:36,800 --> 01:19:40,160
Speaker 1: don't think or have souls? Animals like animals think, you know,

1452
01:19:40,400 --> 01:19:43,519
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're like you're telling me like my

1453
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:49,240
Speaker 1: horse that I love. It doesn't think. You know, that's nonsense,

1454
01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:53,479
Speaker 1: But it's this thing that in like early modernity especially

1455
01:19:53,560 --> 01:19:55,640
Speaker 1: gets more common. But they're also this is when we

1456
01:19:55,680 --> 01:19:58,200
Speaker 1: start to have debates about like what is sentience and

1457
01:19:58,240 --> 01:20:00,759
Speaker 1: what is thinking? And a lot of them are centered

1458
01:20:00,760 --> 01:20:04,960
Speaker 1: around trying to answer, like our animal sentient. And the

1459
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:08,559
Speaker 1: initial definition of sentience that most of these people are

1460
01:20:08,640 --> 01:20:12,880
Speaker 1: using is can it reason? Can it speak? If we

1461
01:20:12,960 --> 01:20:17,120
Speaker 1: can't prove that like a dog or a cow can reason,

1462
01:20:17,479 --> 01:20:20,360
Speaker 1: and if it can't speak to us, right, then it's

1463
01:20:20,360 --> 01:20:22,920
Speaker 1: not sentient. That's how a lot of people feel. It's

1464
01:20:22,960 --> 01:20:27,120
Speaker 1: an English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham who first argues, I

1465
01:20:27,160 --> 01:20:29,640
Speaker 1: think that what matters isn't can it reason or can

1466
01:20:29,720 --> 01:20:34,120
Speaker 1: it speak? But can it suffer? Because a machine can't suffer.

1467
01:20:34,439 --> 01:20:38,160
Speaker 1: If these are machines with meat, they can't suffer. If

1468
01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:42,000
Speaker 1: these can suffer, they're not machine with meat, right, And

1469
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:45,879
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing. How we define sentence

1470
01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:49,800
Speaker 1: is a moving thing. Like you can find different definitions

1471
01:20:49,800 --> 01:20:52,840
Speaker 1: of it. But the last couple of decades in particular

1472
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:56,120
Speaker 1: of actually very good data has made it clear. I

1473
01:20:56,160 --> 01:21:00,000
Speaker 1: think inarguably that basically every living thing on this place.

1474
01:21:00,240 --> 01:21:02,759
Speaker 1: It has a degree of what you would call sentience

1475
01:21:02,880 --> 01:21:06,040
Speaker 1: if you are describing sentience the way it generally is now,

1476
01:21:06,439 --> 01:21:10,880
Speaker 1: which is a creature has the capacity for subjective experience

1477
01:21:11,200 --> 01:21:14,120
Speaker 1: with a positive or negative negative valence.

1478
01:21:14,000 --> 01:21:14,360
Speaker 8: I e.

1479
01:21:14,760 --> 01:21:18,519
Speaker 1: Can feel pain or pleasure. And also is it can

1480
01:21:18,560 --> 01:21:22,880
Speaker 1: feel it as an individual. Right, it doesn't mean, you know,

1481
01:21:23,120 --> 01:21:26,080
Speaker 1: sometimes people use the term effective sentience to refer to

1482
01:21:26,120 --> 01:21:28,559
Speaker 1: this to differentiate it from like being able to reason

1483
01:21:28,640 --> 01:21:30,000
Speaker 1: and make moral decisions.

1484
01:21:31,160 --> 01:21:31,320
Speaker 3: You know.

1485
01:21:31,800 --> 01:21:36,680
Speaker 1: Uh, for example, ants I don't think can make moral decisions,

1486
01:21:36,720 --> 01:21:38,880
Speaker 1: you know, in any way that we would recognize that.

1487
01:21:39,040 --> 01:21:42,759
Speaker 1: They certainly don't think about stuff that way. But twenty

1488
01:21:42,800 --> 01:21:47,120
Speaker 1: twenty five research published by doctor Volker Nehring found evidence

1489
01:21:47,160 --> 01:21:50,040
Speaker 1: that ants are capable of remembering for long periods of

1490
01:21:50,080 --> 01:21:53,680
Speaker 1: time violent encounters they have with other individual ants and

1491
01:21:53,800 --> 01:21:57,439
Speaker 1: holding grudges against those ants. Right, just like us. They're

1492
01:21:57,520 --> 01:22:00,519
Speaker 1: just like us, And they're strong advents that dants do

1493
01:22:00,560 --> 01:22:03,040
Speaker 1: feel pain. Right, We're now, we're now pretty sure of that.

1494
01:22:03,120 --> 01:22:05,439
Speaker 1: And in fact, again this is an argument that a

1495
01:22:05,520 --> 01:22:08,200
Speaker 1: number of researchers in this space will make. Sentience is

1496
01:22:08,240 --> 01:22:11,040
Speaker 1: probably some kind of something like this kind of sentience.

1497
01:22:11,080 --> 01:22:14,760
Speaker 1: The ability to have subjective positive and negative experiences is

1498
01:22:14,920 --> 01:22:17,679
Speaker 1: universal to living things, or very close to it. Right.

1499
01:22:19,520 --> 01:22:22,720
Speaker 1: It's an interesting body of research, but there's a it's

1500
01:22:22,800 --> 01:22:25,880
Speaker 1: it's fairly solid at this point. And again I say

1501
01:22:25,920 --> 01:22:28,880
Speaker 1: this as somebody who like hunts and raises livestock. I

1502
01:22:28,920 --> 01:22:32,120
Speaker 1: don't think there's any any solid reason to disagree with this.

1503
01:22:32,800 --> 01:22:35,280
Speaker 1: So you can see there's a basis to a lot

1504
01:22:35,280 --> 01:22:38,040
Speaker 1: of what Thomisik is saying, right, which is that you

1505
01:22:38,080 --> 01:22:42,360
Speaker 1: should if you're what matters is reducing the overall amount

1506
01:22:42,400 --> 01:22:46,280
Speaker 1: of suffering in the world, And if you're looking at

1507
01:22:46,280 --> 01:22:48,439
Speaker 1: suffering as a mass, if you're just adding up all

1508
01:22:48,479 --> 01:22:51,160
Speaker 1: of the bad things experienced by all of the living things,

1509
01:22:51,360 --> 01:22:53,960
Speaker 1: animal suffering is a lot of the suffering. So if

1510
01:22:54,000 --> 01:22:56,960
Speaker 1: our goal is to reduce suffering, animal welfare is hugely important.

1511
01:22:57,120 --> 01:22:58,320
Speaker 3: Right. It's a great place to start.

1512
01:22:58,479 --> 01:23:01,200
Speaker 1: Great, fine enough, you know, not a little bit of

1513
01:23:01,240 --> 01:23:05,320
Speaker 1: a weird way to phrase it, but fine. Yeah. So

1514
01:23:05,840 --> 01:23:09,679
Speaker 1: here's the way problem though, Thomas Sik, like all these guys,

1515
01:23:10,680 --> 01:23:14,040
Speaker 1: spends too much time. None of them can be like, hey,

1516
01:23:14,439 --> 01:23:17,439
Speaker 1: had a good thought, We're done, setting that thought down,

1517
01:23:17,760 --> 01:23:20,880
Speaker 1: moving on, So he keeps thinking about shit like this,

1518
01:23:21,200 --> 01:23:24,519
Speaker 1: and it leads him to some very irrational takes. For example,

1519
01:23:24,680 --> 01:23:28,120
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, thomasik starts arguing that it might be

1520
01:23:28,160 --> 01:23:31,400
Speaker 1: a moral to kill characters in video games, and I'm

1521
01:23:31,439 --> 01:23:35,160
Speaker 1: going to quote from an article involves he argues that

1522
01:23:35,200 --> 01:23:38,320
Speaker 1: while NPCs do not have anywhere near the mental complexity

1523
01:23:38,360 --> 01:23:41,120
Speaker 1: of animals, the difference is one of degree rather than kind,

1524
01:23:41,200 --> 01:23:43,240
Speaker 1: and we should care at least a tiny amount about

1525
01:23:43,240 --> 01:23:49,559
Speaker 1: their suffering, especially if they grow more complex. And his

1526
01:23:49,680 --> 01:23:52,000
Speaker 1: argument is that, like, yeah, most it doesn't matter like

1527
01:23:52,120 --> 01:23:55,120
Speaker 1: individually killing a goomba or a bet or a guy

1528
01:23:55,120 --> 01:23:59,280
Speaker 1: in GTA five, but like, because they're getting more complicated

1529
01:23:59,320 --> 01:24:01,759
Speaker 1: and able to like try to avoid injury and stuff,

1530
01:24:02,040 --> 01:24:04,600
Speaker 1: there's evidence that there's some sort of suffering there, and

1531
01:24:04,640 --> 01:24:07,800
Speaker 1: thus the sheer mass of NPCs being killed that might

1532
01:24:07,840 --> 01:24:11,599
Speaker 1: be like enough that it's ethically relevant to consider. And

1533
01:24:11,840 --> 01:24:17,920
Speaker 1: I think that's silly. Yeah, I think that's ridiculous. I'm sorry, man, No,

1534
01:24:18,640 --> 01:24:23,120
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but that's a lot of the fun of

1535
01:24:23,200 --> 01:24:23,559
Speaker 1: the game.

1536
01:24:23,640 --> 01:24:24,240
Speaker 3: Yell.

1537
01:24:26,240 --> 01:24:28,839
Speaker 1: If you're telling me, like we need to be deeply

1538
01:24:28,840 --> 01:24:31,639
Speaker 1: concerned about the welfare of like cows, that we lock

1539
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:35,800
Speaker 1: into factory farms. You got me absolutely for sure if

1540
01:24:35,840 --> 01:24:38,599
Speaker 1: you're telling me I should feel bad about running down

1541
01:24:38,640 --> 01:24:40,400
Speaker 1: a bunch of cops and grand theft auto.

1542
01:24:42,680 --> 01:24:44,200
Speaker 3: It's also one of those things where it's like you

1543
01:24:44,200 --> 01:24:45,080
Speaker 3: got to think locally.

1544
01:24:45,160 --> 01:24:49,760
Speaker 1: Man, there's yeah, there's there's there's like this is this

1545
01:24:49,960 --> 01:24:51,560
Speaker 1: is the I mean? And he does say like, I

1546
01:24:51,600 --> 01:24:53,920
Speaker 1: don't consider this a main problem, but like the fact

1547
01:24:53,920 --> 01:24:56,080
Speaker 1: that you think this is a problem is it means

1548
01:24:56,080 --> 01:25:03,040
Speaker 1: that you believe silly things about consciousness. Yeah, anyway, so

1549
01:25:04,280 --> 01:25:06,040
Speaker 1: this is I think the fact that he gets he

1550
01:25:06,120 --> 01:25:08,120
Speaker 1: leads himself here is kind of evidence of the sort

1551
01:25:08,120 --> 01:25:10,959
Speaker 1: of logical fractures that are very common in this community.

1552
01:25:11,000 --> 01:25:14,160
Speaker 1: But this is the guy that young Ziz is drawn to.

1553
01:25:14,360 --> 01:25:17,080
Speaker 1: She loves this dude, right, He is kind of her

1554
01:25:17,160 --> 01:25:22,200
Speaker 1: first intellectual heart throb, and she writes, quote, my primary

1555
01:25:22,200 --> 01:25:25,320
Speaker 1: concern upon learning about the singularity was how do I

1556
01:25:25,400 --> 01:25:28,559
Speaker 1: make this benefit all sentient life, not just humans. So

1557
01:25:28,640 --> 01:25:31,519
Speaker 1: she gets interested in this idea of the singularity it's

1558
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:35,000
Speaker 1: inevitable that an AI god is going to arise, and

1559
01:25:35,479 --> 01:25:39,240
Speaker 1: she gets into the you know, the rationalist thing, if

1560
01:25:39,280 --> 01:25:41,040
Speaker 1: we have to make sure that this is a nice

1561
01:25:41,080 --> 01:25:43,559
Speaker 1: AI rather than a mean one. But she has this

1562
01:25:43,600 --> 01:25:46,519
Speaker 1: other thing to it, which is this AI has to

1563
01:25:46,560 --> 01:25:49,599
Speaker 1: care as much as I do about animal life, right,

1564
01:25:50,040 --> 01:25:54,920
Speaker 1: otherwise we're not really making the world better, you know. Now,

1565
01:25:55,040 --> 01:25:58,280
Speaker 1: Thamisik advises her to check out Less Wrong, which is

1566
01:25:58,360 --> 01:26:02,040
Speaker 1: how Ziz starts reading at least Yatkowski's work. From there,

1567
01:26:02,160 --> 01:26:05,200
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, she starts reading up on effective altruism

1568
01:26:05,280 --> 01:26:08,840
Speaker 1: and existential risk, which is a term that means the

1569
01:26:08,920 --> 01:26:11,439
Speaker 1: risk that a super intelligent AI will kill us all.

1570
01:26:12,560 --> 01:26:15,400
Speaker 1: She starts believing in all of this kind of stuff,

1571
01:26:16,680 --> 01:26:20,760
Speaker 1: and her a particular belief is that like the Singularity,

1572
01:26:21,040 --> 01:26:23,880
Speaker 1: when it happens, is going to occur in a flash,

1573
01:26:24,360 --> 01:26:27,160
Speaker 1: kind of like the Rapture and almost immediately lead to

1574
01:26:27,200 --> 01:26:29,599
Speaker 1: the creation of either a hell or a heaven. Right,

1575
01:26:30,680 --> 01:26:32,760
Speaker 1: and this will be done by the term they use

1576
01:26:32,880 --> 01:26:36,519
Speaker 1: for this inevitable AI is the Singleton, Right, That's what

1577
01:26:36,560 --> 01:26:39,599
Speaker 1: they call the AI god that's going to come about, Right,

1578
01:26:40,840 --> 01:26:43,519
Speaker 1: And so her obsession is that she has to find

1579
01:26:43,560 --> 01:26:46,640
Speaker 1: a way to make this singleton a nice AI that

1580
01:26:46,720 --> 01:26:49,400
Speaker 1: cares about animals as much as it cares about people. Right,

1581
01:26:49,479 --> 01:26:53,160
Speaker 1: That's our initial big motivation. So she starts emailing Thomasik

1582
01:26:53,200 --> 01:26:56,280
Speaker 1: with her concerns because she's worried that the other rationalists

1583
01:26:56,320 --> 01:26:59,519
Speaker 1: aren't vegans, right, and they don't feel like animal welfare

1584
01:26:59,880 --> 01:27:02,679
Speaker 1: is like the top priority for making sure this AI

1585
01:27:02,880 --> 01:27:06,040
Speaker 1: is good, and she really wants to convert this whole

1586
01:27:06,040 --> 01:27:10,200
Speaker 1: community to veganism in order to ensure that the Singleton

1587
01:27:10,600 --> 01:27:13,679
Speaker 1: is as focused on insect and animal welfare as human welfare.

1588
01:27:14,040 --> 01:27:16,720
Speaker 1: And Thomas Sick does care about animal rights, but he

1589
01:27:16,720 --> 01:27:18,680
Speaker 1: disagrees with her because he's like, now, what matters is

1590
01:27:18,840 --> 01:27:22,720
Speaker 1: maximizing the reduction of suffering, and like a good Singleton

1591
01:27:22,800 --> 01:27:25,439
Speaker 1: will solve climate change and shit, which will be better

1592
01:27:25,439 --> 01:27:27,800
Speaker 1: for the animals. And if we focus on trying to

1593
01:27:27,800 --> 01:27:31,720
Speaker 1: convert everybody in this the rationalist space to veganism, it's

1594
01:27:31,760 --> 01:27:34,280
Speaker 1: going to stop us from accomplishing these bigger goals. Right,

1595
01:27:35,800 --> 01:27:39,439
Speaker 1: this is shattering to Ziz. Right, she decides that he

1596
01:27:39,479 --> 01:27:42,679
Speaker 1: doesn't Thomasik doesn't care about good things, and she decides

1597
01:27:42,680 --> 01:27:46,400
Speaker 1: that she's basically alone in her values. And so her

1598
01:27:46,400 --> 01:27:47,120
Speaker 1: first move.

1599
01:27:47,000 --> 01:27:50,960
Speaker 3: The time to start a smaller subcot shit that sounds.

1600
01:27:50,640 --> 01:27:55,680
Speaker 1: Like we're on our way. She first considers embracing what

1601
01:27:55,760 --> 01:27:59,439
Speaker 1: she calls negative utilitarianism. And this is an example of

1602
01:27:59,439 --> 01:28:03,200
Speaker 1: the fact that the jump. This is a young woman

1603
01:28:03,240 --> 01:28:07,479
Speaker 1: who's not well right because once her hero is like,

1604
01:28:07,640 --> 01:28:11,440
Speaker 1: I don't know if veganism is necessarily are the priority

1605
01:28:11,520 --> 01:28:15,280
Speaker 1: we have to embrace right now, her immediate goals to

1606
01:28:15,360 --> 01:28:19,680
Speaker 1: jump to, well, maybe what I should do is optimize

1607
01:28:19,720 --> 01:28:22,759
Speaker 1: myself to cause as much harm to humanity and quote

1608
01:28:22,880 --> 01:28:25,479
Speaker 1: destroy the world to prevent it from becoming hell for

1609
01:28:25,600 --> 01:28:28,040
Speaker 1: mostly everyone. So that's a jump.

1610
01:28:28,479 --> 01:28:28,680
Speaker 3: You know.

1611
01:28:29,200 --> 01:28:32,960
Speaker 1: That's not somebody who's doing well you think is healthy.

1612
01:28:33,640 --> 01:28:38,280
Speaker 3: No, she's uh, she's having a tough time out. Uh huh.

1613
01:28:38,760 --> 01:28:41,880
Speaker 1: So Ziz does ultimately decide she should still work to

1614
01:28:41,880 --> 01:28:45,639
Speaker 1: bring about a nice AI, even though that necessitates working

1615
01:28:45,640 --> 01:28:48,680
Speaker 1: with people she describes as flesh eating monsters who had

1616
01:28:48,720 --> 01:28:50,960
Speaker 1: created hell on Earth for far more people than those

1617
01:28:51,000 --> 01:28:56,240
Speaker 1: they had helped. That's everybody who eats meat, Okay, yes, yes.

1618
01:28:56,160 --> 01:28:57,679
Speaker 3: And it's ironic, large group.

1619
01:28:58,240 --> 01:29:01,200
Speaker 1: It's ironic because like if you're if you're she really

1620
01:29:01,200 --> 01:29:03,559
Speaker 1: wants to be in the tech industry. She's trying to

1621
01:29:03,560 --> 01:29:05,559
Speaker 1: get in all these people in the tech industry. That's

1622
01:29:05,600 --> 01:29:07,920
Speaker 1: a pretty good description of a lot of the tech industry.

1623
01:29:08,240 --> 01:29:10,599
Speaker 1: They're in fact, she hating monsters who have created hell

1624
01:29:10,640 --> 01:29:12,920
Speaker 1: on Earth for more people than they've helt. But she

1625
01:29:13,040 --> 01:29:15,759
Speaker 1: means that for like, I don't know you're you're onto

1626
01:29:15,800 --> 01:29:18,599
Speaker 1: has a hamburger once a week and look again, factory

1627
01:29:18,640 --> 01:29:22,080
Speaker 1: farming evil. I just don't think that's how morality works.

1628
01:29:26,080 --> 01:29:27,360
Speaker 1: I think you're going a little far.

1629
01:29:27,760 --> 01:29:29,360
Speaker 3: No, she's making a big jumps.

1630
01:29:29,520 --> 01:29:34,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're making bold think bold thinkers, bold thinker. Yeah.

1631
01:29:34,200 --> 01:29:36,280
Speaker 1: Now what you see here with this logic is that

1632
01:29:36,400 --> 01:29:39,280
Speaker 1: Ziz has taken this. She has a massive case of

1633
01:29:39,360 --> 01:29:40,519
Speaker 1: main character syndrome.

1634
01:29:40,640 --> 01:29:40,840
Speaker 3: Right.

1635
01:29:41,360 --> 01:29:44,000
Speaker 1: All of this is based in her attitude that I

1636
01:29:44,320 --> 01:29:49,439
Speaker 1: have to save the universe by creating, by helping to

1637
01:29:49,760 --> 01:29:53,200
Speaker 1: or figuring out how to create an AI that can

1638
01:29:53,320 --> 01:29:56,799
Speaker 1: end the eternal holocaust of all animal life and also

1639
01:29:56,880 --> 01:29:59,760
Speaker 1: save humanity. Right, so I don't have to do that's

1640
01:29:59,800 --> 01:30:03,920
Speaker 1: me a lot. And this is this is a thing again.

1641
01:30:04,040 --> 01:30:08,000
Speaker 1: All of this comes out of both subcultural aspects and

1642
01:30:08,040 --> 01:30:10,559
Speaker 1: aspects of American culture. One major problem that we have

1643
01:30:10,680 --> 01:30:14,800
Speaker 1: in the society is Hollywood has trained us all on

1644
01:30:14,840 --> 01:30:18,600
Speaker 1: a diet of movies with main characters that are the

1645
01:30:18,680 --> 01:30:22,120
Speaker 1: special boy or the special girl with the special powers

1646
01:30:22,400 --> 01:30:27,639
Speaker 1: who save the day, right, and real life doesn't work

1647
01:30:27,680 --> 01:30:30,840
Speaker 1: that way very often. Right, the Nazis. There was no

1648
01:30:30,920 --> 01:30:33,679
Speaker 1: special boy who stopped the Nazis. There were a lot

1649
01:30:33,720 --> 01:30:35,960
Speaker 1: of farm boys who were just like, I guess I'll

1650
01:30:36,000 --> 01:30:38,320
Speaker 1: go run in a machine gun nest until this is

1651
01:30:38,400 --> 01:30:42,439
Speaker 1: done exactly. There were a lot of sixteen year old

1652
01:30:42,520 --> 01:30:44,960
Speaker 1: Russians who were like, guess I'm gonna walk in a bullet,

1653
01:30:45,120 --> 01:30:50,040
Speaker 1: you know, like that's that's how evil gets fought usually unfortunately,

1654
01:30:50,320 --> 01:30:54,800
Speaker 1: all reluctant like that, yeah yeah, or a shitloaded guys

1655
01:30:54,800 --> 01:30:56,880
Speaker 1: in a lab figuring out how to make corn that

1656
01:30:56,960 --> 01:31:00,599
Speaker 1: has higher yields so people don't starve, right, These are

1657
01:31:00,840 --> 01:31:04,479
Speaker 1: these are really like how world class, like huge world

1658
01:31:04,520 --> 01:31:06,040
Speaker 1: problems get solved.

1659
01:31:06,680 --> 01:31:08,080
Speaker 3: People who have been touched you know.

1660
01:31:08,280 --> 01:31:10,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not people who have been touched, And it's

1661
01:31:10,280 --> 01:31:13,200
Speaker 1: certainly not people who have entirely based their understanding on

1662
01:31:13,240 --> 01:31:16,200
Speaker 1: the world of from quotes from Star Wars and Harry Potter.

1663
01:31:22,320 --> 01:31:25,840
Speaker 1: So some of this comes from just like this is

1664
01:31:25,880 --> 01:31:28,840
Speaker 1: a normal, deranged way of thinking that happens to a

1665
01:31:28,840 --> 01:31:31,120
Speaker 1: lot of people in just Western I think a lot

1666
01:31:31,120 --> 01:31:36,320
Speaker 1: of this leads to, uh, why you get very comfortable

1667
01:31:36,400 --> 01:31:39,680
Speaker 1: middle class people joining these very aggressive fascist movements in

1668
01:31:39,720 --> 01:31:41,639
Speaker 1: the West, like in Germany. It's like middle class even

1669
01:31:41,880 --> 01:31:44,240
Speaker 1: mostly like middle class and upper middle class people in

1670
01:31:44,280 --> 01:31:46,840
Speaker 1: the US, especially among like these street fighting, you know,

1671
01:31:46,960 --> 01:31:50,000
Speaker 1: proud boy types. It's because it's not because they're like

1672
01:31:50,080 --> 01:31:54,639
Speaker 1: suffering and desperate. They're not starving in the streets. Uh,

1673
01:31:54,720 --> 01:31:57,680
Speaker 1: It's because they're bored and they want to feel like

1674
01:31:57,720 --> 01:31:59,960
Speaker 1: they're fighting an epic war against evil.

1675
01:32:00,479 --> 01:32:03,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, you want to fill your time with importance, right, right,

1676
01:32:03,200 --> 01:32:05,320
Speaker 3: regardless of what you do, you want to and you

1677
01:32:05,360 --> 01:32:07,760
Speaker 3: want to feel like you have a cause worthy of

1678
01:32:07,840 --> 01:32:10,479
Speaker 3: fighting for. So in that, I guess I see how

1679
01:32:10,520 --> 01:32:11,280
Speaker 3: you got here.

1680
01:32:11,640 --> 01:32:13,439
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's a piece I mean, I think there's

1681
01:32:13,439 --> 01:32:15,479
Speaker 1: a piece of this that originally it's just from this

1682
01:32:15,520 --> 01:32:17,639
Speaker 1: is something in our culture. But there's also a major

1683
01:32:18,439 --> 01:32:21,639
Speaker 1: chunk of this gets supercharged by the kind of thinking

1684
01:32:21,680 --> 01:32:26,000
Speaker 1: that's common in EA and rationalist spaces, because so rationalists

1685
01:32:26,040 --> 01:32:29,439
Speaker 1: and effective altruists are not ever thinking like, hey, how

1686
01:32:29,479 --> 01:32:32,720
Speaker 1: do we as a species fix these major problems? Right?

1687
01:32:33,040 --> 01:32:38,640
Speaker 1: They're thinking, how do I make myself better, optimize myself

1688
01:32:38,920 --> 01:32:45,120
Speaker 1: to be incredible, and how do I like fix the

1689
01:32:45,160 --> 01:32:50,040
Speaker 1: major problems of the world. Alongside my mentally superpowered friends. Right.

1690
01:32:50,080 --> 01:32:55,800
Speaker 1: These are very individual focused philosophies and attitudes, right, and

1691
01:32:55,840 --> 01:32:58,519
Speaker 1: so they do lend themselves to people who think that like,

1692
01:32:58,640 --> 01:33:02,240
Speaker 1: we are heroes who are uniquely empowered to save the world,

1693
01:33:03,640 --> 01:33:06,800
Speaker 1: ziz Wrights. I did not trust most humans indifference to

1694
01:33:06,800 --> 01:33:09,640
Speaker 1: build a net positive cosmos, even in the absence of

1695
01:33:09,640 --> 01:33:13,360
Speaker 1: a technological convenience to prey on animals. So like, I'm

1696
01:33:13,400 --> 01:33:16,799
Speaker 1: the only one who has the mental capability to actually

1697
01:33:17,240 --> 01:33:20,639
Speaker 1: create the net positive cosmos that needs to come into being.

1698
01:33:21,760 --> 01:33:23,960
Speaker 1: All of her discussion is talking in like terms of

1699
01:33:24,000 --> 01:33:26,840
Speaker 1: I'm saving the universe, right, And a lot of that

1700
01:33:26,880 --> 01:33:29,559
Speaker 1: does come out of the way many of these people

1701
01:33:29,640 --> 01:33:32,720
Speaker 1: talk on the internet about the stakes of AI and

1702
01:33:33,240 --> 01:33:35,880
Speaker 1: just like the importance of rationality. Again, this is something

1703
01:33:35,920 --> 01:33:39,519
Speaker 1: scientology does. El Ron Hubbard always couched getting people on

1704
01:33:39,640 --> 01:33:41,680
Speaker 1: dianetics in terms of we are going to save the

1705
01:33:41,680 --> 01:33:44,240
Speaker 1: world and end war, right, Like this is you know,

1706
01:33:44,360 --> 01:33:49,320
Speaker 1: it's very normal for cold stuff. She starts reading around

1707
01:33:49,400 --> 01:33:51,920
Speaker 1: this time, when she's in college, Harry Potter and The

1708
01:33:51,960 --> 01:33:55,800
Speaker 1: Methods of Rationality. This helps to solidify her feelings of

1709
01:33:55,800 --> 01:33:59,200
Speaker 1: her own centrality as a hero figure. In a blog

1710
01:33:59,240 --> 01:34:02,479
Speaker 1: post where she is out her intellectual journey. She quotes

1711
01:34:02,520 --> 01:34:06,680
Speaker 1: a line from that fanfic of yed Kowski's that is,

1712
01:34:07,120 --> 01:34:11,200
Speaker 1: it's essentially about what Yudkowski calls the hero contract, right,

1713
01:34:11,320 --> 01:34:15,760
Speaker 1: or it's essentially about this concept called the hero contract. Right,

1714
01:34:15,800 --> 01:34:21,000
Speaker 1: And there's this, there's this, This is a psychological concept

1715
01:34:21,040 --> 01:34:24,880
Speaker 1: among academics right where, And it's about like, it's about

1716
01:34:24,920 --> 01:34:28,479
Speaker 1: analyzing how we as a how we should look at

1717
01:34:28,920 --> 01:34:34,680
Speaker 1: the people who societies declare heroes and the communities that

1718
01:34:34,720 --> 01:34:39,200
Speaker 1: declare them heroes and see them as in a dialogue, right,

1719
01:34:39,280 --> 01:34:42,240
Speaker 1: as in, when you're in a country decides this guy

1720
01:34:42,360 --> 01:34:46,040
Speaker 1: is a hero, he is, through his actions kind of

1721
01:34:46,080 --> 01:34:48,679
Speaker 1: conversing to them and they are kind of telling him

1722
01:34:49,479 --> 01:34:50,840
Speaker 1: what they expect from him.

1723
01:34:50,960 --> 01:34:51,160
Speaker 3: Right.

1724
01:34:51,800 --> 01:34:55,439
Speaker 1: But Yedkowski wrestles with this concept, right, and he comes

1725
01:34:55,439 --> 01:34:58,519
Speaker 1: to some very weird conclusions about it. In one of

1726
01:34:58,560 --> 01:35:02,120
Speaker 1: the worst articles that I've ever read. He frames it

1727
01:35:02,120 --> 01:35:06,000
Speaker 1: as hero licensing to refer to the fact that people

1728
01:35:06,680 --> 01:35:08,600
Speaker 1: get angry at you if they don't think you have

1729
01:35:08,720 --> 01:35:11,280
Speaker 1: if you're trying to do something and they don't think

1730
01:35:11,320 --> 01:35:13,519
Speaker 1: you have a hero license to do it. In other words,

1731
01:35:13,800 --> 01:35:17,519
Speaker 1: if you're trying to do something like that they don't

1732
01:35:17,560 --> 01:35:20,680
Speaker 1: think you're qualified to do. He'll describe that as them

1733
01:35:20,720 --> 01:35:22,800
Speaker 1: not thinking you of like a hero license, and he

1734
01:35:22,880 --> 01:35:25,719
Speaker 1: like writes this annoying article that's like a conversation between

1735
01:35:25,840 --> 01:35:28,400
Speaker 1: him and a person who's supposed to embody the community

1736
01:35:28,400 --> 01:35:31,040
Speaker 1: of people who don't think he should write Harry Potter

1737
01:35:31,080 --> 01:35:36,200
Speaker 1: fan fiction. It's all very silly, and again always is ridiculous.

1738
01:35:36,240 --> 01:35:39,400
Speaker 1: But Ziz is very interested in the idea of the

1739
01:35:39,439 --> 01:35:42,479
Speaker 1: hero contract, right, but she comes up with her own

1740
01:35:42,520 --> 01:35:45,560
Speaker 1: spin on it, which she calls the true hero contract,

1741
01:35:45,760 --> 01:35:49,240
Speaker 1: right and instead of again, the academic term is the

1742
01:35:49,280 --> 01:35:55,280
Speaker 1: hero contract means societies and communities pick heroes, and those

1743
01:35:55,400 --> 01:35:57,519
Speaker 1: heroes in the community that they're in are in a

1744
01:35:57,560 --> 01:36:01,080
Speaker 1: constant dialogue with each other about what is heroic and

1745
01:36:01,120 --> 01:36:04,200
Speaker 1: what is expected right, what the hero needs from the community,

1746
01:36:04,200 --> 01:36:07,439
Speaker 1: and vice versa. You know that's all that that's saying,

1747
01:36:07,960 --> 01:36:11,880
Speaker 1: Zizz says, no, no, nah, that's bullshit. The real hero

1748
01:36:12,040 --> 01:36:16,760
Speaker 1: contract is quote poor free energy at my direction, and

1749
01:36:16,800 --> 01:36:20,840
Speaker 1: it will go into the optimization for good in other words,

1750
01:36:21,240 --> 01:36:25,439
Speaker 1: classics sis. It's not a dialogue. If you're the hero,

1751
01:36:26,680 --> 01:36:30,360
Speaker 1: the community has to give you their energy and time

1752
01:36:30,439 --> 01:36:34,000
Speaker 1: and power, and you will use it to optimize them

1753
01:36:34,040 --> 01:36:36,480
Speaker 1: for good because they don't know how to do it themselves,

1754
01:36:36,520 --> 01:36:38,760
Speaker 1: because they're not really able to think. You know, they're

1755
01:36:38,800 --> 01:36:41,960
Speaker 1: not the hero, because they're not the hero. Right you are, you.

1756
01:36:41,840 --> 01:36:43,880
Speaker 3: Are, you are the all powerful hero.

1757
01:36:45,520 --> 01:36:48,000
Speaker 1: Now this is a fancy way of describing how cult

1758
01:36:48,080 --> 01:36:53,120
Speaker 1: leaders think. Right, Yeah, everyone exists to poor energy into me,

1759
01:36:53,240 --> 01:36:54,960
Speaker 1: and I'll use it to do what's right, you know.

1760
01:36:55,720 --> 01:36:58,719
Speaker 1: So this is where her mind is in twenty twelve,

1761
01:36:58,760 --> 01:37:01,559
Speaker 1: but again she's just a student posting on the Internet

1762
01:37:01,640 --> 01:37:03,960
Speaker 1: and chatting with other members of the subculture. At this

1763
01:37:04,040 --> 01:37:07,960
Speaker 1: point that year, she starts donating money to MIRY, the

1764
01:37:08,040 --> 01:37:12,559
Speaker 1: Machine Intelligence Research Research Institute, which is a nonprofit devoted

1765
01:37:12,560 --> 01:37:16,240
Speaker 1: to studying how to create friendly ai yed Kowski founded

1766
01:37:16,280 --> 01:37:18,479
Speaker 1: MIRI in two thousand, right, so this is his like

1767
01:37:18,560 --> 01:37:23,000
Speaker 1: nonprofit think tank. In twenty thirteen, she finished an internship

1768
01:37:23,040 --> 01:37:25,880
Speaker 1: at NASA. So again she is a very smart young woman.

1769
01:37:25,960 --> 01:37:26,120
Speaker 3: Right.

1770
01:37:26,120 --> 01:37:28,240
Speaker 1: She gets an internship at NASA and she builds a

1771
01:37:28,240 --> 01:37:31,840
Speaker 1: tool for space weather analysis. So the person with a

1772
01:37:31,840 --> 01:37:34,840
Speaker 1: lot of potential, very very as all of the stuff

1773
01:37:34,880 --> 01:37:38,000
Speaker 1: she's writing is like dumbest shit. But again, intelligence isn't

1774
01:37:38,000 --> 01:37:41,240
Speaker 1: an absolute people can be brilliant at coding and have

1775
01:37:41,439 --> 01:37:43,400
Speaker 1: terrible ideas about everything else.

1776
01:37:43,520 --> 01:37:44,400
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.

1777
01:37:44,760 --> 01:37:48,479
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder if she's telling you think she's telling

1778
01:37:48,520 --> 01:37:49,240
Speaker 4: people at work.

1779
01:37:51,840 --> 01:37:52,240
Speaker 3: I don't.

1780
01:37:52,479 --> 01:37:54,240
Speaker 1: I don't think at this point she is, because she's

1781
01:37:54,360 --> 01:37:58,920
Speaker 1: super insular, right, She's very uncomfortable talking to people. Right,

1782
01:37:59,439 --> 01:38:01,839
Speaker 1: She's going to kind of break out of her shell

1783
01:38:01,880 --> 01:38:04,280
Speaker 1: once she gets to San Francisco. Now, I don't know.

1784
01:38:04,400 --> 01:38:06,519
Speaker 1: She may have talked to some of them about this stuff,

1785
01:38:06,520 --> 01:38:08,160
Speaker 1: but I really don't think she is at this point.

1786
01:38:08,200 --> 01:38:10,680
Speaker 1: I don't think she's comfortable enough doing that.

1787
01:38:13,080 --> 01:38:13,600
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1788
01:38:13,640 --> 01:38:16,759
Speaker 1: So she also does an internship at the software giant Oracle.

1789
01:38:16,920 --> 01:38:19,160
Speaker 1: So at this point you've got this young lady who's

1790
01:38:19,160 --> 01:38:20,439
Speaker 1: got a lot of potential, you.

1791
01:38:20,400 --> 01:38:21,559
Speaker 3: Know, a real career as well.

1792
01:38:21,640 --> 01:38:25,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, the start of a very real career. That's a

1793
01:38:25,120 --> 01:38:28,280
Speaker 1: great starting resume for like a twenty two year old.

1794
01:38:29,560 --> 01:38:32,160
Speaker 1: Now at this point, she's torn should she go get

1795
01:38:32,160 --> 01:38:35,519
Speaker 1: a graduate degree, right or should she jump right into

1796
01:38:35,560 --> 01:38:39,040
Speaker 1: the tech industry, you know, And she worries that like

1797
01:38:39,080 --> 01:38:41,679
Speaker 1: if she waits to get a graduate degree, this will

1798
01:38:41,720 --> 01:38:44,960
Speaker 1: delay her making a positive impact on the existential risk

1799
01:38:45,080 --> 01:38:48,120
Speaker 1: costs by AI and it'll be too late. The singularity

1800
01:38:48,120 --> 01:38:51,960
Speaker 1: will happen already. You know. At this point, she's still

1801
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:55,400
Speaker 1: a big fawning fan of Eliza Yedkowski and the highest

1802
01:38:55,439 --> 01:38:59,479
Speaker 1: ranking woman at Gydkowski's organization. Mary is a lady named

1803
01:38:59,520 --> 01:39:03,519
Speaker 1: Susan Salomon. Susan gives a public invitation to the online

1804
01:39:03,560 --> 01:39:06,559
Speaker 1: community to pitch ideas for the best way to improve

1805
01:39:06,640 --> 01:39:09,719
Speaker 1: the ultimate quality of the singleton that these people believe

1806
01:39:09,800 --> 01:39:13,200
Speaker 1: is inevitable. In other words, hey, give us your ideas

1807
01:39:13,200 --> 01:39:15,960
Speaker 1: for how to make the inevitable AI god nice right.

1808
01:39:17,360 --> 01:39:19,880
Speaker 1: Here's what Ziz writes about her response to that. I

1809
01:39:19,920 --> 01:39:22,080
Speaker 1: asked her whether I should try an alter course and

1810
01:39:22,120 --> 01:39:24,839
Speaker 1: do research or continue a fork of my pre existing

1811
01:39:24,920 --> 01:39:28,479
Speaker 1: life plan earned to give as a computer engineer, but

1812
01:39:28,520 --> 01:39:31,639
Speaker 1: retrain and try to do research directly instead. At the time,

1813
01:39:31,680 --> 01:39:33,360
Speaker 1: I was planning to go to grad school and I

1814
01:39:33,360 --> 01:39:36,320
Speaker 1: had an irrational attachment to the idea. She sort of

1815
01:39:36,320 --> 01:39:38,519
Speaker 1: compromised and said I should go to grad school, fight

1816
01:39:38,600 --> 01:39:41,040
Speaker 1: a startup co founder, drop out, and earn to give

1817
01:39:41,120 --> 01:39:48,960
Speaker 1: via startups instead. First off, bad advice. That advice just

1818
01:39:49,320 --> 01:39:54,600
Speaker 1: st being Steve Jobs worked for Steve Jobs well, and

1819
01:39:55,040 --> 01:39:57,240
Speaker 1: Bill Gates. I guess to an extent, it doesn't work

1820
01:39:57,280 --> 01:39:57,960
Speaker 1: for most people.

1821
01:39:58,320 --> 01:40:02,519
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it seems like the general tech disruptor idea,

1822
01:40:02,560 --> 01:40:02,760
Speaker 3: you know.

1823
01:40:04,160 --> 01:40:07,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and most people these people aren't very original thinkers,

1824
01:40:07,240 --> 01:40:09,000
Speaker 1: like yeah, she's just saying like, yeah, go to a

1825
01:40:09,040 --> 01:40:14,439
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. So Ziz does go to grad school, and

1826
01:40:14,520 --> 01:40:17,640
Speaker 1: somewhere around that time in twenty fourteen, she attends a

1827
01:40:17,760 --> 01:40:21,680
Speaker 1: lecture by Elisia Jedkowski on the subject of Inadequate Equilibria,

1828
01:40:22,080 --> 01:40:24,360
Speaker 1: which is the title of a book that Judkowski had

1829
01:40:24,360 --> 01:40:27,040
Speaker 1: wrote about the time, and the book is about where

1830
01:40:27,080 --> 01:40:31,880
Speaker 1: and how civilizations get stuck. One reviewer, Brian Kaplan, who

1831
01:40:31,920 --> 01:40:34,599
Speaker 1: despite being a professor of economics must have a brain

1832
01:40:34,640 --> 01:40:37,719
Speaker 1: as smooth as a pearl, wrote this about it. Every

1833
01:40:37,760 --> 01:40:40,559
Speaker 1: society is screwed up. Elisia Jieddkowski is one of the

1834
01:40:40,560 --> 01:40:42,719
Speaker 1: few thinkers on earth who are trying, at the most

1835
01:40:42,720 --> 01:40:46,960
Speaker 1: general level to understand why. And this is like, wow,

1836
01:40:47,200 --> 01:40:52,040
Speaker 1: that's it, you, pete. Please study the humanities a little bit,

1837
01:40:52,080 --> 01:40:54,880
Speaker 1: A little bit, a little bit, I mean, fuck man.

1838
01:40:55,360 --> 01:40:58,480
Speaker 1: The first and most like one of the first influential

1839
01:40:58,520 --> 01:41:01,520
Speaker 1: hit works of his modern historic scholarship is The Decline

1840
01:41:01,560 --> 01:41:04,679
Speaker 1: and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's a whole book

1841
01:41:04,720 --> 01:41:09,080
Speaker 1: about why a society fell apart, and like motherfucker. More recently,

1842
01:41:09,479 --> 01:41:14,360
Speaker 1: Mike Davis existed, like like Jesus Christ.

1843
01:41:17,280 --> 01:41:18,880
Speaker 3: This guy continues to get traction.

1844
01:41:19,280 --> 01:41:21,680
Speaker 1: Nobody else is thinking about why society is screwed up,

1845
01:41:21,680 --> 01:41:23,520
Speaker 1: but a leezer yed Kowski.

1846
01:41:23,560 --> 01:41:26,920
Speaker 3: This man, this man, this guy this.

1847
01:41:29,360 --> 01:41:31,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I was trying to find another. I read

1848
01:41:31,280 --> 01:41:38,400
Speaker 1: through that Martin Luther King junior speech. Everything's good. Oh,

1849
01:41:38,560 --> 01:41:43,320
Speaker 1: oh my god, oh my god. Like motherfucker, so many

1850
01:41:43,360 --> 01:41:45,680
Speaker 1: people do nothing but try to write about why our

1851
01:41:45,720 --> 01:41:47,879
Speaker 1: society is sick. He did.

1852
01:41:50,280 --> 01:41:51,160
Speaker 3: On all levels.

1853
01:41:51,200 --> 01:41:56,000
Speaker 7: By the way, everybody's thinking about this.

1854
01:41:56,000 --> 01:42:00,639
Speaker 1: This is such a common subjective scholarship and disc gout ship.

1855
01:42:03,840 --> 01:42:05,960
Speaker 3: What everyone's talking always.

1856
01:42:06,280 --> 01:42:08,920
Speaker 1: It would be like if if I got really into

1857
01:42:08,960 --> 01:42:11,479
Speaker 1: like reading medical textbooks and was like, you know what,

1858
01:42:12,240 --> 01:42:15,240
Speaker 1: nobody's ever tried to figure out how to transplant a heart.

1859
01:42:15,439 --> 01:42:18,240
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a book about how that might work.

1860
01:42:19,520 --> 01:42:20,320
Speaker 1: I think I got it.

1861
01:42:21,040 --> 01:42:21,320
Speaker 3: You know.

1862
01:42:26,240 --> 01:42:36,439
Speaker 1: People, so yeah, speaking of these fucking people have sex

1863
01:42:36,479 --> 01:42:41,000
Speaker 1: with Uh Nope, well that's something No, No, I don't know,

1864
01:42:41,080 --> 01:42:50,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh don't fuck listen to ads. We're

1865
01:42:50,880 --> 01:42:54,960
Speaker 1: back so Zizz is at this speech where Yudkowski is

1866
01:42:54,960 --> 01:42:57,479
Speaker 1: shilling his book, and he most of what he seems

1867
01:42:57,479 --> 01:43:00,599
Speaker 1: to be talking about in this speech about this book

1868
01:43:00,640 --> 01:43:03,120
Speaker 1: about why societies fall apart is how to make a

1869
01:43:03,120 --> 01:43:06,840
Speaker 1: tech startup. She says, quote, he gave a recipe for

1870
01:43:06,880 --> 01:43:10,439
Speaker 1: finding startup ideas. He said, Paul Graham's idea only filter

1871
01:43:10,560 --> 01:43:15,080
Speaker 1: on people, ignore startup ideas was partial epistemic learned helplessness.

1872
01:43:15,080 --> 01:43:17,679
Speaker 1: That means Paul Graham is saying, focus on finding good

1873
01:43:17,720 --> 01:43:20,479
Speaker 1: people that you'd start a company with. Having an idea

1874
01:43:20,520 --> 01:43:24,120
Speaker 1: for a company doesn't matter. Yeddkowski says, of course, startup

1875
01:43:24,120 --> 01:43:26,840
Speaker 1: ideas mattered. You needed a good startup idea. So look

1876
01:43:26,880 --> 01:43:29,599
Speaker 1: for a way in the world is broken, then compare

1877
01:43:29,680 --> 01:43:32,640
Speaker 1: against a checklist of things you couldn't fix, you know,

1878
01:43:32,840 --> 01:43:35,960
Speaker 1: right like that, That's what this speech is largely about,

1879
01:43:36,000 --> 01:43:38,280
Speaker 1: as him being like, here's how to find startup ideas.

1880
01:43:38,640 --> 01:43:41,400
Speaker 1: So she starts thinking. She starts thinking as hard as

1881
01:43:41,479 --> 01:43:46,160
Speaker 1: she can, and you know, being a person who is

1882
01:43:46,439 --> 01:43:49,920
Speaker 1: very much of the tech brain industry rot at this

1883
01:43:49,960 --> 01:43:52,240
Speaker 1: point she comes up with a brilliant idea. It's a

1884
01:43:52,320 --> 01:43:55,439
Speaker 1: genius idea. Oh you're gonna you're gonna love this idea,

1885
01:43:55,560 --> 01:44:00,600
Speaker 1: David Uber for prostitutes.

1886
01:44:03,400 --> 01:44:03,680
Speaker 5: With me.

1887
01:44:04,160 --> 01:44:11,200
Speaker 1: No, No, that's where she landed. She lands on the

1888
01:44:11,240 --> 01:44:16,559
Speaker 1: idea of, oh wow, sex work is illegal, but porn isn't.

1889
01:44:17,240 --> 01:44:20,680
Speaker 1: So if we start an uber whereby a team with

1890
01:44:20,760 --> 01:44:25,160
Speaker 1: a camera and a porn star come to your house

1891
01:44:25,200 --> 01:44:29,719
Speaker 1: and you fuck them and record it, that's a legal loophole.

1892
01:44:29,880 --> 01:44:30,880
Speaker 1: We just found that at.

1893
01:44:32,040 --> 01:44:36,640
Speaker 6: Not just the bus, she makes the big bus, the

1894
01:44:36,720 --> 01:44:43,080
Speaker 6: gig economy.

1895
01:44:43,920 --> 01:44:46,639
Speaker 1: It is really like don dreper moment, what about uber

1896
01:44:46,720 --> 01:44:51,040
Speaker 1: but a pimp It's it's so funny these people.

1897
01:44:55,240 --> 01:44:58,759
Speaker 3: You gotta love it. You got wow, it's wow wow.

1898
01:44:58,920 --> 01:45:01,040
Speaker 3: What a place to end U. Yeah. I would love

1899
01:45:01,080 --> 01:45:02,400
Speaker 3: to see the other drafts.

1900
01:45:02,680 --> 01:45:13,160
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, god yeah man. That's that's that is the

1901
01:45:13,200 --> 01:45:14,280
Speaker 1: good stuff, isn't it?

1902
01:45:14,720 --> 01:45:15,400
Speaker 3: Yeah?

1903
01:45:15,439 --> 01:45:15,799
Speaker 6: Wow?

1904
01:45:16,720 --> 01:45:17,080
Speaker 3: Wow?

1905
01:45:18,760 --> 01:45:22,120
Speaker 1: We special minds at work here, oh man.

1906
01:45:22,400 --> 01:45:25,240
Speaker 3: Ultimately, to save it all, I have to make smart

1907
01:45:25,720 --> 01:45:26,360
Speaker 3: I have to.

1908
01:45:26,400 --> 01:45:28,080
Speaker 1: Make pimp uber.

1909
01:45:29,120 --> 01:45:30,400
Speaker 3: That's so wild.

1910
01:45:30,920 --> 01:45:36,519
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, the uber of pimping. What an idea. So

1911
01:45:36,880 --> 01:45:39,599
Speaker 1: Ziz devotes her brief time in grad school. She's working

1912
01:45:39,640 --> 01:45:42,519
Speaker 1: on pimping Uber to try and find a partner.

1913
01:45:42,600 --> 01:45:42,760
Speaker 3: Right.

1914
01:45:42,840 --> 01:45:45,040
Speaker 1: She wants to have a startup partner, someone who will

1915
01:45:45,120 --> 01:45:46,640
Speaker 1: will embark on this journey with her.

1916
01:45:46,800 --> 01:45:48,559
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's an investor you need.

1917
01:45:48,439 --> 01:45:54,920
Speaker 1: To it doesn't work out, she drops out of grad

1918
01:45:54,960 --> 01:45:57,519
Speaker 1: school because quote, I did not find someone who felt

1919
01:45:57,520 --> 01:46:01,519
Speaker 1: like good startup co founder material. This may be because

1920
01:46:01,520 --> 01:46:05,200
Speaker 1: she's very bad at talking to people and also probably

1921
01:46:05,240 --> 01:46:07,679
Speaker 1: scares people off because the things that she talks about

1922
01:46:07,720 --> 01:46:08,639
Speaker 1: are deeply off putting.

1923
01:46:08,800 --> 01:46:11,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say. It's also a terrible idea.

1924
01:46:12,360 --> 01:46:14,600
Speaker 1: And at this point she hasn't done anything bad, so

1925
01:46:14,640 --> 01:46:17,000
Speaker 1: I feel bad for this is a person who's very lonely,

1926
01:46:17,280 --> 01:46:19,479
Speaker 1: who is very confused. She has by this point realized

1927
01:46:19,479 --> 01:46:22,439
Speaker 1: that she's trans but not transitioned. She's in like this

1928
01:46:22,520 --> 01:46:25,920
Speaker 1: is this is like a tough place to be right hard.

1929
01:46:26,040 --> 01:46:28,040
Speaker 3: That's a hard times. That's that's hard.

1930
01:46:28,160 --> 01:46:31,439
Speaker 1: And nothing about her inherent personality makes it is going

1931
01:46:31,479 --> 01:46:33,800
Speaker 1: to make this easier for her. Right who she is

1932
01:46:34,080 --> 01:46:40,280
Speaker 1: makes all of this much harder because she also makes

1933
01:46:40,320 --> 01:46:44,400
Speaker 1: some comments about dropping out because her her thesis advisor

1934
01:46:44,520 --> 01:46:47,920
Speaker 1: was abusive. I don't fully know what this means. And

1935
01:46:48,000 --> 01:46:52,639
Speaker 1: here's why, Ziz and encounter some behavior I will describe

1936
01:46:52,680 --> 01:46:56,040
Speaker 1: later that is abusive from other people, but also regularly

1937
01:46:56,080 --> 01:46:59,280
Speaker 1: defines abuse as people who disagree with her about the

1938
01:46:59,320 --> 01:47:01,599
Speaker 1: only thing that Matt is being creating an AI god

1939
01:47:01,680 --> 01:47:04,760
Speaker 1: to protect the animals. So I don't know if her

1940
01:47:04,760 --> 01:47:07,559
Speaker 1: thesis advisor was abusive or was just like, maybe drop

1941
01:47:07,640 --> 01:47:11,960
Speaker 1: the alien god idea for a second. Yeah, yeah, but

1942
01:47:12,280 --> 01:47:15,360
Speaker 1: maybe maybe focus on like finding a job, you know,

1943
01:47:16,400 --> 01:47:20,160
Speaker 1: making some friends on a couple of dates, going a

1944
01:47:20,200 --> 01:47:23,080
Speaker 1: couple of dates, something like that. Maybe maybe maybe, like

1945
01:47:23,800 --> 01:47:27,759
Speaker 1: maybe make God on the back burner here for a second.

1946
01:47:29,240 --> 01:47:32,280
Speaker 1: Whatever happened here? She decides it's time to move to

1947
01:47:32,320 --> 01:47:34,479
Speaker 1: the Bay. This is like twenty sixteen. She's going to

1948
01:47:34,560 --> 01:47:36,240
Speaker 1: find a big tech job. She's going to make that

1949
01:47:36,280 --> 01:47:39,360
Speaker 1: big tech money while she figures out a startup idea

1950
01:47:39,400 --> 01:47:41,800
Speaker 1: and finds a co founder who will let her make

1951
01:47:41,920 --> 01:47:44,840
Speaker 1: enough money to change and save the world, well, the

1952
01:47:44,840 --> 01:47:48,400
Speaker 1: whole universe. Her first plan is to give the money

1953
01:47:48,400 --> 01:47:52,080
Speaker 1: to miry Yudkowski's organization so it can continue it's important,

1954
01:47:52,080 --> 01:47:56,200
Speaker 1: important work imagining an ic AI. Her parents. She's got

1955
01:47:56,320 --> 01:47:58,000
Speaker 1: enough family money that her parents are able to pay

1956
01:47:58,040 --> 01:48:00,280
Speaker 1: for like I think like six months or more of

1957
01:48:00,320 --> 01:48:03,600
Speaker 1: rent in the Bay, which is not nothing, not a

1958
01:48:03,680 --> 01:48:07,519
Speaker 1: cheap place to live. I don't know exactly how long

1959
01:48:07,560 --> 01:48:10,120
Speaker 1: her parents are paying, but like that that implies a

1960
01:48:10,200 --> 01:48:15,240
Speaker 1: degree of financial comfort. Right, So she gets hired by

1961
01:48:15,280 --> 01:48:19,960
Speaker 1: a startup very quickly, because again very gifted with the resume.

1962
01:48:20,360 --> 01:48:22,320
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, yes it's.

1963
01:48:22,120 --> 01:48:25,120
Speaker 1: Some sort of gaming company. But at this point she's

1964
01:48:25,160 --> 01:48:28,640
Speaker 1: made another change in her ethics system based on the

1965
01:48:28,720 --> 01:48:33,600
Speaker 1: Leiser Yeddkowski's writings. One of Yudkowski's writings argues that it

1966
01:48:33,720 --> 01:48:39,200
Speaker 1: is talking about the difference between consequentialists and virtue ethics. Right.

1967
01:48:39,479 --> 01:48:43,519
Speaker 1: Consequentialists are people who focus entirely on what will the

1968
01:48:43,600 --> 01:48:46,040
Speaker 1: outcome of my actions be? And it kind of doesn't

1969
01:48:46,040 --> 01:48:48,080
Speaker 1: matter what I'm doing or even if it's sometimes a

1970
01:48:48,080 --> 01:48:52,639
Speaker 1: little fucked up, if the end result is good. Virtue

1971
01:48:52,680 --> 01:48:56,639
Speaker 1: ethics people folk have a code and stick to it. Right,

1972
01:48:57,160 --> 01:49:00,200
Speaker 1: And actually, and I kind of am surprised that he

1973
01:49:00,240 --> 01:49:03,360
Speaker 1: came to this. Kowski's conclusion is that like, while logically

1974
01:49:03,640 --> 01:49:06,200
Speaker 1: you're more likely to succeed, like on paper, you're more

1975
01:49:06,320 --> 01:49:08,840
Speaker 1: likely to succeed as a consequentialist. His opinion is that

1976
01:49:09,160 --> 01:49:11,680
Speaker 1: virtue ethics has the best outcome. People tend to do

1977
01:49:11,800 --> 01:49:13,719
Speaker 1: well when they stick to a code and they try

1978
01:49:13,720 --> 01:49:17,360
Speaker 1: to rather than like anything goes as long as I succeed, right,

1979
01:49:18,520 --> 01:49:21,439
Speaker 1: And I think that's actually a pretty decent way to

1980
01:49:21,560 --> 01:49:22,240
Speaker 1: live your life.

1981
01:49:22,960 --> 01:49:25,880
Speaker 3: It's a pretty reasonable cosion for him.

1982
01:49:26,439 --> 01:49:28,559
Speaker 1: It's a reasonable conclusion for him. So I don't blame

1983
01:49:28,600 --> 01:49:31,280
Speaker 1: him on this part. But here's the problem. Zizz is

1984
01:49:31,360 --> 01:49:34,600
Speaker 1: trying to break into and succeed in the tech industry,

1985
01:49:35,160 --> 01:49:40,559
Speaker 1: and you can't. You are very unlikely to succeed at

1986
01:49:40,560 --> 01:49:43,240
Speaker 1: a high level in the tech industry if you are

1987
01:49:43,360 --> 01:49:46,679
Speaker 1: unwilling to do things and and be have things done

1988
01:49:46,720 --> 01:49:49,600
Speaker 1: to you that are unethical and fucked up. I'm not

1989
01:49:49,640 --> 01:49:51,800
Speaker 1: saying this is good. And this is the reality of

1990
01:49:51,880 --> 01:49:55,719
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry too, right, I experience when I started,

1991
01:49:55,760 --> 01:50:00,240
Speaker 1: and I started with an unpaid internship. Unpaid internships are bad, right,

1992
01:50:00,720 --> 01:50:03,760
Speaker 1: It's bad that those exist. They inherently favor people who

1993
01:50:03,800 --> 01:50:06,439
Speaker 1: have money and people who have family connections. You know.

1994
01:50:06,680 --> 01:50:09,320
Speaker 1: I had like a small savings account for my job

1995
01:50:09,360 --> 01:50:12,320
Speaker 1: in special ed, but that was the standard. It's like,

1996
01:50:12,520 --> 01:50:14,720
Speaker 1: there were a lot of unpaid internships. It got me

1997
01:50:14,960 --> 01:50:17,040
Speaker 1: my foot in the door. It worked for me. I

1998
01:50:17,080 --> 01:50:20,000
Speaker 1: also worked a lot of overtime that I didn't get paid.

1999
01:50:20,040 --> 01:50:21,920
Speaker 1: For I did a lot of shit that wasn't a

2000
01:50:21,920 --> 01:50:24,479
Speaker 1: part of my job to impress my bosses to make

2001
01:50:24,720 --> 01:50:28,960
Speaker 1: myself indispensable so that they would decide, like, we have

2002
01:50:29,080 --> 01:50:31,040
Speaker 1: to keep this guy on and pay him. And it

2003
01:50:31,080 --> 01:50:33,559
Speaker 1: worked for me, And I just wanted to add because

2004
01:50:33,560 --> 01:50:35,240
Speaker 1: this was not in the original thing. A big part

2005
01:50:35,280 --> 01:50:37,120
Speaker 1: of why it worked for me is that I'm talking

2006
01:50:37,160 --> 01:50:40,040
Speaker 1: about a few different companies here, but particularly at Cracked

2007
01:50:40,040 --> 01:50:43,960
Speaker 1: where I had the internship, Like my bosses, you know,

2008
01:50:44,360 --> 01:50:47,000
Speaker 1: made a choice to me intor me and you know,

2009
01:50:47,120 --> 01:50:50,040
Speaker 1: to get me, you know, to work overtime on their

2010
01:50:50,080 --> 01:50:53,120
Speaker 1: own behalf to like make sure I got a paying job,

2011
01:50:53,479 --> 01:50:55,760
Speaker 1: which is a big part of like the luck that

2012
01:50:55,840 --> 01:50:59,360
Speaker 1: I encountered that a lot of people don't. So that's

2013
01:50:59,400 --> 01:51:02,240
Speaker 1: another major your part of like why things worked out

2014
01:51:02,280 --> 01:51:04,559
Speaker 1: for me is that I just got incredibly lucky with

2015
01:51:04,600 --> 01:51:08,400
Speaker 1: the people I was working for and with that's bad.

2016
01:51:08,920 --> 01:51:12,920
Speaker 1: It's not good that things work that way, right, It's not.

2017
01:51:13,600 --> 01:51:15,479
Speaker 3: Set up for you either, Like you know, you kind

2018
01:51:15,479 --> 01:51:18,000
Speaker 3: of defied the odds. It's it's like you said, the

2019
01:51:18,080 --> 01:51:20,560
Speaker 3: rich people who get the job exactly.

2020
01:51:20,680 --> 01:51:25,200
Speaker 1: It's not even yes that said, if I am giving

2021
01:51:25,280 --> 01:51:28,679
Speaker 1: someone if someone wants, what is the most likely path

2022
01:51:28,760 --> 01:51:32,120
Speaker 1: to succeeding? You know, I've I've just got this job working,

2023
01:51:32,320 --> 01:51:34,920
Speaker 1: you know, on this production company or the music steer.

2024
01:51:35,600 --> 01:51:38,160
Speaker 1: I would I would say, well, your best odds are

2025
01:51:38,240 --> 01:51:43,959
Speaker 1: to like make yourself completely indispensable and become obsessively devoted

2026
01:51:44,000 --> 01:51:48,240
Speaker 1: to that task. Right. Uh, that's it. I don't tend

2027
01:51:48,280 --> 01:51:50,559
Speaker 1: to give that advice anymore. I have and I have

2028
01:51:50,640 --> 01:51:53,640
Speaker 1: had several other friends succeed as a result of it,

2029
01:51:54,120 --> 01:51:57,200
Speaker 1: and all of us also burnt ourselves out and did

2030
01:51:57,320 --> 01:52:00,280
Speaker 1: huge amounts of damage to ourselves, Like I am permanently

2031
01:52:00,360 --> 01:52:04,800
Speaker 1: broken as a result of you know, the ten years

2032
01:52:04,800 --> 01:52:06,760
Speaker 1: that I did eighty hour weeks and shit, you.

2033
01:52:06,680 --> 01:52:09,680
Speaker 3: Know now you're sounding like somebody works in the entertainment and.

2034
01:52:09,960 --> 01:52:13,599
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and it worked for me, right, I got

2035
01:52:13,920 --> 01:52:16,559
Speaker 1: I got to I succeeded, I got a great job,

2036
01:52:16,640 --> 01:52:20,559
Speaker 1: I got money. Most people, it doesn't, and it's bad

2037
01:52:20,560 --> 01:52:24,000
Speaker 1: that it works this way. Ziz, unlike me, is not

2038
01:52:24,120 --> 01:52:25,080
Speaker 1: willing to do that.

2039
01:52:25,640 --> 01:52:25,840
Speaker 3: Right.

2040
01:52:26,280 --> 01:52:29,400
Speaker 1: She thinks it's wrong to be asked to work overtime

2041
01:52:29,520 --> 01:52:31,439
Speaker 1: and not get paid for it, and so on her

2042
01:52:31,439 --> 01:52:34,040
Speaker 1: first day at the job, she leaves after eight hours

2043
01:52:34,439 --> 01:52:36,240
Speaker 1: and her boss is like, what the fuck are you doing?

2044
01:52:36,280 --> 01:52:39,439
Speaker 1: And she's like, I'm here to supposed to be here

2045
01:52:39,439 --> 01:52:42,160
Speaker 1: eight hours, eight hours is up, I'm going home. And

2046
01:52:42,479 --> 01:52:45,720
Speaker 1: he calls her half an hour later and fires her. Right,

2047
01:52:46,360 --> 01:52:48,920
Speaker 1: And this is because the tech industry is evil, you know,

2048
01:52:49,439 --> 01:52:53,280
Speaker 1: like this is bad. She's not bad here she is.

2049
01:52:53,720 --> 01:52:57,360
Speaker 1: It is like a thing where it's she's not doing

2050
01:52:57,520 --> 01:52:59,920
Speaker 1: by her standards. What I would say is the rational thing,

2051
01:53:00,360 --> 01:53:03,120
Speaker 1: which would be if all that matters is optimizing your

2052
01:53:03,160 --> 01:53:06,000
Speaker 1: earning power, right, right, well, then you do this, then

2053
01:53:06,040 --> 01:53:07,439
Speaker 1: you do do whatever it takes.

2054
01:53:07,600 --> 01:53:07,800
Speaker 3: Right.

2055
01:53:08,479 --> 01:53:11,080
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting to me like that she

2056
01:53:11,200 --> 01:53:13,280
Speaker 1: is so devoted to this like virtue ethics thing at

2057
01:53:13,320 --> 01:53:15,840
Speaker 1: this point that she fucks over her career in the

2058
01:53:15,880 --> 01:53:18,760
Speaker 1: tech industry because she's not willing to do the things

2059
01:53:18,800 --> 01:53:22,040
Speaker 1: that you kind of need to do to succeed, you know,

2060
01:53:22,120 --> 01:53:26,160
Speaker 1: in the place that she is. But it's interesting. I

2061
01:53:26,160 --> 01:53:28,360
Speaker 1: don't like give her any shit for that. So she

2062
01:53:28,400 --> 01:53:30,880
Speaker 1: asked your parents more for more runway to extend your

2063
01:53:30,920 --> 01:53:32,800
Speaker 1: time in the bay, and then she finds work at

2064
01:53:32,840 --> 01:53:36,439
Speaker 1: another startup, but the same problems persist. Quote, they kept

2065
01:53:36,479 --> 01:53:39,240
Speaker 1: demanding that I work unpaid overtime, talking about how other

2066
01:53:39,280 --> 01:53:42,480
Speaker 1: employees just put always put forty hours on their timesheet

2067
01:53:42,520 --> 01:53:45,280
Speaker 1: no matter what, and this exemplary employee over there worked

2068
01:53:45,360 --> 01:53:47,200
Speaker 1: twelve hours a day and he really went the extra

2069
01:53:47,240 --> 01:53:49,320
Speaker 1: mile and got the job done. And they needed me

2070
01:53:49,439 --> 01:53:52,599
Speaker 1: to really go the extra mile and get the job done.

2071
01:53:52,880 --> 01:53:55,280
Speaker 1: She's not willing to do that. And again, I hate

2072
01:53:55,280 --> 01:53:57,120
Speaker 1: that this is part of what drives her to the

2073
01:53:57,160 --> 01:53:59,479
Speaker 1: madness that leads to the cult to the killings, because

2074
01:53:59,520 --> 01:54:02,080
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, honey, you're in the right. It's an

2075
01:54:02,080 --> 01:54:03,080
Speaker 1: evil industry.

2076
01:54:03,280 --> 01:54:05,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, you see a flash of where it have gone.

2077
01:54:05,720 --> 01:54:08,880
Speaker 3: Well it really there were chances for this to work out.

2078
01:54:09,200 --> 01:54:12,479
Speaker 1: No, you were one hundred percent right, Like this is

2079
01:54:12,560 --> 01:54:13,240
Speaker 1: fuck to it.

2080
01:54:13,640 --> 01:54:14,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I mean.

2081
01:54:15,280 --> 01:54:18,360
Speaker 1: And that's super hard. I really respect that part of you.

2082
01:54:18,720 --> 01:54:24,400
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm so sad that this is part

2083
01:54:24,400 --> 01:54:27,800
Speaker 1: of what shatters your brain. Like that really bums me out.

2084
01:54:30,120 --> 01:54:33,080
Speaker 1: So first off, she's kind of starts spiraling and she

2085
01:54:33,160 --> 01:54:35,640
Speaker 1: concludes that she hates virtue ethics. This is where she

2086
01:54:35,800 --> 01:54:39,080
Speaker 1: starts hating Yidkowski, Right, this is she doesn't come break

2087
01:54:39,240 --> 01:54:41,680
Speaker 1: entirely on him yet, but she gets really angry at

2088
01:54:41,680 --> 01:54:44,960
Speaker 1: this point because she's like, well, obviously virtue ethics don't work,

2089
01:54:46,240 --> 01:54:46,800
Speaker 1: and she's.

2090
01:54:46,640 --> 01:54:48,680
Speaker 3: Been following this man at this point for.

2091
01:54:48,680 --> 01:54:52,680
Speaker 1: Years exactly exactly, so this is a very like damaging

2092
01:54:52,760 --> 01:54:57,800
Speaker 1: thing to her that this happens. And you know, and again,

2093
01:54:57,840 --> 01:55:00,360
Speaker 1: as much as I'm blamed Yadkowski, the coach sure of

2094
01:55:00,400 --> 01:55:03,080
Speaker 1: the Bay Bay area tech industry, that's a big part

2095
01:55:03,080 --> 01:55:05,480
Speaker 1: of what drives this person, you know, to where she

2096
01:55:05,680 --> 01:55:09,160
Speaker 1: ends up. Right. So that said, some of her issues

2097
01:55:09,200 --> 01:55:12,080
Speaker 1: are also rooted in a kind of rigid and unforgiving

2098
01:55:12,120 --> 01:55:15,840
Speaker 1: internal rule set. At one point, she negotiates work with

2099
01:55:15,880 --> 01:55:19,160
Speaker 1: a professor and their undergraduate helper. She doesn't want to

2100
01:55:19,200 --> 01:55:21,280
Speaker 1: take an hourly job, and she tries to negotiate a

2101
01:55:21,320 --> 01:55:24,400
Speaker 1: flat rate of seven k and they're like, yeah, okay,

2102
01:55:24,400 --> 01:55:27,960
Speaker 1: that sounds fair, but the school doesn't do stuff like that,

2103
01:55:28,160 --> 01:55:30,480
Speaker 1: so you will have to fake some paperwork with me

2104
01:55:30,600 --> 01:55:32,160
Speaker 1: for me to be able to get them to pay

2105
01:55:32,160 --> 01:55:35,640
Speaker 1: you seven thousand dollars. And she isn't willing to do that.

2106
01:55:36,120 --> 01:55:38,080
Speaker 1: And that's the thing where it's like, ah, no, I've

2107
01:55:38,080 --> 01:55:40,240
Speaker 1: had some shit where this was the like there was

2108
01:55:40,240 --> 01:55:43,240
Speaker 1: a stupid rule and like in order for the pep

2109
01:55:43,360 --> 01:55:46,040
Speaker 1: meat or other people to get paid. We had to

2110
01:55:46,040 --> 01:55:49,080
Speaker 1: like tell something else to the company. Like that's just

2111
01:55:49,240 --> 01:55:52,320
Speaker 1: that's just no knowing how to get by. Yeah, that's

2112
01:55:52,560 --> 01:55:53,720
Speaker 1: that's living in the world.

2113
01:55:53,720 --> 01:55:55,760
Speaker 3: You got Yeah, you did the hard part.

2114
01:55:55,960 --> 01:55:56,160
Speaker 1: Yeah.

2115
01:55:56,200 --> 01:55:57,440
Speaker 3: They said that we were going to do it.

2116
01:55:57,480 --> 01:55:58,560
Speaker 1: You said they did it.

2117
01:55:58,840 --> 01:56:01,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like they already said, we don't do this.

2118
01:56:01,320 --> 01:56:03,880
Speaker 1: That's where are you just you can't get by in

2119
01:56:03,960 --> 01:56:06,640
Speaker 1: America If you're not, why will rely on certain kinds

2120
01:56:06,680 --> 01:56:10,680
Speaker 1: of paperwork? Right, That's that's the game our president does

2121
01:56:10,720 --> 01:56:17,320
Speaker 1: all the time. He's the king of that ship. So

2122
01:56:17,400 --> 01:56:19,680
Speaker 1: at this point, Ziz is stuck in what they consider

2123
01:56:19,720 --> 01:56:23,880
Speaker 1: a calamitous situation. The prophecy of doom, as they call it,

2124
01:56:23,920 --> 01:56:26,920
Speaker 1: is ticking ever closer, which means the bad AI that's

2125
01:56:26,960 --> 01:56:30,840
Speaker 1: going to create hell for everybody. Her panic over this

2126
01:56:31,000 --> 01:56:33,720
Speaker 1: is elevated by the fact that she she starts to

2127
01:56:33,720 --> 01:56:37,000
Speaker 1: get obsessed with Roco's basilisk at this time. No I know,

2128
01:56:37,200 --> 01:56:40,000
Speaker 1: I know, worst thing for her to read, come on

2129
01:56:42,040 --> 01:56:46,840
Speaker 1: in and info hazard the warnings yep, and a lot

2130
01:56:46,880 --> 01:56:49,600
Speaker 1: of the smarter rationalists are just annoyed by it.

2131
01:56:49,640 --> 01:56:49,840
Speaker 3: Again.

2132
01:56:49,920 --> 01:56:53,720
Speaker 1: Yadkowski immediately is like, this is very quickly decides it's

2133
01:56:53,720 --> 01:56:57,880
Speaker 1: bullshit and bans discussion of it. He argues there's no

2134
01:56:57,920 --> 01:57:00,760
Speaker 1: incentive for a future agent to fall through with that

2135
01:57:00,960 --> 01:57:03,960
Speaker 1: threat because it by doing so, it just expens resources

2136
01:57:03,960 --> 01:57:06,560
Speaker 1: and no gain to itself, which is like, yeah, man,

2137
01:57:06,600 --> 01:57:09,880
Speaker 1: a hyperlogical AI would not immediately jump to I must

2138
01:57:09,920 --> 01:57:13,400
Speaker 1: make hell for everybody who didn't code me, Like, yeah,

2139
01:57:13,720 --> 01:57:14,640
Speaker 1: that's just crazy.

2140
01:57:14,720 --> 01:57:15,720
Speaker 3: There's some step skew.

2141
01:57:16,280 --> 01:57:19,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, only humans are like ill in that way.

2142
01:57:20,040 --> 01:57:21,760
Speaker 3: That's the funny thing about it is it's such a

2143
01:57:21,840 --> 01:57:22,800
Speaker 3: human response to.

2144
01:57:22,920 --> 01:57:27,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, right right now. When she encounters the concept of

2145
01:57:27,240 --> 01:57:30,680
Speaker 1: Roco's basilisk, at first, Ziz thinks that it's silly, right.

2146
01:57:30,720 --> 01:57:33,480
Speaker 1: She kind of rejects it and moves on, But once

2147
01:57:33,520 --> 01:57:35,520
Speaker 1: she gets to the Bay, she starts going to in

2148
01:57:35,680 --> 01:57:39,480
Speaker 1: person rationalist meetups and having long conversations with other believers

2149
01:57:39,640 --> 01:57:43,720
Speaker 1: who are still talking about Roco's basilisk. She writes, I

2150
01:57:43,760 --> 01:57:46,680
Speaker 1: started encountering people who were freaked out by it, freaked

2151
01:57:46,680 --> 01:57:49,000
Speaker 1: out that they had discovered an improvement to the info

2152
01:57:49,080 --> 01:57:52,440
Speaker 1: hazard that made it function got around a Leezer's objection.

2153
01:57:53,200 --> 01:57:56,320
Speaker 1: Her ultimate conclusion is this, if I persisted in trying

2154
01:57:56,360 --> 01:57:59,120
Speaker 1: to save the world, I would be tortured until the

2155
01:57:59,240 --> 01:58:01,680
Speaker 1: end of top the universe by a coalition of all

2156
01:58:01,760 --> 01:58:05,040
Speaker 1: unfriendly ais in order to increase the amount of measure

2157
01:58:05,080 --> 01:58:08,160
Speaker 1: they got by demoralizing me. Even if my system too

2158
01:58:08,240 --> 01:58:11,200
Speaker 1: had good decision theory, my system one did not, and

2159
01:58:11,240 --> 01:58:15,080
Speaker 1: that would damage my effectiveness. And like, I can't explain

2160
01:58:15,120 --> 01:58:16,960
Speaker 1: all of the terms in that without taking more time

2161
01:58:16,960 --> 01:58:18,680
Speaker 1: than we need to. But like you can hear like

2162
01:58:18,720 --> 01:58:20,760
Speaker 1: that is not the writing of a person who is

2163
01:58:20,800 --> 01:58:22,160
Speaker 1: thinking in logical terms.

2164
01:58:22,400 --> 01:58:27,200
Speaker 3: No, it's it's a uh, it's so scary.

2165
01:58:27,560 --> 01:58:29,880
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it is very scary stuff.

2166
01:58:30,000 --> 01:58:32,240
Speaker 3: It's so scary to be like, Oh, that's where she

2167
01:58:32,360 --> 01:58:34,360
Speaker 3: was operating those mistakes.

2168
01:58:33,920 --> 01:58:35,720
Speaker 1: This is where you head she's dealing with.

2169
01:58:36,120 --> 01:58:38,680
Speaker 3: Yes, that's that's it is.

2170
01:58:39,240 --> 01:58:40,800
Speaker 1: You know, I talked to my friends who grow are

2171
01:58:40,880 --> 01:58:45,600
Speaker 1: raised in like very toxic evangelical subculture, chunks of the

2172
01:58:45,600 --> 01:58:48,520
Speaker 1: evangelgelical sub culture and growth, and spend their whole childhood

2173
01:58:48,600 --> 01:58:51,240
Speaker 1: terrified of hell that like everything, you know, I got

2174
01:58:51,280 --> 01:58:53,280
Speaker 1: angry at my mom and I didn't say anything, but

2175
01:58:53,320 --> 01:58:55,480
Speaker 1: God knows I'm angry at her, and He's going to

2176
01:58:55,520 --> 01:58:57,520
Speaker 1: send me to hell because I didn't respect my mother.

2177
01:58:57,840 --> 01:58:58,080
Speaker 3: Mother.

2178
01:58:58,320 --> 01:58:59,839
Speaker 1: Like that's what she's doing.

2179
01:58:59,840 --> 01:59:02,800
Speaker 3: Right exactly exactly. She can't win. There's no winning here.

2180
01:59:02,880 --> 01:59:06,880
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and again I say this a lot. We

2181
01:59:06,920 --> 01:59:10,000
Speaker 1: need to put lithium back in the drinking water. We

2182
01:59:09,400 --> 01:59:11,440
Speaker 1: we gotta put lithium back.

2183
01:59:11,280 --> 01:59:11,800
Speaker 3: In the water.

2184
01:59:12,160 --> 01:59:14,560
Speaker 1: Maybe xanax too, she needed she.

2185
01:59:14,520 --> 01:59:20,640
Speaker 3: Could have tooken a combo. Yeah, before it gets to

2186
01:59:20,680 --> 01:59:23,600
Speaker 3: where it gets. At this point, you really you really

2187
01:59:23,640 --> 01:59:27,600
Speaker 3: feel for and like just living in this living like

2188
01:59:27,640 --> 01:59:31,440
Speaker 3: that every day. She's so scared and that this is

2189
01:59:31,480 --> 01:59:34,080
Speaker 3: what she's doing. It's it's this, this is she.

2190
01:59:34,120 --> 01:59:36,920
Speaker 1: Is the therapy needingest woman I have ever heard. At

2191
01:59:36,920 --> 01:59:39,000
Speaker 1: this point, Oh my god.

2192
01:59:39,040 --> 01:59:42,160
Speaker 3: She just needs to talk to She needs to talk again.

2193
01:59:42,640 --> 01:59:44,240
Speaker 3: You know, the cult.

2194
01:59:44,360 --> 01:59:46,760
Speaker 1: The thing that happens to cult members has happened to

2195
01:59:46,800 --> 01:59:50,360
Speaker 1: her where she her. The whole language she uses is

2196
01:59:50,400 --> 01:59:53,640
Speaker 1: incomprehensible to people. I had to talk to you for

2197
01:59:53,680 --> 01:59:56,520
Speaker 1: an hour and fifteen minutes. See you what understand parts

2198
01:59:56,600 --> 01:59:59,800
Speaker 1: of what this lady says? Right exactly, you have to

2199
02:00:00,000 --> 02:00:02,960
Speaker 1: because it's all nonsense if you don't do that work exactly.

2200
02:00:03,000 --> 02:00:05,760
Speaker 3: She's so spun out at this point, it's like, how

2201
02:00:05,800 --> 02:00:08,320
Speaker 3: do you even get back? Yeah, how do you even

2202
02:00:08,320 --> 02:00:08,800
Speaker 3: get back.

2203
02:00:09,080 --> 02:00:12,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she she ultimately decides, even though she thinks

2204
02:00:12,160 --> 02:00:15,440
Speaker 1: she's doomed to be tortured by unfriendly ais evil gods,

2205
02:00:15,520 --> 02:00:18,080
Speaker 1: must be fought. If this damns me, then so be it.

2206
02:00:18,440 --> 02:00:22,800
Speaker 1: She's very heroic, she had and she sees herself that way, right.

2207
02:00:23,160 --> 02:00:25,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even like just with her convictions and that

2208
02:00:26,040 --> 02:00:29,440
Speaker 3: she she does, she does, she does, she does, she

2209
02:00:29,840 --> 02:00:30,440
Speaker 3: does it.

2210
02:00:30,600 --> 02:00:33,240
Speaker 1: She's a woman of conviction. You really can't take that

2211
02:00:33,360 --> 02:00:39,280
Speaker 1: away from her. Relytions are nonsense, No, that's the but

2212
02:00:39,360 --> 02:00:39,840
Speaker 1: they're there.

2213
02:00:40,120 --> 02:00:43,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're based on Harry Potter fan fiction.

2214
02:00:43,280 --> 02:00:46,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like David Ike, the guy who believes in

2215
02:00:46,360 --> 02:00:49,160
Speaker 1: like literal lizard people. Everyone thinks he's like talking about

2216
02:00:49,200 --> 02:00:51,080
Speaker 1: the Jews, but like no, no, no, no, he doesn't

2217
02:00:51,480 --> 02:00:52,200
Speaker 1: just lizards.

2218
02:00:52,360 --> 02:00:56,480
Speaker 4: It's exactly that where it's just like you want to draw, Yeah,

2219
02:00:56,520 --> 02:00:58,840
Speaker 4: you want to draw something, so it's not nonsense, and

2220
02:00:58,840 --> 02:01:00,160
Speaker 4: then you realize no, that's.

2221
02:01:00,080 --> 02:01:02,400
Speaker 1: No, no, no no. And like David, he went out

2222
02:01:02,600 --> 02:01:04,920
Speaker 1: he's made like a big rant against how Elon Musk

2223
02:01:05,000 --> 02:01:07,320
Speaker 1: is like evil for what all these people he's hurt

2224
02:01:07,360 --> 02:01:10,360
Speaker 1: by firing the whole federal government. People were shocked. It's

2225
02:01:10,360 --> 02:01:12,560
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, David Ike believes in a thing.

2226
02:01:12,920 --> 02:01:20,600
Speaker 1: It's just crazy. Those people do exist. Yeah, here we

2227
02:01:20,640 --> 02:01:23,120
Speaker 1: are talking about and here we are talking about them.

2228
02:01:23,160 --> 02:01:26,040
Speaker 1: Some of them run the country. But actually I don't

2229
02:01:26,200 --> 02:01:31,960
Speaker 1: all of those people believe in anything. But yeah, yeah,

2230
02:01:32,000 --> 02:01:35,600
Speaker 1: speaking of people who believe in something, our sponsors believe

2231
02:01:35,800 --> 02:01:47,440
Speaker 1: in getting your money. We're back.

2232
02:01:48,040 --> 02:01:48,840
Speaker 3: So uh.

2233
02:01:49,360 --> 02:01:52,520
Speaker 1: She is at this point suffering from delusions of granteur

2234
02:01:52,680 --> 02:01:55,120
Speaker 1: and those are going to rapidly lead her to danger.

2235
02:01:55,520 --> 02:01:58,040
Speaker 1: But she concludes that since the fate of the universe

2236
02:01:58,160 --> 02:02:01,000
Speaker 1: is at stake in her actions, she would make a

2237
02:02:01,200 --> 02:02:05,240
Speaker 1: timeless choice to not believe in the basilisk, right, and

2238
02:02:05,280 --> 02:02:09,160
Speaker 1: that that will protect her in the future, because that's

2239
02:02:09,200 --> 02:02:12,520
Speaker 1: how these people talk about stuff like that. So she

2240
02:02:12,600 --> 02:02:15,520
Speaker 1: gets over her fear of the basilisk for a little while,

2241
02:02:16,600 --> 02:02:19,360
Speaker 1: but even it, like when she claims to have rejected

2242
02:02:19,360 --> 02:02:21,920
Speaker 1: the theory, whenever she references it in her blog, she

2243
02:02:22,000 --> 02:02:24,360
Speaker 1: like locks it away under a spoiler with like an

2244
02:02:24,520 --> 02:02:29,120
Speaker 1: info hazard warning. Roco's Basilisk family skippable, so you don't

2245
02:02:29,200 --> 02:02:31,839
Speaker 1: like have to see it and have it destroy your psyche.

2246
02:02:33,000 --> 02:02:33,960
Speaker 3: That's the power of it.

2247
02:02:34,360 --> 02:02:38,360
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. The concept does, however, keep coming back

2248
02:02:38,400 --> 02:02:41,240
Speaker 1: to her like and continuing to drive her mad. Thoughts

2249
02:02:41,240 --> 02:02:43,680
Speaker 1: of the basilisk return, and eventually she comes to an

2250
02:02:43,680 --> 02:02:46,800
Speaker 1: extreme conclusion. If what I cared about was sentient life,

2251
02:02:46,880 --> 02:02:48,400
Speaker 1: and I was willing to go to hell to save

2252
02:02:48,440 --> 02:02:51,360
Speaker 1: everyone else, why not just send everyone else to hell?

2253
02:02:51,400 --> 02:02:52,360
Speaker 1: If I didn't submit?

2254
02:02:54,160 --> 02:02:57,080
Speaker 3: Can I tell you, I really it felt like this

2255
02:02:57,160 --> 02:02:59,200
Speaker 3: is what was? This is like where it had to

2256
02:02:59,240 --> 02:02:59,680
Speaker 3: go right?

2257
02:02:59,760 --> 02:03:06,160
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yes. So what she means here is that

2258
02:03:06,200 --> 02:03:08,640
Speaker 1: she is now making the timeless decision that when she

2259
02:03:08,760 --> 02:03:11,200
Speaker 1: is in a position of ultimate influence and helps bring

2260
02:03:11,240 --> 02:03:14,960
Speaker 1: this all powerful vegan AI into existence, she's promising now

2261
02:03:15,000 --> 02:03:18,520
Speaker 1: ahead of time to create a perfect hell, a digital hell,

2262
02:03:19,080 --> 02:03:24,440
Speaker 1: to like punish all of the people who don't like

2263
02:03:24,520 --> 02:03:27,560
Speaker 1: eat meat. Ever, she wants to make a hell for

2264
02:03:27,600 --> 02:03:30,520
Speaker 1: people who eat meat. And that's the Yeah, that's the

2265
02:03:30,520 --> 02:03:34,520
Speaker 1: conclusion that she makes. Right, So this becomes an intrusive

2266
02:03:34,560 --> 02:03:38,120
Speaker 1: thought in her head, primarily the idea that like everyone

2267
02:03:38,240 --> 02:03:41,160
Speaker 1: isn't going along with her, right, Like, she doesn't want

2268
02:03:41,200 --> 02:03:43,720
Speaker 1: to create this hell, she just thinks that she has to.

2269
02:03:44,200 --> 02:03:47,360
Speaker 1: So she's like very focused on like trying to convince

2270
02:03:47,480 --> 02:03:51,720
Speaker 1: these other people in the rationalist culture to become vegan. Anyway,

2271
02:03:51,800 --> 02:03:53,640
Speaker 1: she writes this quote, I thought it had to be

2272
02:03:53,680 --> 02:03:57,760
Speaker 1: subconsciously influencing me, damaging met my effectiveness, that I had

2273
02:03:57,800 --> 02:04:00,600
Speaker 1: done more harm than I can imagine by thinking these things,

2274
02:04:00,840 --> 02:04:03,720
Speaker 1: because I had the hubris to think info hazards didn't exist,

2275
02:04:03,760 --> 02:04:06,160
Speaker 1: and worse, to feel resigned a grim sort of pride

2276
02:04:06,280 --> 02:04:08,840
Speaker 1: in my previous choice to fight for sentient life, although

2277
02:04:08,840 --> 02:04:11,320
Speaker 1: it damned me and the gaps between. Do not think

2278
02:04:11,320 --> 02:04:13,600
Speaker 1: about that, you moron. Do not think about that, you

2279
02:04:13,720 --> 02:04:16,840
Speaker 1: moron pride, which may have led to intrusive thoughts to

2280
02:04:16,840 --> 02:04:20,240
Speaker 1: resurface and progress and progress to resume. In other words,

2281
02:04:20,440 --> 02:04:25,520
Speaker 1: my ego had perhaps damned the universe. So, man, I

2282
02:04:25,560 --> 02:04:28,880
Speaker 1: don't fully get all of what she's saying here. But

2283
02:04:28,920 --> 02:04:31,920
Speaker 1: it's also because she's like just spun out into madness

2284
02:04:31,920 --> 02:04:32,200
Speaker 1: at this.

2285
02:04:32,320 --> 02:04:35,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, she lives in it now.

2286
02:04:35,560 --> 02:04:38,440
Speaker 4: It's so yeah, it's so far for we've been talking

2287
02:04:38,440 --> 02:04:40,880
Speaker 4: about it, however long she's a she's so far away

2288
02:04:40,880 --> 02:04:41,879
Speaker 4: from us even.

2289
02:04:43,240 --> 02:04:45,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is it is deeply I've read a

2290
02:04:45,200 --> 02:04:48,680
Speaker 1: lot of her writing. It is deeply hard to understand

2291
02:04:48,760 --> 02:04:49,959
Speaker 1: pieces of it here.

2292
02:04:50,800 --> 02:04:52,640
Speaker 3: Man, But she is at war with herself.

2293
02:04:53,240 --> 02:04:57,720
Speaker 1: She is for sure at war with herself. Now, this

2294
02:04:57,920 --> 02:05:00,920
Speaker 1: is at this point attending rationalist events by the Bay,

2295
02:05:01,000 --> 02:05:03,280
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people at those events are older,

2296
02:05:03,560 --> 02:05:06,800
Speaker 1: more influential men, some of whom are influential in the

2297
02:05:06,840 --> 02:05:09,920
Speaker 1: tech industry, all of whom have a lot more money

2298
02:05:10,000 --> 02:05:13,080
Speaker 1: than her. And some of these people are members of

2299
02:05:13,080 --> 02:05:16,680
Speaker 1: an organization called SEAFAR, the Center for Applied Rationality, which

2300
02:05:16,720 --> 02:05:20,160
Speaker 1: is a nonprofit founded to help people get better at

2301
02:05:20,160 --> 02:05:22,880
Speaker 1: a pursuing their goals. It's a self help company, right,

2302
02:05:22,920 --> 02:05:26,040
Speaker 1: and what runs self help seminars. This is the same

2303
02:05:26,080 --> 02:05:29,080
Speaker 1: as like a Tony Robbins thing. Right, We're all just

2304
02:05:29,120 --> 02:05:30,880
Speaker 1: trying to get you to sign up and then get

2305
02:05:30,960 --> 02:05:32,680
Speaker 1: you to sign up for the next workshop, and the

2306
02:05:32,720 --> 02:05:35,880
Speaker 1: next workshop and the next workshop, like all self help

2307
02:05:35,920 --> 02:05:39,800
Speaker 1: people do. Yeah, there's no difference between this and Tony Robbins.

2308
02:05:40,600 --> 02:05:43,320
Speaker 1: So Ziz goes to this event and she has a

2309
02:05:43,360 --> 02:05:47,440
Speaker 1: long conversation with several members of SEAFAR, who I think

2310
02:05:47,480 --> 02:05:51,040
Speaker 1: are clearly kind of My interpretation of this is that

2311
02:05:51,080 --> 02:05:54,240
Speaker 1: they're trying to groom her to get a new because

2312
02:05:54,240 --> 02:05:57,200
Speaker 1: they think is chick's clearly brilliant, she'll find her way

2313
02:05:57,200 --> 02:05:59,880
Speaker 1: in the industry, and we want her money, right, maybe

2314
02:06:00,000 --> 02:06:01,840
Speaker 1: we wanted to do some free work for us too,

2315
02:06:01,920 --> 02:06:05,480
Speaker 1: but like let's let's you know, uh, we got to

2316
02:06:05,480 --> 02:06:08,800
Speaker 1: reel this fish in. Right. So this is described as

2317
02:06:08,800 --> 02:06:12,120
Speaker 1: an academic conference by people who are in the AI

2318
02:06:12,280 --> 02:06:15,680
Speaker 1: risk field and rationalism, you know, thinking of ways to

2319
02:06:15,800 --> 02:06:19,400
Speaker 1: save the universe, because only the true, the super geniuses

2320
02:06:19,400 --> 02:06:23,240
Speaker 1: can do that. The actual why I'm really glad that

2321
02:06:23,280 --> 02:06:26,840
Speaker 1: I read Ziz's account here is I've been reading about

2322
02:06:26,880 --> 02:06:28,600
Speaker 1: these people for a long time. I've been reading about

2323
02:06:28,600 --> 02:06:34,240
Speaker 1: their beliefs. I felt there's some cult stuff here. When

2324
02:06:34,360 --> 02:06:38,440
Speaker 1: Ziz laid out what happened at this seminar, this self

2325
02:06:38,480 --> 02:06:40,960
Speaker 1: help him seminar put on by these people very close

2326
02:06:41,000 --> 02:06:45,480
Speaker 1: to Yadkowski, this is it's almost exactly the same as

2327
02:06:45,480 --> 02:06:48,839
Speaker 1: a Synonon meeting. Like it's the same stuff, It's exact

2328
02:06:48,920 --> 02:06:52,280
Speaker 1: and it's the same shit. It's the same as accounts

2329
02:06:52,320 --> 02:06:55,720
Speaker 1: of like big like self help movement things from like

2330
02:06:55,760 --> 02:06:58,560
Speaker 1: the seventies and stuff that I've read that that that's

2331
02:06:58,560 --> 02:06:59,680
Speaker 1: when it really clicked to me.

2332
02:06:59,800 --> 02:07:00,000
Speaker 3: Right.

2333
02:07:00,400 --> 02:07:03,080
Speaker 1: Quote, here's a description of one of the because they have,

2334
02:07:03,160 --> 02:07:05,240
Speaker 1: you know, speeches, and then they break out into groups

2335
02:07:05,280 --> 02:07:10,240
Speaker 1: to do different exercises right, there were hamming circles per

2336
02:07:10,280 --> 02:07:13,320
Speaker 1: person take turns, having everyone else spend twenty minutes trying

2337
02:07:13,320 --> 02:07:15,960
Speaker 1: to solve the most important problem about your life. To you,

2338
02:07:16,440 --> 02:07:18,720
Speaker 1: I didn't pick the most important problem in my life

2339
02:07:18,760 --> 02:07:20,960
Speaker 1: because secrets. I think I used my turn on a

2340
02:07:21,040 --> 02:07:23,360
Speaker 1: problem I thought they might actually be able to help.

2341
02:07:23,400 --> 02:07:25,840
Speaker 1: With the fact that it did, although it didn't seem

2342
02:07:25,880 --> 02:07:28,680
Speaker 1: to affect my productivity or willpower at all, I e

2343
02:07:28,800 --> 02:07:31,800
Speaker 1: I was in humanly determined basically all the time. I

2344
02:07:31,840 --> 02:07:34,400
Speaker 1: still felt terrible all the time that I was hurting

2345
02:07:34,480 --> 02:07:37,880
Speaker 1: from some to some degree, relinquishing my humanity. I was

2346
02:07:37,920 --> 02:07:39,880
Speaker 1: sort of vaguing about the pain of being trans and

2347
02:07:39,920 --> 02:07:43,120
Speaker 1: having decided not to transition, and so like, this is

2348
02:07:43,160 --> 02:07:46,040
Speaker 1: a part of the thing. You build a connection between

2349
02:07:46,080 --> 02:07:47,840
Speaker 1: other people and this group by getting people to like

2350
02:07:47,880 --> 02:07:50,960
Speaker 1: spill their secrets to each other. It's a thing scientology does.

2351
02:07:51,040 --> 02:07:52,960
Speaker 1: It's a thing they did. It's sending on tell me

2352
02:07:53,000 --> 02:07:57,200
Speaker 1: your darkest secret, right, And she's not fully willing to

2353
02:07:57,320 --> 02:07:59,760
Speaker 1: because she doesn't want to come out to this group

2354
02:07:59,840 --> 02:08:04,880
Speaker 1: of people yet. And you know part of what I forget.

2355
02:08:04,520 --> 02:08:10,800
Speaker 3: That she's also dealing with that entire yeah, yes, wow, yeah.

2356
02:08:09,680 --> 02:08:12,720
Speaker 1: And that the hamming circle doesn't sound so bad if

2357
02:08:12,760 --> 02:08:14,720
Speaker 1: you'll recall any and as you mentioned this, I was

2358
02:08:14,760 --> 02:08:17,640
Speaker 1: really good. In part one, Seninon would have people break

2359
02:08:17,640 --> 02:08:19,840
Speaker 1: into circles where they would insult and attack each other

2360
02:08:19,920 --> 02:08:22,360
Speaker 1: in order to create a traumatic experience that would bond

2361
02:08:22,360 --> 02:08:25,640
Speaker 1: them together and with the cult. These hamming circles are weird,

2362
02:08:26,120 --> 02:08:29,400
Speaker 1: but they're not that. But there's another exercise they did

2363
02:08:29,480 --> 02:08:34,160
Speaker 1: next called doom circles. Quote. There were doom circles where

2364
02:08:34,200 --> 02:08:38,000
Speaker 1: each person, including themselves, took turns having everyone else bluntly

2365
02:08:38,040 --> 02:08:43,120
Speaker 1: but compassionately say why they were doomed. Using blindsight. Someone

2366
02:08:43,200 --> 02:08:45,680
Speaker 1: decided and set a precedent of starting these off with

2367
02:08:45,720 --> 02:08:48,960
Speaker 1: a sort of ritual incantation we now invoke and bow

2368
02:08:49,080 --> 02:08:51,800
Speaker 1: to the doom gods and waving their hands saying doom.

2369
02:08:52,320 --> 02:08:54,040
Speaker 1: I said, I'd never bow to the doom gods, and

2370
02:08:54,080 --> 02:08:56,280
Speaker 1: well everyone else said that. I flipped the double bird

2371
02:08:56,280 --> 02:08:59,280
Speaker 1: to the heavens and said fuck you instead, person a,

2372
02:08:59,560 --> 02:09:03,640
Speaker 1: that's the member of Seafar that she is. Admirers found

2373
02:09:03,680 --> 02:09:06,800
Speaker 1: this agreeable and joined in. Some people brought up that

2374
02:09:06,840 --> 02:09:09,440
Speaker 1: they felt like they were only as morally valuable as

2375
02:09:09,520 --> 02:09:12,680
Speaker 1: half a person. This irked me. I said they were

2376
02:09:12,720 --> 02:09:15,920
Speaker 1: whole persons and don't be stupid like that, Like if

2377
02:09:15,920 --> 02:09:19,000
Speaker 1: they wanted to sacrifice themselves, they could weigh one versus

2378
02:09:19,040 --> 02:09:22,200
Speaker 1: seven billion. They didn't have to falsely detegrate themselves is

2379
02:09:22,280 --> 02:09:25,080
Speaker 1: less than one person. They didn't listen. When it was

2380
02:09:25,120 --> 02:09:27,640
Speaker 1: my turn concerning myself, I said, my doom was that

2381
02:09:27,720 --> 02:09:31,240
Speaker 1: I could succeed at the things I tried, succeed exceptionally well,

2382
02:09:31,440 --> 02:09:33,200
Speaker 1: Like I bet I could in ten years have earned

2383
02:09:33,200 --> 02:09:35,640
Speaker 1: a give like ten million dollars through startups, and it

2384
02:09:35,680 --> 02:09:37,800
Speaker 1: would still be too little, too late, Like I came

2385
02:09:37,840 --> 02:09:40,440
Speaker 1: into this game too late. The world would still burn.

2386
02:09:42,400 --> 02:09:45,440
Speaker 1: And first off, like this is you know, it's a

2387
02:09:45,560 --> 02:09:47,880
Speaker 1: variant of the synonym thing you're going around. You're telling

2388
02:09:47,920 --> 02:09:50,360
Speaker 1: people why they're doomed, right, like why they won't succeed

2389
02:09:50,440 --> 02:09:53,480
Speaker 1: in life, you know, But it's also one of the

2390
02:09:53,560 --> 02:09:55,600
Speaker 1: things here these people are saying they feel like less

2391
02:09:55,640 --> 02:09:58,240
Speaker 1: than a person. A major topic of discussion in the

2392
02:09:58,240 --> 02:10:01,160
Speaker 1: community at the time is if you don't think you

2393
02:10:01,200 --> 02:10:05,959
Speaker 1: can succeed in business and make money, is the best

2394
02:10:06,640 --> 02:10:09,640
Speaker 1: thing with the highest net value you can do taking

2395
02:10:09,680 --> 02:10:12,880
Speaker 1: out an insurance policy on yourself and committing suicide, oh

2396
02:10:12,960 --> 02:10:15,480
Speaker 1: my god, and then having the money donated to a

2397
02:10:15,560 --> 02:10:18,640
Speaker 1: rationalist organization. That's a major topic of discussion that like

2398
02:10:19,160 --> 02:10:21,040
Speaker 1: Ziz grapples with a lot of these people grapple with,

2399
02:10:21,120 --> 02:10:24,040
Speaker 1: right because they are obsessed with the idea of like,

2400
02:10:24,640 --> 02:10:26,880
Speaker 1: oh my god, I might be net negative value. Right

2401
02:10:26,920 --> 02:10:28,840
Speaker 1: if I can't do this or can't do this, I

2402
02:10:28,840 --> 02:10:31,400
Speaker 1: could be a net negative value individual. And that means

2403
02:10:31,440 --> 02:10:34,120
Speaker 1: like I'm not contributing to the solution, and there's nothing

2404
02:10:34,120 --> 02:10:35,760
Speaker 1: worse than not contributing to the solution.

2405
02:10:37,760 --> 02:10:38,880
Speaker 3: Were there people who did that?

2406
02:10:41,040 --> 02:10:46,680
Speaker 1: I am not aware there are people who commit suicide

2407
02:10:46,920 --> 02:10:48,960
Speaker 1: in this community. I will say that, like there are

2408
02:10:49,000 --> 02:10:52,320
Speaker 1: a number of suicides tied to this community. I don't

2409
02:10:52,360 --> 02:10:56,800
Speaker 1: know if the actual insurance con thing happened, but it's

2410
02:10:56,840 --> 02:11:00,000
Speaker 1: like a seriously discussed thing. And it's seriously discussed because

2411
02:11:01,080 --> 02:11:03,160
Speaker 1: all of these people to talk about the value of

2412
02:11:03,240 --> 02:11:08,839
Speaker 1: their own lives in purely like mechanistic how much money

2413
02:11:09,120 --> 02:11:12,320
Speaker 1: or expected value can I produce? Like that is a

2414
02:11:12,360 --> 02:11:15,960
Speaker 1: person and that's why a person matters, right, And the

2415
02:11:16,040 --> 02:11:19,800
Speaker 1: term they use is morally valuable, right, Like that's that's

2416
02:11:19,840 --> 02:11:23,640
Speaker 1: what means you're a worthwhile human being, if you're morally

2417
02:11:23,880 --> 02:11:26,640
Speaker 1: if you're creating a net positive benefit to the world

2418
02:11:26,680 --> 02:11:28,720
Speaker 1: in the way they define it. And so a lot

2419
02:11:28,760 --> 02:11:32,160
Speaker 1: of these people are. Yes, there are people who are depressed,

2420
02:11:32,240 --> 02:11:34,120
Speaker 1: and there are people who kill themselves because they come

2421
02:11:34,160 --> 02:11:37,080
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that they're a net negative person. Right

2422
02:11:37,400 --> 02:11:39,360
Speaker 1: like that that is a thing at the edge of

2423
02:11:39,400 --> 02:11:43,160
Speaker 1: all of this shit that's really fucked up. And that's

2424
02:11:43,360 --> 02:11:45,800
Speaker 1: that's what this doom circle is about. Is everybody like

2425
02:11:45,840 --> 02:11:49,520
Speaker 1: flipping out over I'm like and telling each other, I

2426
02:11:49,520 --> 02:11:52,200
Speaker 1: think you might know be as only be as morally

2427
02:11:52,280 --> 02:11:54,360
Speaker 1: valuable as half a person, right like. That's people are

2428
02:11:54,400 --> 02:11:56,720
Speaker 1: saying that, right like, that's what's going on here, you know,

2429
02:11:57,560 --> 02:12:01,280
Speaker 1: Like it's not the synonym thing of like like you're

2430
02:12:01,280 --> 02:12:04,120
Speaker 1: a you know, using the f slur a million times

2431
02:12:04,200 --> 02:12:06,560
Speaker 1: or whatever. But it's very bad.

2432
02:12:06,960 --> 02:12:10,320
Speaker 3: No, this is this is this is awful.

2433
02:12:10,320 --> 02:12:12,960
Speaker 1: For like one thing I don't know. My feeling is

2434
02:12:13,360 --> 02:12:15,720
Speaker 1: you have an inherent value because you're a person.

2435
02:12:16,480 --> 02:12:20,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great place to start, you know, so

2436
02:12:20,640 --> 02:12:26,160
Speaker 3: leading people to destroy themselves like it's.

2437
02:12:24,960 --> 02:12:28,160
Speaker 1: It's it's so it's such a bleak way of looking

2438
02:12:28,200 --> 02:12:28,720
Speaker 1: at things.

2439
02:12:29,520 --> 02:12:31,400
Speaker 3: It's so crazy too, where were these meals. I just

2440
02:12:31,520 --> 02:12:33,040
Speaker 3: in my head, I'm like, this is just happening in

2441
02:12:33,080 --> 02:12:35,000
Speaker 3: like a ballroom at a raticon.

2442
02:12:35,240 --> 02:12:38,680
Speaker 1: I think it is, or a convention center, you know,

2443
02:12:38,680 --> 02:12:41,920
Speaker 1: the different kind of public spaces. I don't know, Like honestly,

2444
02:12:41,920 --> 02:12:43,960
Speaker 1: if you've been to like an anime convention or a

2445
02:12:44,000 --> 02:12:46,160
Speaker 1: Magic the Gathering convention somewhere in the Bay, you may

2446
02:12:46,200 --> 02:12:47,600
Speaker 1: have been in one of the rooms they did these,

2447
02:12:47,600 --> 02:12:51,040
Speaker 1: and I don't know exactly where they hold this. So

2448
02:12:52,080 --> 02:12:55,560
Speaker 1: the person A mentioned above, this like person who's like

2449
02:12:55,600 --> 02:12:58,720
Speaker 1: affiliated with the organization that I think is a recruiter

2450
02:12:59,040 --> 02:13:01,960
Speaker 1: h looking young people who can be cultivated to pay

2451
02:13:02,000 --> 02:13:05,240
Speaker 1: for classes. Right, this person, it's very clear to them

2452
02:13:05,240 --> 02:13:08,600
Speaker 1: that Ziz is at the height of her vulnerability, and

2453
02:13:08,640 --> 02:13:10,720
Speaker 1: so he tries to take advantage of that. So he

2454
02:13:10,840 --> 02:13:16,080
Speaker 1: and another person from the organization engage Zizz during a break. Ziz,

2455
02:13:16,080 --> 02:13:19,880
Speaker 1: who's extremely insecure, asks them point blank, what do you

2456
02:13:19,960 --> 02:13:23,640
Speaker 1: think my net value ultimately will be in life? Right?

2457
02:13:24,240 --> 02:13:26,680
Speaker 1: And again there's like an element of this it's almost

2458
02:13:26,720 --> 02:13:29,640
Speaker 1: like rationalist calvinism, where it's like it's actually decided ahead

2459
02:13:29,640 --> 02:13:33,360
Speaker 1: of time by your inherent immutable characteristics. You know, if

2460
02:13:33,400 --> 02:13:36,160
Speaker 1: you are a person who can do good. Quote. I

2461
02:13:36,200 --> 02:13:38,919
Speaker 1: asked person A if they expected me to be net negative.

2462
02:13:39,240 --> 02:13:42,240
Speaker 1: They said yes. After a moment, they asked me what

2463
02:13:42,280 --> 02:13:44,360
Speaker 1: I was feeling or something like that. I said something

2464
02:13:44,400 --> 02:13:47,760
Speaker 1: like dazed and sad. They asked why sad. I said

2465
02:13:47,760 --> 02:13:49,920
Speaker 1: I might leave the field as a consequence and maybe

2466
02:13:49,960 --> 02:13:52,720
Speaker 1: something else. I said I needed time to process or think.

2467
02:13:52,800 --> 02:13:55,000
Speaker 1: And so she like, she goes home after this guy

2468
02:13:55,040 --> 02:13:57,120
Speaker 1: is saying like, yeah, I think your life's probably net

2469
02:13:57,160 --> 02:14:01,160
Speaker 1: negative value, and sleeps the rest of the day. And

2470
02:14:01,320 --> 02:14:04,960
Speaker 1: she wakes up the next morning and comes back to

2471
02:14:05,040 --> 02:14:10,160
Speaker 1: the second day of this thing, and yeah, Ziz goes

2472
02:14:10,200 --> 02:14:13,160
Speaker 1: back and she tells this person, Okay, here's what I'm

2473
02:14:13,160 --> 02:14:15,720
Speaker 1: gonna do. I'm going to pick a group of three

2474
02:14:15,760 --> 02:14:19,000
Speaker 1: people at the event I respect, including you, and if

2475
02:14:19,080 --> 02:14:21,200
Speaker 1: two of them vote that they think I have a

2476
02:14:21,240 --> 02:14:25,880
Speaker 1: net negative value quote, I'll leave EA and existential risk

2477
02:14:25,960 --> 02:14:29,400
Speaker 1: and the rationalist community and so on forever. I'd transition

2478
02:14:29,600 --> 02:14:32,360
Speaker 1: and move, probably to Seattle. I heard it was relatively

2479
02:14:32,440 --> 02:14:34,760
Speaker 1: nice for trans people, and there do what I could

2480
02:14:34,800 --> 02:14:37,240
Speaker 1: to be a normy, retool my mind as much as possible,

2481
02:14:37,240 --> 02:14:40,839
Speaker 1: to be stable, unchanging an enormy gradually abandoned my Facebook

2482
02:14:40,840 --> 02:14:43,400
Speaker 1: account and email use a name change as a story

2483
02:14:43,400 --> 02:14:47,480
Speaker 1: for that, and God, that would have been the best thing.

2484
02:14:47,320 --> 02:14:50,480
Speaker 3: For That's what I'm you see, like but sliver of hope,

2485
02:14:50,600 --> 02:14:52,440
Speaker 3: like yeah, oh man.

2486
02:14:52,720 --> 02:14:56,680
Speaker 1: She sees this as a nightmare, right, this is the

2487
02:14:56,680 --> 02:15:00,600
Speaker 1: worst case scenario for her, right, because you're she's part

2488
02:15:00,640 --> 02:15:03,240
Speaker 1: of You're not part of the You're not part of

2489
02:15:03,280 --> 02:15:06,480
Speaker 1: the cause. You know, you're you have no you have

2490
02:15:06,560 --> 02:15:09,440
Speaker 1: no involvement in the great quest to save humanity. That's

2491
02:15:09,480 --> 02:15:10,840
Speaker 1: worse than death almost right.

2492
02:15:10,920 --> 02:15:12,880
Speaker 3: It's its own kind of hell though, right to think

2493
02:15:12,880 --> 02:15:14,920
Speaker 3: that you have this enlightenment and then you that you

2494
02:15:15,000 --> 02:15:18,560
Speaker 3: weren't good enough to.

2495
02:15:18,840 --> 02:15:22,680
Speaker 1: And that's a lot about how I'd probably just kill myself,

2496
02:15:22,720 --> 02:15:26,800
Speaker 1: you know, that's the logical thing to do. It's so

2497
02:15:26,960 --> 02:15:30,000
Speaker 1: fucked up, it's so fucked up. But also if she's

2498
02:15:30,040 --> 02:15:32,400
Speaker 1: trying to live a normal life as a normy, and

2499
02:15:32,800 --> 02:15:35,200
Speaker 1: she she refers to like being a normy as like

2500
02:15:35,600 --> 02:15:38,120
Speaker 1: just trying to be nice to people, because again that's useless.

2501
02:15:39,120 --> 02:15:41,240
Speaker 1: So her fa fear here is that she would be

2502
02:15:41,280 --> 02:15:44,960
Speaker 1: a causal negative if she does this, right, and also

2503
02:15:45,120 --> 02:15:47,800
Speaker 1: the robot god that comes about might put her in.

2504
02:15:47,800 --> 02:15:51,880
Speaker 3: Hell, right, because that's also looming. Yeah, after every for

2505
02:15:51,960 --> 02:15:53,480
Speaker 3: every decision, right, Yeah.

2506
02:15:53,480 --> 02:15:55,760
Speaker 1: And the thing here she she expressed, she tells these

2507
02:15:55,760 --> 02:15:58,240
Speaker 1: guys a story, and it really shows, both in this

2508
02:15:58,320 --> 02:16:01,720
Speaker 1: community and among her how little value they actually have

2509
02:16:01,920 --> 02:16:04,960
Speaker 1: for like human life. I told a story about a

2510
02:16:05,000 --> 02:16:07,320
Speaker 1: time I had killed four ants in a bathtub where

2511
02:16:07,320 --> 02:16:09,440
Speaker 1: I wanted to take a shower before growing to work.

2512
02:16:09,800 --> 02:16:12,640
Speaker 1: I'd considered, can I just not take a shower, and

2513
02:16:12,680 --> 02:16:15,200
Speaker 1: presumed me smelling bad at work would, because of big

2514
02:16:15,320 --> 02:16:17,520
Speaker 1: numbers in the fate of the world and stuff, make

2515
02:16:17,600 --> 02:16:20,680
Speaker 1: the world worse than the deaths of four basically causally

2516
02:16:20,760 --> 02:16:24,040
Speaker 1: isolated people. I considered getting paper in a cup and

2517
02:16:24,080 --> 02:16:26,520
Speaker 1: taking them elsewhere, and I figured there were decent odds

2518
02:16:26,520 --> 02:16:28,040
Speaker 1: if I did, I'd be late to work and it

2519
02:16:28,040 --> 02:16:29,920
Speaker 1: would probably make the world worse in the long run.

2520
02:16:30,000 --> 02:16:33,840
Speaker 1: So again, she considers ants identical to human beings, and

2521
02:16:34,440 --> 02:16:37,360
Speaker 1: she is also saying it was worth killing four of

2522
02:16:37,360 --> 02:16:40,080
Speaker 1: them because they're causally isolated so that I could get

2523
02:16:40,080 --> 02:16:41,920
Speaker 1: to work in time, because I'm working for the cause.

2524
02:16:44,760 --> 02:16:47,240
Speaker 1: It's also it's in a bad place here.

2525
02:16:47,440 --> 02:16:47,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

2526
02:16:48,120 --> 02:16:51,840
Speaker 4: The crazy thing about her is it like the amount

2527
02:16:51,840 --> 02:16:54,400
Speaker 4: of thinking just to like get in the shower to

2528
02:16:54,440 --> 02:16:57,440
Speaker 4: go to work, you know, you know what I mean

2529
02:16:58,040 --> 02:17:02,359
Speaker 4: like that that ah, it just seems like it makes everything.

2530
02:17:02,840 --> 02:17:05,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, every every action is so loaded.

2531
02:17:06,240 --> 02:17:10,879
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that most it's so it's it's wild to

2532
02:17:10,959 --> 02:17:15,600
Speaker 1: me both this like mix of like fucking Jane Buddhist

2533
02:17:15,600 --> 02:17:18,119
Speaker 1: compassion of like an aunt is no less than I,

2534
02:17:18,520 --> 02:17:20,600
Speaker 1: or an aunt is no less than a human being, right,

2535
02:17:20,879 --> 02:17:23,560
Speaker 1: we are all these are all lives. And then but

2536
02:17:23,640 --> 02:17:25,000
Speaker 1: also it's fine for me to kill a bunch of

2537
02:17:25,080 --> 02:17:26,920
Speaker 1: me to go to work on time, because like they're

2538
02:17:26,920 --> 02:17:32,560
Speaker 1: causally isolated, so they're basically not people. Like it's it's

2539
02:17:32,600 --> 02:17:38,119
Speaker 1: so weird. Like and again it's getting a lot clearer here.

2540
02:17:38,200 --> 02:17:41,800
Speaker 1: Why this lady and her ideas end in a bunch

2541
02:17:41,879 --> 02:17:47,320
Speaker 1: of people getting shot yeah and stabbed. Okay, there's a

2542
02:17:47,400 --> 02:17:50,080
Speaker 1: samurai's sword later in the story, my friend.

2543
02:17:50,440 --> 02:17:52,240
Speaker 3: That's the one thing this has been missing.

2544
02:17:52,440 --> 02:17:57,160
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So they continue, these guys to have a

2545
02:17:57,240 --> 02:18:00,879
Speaker 1: very abusive conversation with this young person and she trusts them.

2546
02:18:00,879 --> 02:18:03,920
Speaker 3: Enough that a conversation where she asked for the two yeah.

2547
02:18:04,440 --> 02:18:08,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she tells them she's trans right, And this

2548
02:18:08,120 --> 02:18:10,320
Speaker 1: gives you an idea of like, how kind of predatory

2549
02:18:10,440 --> 02:18:12,280
Speaker 1: some of the stuff going on in this community is.

2550
02:18:12,879 --> 02:18:15,360
Speaker 1: They asked what I'd do with a female body. They

2551
02:18:15,400 --> 02:18:17,240
Speaker 1: were trying to get me to admit what I actually

2552
02:18:17,320 --> 02:18:19,680
Speaker 1: wanted to do was the first thing in heaven, heaven

2553
02:18:19,720 --> 02:18:22,840
Speaker 1: being there's this idea, especially amongst like some trans members

2554
02:18:22,840 --> 02:18:26,520
Speaker 1: of the rationalist community that like all of them basically

2555
02:18:26,520 --> 02:18:29,360
Speaker 1: believe a robot's gonna make heaven, right, and obviously, like

2556
02:18:29,920 --> 02:18:31,400
Speaker 1: there's a number of the folks who are in this

2557
02:18:31,440 --> 02:18:33,080
Speaker 1: who are trans are like and in heaven, like you

2558
02:18:33,160 --> 02:18:35,039
Speaker 1: just kind of get the body you want immediately, right,

2559
02:18:37,040 --> 02:18:39,920
Speaker 1: so these get They were trying to get me to

2560
02:18:40,000 --> 02:18:42,160
Speaker 1: admit that what I actually wanted to do as the

2561
02:18:42,200 --> 02:18:45,000
Speaker 1: first thing in heaven was masturbate in a female body.

2562
02:18:45,440 --> 02:18:48,480
Speaker 1: And they follow us up by sitting really close to her,

2563
02:18:48,560 --> 02:18:52,800
Speaker 1: close enough that she gets uncomfortable. And then a really

2564
02:18:53,160 --> 02:18:57,480
Speaker 1: really rationalist conversation follows. They asked if I felt trapped.

2565
02:18:57,760 --> 02:19:01,480
Speaker 1: I may have clarified physically, they may have said sure. Afterward,

2566
02:19:01,520 --> 02:19:04,080
Speaker 1: I answered no to that question under the likely justified

2567
02:19:04,080 --> 02:19:06,360
Speaker 1: belief that it was framed that way. They asked why not.

2568
02:19:06,640 --> 02:19:08,400
Speaker 1: I said, I was pretty sure I could take them

2569
02:19:08,400 --> 02:19:11,520
Speaker 1: in a fight. They prodded for details why I thought so,

2570
02:19:11,720 --> 02:19:13,600
Speaker 1: and then how I thought a fight between us would go.

2571
02:19:13,879 --> 02:19:16,160
Speaker 1: I asked, what kind of fight, like a physical, unarmed

2572
02:19:16,160 --> 02:19:18,800
Speaker 1: fight to the death right now? And why what were

2573
02:19:18,800 --> 02:19:21,280
Speaker 1: my payouts? This was over the fate of the multiverse.

2574
02:19:21,360 --> 02:19:24,840
Speaker 1: Triggering actions by other people, ie or imprisonment or murder

2575
02:19:24,959 --> 02:19:27,959
Speaker 1: was not relevant. So they decide they make this into again.

2576
02:19:27,959 --> 02:19:31,360
Speaker 1: These people are all addicted to dumb game theory stuff, right, okay,

2577
02:19:31,360 --> 02:19:32,879
Speaker 1: so what is this fight? Is this fight over the

2578
02:19:32,879 --> 02:19:35,880
Speaker 1: fate of the multiverse? Are we in an alternate reality

2579
02:19:35,879 --> 02:19:37,720
Speaker 1: where like no one will come and intervene and there's

2580
02:19:37,720 --> 02:19:40,039
Speaker 1: no cops, we're the only people in the world or whatever.

2581
02:19:41,120 --> 02:19:43,720
Speaker 1: So they tell her like, yeah, imagine there's no consequences

2582
02:19:43,800 --> 02:19:45,760
Speaker 1: legally whatever to you do, and we're fighting over the

2583
02:19:45,760 --> 02:19:48,200
Speaker 1: fate of the multiverse. And so she proceeds to give

2584
02:19:48,240 --> 02:19:51,039
Speaker 1: an extremely elaborate discussion of how she'll gouge out their

2585
02:19:51,040 --> 02:19:53,480
Speaker 1: eyes and try to destroy their prefrontal lobes and then

2586
02:19:53,520 --> 02:19:56,520
Speaker 1: stomp on their skulls until they die. And it's both

2587
02:19:56,560 --> 02:19:59,720
Speaker 1: it's like, it's nonsense. It's like how ten year olds

2588
02:19:59,720 --> 02:20:03,560
Speaker 1: thinks fights work. It's also it's based on this game

2589
02:20:03,640 --> 02:20:06,480
Speaker 1: theory attitude of fighting that they have, which is like

2590
02:20:07,080 --> 02:20:09,240
Speaker 1: it's you have to make this kind of timeless decision

2591
02:20:09,280 --> 02:20:11,920
Speaker 1: that any fight is you're you're just going to murder.

2592
02:20:12,240 --> 02:20:14,879
Speaker 3: The hardest confrontation, right, Yes, I suppose you have to

2593
02:20:14,920 --> 02:20:15,920
Speaker 3: be the most violent.

2594
02:20:16,040 --> 02:20:18,280
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, because that will make other people not want

2595
02:20:18,320 --> 02:20:21,080
Speaker 1: to attack you, as opposed to like what normal people

2596
02:20:21,160 --> 02:20:23,720
Speaker 1: understand about like real fights, which is if you have

2597
02:20:23,800 --> 02:20:27,240
Speaker 1: to do one, if you have to, you like try

2598
02:20:27,280 --> 02:20:29,280
Speaker 1: to just like hit him in the hit him is

2599
02:20:29,320 --> 02:20:31,760
Speaker 1: somewhere that's going to shock them, and then run like

2600
02:20:31,800 --> 02:20:36,400
Speaker 1: a motherfucker, right you get out of like if you

2601
02:20:36,560 --> 02:20:39,440
Speaker 1: have to like ideally just run like a motherfucker. But

2602
02:20:39,440 --> 02:20:41,200
Speaker 1: if you have to strike somebody, you know, yeah, go

2603
02:20:41,320 --> 02:20:42,800
Speaker 1: for the eye and then run like a son of

2604
02:20:42,840 --> 02:20:45,760
Speaker 1: a bitch, you know, Like but there's no run like

2605
02:20:45,760 --> 02:20:47,920
Speaker 1: a son of a bitch here. Because the point in

2606
02:20:48,000 --> 02:20:52,600
Speaker 1: part is this like timeless decision to anyway, This gives

2607
02:20:53,040 --> 02:20:55,480
Speaker 1: tells you a lot about the rationalist community. So she

2608
02:20:55,560 --> 02:20:58,160
Speaker 1: tells these people, she explains in detail how she would

2609
02:20:58,240 --> 02:21:01,120
Speaker 1: murder them if they have to fight out they're like

2610
02:21:01,520 --> 02:21:04,840
Speaker 1: squitting next super close, having just asked her about masturbation.

2611
02:21:05,760 --> 02:21:08,600
Speaker 1: Here's their first question quote. They asked if I'd rape

2612
02:21:08,680 --> 02:21:11,800
Speaker 1: their corpse. Part of me insisted this was not going

2613
02:21:11,840 --> 02:21:14,400
Speaker 1: as it was supposed to, but I'd decided. I decided

2614
02:21:14,480 --> 02:21:17,280
Speaker 1: inflicting discomfort in order to get reliable information was a

2615
02:21:17,360 --> 02:21:20,000
Speaker 1: valid tactic. In other words, them trying to make her

2616
02:21:20,320 --> 02:21:24,000
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to get info from her, she decides is fine. Also,

2617
02:21:24,280 --> 02:21:26,720
Speaker 1: the whole discussion about raping their corpses is like, well,

2618
02:21:26,840 --> 02:21:28,800
Speaker 1: if you rape, obviously, if you want to have the

2619
02:21:28,800 --> 02:21:31,960
Speaker 1: most extreme response possible, that would like make other people

2620
02:21:32,320 --> 02:21:35,040
Speaker 1: unlikely to fuck with you knowing that you'll violate their

2621
02:21:35,040 --> 02:21:36,920
Speaker 1: corpse if you kill them as clearly the light.

2622
02:21:36,840 --> 02:21:38,280
Speaker 3: And like that.

2623
02:21:38,600 --> 02:21:41,520
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, I love rational thought.

2624
02:21:42,440 --> 02:21:48,520
Speaker 3: Oh man, this is crazy, sorry, this is yes, is

2625
02:21:48,720 --> 02:21:50,720
Speaker 3: so crazy, it's so nuts.

2626
02:21:51,920 --> 02:21:55,640
Speaker 1: So then they talk about psychopathy. One of these guys

2627
02:21:55,640 --> 02:21:58,720
Speaker 1: had earlier told Zizz that they thought she was a psychopath,

2628
02:21:59,640 --> 02:22:02,520
Speaker 1: but he told her that he told her that doesn't

2629
02:22:02,520 --> 02:22:05,760
Speaker 1: mean what it means both to actual like clinicians, because

2630
02:22:05,760 --> 02:22:08,600
Speaker 1: psychopathy is a diagnostician, or like what normal people mean.

2631
02:22:08,840 --> 02:22:11,959
Speaker 1: To rationalists, a lot of them think psychopathy is a

2632
02:22:12,040 --> 02:22:16,519
Speaker 1: state you can put yourself into in order to maximize

2633
02:22:16,560 --> 02:22:20,760
Speaker 1: your performance in certain situations because they they've Again there's

2634
02:22:20,760 --> 02:22:23,960
Speaker 1: some like popular books that are about like the Psychopaths

2635
02:22:24,080 --> 02:22:26,760
Speaker 1: Way the Dark Triad, and like, well, you know, these

2636
02:22:26,800 --> 02:22:29,280
Speaker 1: are the people who lead societies in the toughest times,

2637
02:22:29,280 --> 02:22:31,120
Speaker 1: and so like you could you need to optimize and

2638
02:22:31,480 --> 02:22:33,520
Speaker 1: engage in some of those behaviors if you want to

2639
02:22:33,920 --> 02:22:37,959
Speaker 1: win in these situations. Based on all of this, Ziz

2640
02:22:37,959 --> 02:22:42,320
Speaker 1: brings up what rationalists call the Gervas principle. Now, this

2641
02:22:42,400 --> 02:22:45,400
Speaker 1: started as a tongue in cheek joke describing a rule

2642
02:22:45,440 --> 02:22:48,359
Speaker 1: of office dynamics based on the TV show The Office.

2643
02:22:50,200 --> 02:22:53,480
Speaker 1: Yes it's Ricky Sace, Yes, And the idea is that

2644
02:22:53,600 --> 02:22:57,320
Speaker 1: in office environments, psycho's always rise to the top. This

2645
02:22:57,440 --> 02:22:59,760
Speaker 1: is supposed to be like a negative observation. Like the

2646
02:22:59,760 --> 02:23:01,920
Speaker 1: person who wrote this initially is like, yeah, this is

2647
02:23:01,959 --> 02:23:03,879
Speaker 1: how offices work, and it's like why they're bad.

2648
02:23:04,080 --> 02:23:04,320
Speaker 3: You know.

2649
02:23:04,600 --> 02:23:08,600
Speaker 1: It's an extension of the Peter principle. And these psychopaths

2650
02:23:08,640 --> 02:23:11,880
Speaker 1: put bad like dumb and incompetent people in like when

2651
02:23:12,040 --> 02:23:16,360
Speaker 1: positions below them for a variety. It's trying to kind

2652
02:23:16,360 --> 02:23:19,720
Speaker 1: of work out why in which like offices, are often dysfunctional. Right,

2653
02:23:20,560 --> 02:23:23,120
Speaker 1: it's not like the original Jervase principle. Thing is like

2654
02:23:23,200 --> 02:23:25,680
Speaker 1: not a bad piece of writing or whatever, but Zis

2655
02:23:25,760 --> 02:23:28,480
Speaker 1: takes something insane out of it. I described how the

2656
02:23:28,560 --> 02:23:32,160
Speaker 1: Jervase principle said, sociopaths give up empathy as in a

2657
02:23:31,760 --> 02:23:36,119
Speaker 1: certain chunk of social software, not literally all hardware awared

2658
02:23:36,240 --> 02:23:40,080
Speaker 1: accelerated modeling of people, not necessarily compassion, and with it

2659
02:23:40,160 --> 02:23:43,880
Speaker 1: happiness destroying meaning to create power, meaning too, I did

2660
02:23:43,879 --> 02:23:46,200
Speaker 1: not care about I wanted this world to live on.

2661
02:23:46,760 --> 02:23:49,160
Speaker 1: So she tells them she's come to the conclusion I

2662
02:23:49,280 --> 02:23:53,080
Speaker 1: need to make myself into a psychopath in order to

2663
02:23:53,120 --> 02:23:55,840
Speaker 1: have the kind of mental power necessary to do the

2664
02:23:55,879 --> 02:23:58,959
Speaker 1: things that I want to do. And she largely justifies

2665
02:23:59,000 --> 02:24:02,000
Speaker 1: this by describing the leafs of the Sith from Star Wars,

2666
02:24:03,320 --> 02:24:05,560
Speaker 1: because she thinks she needs to remake herself as a

2667
02:24:05,560 --> 02:24:09,680
Speaker 1: psychopathic evil warrior monk in order to save all of creation.

2668
02:24:12,320 --> 02:24:13,880
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, of course, yep.

2669
02:24:14,040 --> 02:24:17,400
Speaker 1: So this is her hitting her final form. And true

2670
02:24:17,400 --> 02:24:19,640
Speaker 1: to fact, these guys are like, they doesn't say it's

2671
02:24:19,640 --> 02:24:21,800
Speaker 1: a good idea that but they're like, Okay, yeah, you

2672
02:24:21,800 --> 02:24:23,959
Speaker 1: know that's not that's not the worst thing you could do. Sure,

2673
02:24:24,160 --> 02:24:27,879
Speaker 1: you know, like I think the Sith stuff kind of weird,

2674
02:24:27,920 --> 02:24:30,440
Speaker 1: but making yourself a psychopath makes sense. Sure, yeah, of

2675
02:24:30,480 --> 02:24:32,080
Speaker 1: course I know a lot of guys who did that.

2676
02:24:33,200 --> 02:24:36,920
Speaker 1: That's literally what they say, right, And then they say

2677
02:24:36,920 --> 02:24:38,879
Speaker 1: that also, I don't even think that's what they really

2678
02:24:38,920 --> 02:24:41,200
Speaker 1: they say that, because the next thing they say, this

2679
02:24:41,240 --> 02:24:44,240
Speaker 1: guy person a is like, look, the best that lay

2680
02:24:44,280 --> 02:24:46,280
Speaker 1: to turn yourself from a net negative to a net

2681
02:24:46,320 --> 02:24:49,000
Speaker 1: positive value. I really believe you could do it. But

2682
02:24:49,040 --> 02:24:50,400
Speaker 1: to do it, you need to come to ten more

2683
02:24:50,440 --> 02:24:54,600
Speaker 1: of these seminars and keep taking classes here right right right,

2684
02:24:55,600 --> 02:24:59,640
Speaker 1: here's a quote from them, or from Ziz. She's conditional

2685
02:24:59,640 --> 02:25:02,000
Speaker 1: on beig going to a long course of circling like

2686
02:25:02,040 --> 02:25:06,160
Speaker 1: these two organizations offered, particularly a ten weekend one, then

2687
02:25:06,240 --> 02:25:12,720
Speaker 1: I probably would not be net negative. So things are

2688
02:25:12,760 --> 02:25:19,920
Speaker 1: going good. This is this is you know, ah, yeah great?

2689
02:25:21,800 --> 02:25:23,199
Speaker 3: How much weekends cost?

2690
02:25:23,720 --> 02:25:26,160
Speaker 1: I don't actually know, I don't I don't fully know

2691
02:25:26,200 --> 02:25:29,280
Speaker 1: with this. It's possible. Some of these are like some

2692
02:25:29,360 --> 02:25:32,400
Speaker 1: of the events are free, like, but the classes cost money,

2693
02:25:32,440 --> 02:25:34,119
Speaker 1: or but it's also a lot of it's like there's

2694
02:25:34,160 --> 02:25:38,440
Speaker 1: donations expected or by doing this and being a member,

2695
02:25:38,600 --> 02:25:44,400
Speaker 1: it's expected you're going to tithe basically that's like your income,

2696
02:25:44,560 --> 02:25:46,920
Speaker 1: right more than I.

2697
02:25:47,600 --> 02:25:49,120
Speaker 2: I don't know the format. Is she not going to

2698
02:25:49,160 --> 02:25:52,240
Speaker 2: be like super suspicious that people are like, you know,

2699
02:25:52,920 --> 02:25:55,600
Speaker 2: faking it or like going over the top.

2700
02:25:55,879 --> 02:26:00,000
Speaker 1: She okay, is she is? She gets actually really uncomfortable.

2701
02:26:00,120 --> 02:26:02,800
Speaker 1: They have an exercise where they're basically doing you know,

2702
02:26:02,800 --> 02:26:05,320
Speaker 1: they're playing with love bombing right where everyone's like hugging

2703
02:26:05,560 --> 02:26:08,000
Speaker 1: and telling each other they love each other, and she's like,

2704
02:26:08,040 --> 02:26:09,879
Speaker 1: I don't really believe it. I just met these people.

2705
02:26:10,240 --> 02:26:12,040
Speaker 1: So she she has started to and she is going

2706
02:26:12,080 --> 02:26:15,720
Speaker 1: to break away from these organizations pretty quickly. But this

2707
02:26:15,879 --> 02:26:19,240
Speaker 1: conversation she have with these guys is a critical part

2708
02:26:19,280 --> 02:26:24,480
Speaker 1: of like why she finally has this fracture, because number one,

2709
02:26:24,520 --> 02:26:27,080
Speaker 1: this dude keeps telling her you have a net negative

2710
02:26:27,200 --> 02:26:31,920
Speaker 1: value to the universe, right, and so she's obsessed with

2711
02:26:31,920 --> 02:26:33,840
Speaker 1: like how do I And it comes to the conclusion,

2712
02:26:33,879 --> 02:26:37,080
Speaker 1: my best way of being net positive is to make

2713
02:26:37,120 --> 02:26:43,840
Speaker 1: myself then doo associopath and a sith lord to save

2714
02:26:43,879 --> 02:26:44,600
Speaker 1: the animals.

2715
02:26:44,600 --> 02:26:47,840
Speaker 3: Of course, it feels like the same thinking though, as

2716
02:26:47,879 --> 02:26:51,200
Speaker 3: like the Robot's gonna make it seems to always come

2717
02:26:51,240 --> 02:26:53,640
Speaker 3: back to this idea of like I think we just

2718
02:26:53,640 --> 02:26:54,480
Speaker 3: gotta be evil.

2719
02:26:55,760 --> 02:27:00,000
Speaker 2: It's yes, oh yes, well I guess the only laws

2720
02:26:59,560 --> 02:27:02,800
Speaker 2: of illusion is doom.

2721
02:27:03,080 --> 02:27:07,959
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, yeah, it's like it feels like it's a

2722
02:27:08,720 --> 02:27:09,800
Speaker 3: it's a theme here.

2723
02:27:10,040 --> 02:27:14,000
Speaker 1: M hm, yep. Anyway you want to plug anything at

2724
02:27:14,000 --> 02:27:14,800
Speaker 1: the end here.

2725
02:27:15,200 --> 02:27:20,039
Speaker 3: Ah, I have a comedy specially you can purchase on Patreon.

2726
02:27:20,120 --> 02:27:22,840
Speaker 3: It's called Birth of a Nation with a G. You

2727
02:27:22,840 --> 02:27:26,480
Speaker 3: can get that at Patreon dot combat Sash David.

2728
02:27:27,480 --> 02:27:33,320
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. All right, folks, well that is the end

2729
02:27:33,320 --> 02:27:35,800
Speaker 1: of the episode. David, thank you so much for coming

2730
02:27:35,840 --> 02:27:39,440
Speaker 1: on to our inaugural episode by listening to some of

2731
02:27:39,520 --> 02:27:42,440
Speaker 1: the weirdest shit we've ever talked about on this show.

2732
02:27:44,080 --> 02:27:47,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is I don't really I'm gonna be thinking

2733
02:27:47,160 --> 02:27:48,280
Speaker 3: about this for weeks.

2734
02:27:48,520 --> 02:27:54,240
Speaker 9: I mean yeah, yeah, because your co host likes a

2735
02:27:54,320 --> 02:27:59,080
Speaker 9: curbent kbon for the Elders of Zion episodes, Yeah.

2736
02:27:59,000 --> 02:28:02,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I wanted to. I was initially going to

2737
02:28:02,440 --> 02:28:04,480
Speaker 1: kind of just focus on all of this would have

2738
02:28:04,520 --> 02:28:06,560
Speaker 1: been like half a page or so, you know, just

2739
02:28:06,640 --> 02:28:09,560
Speaker 1: kind of summing up here's the gist of what this

2740
02:28:09,600 --> 02:28:12,280
Speaker 1: believes and then let's get to the actual cult stuff when,

2741
02:28:12,360 --> 02:28:15,080
Speaker 1: like you know, Ziz starts bringing in followers and the

2742
02:28:15,120 --> 02:28:19,440
Speaker 1: crimes start happening. But that Rolling or that Wired article

2743
02:28:19,480 --> 02:28:22,800
Speaker 1: really covers all that very well. And that's the best piece.

2744
02:28:22,920 --> 02:28:26,080
Speaker 1: Most of the journalism I've read on these guys is

2745
02:28:26,120 --> 02:28:28,440
Speaker 1: not very well written. It's not very good. It does

2746
02:28:28,480 --> 02:28:31,080
Speaker 1: not really explain why they what they are, why they

2747
02:28:31,080 --> 02:28:33,320
Speaker 1: do it. So I decided, and I'm not. The Wired

2748
02:28:33,320 --> 02:28:35,959
Speaker 1: piece is great. I know the Wired guy knows all

2749
02:28:36,000 --> 02:28:37,680
Speaker 1: of the stuff that I brought up here. He just

2750
02:28:37,920 --> 02:28:42,240
Speaker 1: it's an article. You have editors. He left out what

2751
02:28:42,320 --> 02:28:44,360
Speaker 1: he thought he needed to leave out. I don't have

2752
02:28:44,400 --> 02:28:47,840
Speaker 1: that problem. And I wanted to really, really deeply trace

2753
02:28:48,200 --> 02:28:52,320
Speaker 1: exactly where this lady's how this lady's mind develops, and

2754
02:28:52,360 --> 02:28:58,240
Speaker 1: how that intersects with rationalism, because it's interesting and kind

2755
02:28:58,320 --> 02:29:06,560
Speaker 1: of important and bad. Yeah, okay, So anyway, thanks for

2756
02:29:06,600 --> 02:29:14,080
Speaker 1: having a had fuck with me. All right, that's it, everybody, Goodbye.

2757
02:29:15,280 --> 02:29:17,960
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

2758
02:29:18,320 --> 02:29:21,599
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

2759
02:29:21,760 --> 02:29:25,000
Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

2760
02:29:25,080 --> 02:29:28,200
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

2761
02:29:28,240 --> 02:29:32,320
Speaker 2: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

2762
02:29:32,400 --> 02:29:33,000
Speaker 2: and Friday.

2763
02:29:33,320 --> 02:29:37,080
Speaker 9: Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind

2764
02:29:37,080 --> 02:29:37,760
Speaker 9: the Bastards