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Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where I,

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Speaker 1: Robert Evans, am going to war like a one man

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Speaker 1: like Rambo, like one of the later Rambo movies, not

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Speaker 1: the first one that was actually about the cost of

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Speaker 1: PTSD and Imperial War, but like the later ones where

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Speaker 1: he's a one man army. I'm doing that, and I'm

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Speaker 1: doing it against Microsoft because I fucking hate co Pilot.

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Speaker 1: With me to talk about how much we hate Microsoft

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Speaker 1: co Pilot, my producer Sophie Lichterman, and our wonderful guest

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Speaker 1: David Borie. David, how do you feel about Microsoft co pilot?

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Speaker 2: Ah Rambo three, let's go okay, okay, okay, kill a

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Speaker 2: ton of brown people.

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Speaker 1: Well, no, I mean this one. We're just it's just

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Speaker 1: like Microsoft co pilots. We're killing Okay, all of them

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Speaker 1: are not really people.

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Speaker 2: It's so bad.

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Speaker 1: The outlook is terrible. Microsoft has really gone far off

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Speaker 1: of making a lot of products that people hate to use.

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Speaker 3: Speaking of speaking of products people hate to use, David

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Speaker 3: said before we started recording that he was excited to

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Speaker 3: hear this story. I just watched it.

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Speaker 4: Know.

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Speaker 3: Where we're starting on this story is page twenty one

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Speaker 3: of the script, and where we add the script is

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Speaker 3: page forty nine.

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Speaker 1: WHOA, I I made a mistake in doing this. I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna admit that right now before we get further, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna say I aired in this. And it's you know,

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Speaker 1: I've made peace with the inevitability of fucking stuff up,

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Speaker 1: especially when like every week you're doing a different chunk

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Speaker 1: of history and we're veering from like we're talking about

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Speaker 1: fucking seventeenth and eighteenth century France and then like now

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Speaker 1: we're talking about like a fucking gay you died, a

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Speaker 1: genocide and Darfur or whatever. Right, like you're going to

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Speaker 1: these are all important topics, but like you simply can't

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Speaker 1: every single week cover the breadth of stuff that we

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Speaker 1: do and not you're gonna misspeak, You're gonna make errors

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Speaker 1: and stuff. And when it comes to like I'm talking

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Speaker 1: about I'm talking about like not obviously those are important,

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Speaker 1: but you know, if I fuck up some fact about

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Speaker 1: like early nineteen hundreds Germany, I'm not going to be

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Speaker 1: like too bent out of shape because it's like, you know,

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Speaker 1: there's there's no perfection in this. But in this case,

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Speaker 1: it's this tiny little community that nearly all of the

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Speaker 1: reporting on has been like deeply incomplete, and I feel

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Speaker 1: like I like the stress over, like what do I

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Speaker 1: include in here? And the other problem is that none

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Speaker 1: of these people have editors, and so all of everybody

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Speaker 1: in this story has a blog, and every blog post

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Speaker 1: is like forty thousand words.

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Speaker 2: So it's just like, now, just say, what media are

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Speaker 2: you able to get this? Is? You're getting this all

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Speaker 2: straight from the source, right, A.

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Speaker 1: Lot of it's I mean I read, I've read most

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Speaker 1: of Zizz's blog entries, and I've at least done like

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Speaker 1: little surveys of the blogs of everybody else involved in this.

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Speaker 1: There were also a couple of very helpful compilations that

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Speaker 1: like people, there's like one like a former Sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: like former members of the community. Sometimes it's folks who

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Speaker 1: are like rationalists that were trying to warn other rationalists

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Speaker 1: about Zizians. But like people in and around the community

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Speaker 1: have put together compilations where they'll like clip mixes of

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Speaker 1: news stories and like conversations online come and obviously these

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Speaker 1: folks like nasty work, yes, yes, and I'm deeply great, well,

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Speaker 1: we'll have source links at everything in here. I note

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Speaker 1: when I'm kind of like pulling something from something directly,

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Speaker 1: but like, I'm very grateful to the maniacs who put

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Speaker 1: together these like documents that have helped me piece together

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Speaker 1: what's happening. Because really, if you're coming in as an outsider,

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Speaker 1: if you weren't like embedded in this community while all

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Speaker 1: is crazy shit was going on, it's a little it's

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Speaker 1: kind of impossible to like get everything you need to get.

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Speaker 1: You have to refer to these interior sources. It's just

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Speaker 1: the only way to actually understand stuff.

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Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I as an out cider, I don't know

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Speaker 5: what's going on.

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Speaker 2: I don't know where it's going for sure. I don't

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Speaker 2: know where it's going.

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Speaker 1: It's going, we know where it ends, which you know

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Speaker 1: what it ends. A member of Congress shows up at

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Speaker 1: the library in Vermont that the US and Canada shares

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Speaker 1: because a border patrol agent was murdered there and threatens

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Speaker 1: to take over Canada, and that's all. Like, there's a

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Speaker 1: degree to which you can kind of tie heightened tensions

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Speaker 1: between the US and Canada to the murder of this

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Speaker 1: border patrol agent, which itself is directly tied to the

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Speaker 1: fact that Alicia Jedkowski wrote a piece of Harry Potter

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Speaker 1: fan fiction.

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Speaker 2: I love it all goes back to that.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it all comes back to bad Harry Potter

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Speaker 1: fan fiction. So part three we spent last episode talking

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Speaker 1: about zizz Is moving to the Bay and their first

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Speaker 1: interactions with the rationalist community. That big Sea Far conference

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Speaker 1: they went to that was very reminiscent, had a lot

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Speaker 1: of exercises reminiscent of like Sin and on ship.

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Speaker 5: Right, very very a lot of talking murder, Yes, a

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Speaker 5: lot of talk a murder.

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Speaker 1: These people love theorizing about when it's okay to kill people.

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Speaker 1: Constant factor at all of this, which.

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Speaker 2: Is can't be a step in a good direction.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you should. You should be aware of.

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Speaker 1: There's like, if your community is talking about like the

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Speaker 1: ethics of escalating to murder in random arguments too much,

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Speaker 1: maybe be a little worried.

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Speaker 2: If someone sits down next to you and says, how

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Speaker 2: would you murder me? Or whatever? This right? You always

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Speaker 2: got to get out of that room.

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Speaker 1: Yeah you want to, You want to, You want to

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Speaker 1: leave immediately.

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Speaker 2: And even more if they're like, yeah, that's the right way,

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Speaker 2: even worse sign and then.

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Speaker 1: If they're like, yeah, would you would you perform necrophilia?

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Speaker 1: In order to, in the past scare people away from

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Speaker 1: attacking you, like, get out of that room, leap bad.

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Speaker 1: This is not a crew you want to be a

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Speaker 1: part of. Yeah, maybe just take a pickleball or pickleball.

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Speaker 1: People never talk about necrophilia playing pickleball.

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Speaker 2: I don't think one time. I don't think one time.

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Speaker 1: No, they all talk about how they're getting knee replacements,

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Speaker 1: and that's beauty of pickleball exactly. So, in spite of

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Speaker 1: how obviously bad this community is, Ziz desperately wants to

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Speaker 1: be in the center of the rationalist subculture, and that

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Speaker 1: means being in the Bay. Unfortunately, the Bay is a

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Speaker 1: nearly impossible place to survive in if you don't have

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Speaker 1: shitloads of money, and one of the only ways to

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Speaker 1: make it in the Bay if you're not rich is

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Speaker 1: to wind up in deeply abusive and illegal rental situations.

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Speaker 1: You know this, David, I'm I'm not spreading any news

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Speaker 1: to you.

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Speaker 2: Shout out to my landlord, mister lou.

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Speaker 3: So.

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Speaker 1: Ziz winds up in a horrible sublet with a person

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Speaker 1: she describes as an abusive alcoholic. I was there. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if she was the problem. In this part like,

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Speaker 1: I obviously I've got one side of this story, but

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Speaker 1: her claim is that it ends in physical violence. Ziz

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Speaker 1: claims he was to blame, but she also describes a

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Speaker 1: situation where they're like, after a big argument, bump into

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Speaker 1: each other and he calls the cops on her for assault.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it past Ziz to be leaving some

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Speaker 1: parts out of this. But also I know a bunch

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Speaker 1: of people who wound up in horrible sublets with abusive

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Speaker 1: alcoholics who assaulted them in the Bay Area.

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Speaker 3: And then La.

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Speaker 2: Chrislist is a crap shoot.

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Speaker 1: Craigslist is a crap shoot. Yeah, every time I always

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Speaker 1: I feel like they need to like qualify with like

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Speaker 1: this is just his's account. But also this sounds like

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Speaker 1: a lot of stories I know people have had.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough to get by there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so she calls the or he calls the cops

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Speaker 1: on her, and then yeah, they do nothing, and he

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Speaker 1: attacks her in her bedroom that night. So she decides

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Speaker 1: to like he's like throwing a chair at her and shit,

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Speaker 1: So she decides, I got to get out of this

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Speaker 1: terrible fucking sublet. And unfortunately, her next best option, a

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Speaker 1: very common thing in the rationalist community is to have

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Speaker 1: whole houses rented out that you fill with rationalists who

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Speaker 1: don't have a lot of money. It never rents by

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Speaker 1: the artists yet kind of like artists or like content

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Speaker 1: producer houses, it never explodes. People never have horrible times

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Speaker 1: in these. This particular rationalist house is called liminal because

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Speaker 1: you know, gen Z loves talking about their liminal spaces

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Speaker 1: on the Internet. One resident of the house reacts very

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Speaker 1: negatively when Ziz identifies herself as a non transitioning trans

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Speaker 1: woman and basically asks like, when are you going to leave?

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Speaker 1: So she has, you know, she says that as soon

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Speaker 1: as she arrives one of the other residents's transphobes, she

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Speaker 1: can't stay there very long. Again, all sounds like a

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Speaker 1: very familiar Bay Area housing situation story. She bounces around

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Speaker 1: some short term solutions airbnbs, moving constantly while trying to

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Speaker 1: find work. She gets an interview with Google, but the

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Speaker 1: hiring process there is slow. There's a lot of different

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Speaker 1: stages to it, and it doesn't offer immediate relief from

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Speaker 1: her financial issues. Other potential offers fall through as she

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Speaker 1: conflicts with the fundamental snake oiliness of this era of

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Speaker 1: silicon Valley Development, ziz blames on the fact that she

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Speaker 1: couldn't feign enthusiasm for companies she didn't believe in. Quote,

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Speaker 1: I was inexperienced with convincing body language, inclusive lies like this.

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Speaker 1: I did not have the right false face, but very

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Speaker 1: quick to think up words to say so, like I'm

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Speaker 1: not good enough at lying that I'm excited about working

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Speaker 1: for an app to you know, help you do your

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Speaker 1: laundry better, which is like a third of the bay.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, right, yeah, And once again she has like flashes

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Speaker 5: of like, oh, wow, you really you really have strong

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Speaker 5: morals and all the aim. Yeah, she's a strong resume, right,

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Speaker 5: it wasn't she does she wants like an award as

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Speaker 5: a NASA intern, Right, She's still yeah, she's she really

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Speaker 5: is good at a lot of this stuff. In all

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Speaker 5: of these Zizians, as silly as their their beliefs about

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Speaker 5: philosophy and like cognitive science are, they're all extremely a

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Speaker 5: comp in their fields.

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Speaker 1: Nearly. It's a it's good evidence of the fact that

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Speaker 1: like it's always a mistake to think of intelligence as

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Speaker 1: like an absolute characteristic, like I am a genius software engineer,

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Speaker 1: therefore I am smart. It's like no, no, no, you

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Speaker 1: you're you're you're you're dumb at plenty of things, mister

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Speaker 1: software engineer.

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Speaker 2: I don't sell yourself. Sure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So she does start to transition during this period

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Speaker 1: of time. She goes on finasteride, which helps to avoid

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Speaker 1: male pattern baldness, and she starts experimenting with estrogen and

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Speaker 1: anti androgens. She'd wanted to avoid this for I'm sure

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Speaker 1: she had a variety of reasons, but as soon as

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Speaker 1: she starts taking hormones they have such a positive effect.

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Speaker 1: She describes it as a hard to describe felt sense

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Speaker 1: of cognitive benefits, and she decides to say stay on them.

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Speaker 1: By October, she'd committed to start writing a blog about

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Speaker 1: her own feelings and theories on rationalism, and her model

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Speaker 1: here was Yudkowski. She names this blog Sin Seriously, and

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Speaker 1: it was her attempt to convince other rationalists to adopt

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Speaker 1: her belief about like veganism and such. Her first articles

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Speaker 1: are like pretty bland. It's the scattered concepts and thought experients,

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Speaker 1: very basic stuff like can God create a rock so

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Speaker 1: big God couldn't move it? And then like throwing a

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Speaker 1: rationalist spin on that. So it's you know a lot

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Speaker 1: of this is like, oh, maybe in an area in

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Speaker 1: which college didn't cost two hundred grand, you could have

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Speaker 1: just gotten a philosophy degree, and right, that would have

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Speaker 1: made you happy. Like, right, you just wanted to spend

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Speaker 1: a couple of years talking through silly ideas based on

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Speaker 1: dead Greek guys.

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Speaker 2: Well you know the Bay is the place to do that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, unfortunately, so she starts to really show an

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Speaker 1: interest early on though, and this is where things get

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Speaker 1: unsettling and enforcement mechanisms, which are methods by which individuals

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Speaker 1: can like blackmail themselves into accomplishing difficult tasks for personal betterment.

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Speaker 1: She writes about an app called b Minder, which lets

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Speaker 1: you set goals and punish yourself with a financial bit

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Speaker 1: penalty if you don't make regular progress. And she's really

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Speaker 1: obsessed with just the concept of using enforcement mechanisms to

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Speaker 1: make people better, writing often you have to break things

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Speaker 1: to make them better. So not a great path going down?

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Speaker 1: Here is she following this herself like she's working on

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Speaker 1: She's trying to use some of these tactics on herself

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Speaker 1: to make herself to deal with like what she sees

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Speaker 1: as her flaws that're stopping her from you know, saving

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Speaker 1: the cosmos. Great stuff, a lot I've brought pressure to

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Speaker 1: put on yourself.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this poor woman has been under the highest stakes

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Speaker 2: this whole time.

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Speaker 1: Well, and that's again that that comes. That's not Zizz,

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Speaker 1: that's the entire rationalist subculture. The stakes are immediately, we

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Speaker 1: have to save the world from the evil AI that

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Speaker 1: will create hell to punish everybody who doesn't build it,

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Speaker 1: and that actually will talk about this later. That breaks

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Speaker 1: a ton of people in this She is not the

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Speaker 1: only one kind of fracturing her psyche in this community.

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Speaker 1: So right around this time, she's bouncing around short term

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Speaker 1: rentals and like desperately trying to get work. She meets

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Speaker 1: a person named Jasper Wynn, who at that point identified

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Speaker 1: as a trans woman. Now those by Gwynn Danielson and

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Speaker 1: uses by them pronouns. That's what I'm gonna refer to them,

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Speaker 1: but for clarity's sake, I'm gonna call them gwyn or Danielson,

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Speaker 1: even though they went by a different name at this time,

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Speaker 1: because that's what they're called now. Gwinn was a fan

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Speaker 1: of Zizz's blog and had some complex rationalist theories of

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Speaker 1: her own. They came to believe that each person had

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Speaker 1: multiple personalities stored inside their brain, a sort of like

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Speaker 1: mutation of the left brain right brain hypothesis, and each

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Speaker 1: of these sides of your brain was like a whole,

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Speaker 1: like intact person, right, Like great, yeah, no, cool, No,

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Speaker 1: you guys are gonna be fucking with your head's real heart. Great.

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Speaker 5: Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: So Ziz falls in love with Gwynn's ideas and she

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Speaker 1: starts bringing them up in rationalist events, trying to brute

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Speaker 1: force them into going mainstream among the community. But people

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Speaker 1: are like, this is a little weird even for us,

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Speaker 1: and she does not succeed in this, and as a result,

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Speaker 1: she and Danielson and a couple of other friends start

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Speaker 1: like talking and theorizing together separately from the bulk of

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Speaker 1: the community. So now again you've had this. They're starting

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Speaker 1: to calve off from the broader subculture, and they're starting

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Speaker 1: to like really like dig ruts for themselves in a

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Speaker 1: specific direction that's leading away from the rest of the rationalists.

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Speaker 2: Literally, all that cold stuff.

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Speaker 1: Huh, all that colt stuff, all that cold stuff. Now,

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Speaker 1: Gwynn and Ziz largely like bonded over their struggle paying

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Speaker 1: Bay Area rints, and together they stumbled upon a solution

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Speaker 1: beloved by generations of punks and artists in northern California

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Speaker 1: taking to the sea specifically. It's great, it's great. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I've known like three separate people who lived on boats

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Speaker 1: in the Oakland Harbor because it was like, this is

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Speaker 1: the only way I can't afford to live in the bay.

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Speaker 5: My little brother went to school right right outside of

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Speaker 5: San Francisco, and his principal lived on a boat right

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Speaker 5: just like a mile away from the school, and everybody

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Speaker 5: loved it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, everybody loved it. I mean, I gotta say,

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Speaker 1: everyone I know who lived on a boat lived on

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Speaker 1: a shitty boat. But I'm also not convinced there are

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Speaker 1: boats that any, boats that stay nice for very long.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like you would be dank. I guess

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Speaker 2: is the word.

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Speaker 1: Dank is a good description of boat life, I think.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So Gwinn's boat was anchored off the Encenal Basin, and

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Speaker 1: Ziz found this a pretty sweet solution. She goes over

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Speaker 1: to stay over one night and while they're like hanging out,

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Speaker 1: staying up, probably taking drugs, they don't like usually write

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Speaker 1: about it, but from like other community conversations, I think

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Speaker 1: we have to assume an awful lot of the time

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Speaker 1: when these people are staying up all night and talking,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of like ketamine and stuff being used

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Speaker 1: to that isn't written into the narrative.

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Speaker 2: That also goes along with it, also.

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Speaker 1: Goes along with the Bay Area pills and powders are

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Speaker 1: big yeah quote. They talked about how when they were

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Speaker 1: a child, their friend who was a cat had died

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Speaker 1: and they had to use their own retroactive paraphrasing sworn

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Speaker 1: an oath of vengeance against death. Fucking. These are just

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Speaker 1: people doing great, very healthy from the opposite of what

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Speaker 1: you want a kid to learn when their pet dies.

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Speaker 1: Is like, yeah, you know, death is inevitable. It happens

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Speaker 1: to everything. You know, it'll happen to you one day,

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Speaker 1: and it's sad, but just something we have to accept. No, no,

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Speaker 1: no wars death.

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Speaker 2: No. They were like, no, no, no, I can fix this.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I as a parent have failed in this situation.

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Speaker 1: This was an unsuccessful step in my child's development. Maybe

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Speaker 1: no more pets for a while, Maybe no more pets.

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Speaker 1: Gwynn also spent way too much time online, which is

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Speaker 1: how they wound up reading hundreds of theoretical articles about

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Speaker 1: how AGI artificial general intelligence would destroy the world. And again,

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Speaker 1: AGI is like a mainstream term now because a fucking

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Speaker 1: chat GPT came out a couple of years ago and

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Speaker 1: everyone started talking about it at this point two sixteen seventeen.

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Speaker 1: It's only like real people who are really into the

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Speaker 1: industry in a nerdy way who are using that frame,

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Speaker 1: Like regular people on the street don't know what you

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Speaker 1: fucking mean when you're talking about this stuff, but this

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Speaker 1: is a term that is in use among them. And

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Speaker 1: like Ziz Gwyn moved to the Bay Area to get

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Speaker 1: involved in fixing the problem. They were another kin, are

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Speaker 1: you familiar with this online community? Which one other kin?

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Speaker 2: Other kin? No, I have no, I've never heard of that.

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Speaker 1: It's like a it's like the Mormonism of furreedom almost like.

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Speaker 2: That that's that's the same you say.

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Speaker 1: I don't mean like it's harmless, right, Like these are

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Speaker 1: people who there's a mix of beliefs. Some of them

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Speaker 1: like literally believe they're like fantasy creatures. Some of them

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Speaker 1: just like yeah.

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Speaker 3: To be like yeah, like half identify as like it

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Speaker 3: a non human creature.

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Speaker 2: Right, Oh, Like their furry persona is they're true.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, kind of. That's close enough for government work.

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Speaker 1: And in Gwin's case, it's even different where I don't

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Speaker 1: think they believe they are literally a dragon, but they

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Speaker 1: believe that when there's a singularity and the robot god

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Speaker 1: creates heaven, they'll be given the body of a dragon

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Speaker 1: because the robot god will be able to do that.

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Speaker 1: It's a good singularity at least. That's why this is

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Speaker 1: all so important to them, making sure it's like a

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Speaker 1: nice AI so they'll be able to get their animal

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Speaker 1: friends back and get their dragon body. Til is old

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Speaker 1: time tale, as old as time again. A lot of

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Speaker 1: this could be avoided by just like processing death and uh,

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Speaker 1: stuff like that a little better. But we don't do

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Speaker 1: that very well in our society anyway. We've got a

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Speaker 1: lot of people who are committed to denying that. So

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Speaker 1: I'm not surprised like this happens at like the corners

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Speaker 1: right Like this is this is just a little downstream

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Speaker 1: from that Brian Johnson guy tracking his erections at night

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Speaker 1: and trying to get the penis of a nineteen year old.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like.

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Speaker 1: A massive sanity gap between these two things.

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Speaker 2: It's I think I think it's I think we're drinking

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Speaker 2: from the same well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so this is a result or so, Zizz

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Speaker 1: commits herself to turning Gwynn to the dark side, which

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Speaker 1: is a term she started to use. Obviously, it's a

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Speaker 1: Star Wars term and it comes out as a result

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Speaker 1: of her obsession with It's called acrasia. Akrasia is an

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Speaker 1: actual Greek term for a lack of will power that

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Speaker 1: leads someone to act in ways that take them further

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Speaker 1: from their goals in life. It's an actual, like I

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Speaker 1: think akrasia often it was like an early term for

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Speaker 1: like what we call adhd right, like people who have difficulty,

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Speaker 1: like focusing on tasks that they need to complete. One

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Speaker 1: of the promises of rationalism was to arm a person

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Speaker 1: with tools to escape this state of being and act

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Speaker 1: more powerfully and effectively in the world. Ziz adds to

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Speaker 1: this some ideas crib from Star Wars. She decides that

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Speaker 1: the quote unquote way of the Jedi, which is like

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Speaker 1: accepting moral restrictions you know about like not murdering people

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Speaker 1: and the like, is a prison for someone who's like

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Speaker 1: truly great and has the opportunity to accomplish important goals.

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Speaker 1: Right if you're that kind of person. You can't afford

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Speaker 1: to be limited by moral beliefs. So in order to

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Speaker 1: achieve the kind of vegan singularity that she thinks is

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Speaker 1: critical to save the cosmos, she and her fellow rationalists

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Speaker 1: need to free themselves and from the restrictions of the

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Speaker 1: Jedi and become vegan scyth. That's more or less where

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00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:09,080
Speaker 1: things are going here. So here I should note that

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00:20:09,119 --> 00:20:12,280
Speaker 1: while Gwynnin's's are spinning out on their own, everything that

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Speaker 1: you're seeing from them, these feelings of grandiosity and cosmic significance,

398
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Speaker 1: but also paranoid obsession are the norm in rationalists in

399
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Speaker 1: effective altruist circles. There's a great article in Bloomberg News

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Speaker 1: by Ellen Hewitt. It discusses how many in the EA

401
00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:29,159
Speaker 1: set would suffer paralyzing panic attacks over things like spending

402
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:32,080
Speaker 1: money on an ice dinner or buying ice cream, obsessing

403
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Speaker 1: over how many people they'd killed by not better optimizing

404
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:39,240
Speaker 1: their expenses, and quote in extreme pockets of the rationality community,

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Speaker 1: AI researchers believe their apocalypse related stress was contributing to

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Speaker 1: psychotic breaks. Marie employee, and that's one of these organizations

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Speaker 1: created by the people around Yakowski. Jessica Taylor had a

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Speaker 1: job that sometimes involved imagining extreme AI torture scenarios. As

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Speaker 1: she described it in a post on Less Wrong, the

410
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Speaker 1: worst possible suffering in AI might be able to people

411
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Speaker 1: at work, she says, she in a small team of

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Speaker 1: researchers believed we might make God, but we might make

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Speaker 1: mess up and destroy everything. In twenty seventeen, she was

414
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Speaker 1: hospitalized for three weeks with delusions that she was intrinsically

415
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Speaker 1: evil and had destroyed significant parts of the world with

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Speaker 1: my demonic powers, she wrote in her post. Although she

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Speaker 1: acknowledged taking psychedelics for therapeutic reasons, she also attributed the

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00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:26,080
Speaker 1: delusions to her job's blurring of nightmare scenarios. In real life,

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Speaker 1: in an ordinary patient, having fantasies about being the devil

420
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Speaker 1: is considered megalomania, She wrote here. The idea naturally followed

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Speaker 1: from my day to day social environment and was central

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Speaker 1: to my psychotic breakdown. Oh man, just taking ketamine and

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Speaker 1: convincing yourself you're the devil, normal rationalist stuff.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, hey, we've all been there, right.

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Speaker 1: We've been there now.

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Speaker 5: In fact, no, this is the least relatable group of

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Speaker 5: people i've ever heard of.

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Speaker 1: No, no, exactly, because there it's this like grandiosity, it's

429
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Speaker 1: this absolutely need to whatever else is going on, even

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Speaker 1: if you're like the bad guy, feel like what you're

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Speaker 1: doing is like of central cosmic significance. It's this fundamental

432
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,840
Speaker 1: fear that all is integral to all of these tech guys.

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Speaker 1: It's at the core of Elon Musk too, that like,

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Speaker 1: one of these days you're not going to exist and

435
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:18,880
Speaker 1: very few of the things that you valued in your

436
00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 1: life are going to exist, and there's still going to

437
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 1: be a world because that's life.

438
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:26,960
Speaker 5: That's just yeah, that It's so crazy how it boils

439
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 5: down to just like yeah, man, well I don't know

440
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:31,119
Speaker 5: what you thought was going to happen.

441
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:34,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, bro, sorry, Yeah, that's just how that's just how

442
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 1: it goes. You know, We've got like ten thousand years

443
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:40,040
Speaker 1: of like philosophy and like like thinking and writing on

444
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:42,440
Speaker 1: the subject of dealing with this, But you didn't take

445
00:22:42,440 --> 00:22:45,320
Speaker 1: any humanities and your STEM classes. So no, you know

446
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:48,000
Speaker 1: that you're just trying to bootstrap it.

447
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just watched Star Wars again and decided you

448
00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 2: got to figure it out.

449
00:22:53,119 --> 00:22:55,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, you watch Star Wars one hundred and thirty seven

450
00:22:55,520 --> 00:22:57,560
Speaker 1: times and figured that was going to your a place

451
00:22:57,600 --> 00:23:01,680
Speaker 1: reading a little bit of fucking Plato or something. Maybe

452
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:05,159
Speaker 1: it didn't work. Also, again, the ketaminees not helping.

453
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:09,159
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, God to be a fly on

454
00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:09,680
Speaker 2: that wall.

455
00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:14,920
Speaker 1: Oh god. Yeah, the rationalist therapists are raking it in, oh.

456
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:16,320
Speaker 2: Man, honestly well deserved.

457
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 1: But yeah, some talk about info hazards.

458
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:21,840
Speaker 2: Jesus.

459
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:25,880
Speaker 1: So I have to emphasize here again that I want

460
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:28,200
Speaker 1: to keep going back to the broader rationalist community because

461
00:23:28,359 --> 00:23:29,800
Speaker 1: I felt like a risk of this is that I

462
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 1: would just be talking about how crazy this one lady

463
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: and her friends were, and it's like, no, no, no,

464
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:37,000
Speaker 1: Everything they're doing, even the stuff that is a split

465
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:40,200
Speaker 1: off and different in like more extreme than mainstream rationalism,

466
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:43,360
Speaker 1: is directly related to shit going on in the mainstream

467
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:46,440
Speaker 1: rationalist community, which is deeply tied into big tech, which

468
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:48,800
Speaker 1: is deeply tied into like the Peter Teal circle. A

469
00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 1: lot of these folks are close to in and around

470
00:23:50,800 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 1: the government right now, right So like that is it's

471
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,000
Speaker 1: Ziz is not nearly as much of an outlier as

472
00:23:56,040 --> 00:24:00,399
Speaker 1: a lot of rationalists want people to think. Right, Yeah, anyway,

473
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: at rationalists meetups, Ziz began to pushing this whole vegan

474
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 1: syth thing hard and again meets with little success, but

475
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:09,600
Speaker 1: she and Gwyn gradually start to expand the circle of

476
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 1: people around them. Meanwhile, in her professional life, that Google

477
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,360
Speaker 1: interview process moves forward. Ziz says that she past every

478
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 1: stage of the process, but that it keep getting dragged out,

479
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 1: forcing her to ask her parents for more help. In November,

480
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 1: around the time her blog started to get a following,

481
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: she says Google said she'd passed the committee and would

482
00:24:27,359 --> 00:24:30,160
Speaker 1: be hired once she got picked for a team. Now

483
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:32,639
Speaker 1: I don't know what happens after this, she says. Google

484
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:36,000
Speaker 1: asks for proof of address, which she doesn't have. She's

485
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:38,119
Speaker 1: just turned twenty six, and she's not on her parents'

486
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:41,280
Speaker 1: health insurance either. She's been pages describing what is a

487
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:43,600
Speaker 1: very familiar nightmare scenario to me of like trying to

488
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: get proof of address so you can get a job

489
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,919
Speaker 1: and life continue getting like, you know, get on Cali

490
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: med and stuff. And I do think it's probably worth

491
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: acknowledging that, Like, as her brain is starting to break

492
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: and she's she's getting further and further into all these

493
00:24:57,240 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: delusional ideas, She's also struggling with being off of her parents'

494
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 1: health insurance and like trying to find stable housing in

495
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 1: the bay and like that influences the situation.

496
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:09,560
Speaker 2: And still in the process of transitioning, right.

497
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly, And still in the process of transitioning. Yes,

498
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: a heavy workload, you're doing too much to your brain, right, yes, so,

499
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: And then she makes the worst possible decision, which is

500
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: to live with her friend Gwynn in her tiny sail

501
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 1: in their tiny sailboat, which is now anchored by the

502
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 1: Berkeley Marina. Again, this is not like a houseboat. This

503
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 1: is like a sailboat with one small room.

504
00:25:34,359 --> 00:25:38,359
Speaker 2: Right, it's got a court like yeah, there's like a

505
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 2: bed table in.

506
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,200
Speaker 1: A sink, writing, like a little bathroom probably maybe a kitchenette.

507
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: But it's not like livable for two people.

508
00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:50,119
Speaker 3: Somebody who's like ever lived into small space with your

509
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:55,480
Speaker 3: roommate knows just like, no matter where you're at, it's horrible,

510
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 3: bad idea.

511
00:25:56,760 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: And imagine if that's shitty tiny apart meant that you

512
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 1: remember from your past was a boat just disastrous and

513
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 1: this is not a good situation. This would later write,

514
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:15,640
Speaker 1: I couldn't use my computer as well. I couldn't set

515
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 1: up my three monitors, there was no room, couldn't have

516
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: a programming flow state. For nine hours, I had trouble sleeping.

517
00:26:20,760 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: The slightest noise in my mind kept alerting me to

518
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 1: the possibility that someone like my roommate from several months ago,

519
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: was going to attack me in my sleep. So this

520
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: is not a healthy situation. And both Gwynnon's's have endured

521
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: some specific traumas, and both are also prone to flights

522
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: of grandiosity and delusion. And now they are trapped all day,

523
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:41,879
Speaker 1: every day together in a single room where their various

524
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 1: neuroses are clashing with each other and their only relief

525
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 1: is talking for hours about how to save the world.

526
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:54,160
Speaker 5: Oh my god, this is a it's a real villain story.

527
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 2: You couldn't get any worse than this.

528
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 1: It couldn't. And it's like, at this point, I don't

529
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: think either of them is like intentionally doing anything bad.

530
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:06,199
Speaker 1: You've just you've kind of created a cult where like

531
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 1: you're trading off on being the cult leader and cult

532
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: member for each other, Like you've isolated each other away

533
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 1: from the world, and you're spending time brainwashing each other

534
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 1: together in your little boats. Yeah, how often do you

535
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: think they were leaving that boat not nearly long enough?

536
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,879
Speaker 1: And Gwynn is on what Ziz describes as a cocktail

537
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: of stimulants. Quote mapped out the cognitive effects of each

538
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: hour they were on them. They get very angry if

539
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: Ziz interrupts their thoughts at the wrong time. And also

540
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: like Ziz isn't really sleeping, so they're just talking for

541
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,400
Speaker 1: hours and getting on each other's nerves at the same time.

542
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 1: But also like building these increasingly elaborate fantasies about how

543
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: they're going to save the cosmos and it's you know,

544
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:52,719
Speaker 1: it's not great. Through these conversations they do develop Gwinn's

545
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: multiple personalities theory, mixing in some of Zizz's own beliefs

546
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 1: about good and evil. And I want to quote another

547
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 1: passage from that Wired article that's summarizes what they come

548
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,440
Speaker 1: to believe about this. A person's core consisted of two hemispheres,

549
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:09,679
Speaker 1: each one intrinsically good or non good. In extremely rare cases,

550
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: they could be double good, a condition that so happened

551
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: with Lesoda identified in herself and this is consistently going

552
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 1: to identify herself as intrinsically good, so she's both sides

553
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 1: of her personality are only good. But most people are

554
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 1: at best single good, which means part of them is

555
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,239
Speaker 1: non good or basically evil, and they're at war with

556
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:31,679
Speaker 1: this other half of their brain. That's a whole person

557
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: that's evil, which is why the other people can't be

558
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: trusted to make decisions. You know, like, increasingly, this's attitude

559
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: is going to be like, only intrinsically good people can

560
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: be trusted to make good decisions, only the double goods,

561
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 1: only the double goods. That's such like a you know,

562
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: you're making your own life or well speech. This this

563
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: is a bad sign. Yeah, so, Zizz is google ambitions

564
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 1: fall apart at this time. They don't really give us

565
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 1: a good explanation as to why. I kind of think

566
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: they started bombarding their contact with Google with like requests

567
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 1: about why the process wasn't going faster, and maybe Google

568
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 1: was like, ah, maybe we don't need this person. Ziz

569
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 1: concludes failing at Google was good because she's gotten she'd

570
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 1: gotten ten thousand dollars from unemployment at this point. Quote

571
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: this means I had some time. If they hired me soon,

572
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: it would deprive me of at least several months of freedom,

573
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: and which of course she is continuing to work out

574
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: her theories with Gwynn on the sailboat. Also, if that's freedom,

575
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: it's really not freedom.

576
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: I maybe maybe work. I heard the Google campus has

577
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:35,720
Speaker 2: a lot of things to do, and.

578
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: It's the kind of the what if. I think maybe

579
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: at this point she still could have pulled out of

580
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: this tailspin if she'd gotten a job and worked around

581
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 1: other people and socialized not on the sailboat, but also

582
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 1: a real consistent thing with Zizz is at this point

583
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: she has no willingness to do the kind of compromise.

584
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about the moral compromise, but like,

585
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 1: even going to work a job for a company, you're

586
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: going to spend a large part of your day doing

587
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 1: a thing that like you wouldn't be doing otherwise, right,

588
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: because that's what a job generally, that's just work. And

589
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 1: Ziz feels like she can't handle the idea of doing

590
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: anything but reading fan fiction and theorizing about how to

591
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 1: give herself superpowers. Right, that's the most important thing in

592
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 1: the world because the stakes are so high, So she

593
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: like like ethically can't square herself with doing anything she

594
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: needs to succeed in this industry. Where she has the

595
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: skill to succeed. And this is this is another trait

596
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: she's got in common with the rest of the rationalist

597
00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: EA subculture that that Bloomberg article interviewed a guy named

598
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:41,600
Speaker 1: quaou Chu Yuan, a former rationalist and PhD candidate who

599
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: dropped out of his PhD program in order to work

600
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: in AI risk. He stopped saving for retirement and cut

601
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: off his friends so he could donate all of his

602
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: money to you know, EA causes and because his friends

603
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: were distracting him from saving the world. And these are

604
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: all this all cult stuff, right. Cults want you to

605
00:30:58,000 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: cut off from your friends, they want you to give

606
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: them all your money. He's doing but he's doing it

607
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: like independently, Like there's not like a single leader. He's

608
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:09,520
Speaker 1: not like living on a compound with them. It's just

609
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: once you kind of take these beliefs seriously, the things

610
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 1: that you that you will do to yourself are the

611
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: things people in cults have done to them.

612
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 2: Right.

613
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: In an interview with Business Insider, Yan said, you can

614
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: really manipulate people, and you're doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

615
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:26,239
Speaker 1: If you can convince them, this is how you can

616
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: prevent the end of the world. Once you get into

617
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 1: that frame, it really distorts your ability to care about

618
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: anything else.

619
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 2: Man.

620
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's kind of a thing. It's harder to

621
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: talk about this than like could people talk about Ziz

622
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: as like, oh, it's a cult leader and she had

623
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: her you know, Vegan trans Ai death cult or something,

624
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 1: and you know, I feel like that's not close enough

625
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:53,160
Speaker 1: to the truth to get what's like to get how

626
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: this happened, right, because what happens with Ziz is very cultish.

627
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 1: But Ziz is one of a number of different people

628
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,720
Speaker 1: who have cabbed off of the rationalism community and had

629
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 1: disastrous impacts. But it happens constantly with these people because

630
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 1: like it's such.

631
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 2: An engine for it.

632
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 1: Yes, it's an engine for making cults.

633
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 2: It's it's this is a cult factory for sure.

634
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're creating a cult factory.

635
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 5: Oh no, to give you the base ideas and then

636
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 5: you can just kind of franchise it how you'd like.

637
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of prominent rationalists who news is

638
00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: at the time have since gone out of their way

639
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: to describe her as like, you know, someone on the fringes.

640
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 1: Anna Salomon of Seafar described her as a young person

641
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: who was hanging around and who I suspect wanted to

642
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 1: be important. And Anna claim, is there anyone here who

643
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: doesn't want that? Within this No, that's all of them, right,

644
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: that's the whole community. And like Anna was emailing directly

645
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 1: gave that gave Ziz, like some of the advice that

646
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 1: Ziz considered like key to her moving to the Bay

647
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: Area and stuff. Right like these these these people, like

648
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:01,719
Speaker 1: the rationalists are really really want you to think that

649
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: this was just like some fringe person. But she's very

650
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: much tied in to all of this stuff, right, So

651
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: for her part, Ziz doesn't deny that failing to convince

652
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: other rationalists was part of why she pulled away from

653
00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: mainstream rationalism. But she's also going to claim that a

654
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: big reason for her break is sexual abuse among people

655
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: leading in the rationalist community. And there's a specific case

656
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: that she'll cite later that doesn't happen to until twenty eighteen,

657
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: But this is a problem people were discussing in twenty

658
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 1: seventeen when she's living on that boat. The representative story

659
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 1: is the case of Sonia Joseph, who was the basis

660
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 1: of that Bloomberg news piece. I've quoted from a couple

661
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 1: of times, and it's a bummer of a story. Sonya

662
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: was fourteen when she first read Ydkowski's Harry Potter and

663
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: the Methods of Rationality, which is set her on the

664
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: path that led her to moving to the Bay Area

665
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 1: in order to get involved in the rationalist EA set.

666
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: And she's focused on the field of AI risk. And

667
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 1: I'm going to read it a quote.

668
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 3: This week has been so long that I completely erased

669
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 3: the Harry Potter part of this story from my brain.

670
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: It's never drops too far below the surface. I cannot

671
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:08,920
Speaker 1: overemphasize how important this Harry Potter fan fiction is to

672
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 1: all these murders. I want primary texts are getting abused. Yes, yes,

673
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 1: it's a primary text of the movement. Wow, I'm going

674
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:20,319
Speaker 1: to read a quote from that Bloomberg article. Sonia was

675
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: encouraged when she was twenty two to have dinner with

676
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 1: a fortyish startup founder in the rationalist sphere because he

677
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:28,960
Speaker 1: had a close connection to Peter Teal. At dinner, the

678
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,760
Speaker 1: man Bragg that Yudkowski had moderate modeled a core Harry

679
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: Potter like fit professor in that fanfic on him, Joseph

680
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: says that He also argued that it was normal for

681
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: a twelve year old girl to have sexual relationships with

682
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: adult men, and that such relationships were a noble way

683
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: of transferring knowledge to a younger generation. Then, she says

684
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: he followed her home and insisted on staying over. She

685
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: says he slept on the floor of her living room

686
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 1: and that she felt unsafe until he left in the morning. Jesus,

687
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:58,319
Speaker 1: so great. You know, bragging about your Harry Potter, how

688
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: you helped inspire the Harry Potter fan, and then explaining

689
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: how twelve year old girls should have sex with adult men.

690
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:05,480
Speaker 1: Good stuff, got rational.

691
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 5: I gotta say, that's a crazy brag to get chicks. Yeah,

692
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 5: you know it was.

693
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:15,320
Speaker 2: You know, one of those characters. I'm the snake.

694
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the snipe of this. By the way, what

695
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: do you think about twelve year olds? Awesome? I have

696
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:23,280
Speaker 1: a close connection to Peter Teal.

697
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

698
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 1: Cool, oh man. As that Bloomberg article makes clear, this

699
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: is not an isolated issue within rationalism. Quote, sexual harassment

700
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: and abuse are distressing, are distressingly common. According to interviews

701
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 1: with eight women at all levels of the community, many

702
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: young ambitious women described a similar trajectory that were initially

703
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: drawn in by the ideas, then became immersed in the

704
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,839
Speaker 1: social scene. Often that meant to attending parties at EA

705
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 1: or rationalist group houses, or getting added to jargon filled

706
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 1: Facebook messenger chat groups with hundreds of like minded people.

707
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: The eight women say casual misogyny threaded through the scene

708
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: on the low end brick. The rationalist adjacent writer says

709
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 1: a prominent rationalist once told her condescendingly that she was

710
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,280
Speaker 1: a five year old and a hot twenty year old's body.

711
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,839
Speaker 1: Relationships with much older men were common, as was polyamory.

712
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,399
Speaker 1: Now there was inherently harmful, but several women say those

713
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: norms became tools to help influential older men get more partners.

714
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:20,920
Speaker 1: And this is also this isn't just rationalism, that is

715
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: the California ideology. That is the Bay Area tech set, right.

716
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, very techy.

717
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: Yes a man, and it's all super fucking gross the

718
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:35,479
Speaker 1: whole year a five year old and a hot twenty

719
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: year old's body thing. What the fuck? Man? How do

720
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:44,320
Speaker 1: you say that? Not hurl yourself off the San Francisco

721
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: Bay Bridge?

722
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:46,959
Speaker 2: Vile?

723
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: That's fucked up, dude, that's bad. Speaking of bad to

724
00:36:52,760 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: the bone are sponsors. Ah, we're back. So this is

725
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:05,280
Speaker 1: important to understand in a series about this very strange

726
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 1: person and the strange beliefs that she developed that influenced

727
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 1: several murders. Ziz had many of the traits of a

728
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:15,319
Speaker 1: cult leader, but again, she's also a victim first of

729
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: the cult dynamics inherent to rationalism. And what she's doing

730
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: next is she breaks away with a small loyal group

731
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 1: of friends, and she does create a physical situation that

732
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:25,800
Speaker 1: much more resembles the kind of cults we're used to

733
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 1: dealing with, particularly scientology, because next she's going to take

734
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 1: Oh wow, me and Gwnn living alone on this boat.

735
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:34,279
Speaker 1: We kind of hate each other and neither of us

736
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,240
Speaker 1: is sleeping, and our emotional health is terrible. But we've

737
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 1: made so many much progress on our ideas. Maybe we

738
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 1: should Maybe we should make this a bigger thing, right,

739
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: Maybe we should get a bunch of rationalists all living

740
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: together on boats.

741
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:52,120
Speaker 2: She needs a work life balance.

742
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, what she thinks she needs is she

743
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: calls it the Rationalist fleet, which is she wants to

744
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: get a bunch of community members to buy several boats

745
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: and live anchored in the bay to avoid high bay

746
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: area rent so they can spend all their time talking

747
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,480
Speaker 1: and plotting out ideas for saving the cosmos. Oh man,

748
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: so great, and.

749
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 5: I get it right. It's expensive here. I want to

750
00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:17,320
Speaker 5: get some boats with my friends. It does sound cool.

751
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 1: We won't go insane together, obviously, you know. She buys

752
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:25,239
Speaker 1: a twenty four foot boat for six hundred dollars off

753
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:29,319
Speaker 1: of Craigslist. And I don't know much about boats, but

754
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 1: I know you're not getting a good one for just

755
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars.

756
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:33,560
Speaker 2: No.

757
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:38,799
Speaker 1: No, like a living boat, like a full boat, like.

758
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:40,240
Speaker 2: A foot boat.

759
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: Yes, a full boat.

760
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 2: Oh man, that had to be a piece of shit,

761
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:48,760
Speaker 2: to be a shitty, shitty, colossal piece of shit. Yeah.

762
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:51,359
Speaker 1: She names it the Black Signet, and she starts trying

763
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: to convince some of her idea a lot of these

764
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: people who have gathered around her to get in on

765
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:58,719
Speaker 1: the project. Eventually, she, Danielson, and a third person puts

766
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:00,400
Speaker 1: together the money to buy a boat that's going to

767
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:02,839
Speaker 1: be like the center of their fleet, a seventy year

768
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: old Navy tug boat named the Caleb, which was anchored

769
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 1: in Alaska.

770
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 2: This is like a.

771
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 1: Ninety four foot boat. It's a sizeable boat, and it

772
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 1: is also very old and in terrible shape. That's the

773
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:21,399
Speaker 1: that's the crown jewel of the food, right right, that's

774
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: our flagship. Man, Danielson sale, They buy this thing with

775
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: this third guy, Dan Powell, who's at least a navy veteran,

776
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 1: so like, you know, okay, that boot calls boat adjacent,

777
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,800
Speaker 1: but he's I get the feeling. Nobody says this, but

778
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:41,759
Speaker 1: David Powell says that he put tens of thousands of

779
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: dollars into buying the Caleb. And I just know from

780
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:48,360
Speaker 1: what Danielson and Ziz wrote about their finances, neither of

781
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,399
Speaker 1: them had nearly that much money. So I think, by

782
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 1: far he invests the most in this project. And I

783
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: don't want to insult the guy, but he says he

784
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: did it because he quote considered buying the boat to

785
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: be a good investment, which boats aren't. Boats are never

786
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: an investment comically, so like known to nothing depreciates like

787
00:40:11,239 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: fucking raw salmon depreciates slower than a boat. I think

788
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: his attitude is I'm going to become like the slumlord

789
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 1: of a bunch of or at least landlord to a

790
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: bunch of boat rationalists. But I think correct, I don't

791
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: know how you expect this to pay off seventy year

792
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: old tug boat for a bunch of like poor rationalists,

793
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 1: punk kids to live in. Who was that ever supposed

794
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:44,279
Speaker 1: to work? What's the P and L statement you put

795
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:45,040
Speaker 1: together here?

796
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 5: Oh?

797
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 2: What was the what was the timeline on him getting

798
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:52,760
Speaker 2: his money back? He thought?

799
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,360
Speaker 1: Oh god, I have no idea. He absolutely takes a

800
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: bath on this ship, right, yeah, he claims, And I

801
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: belie leave him that Ziz lied to him about the

802
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 1: whole scenario to get his money. I do think this

803
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: was essentially a con from her, he says. Quote Ziz

804
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 1: led me to believe that she had established contacts in

805
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: the bay and that it would be easy for us

806
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: to at least get a slip, if not one that

807
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:16,920
Speaker 1: was approved for overnight use. And as it turns out,

808
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: when we were coming through the inside passage from Alaska,

809
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 1: it was revealed that we did not have a place

810
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: to arrive.

811
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 2: Wait, oh, I didn't realize he sailed it down from Alaska.

812
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, they all sail it together, them and a couple

813
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: other rationalists that they pick up. They make a post

814
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: on the internet being like, hey, any rationalists want to

815
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: sail a boat? Down from Alaska, talk about our ideas

816
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: while we live on a boat.

817
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 5: Oh man, so these people need space, yes, just get

818
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:47,239
Speaker 5: a warehouse.

819
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:51,800
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, well get the ghost ship. Fire had happened

820
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 1: by that point, so I don't think warehouse space was

821
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: easy to get. Yeah, but this, I think this would have.

822
00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:00,200
Speaker 1: I think you're right. In an earlier era, they have

823
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:02,919
Speaker 1: just wound up living in like a warehouse and maybe

824
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:05,879
Speaker 1: all died in the horrible fire because that there were

825
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: issues with that kind of life too, But they would

826
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: have been an option besides the boat thing. Anyway, the

827
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:12,280
Speaker 1: Caleb is not in good shape.

828
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 2: Again.

829
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:15,360
Speaker 1: This boat is seventy plus years old. It is only

830
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: livable by punk standards, and while it was large enough

831
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 1: it is a ninety four foot boat you can keep

832
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: some people on there, it's also way too big to

833
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 1: anchor in most municipal marinas, especially since the boat has

834
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 1: three thousand gallons of incredibly toxic diesel fuel and it's

835
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: not really seaworthy, which means there's this constant risk of

836
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: poisoning the water as it sits in that the authorities

837
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: are just going to be consistently like, guys, you can't

838
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: have this here, guys, you simply can't have this here,

839
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 1: so they just.

840
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 2: Got to operate out and inter national waters like a

841
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 2: cruise ship.

842
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: No, they're just kind of illegally anchoring places and hoping

843
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: that it's fine and periodically getting boarded over it. Another

844
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: crew member on the right down from Alaska who's just

845
00:42:56,840 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: kind of there. They're just there, you know, for the adventure.

846
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: So they they leave and don't come back after they

847
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 1: get to the bay. But this person expressed an opinion

848
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 1: that Ziz consistently came off as creepy but not scary.

849
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: At one point, he says that she confronted him and

850
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:13,719
Speaker 1: told him he was transgender, and when he's like, no,

851
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: I'm really not, she told him he was.

852
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:16,919
Speaker 2: Yes.

853
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: She does this a lot, tells people I know that

854
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:21,759
Speaker 1: you're this, this is and it works like that's how

855
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:24,960
Speaker 1: a number of her followers get to her. But she

856
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:26,840
Speaker 1: also it doesn't work a lot of time. A lot

857
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:29,400
Speaker 1: of people are like, no, I'm not you know whatever

858
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 1: it is you're saying. She does this to Gwynn too,

859
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 1: so I don't doubt his story. Like she just kind

860
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,720
Speaker 1: of decides things about people and then tries to brute

861
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:40,799
Speaker 1: force them into accepting that about herself, and when there

862
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:43,360
Speaker 1: are people who are like both desperate for like approval

863
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:46,919
Speaker 1: and affection and also who are housing insecure and need

864
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:49,800
Speaker 1: the boat or wherever to live with her, those people

865
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 1: feel a lot a number of them feel like a

866
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: significant pull to just kind of accept whatever Ziz is

867
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: saying about them.

868
00:43:56,280 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, when you're desperate in that way, you

869
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 2: kind of definitely find yourself to have a roof over

870
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 2: your head, like.

871
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And it's a very normal cult thing, right,

872
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 1: Like this is an aspect of all of that kind

873
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: of behavior. Now, by this point, a few other people

874
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 1: have come to live in the Rationalist fleet. One of

875
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 1: them is Imma Borhanian, a former Google engineer, and Alex Leatham,

876
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: a budding mathematician. The flotilla became a sort of marooned

877
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:25,359
Speaker 1: aquatic salon. Wired quotes Zizz as emailing to a friend

878
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,400
Speaker 1: at the time, We've been somewhat isolated from the rationalist

879
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: community for a while, and in the course developed a

880
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,400
Speaker 1: significant chunk of unique art of rationality and theories of

881
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 1: psychology aimed at solving our problems. Excited for this psychology

882
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:42,760
Speaker 1: you built on the boat, yeah, Wired continues as Lesoda

883
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,640
Speaker 1: articulated their goals had moved beyond real estate into a

884
00:44:45,640 --> 00:44:48,680
Speaker 1: more grandiose realm. We are built trying to build a cabal,

885
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: she wrote. The aim was to find abnormally intrinsically good

886
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: people and turn them all into Gervais sociopaths, creating a

887
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 1: fundamentally type of group than I have heard of existing

888
00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:01,279
Speaker 1: before sociopathy was at a road would allow the group

889
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:04,240
Speaker 1: members to operate unpooned by the external world.

890
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 2: Yeah that is because you had said that before, right, Yeah,

891
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 2: they had been that's sort of what they're looking to be.

892
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're obsessed with this idea of which is initially

893
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: like kind of a joke about the office, but they're like, no, no, no,

894
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 1: it actually is really good to have this sociopath at

895
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: the top who like moves the and manipulates these like

896
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 1: lesser like fools and whatnot and puts them into positions

897
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: below them. Like that's how we need what we need

898
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: to be in order to gain control of the levels

899
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:35,840
Speaker 1: of power. We have to make ourselves into Ricky Gervais sociopaths. Yeah, great,

900
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 1: what a good ideology.

901
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:42,439
Speaker 2: I love that they still love pop culture though you know.

902
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 1: They're obsessed with it. And again this is you can't

903
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: talk about this kind of shit if you're if you're

904
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:50,440
Speaker 1: regularly having conversations with people outside of your bubble, like.

905
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:53,479
Speaker 2: Exactly it's the thing. Yeah, if you have somewhere to go, yeah,

906
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 2: if you have anywhere to go this campaign.

907
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 1: Yes, yes. If you've got a friend who's like a

908
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: nurse or a contract if drinks with once a week

909
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: and you just talk about your ideas once, they're gonna

910
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 1: be like, hey, this is bad.

911
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:05,479
Speaker 2: You need to stop.

912
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 1: You're going out of a bad road. Do you need to

913
00:46:08,600 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 1: stay with me? Are you okay?

914
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:12,760
Speaker 2: This is clearly a cousin.

915
00:46:13,120 --> 00:46:14,280
Speaker 1: Yes, someone.

916
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 2: This would be so upsetting for someone to just casually

917
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 2: talk about it like a paint and sip or like Ricky.

918
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 1: Servas somebody there. Breaks with mainstream rationalism had gone terminal. GW.

919
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 1: Gwynn criticized the rest of the central rationalist community for

920
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:41,600
Speaker 1: quote not taking heroic responsibility for the outcome of this world.

921
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: In addition to the definitely accurate claims of sexual abuse

922
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: within rationalism, they alledged organizations like Sea Far we're actively transphobic.

923
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 1: I don't know how true that is. Some of the

924
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 1: articles I've read. There's a lot of trans rationalists will

925
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 1: be like, no, there's a very high population of trans

926
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 1: people within the rationalist community. So people just agree about this.

927
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 1: It's not my place to come to a conclusion. But

928
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:04,760
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that Zizz says about

929
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:09,640
Speaker 1: the central rationalist community. Ziz had concluded that transgender people

930
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:12,480
Speaker 1: were the best people to build a cabal around because

931
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:16,240
Speaker 1: they quote from Zizz's blog, had unusually high life force.

932
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: Ziz believed that the mental powers locked within the small

933
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: community of simpatico rationalists they'd gathered together were enough to

934
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:24,880
Speaker 1: alter the fate of the cosmos if everyone could be

935
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:26,960
Speaker 1: jail broken into sociopaths.

936
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 2: And yeah, these are all double goods as well.

937
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: Well, no, she's the only double good. Actually, she becomes

938
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 1: increasingly convinced that they're all just single good right, And

939
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: this is like her beliefs about heroism from the last episode.

940
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:43,160
Speaker 1: If you've got the community and the hero, the community's

941
00:47:43,239 --> 00:47:48,120
Speaker 1: job is to support the hero, right, like blind support, right,

942
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 1: blind support, no matter what. And a lot of the

943
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 1: languages is using here in addition to being you know,

944
00:47:54,200 --> 00:47:57,800
Speaker 1: rationalist language. This is all like scientology mixed with gaming

945
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 1: and fantasy media. She talks about the need to install

946
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 1: new mental tech on she and her friends. They which

947
00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: is like tech is like a scientology term, right, Like

948
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:10,680
Speaker 1: that's that's like a big thing that they say. She

949
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: and her circle start dressing differently. Ziz starts wearing like

950
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:16,279
Speaker 1: all black robes and stuff to make her look like

951
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: a syth or some sort of wizard. Her community adopts

952
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: the name vegan anarco transhumanism and starts unironically referring to

953
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: themselves as vegan scyth.

954
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 2: In the boat community when they move in.

955
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:32,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like, what is going I just wanted to

956
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 1: I'm just an alcoholic. What's happening? I just wanted to

957
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 1: be like Quint from John's Oh no, Yeah.

958
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:40,960
Speaker 2: I'm just here because my wife.

959
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 1: Left, right. I think might a different way than a

960
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:46,799
Speaker 1: grape white attack. Now looking bad?

961
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:48,680
Speaker 2: Yike? Oh man.

962
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: So around this time, Gwynn claims she came up with

963
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:55,600
Speaker 1: a tactic for successfully separating and harnessing the power of

964
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: different hemispheres of someone's brain. The tactic was uni himus

965
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 1: spheric sleep, and this is a process by which only

966
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 1: one half of your brain sleeps at a time. In

967
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: a critical write up, publishes a warning before the killings

968
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: that are to come. A rationalist named Apala Mojave writes,

969
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:15,840
Speaker 1: normally it is not possible for human beings to sleep

970
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:18,840
Speaker 1: with only one hemisphere. However, a weak form of UHS

971
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 1: can be achieved by stimulating one half of the body

972
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: and resting the other like hypnosis are fasting. This is

973
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,840
Speaker 1: a vulnerable psychological state for a person entering UHS requires

974
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: the sleeper to be exhausted. It also has disorienting effects,

975
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 1: so they are not quite themselves. And I disagree with

976
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,280
Speaker 1: them that, like, there's no, they're not just actually sleeping

977
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,319
Speaker 1: with only one hemisphere. And in fact, I think they

978
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:43,240
Speaker 1: may have taken this idea from Warhammer forty thousand because.

979
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 5: Its do because yeah, what are you talking about?

980
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's not a thing. Like, yes, if you

981
00:49:51,640 --> 00:49:54,640
Speaker 1: don't let yourself sleep for long periods of time and

982
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 1: like kind of let yourself zone into a meditative state,

983
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: you'll get a trippy effect. You will become altered. You're

984
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 1: altering your state, and you cant This is why colts

985
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:08,400
Speaker 1: deprive people of sleep. You can fuck with people's heads

986
00:50:08,440 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: a lot when they're in that space, but this isn't

987
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: what's happening.

988
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 5: I like to think of them on the boat, just

989
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 5: only using one half of their body.

990
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 1: Line right, like one eye open, watching the office.

991
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:26,280
Speaker 2: Furiously taking notes.

992
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,760
Speaker 1: So this is how that write up describes the process

993
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:33,720
Speaker 1: of uni hemispheric sleep. One you need to be tired.

994
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 1: Two you need to be laying down or sitting up.

995
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:37,920
Speaker 1: It is important that you stay in a comfortable position

996
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:39,800
Speaker 1: that won't require it to you to move very much.

997
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:41,719
Speaker 1: In either case, you want to close one eye and

998
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:44,239
Speaker 1: keep the other open. Distract the open eye with some

999
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:47,279
Speaker 1: kind of engagement. Eventually you should feel yourself begin to

1000
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,240
Speaker 1: fall asleep on one side. That side will also become numb.

1001
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 1: The degree of numbness is a good way to track

1002
00:50:52,040 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: how deep into sleep the side is. Once into UHS,

1003
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:57,320
Speaker 1: it is supposed to be possible to infer which aspects

1004
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 1: of your personality are associated with which side of the brain.

1005
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:04,880
Speaker 1: And the goal of hemispheric sleep is to jail break

1006
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: the mind into psychopathy fully right, And that's how Ziz

1007
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:11,799
Speaker 1: describes it is that's the goal. That's the goal, that's

1008
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 1: their goal. Got to make ourselves into psychopaths so we

1009
00:51:14,680 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: can save the world. But it also gets used. You

1010
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:20,759
Speaker 1: could use it to like I have this thing. I

1011
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 1: don't like that I react this way in this situation.

1012
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:24,719
Speaker 1: So get me into this sleep pattern and you like

1013
00:51:24,800 --> 00:51:26,920
Speaker 1: talk me through and we'll figure out why I'm doing it,

1014
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: and we'll They describe it as using tech to upgrade

1015
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:35,040
Speaker 1: their mental capabilities, right, so they're just kind of brainwashing

1016
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 1: each other. They're like fucking around with with some pretty

1017
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:41,680
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous stuff. And again, drugs are definitely involved in

1018
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:44,040
Speaker 1: a lot of aspects of this, which which is not

1019
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: usually written up, but you could you just have to

1020
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: infer given that there's some disagreement or there's some disagreement

1021
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 1: around all this. But it seems accurate to say that

1022
00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:57,120
Speaker 1: Gwynn is the one who came up with the hemispheric

1023
00:51:57,200 --> 00:51:59,879
Speaker 1: sleep idea, but a lot of the language around how

1024
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:02,400
Speaker 1: tactic it was used and what it was supposed to

1025
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: do came from Ziz. And again, the process is just

1026
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation. Right. This is cult stuff. It's part of

1027
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 1: how cults brainwash people. But it also wouldn't have seemed

1028
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: inherently suspicious to rationalists because part of that subculture. Being

1029
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:20,480
Speaker 1: part of that subculture and going to those events had

1030
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: already normalized a slightly less radical version of this behavior,

1031
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: as this piece in Bloomberg explains, at house parties, rationalists

1032
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 1: spent time debugging each other, engaging in a confrontational style

1033
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:35,680
Speaker 1: of interrogation that would supposedly yield more rational thoughts. Sometimes,

1034
00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:38,800
Speaker 1: to probe further, they experimented with psychedelics and tried jail

1035
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 1: breaking their minds to crack open their consciousness and make

1036
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: them more influential or agentic. Several people in Taylor and

1037
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:48,360
Speaker 1: this is one of the sources sphere, had similar psychotic episodes.

1038
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:50,759
Speaker 1: One died by suicide in twenty eighteen and another in

1039
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:54,359
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. So in the mainstream rationalist subculture, they

1040
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:57,720
Speaker 1: are also trying to like consciously hack their brains using

1041
00:52:57,800 --> 00:53:01,080
Speaker 1: a mix of like drugs and meditation and social abuse,

1042
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: and people kill themselves as a result of like the

1043
00:53:04,200 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 1: outcomes of this. This is already a problem in the

1044
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:07,560
Speaker 1: mainstream subculture.

1045
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:11,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, let alone this extremist offshoot right yep.

1046
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: In her own writings at the time, Ziz describes hideous

1047
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: fights with Gwinn in which gwyn What tries to mentally

1048
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 1: dominate in mind control Ziz, they've both become believers and

1049
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:26,400
Speaker 1: new theories is has that's basically like she uses the

1050
00:53:26,480 --> 00:53:29,560
Speaker 1: term mana, which she is. She describes as like your

1051
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:32,240
Speaker 1: ability to persuade people, which is, if you can convince

1052
00:53:32,280 --> 00:53:34,880
Speaker 1: someone of something, it's evidence that you have an inherent

1053
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:37,960
Speaker 1: level of like magical power. And someone with naturally high

1054
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: manna like Ziz can literally mind control people with low manna.

1055
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:44,920
Speaker 1: That's what she believes she's doing whenever she tries to

1056
00:53:44,960 --> 00:53:48,799
Speaker 1: talk someone into something about themselves, is she's mind controlling them.

1057
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: And she and Gwinn have mind control battles. At one

1058
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,600
Speaker 1: point they start having like one of these arguments where

1059
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:58,760
Speaker 1: basically Gwinn threatens to mind control Ziz and Ziz threatens

1060
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: Gwin back, and this starts of verbal escalation. And the

1061
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:04,680
Speaker 1: way Ziz describes this escalation, which is, again these are

1062
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:08,560
Speaker 1: two sleep deprived, traumatized people fucking with each other's heads

1063
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 1: on a boat. But the way that Ziz describes the

1064
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: escalation cycle is going to be important because this has

1065
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the logic of the murders

1066
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,040
Speaker 1: that are to come. I said that if they were

1067
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:21,200
Speaker 1: going to defend a right to be attacking me on

1068
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:23,719
Speaker 1: some level and treat fighting back as a new aggression

1069
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: and cause to escalate. I would not at any point

1070
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:28,960
Speaker 1: back down. And if our conflicting definitions of the ground

1071
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: state were no further retaliation was necessary. Meant that we

1072
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:35,000
Speaker 1: were consigned to a runaway positive feedback loop of revenge.

1073
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:37,239
Speaker 1: So be it. And if that was true, we might

1074
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:39,239
Speaker 1: as well try to kill each other right then and there,

1075
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 1: in the darkness of the Caleb's Bridge at night, where

1076
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:43,960
Speaker 1: we were both sitting lying under things in a cramped space,

1077
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:47,200
Speaker 1: I became intensely worried they could stand up faster. Consider

1078
00:54:47,280 --> 00:54:50,239
Speaker 1: the idea from World War One mobilization is tantamount to

1079
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:53,760
Speaker 1: a declaration of war. I stood up, still silent, waiting

1080
00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: see see first off, and there's other people there is Well,

1081
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:05,640
Speaker 1: it's not just yes, And just like the logic of well,

1082
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 1: obviously if you attack me, then I'm going to counterattack you,

1083
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:10,280
Speaker 1: and then you're going to counterattack me, which means eventually

1084
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 1: we'll kill each other. So we should just kill each

1085
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:14,560
Speaker 1: other now, like when you are taking your advice on

1086
00:55:14,640 --> 00:55:18,360
Speaker 1: how to handle social conflict from the warring European powers

1087
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 1: that got into World War One.

1088
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:30,040
Speaker 4: Maybe not a good like positive example, it's just so

1089
00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:35,640
Speaker 4: like even in understanding how they got there, it still

1090
00:55:35,719 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 4: is such a stress.

1091
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:37,879
Speaker 2: Like, even having all this.

1092
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:41,279
Speaker 1: Back, it's still like, yeah, really taking some leaps, It's

1093
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:43,480
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I mean just having a fight with your

1094
00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 1: friend and then opening your locket which has like Kaiser

1095
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:47,919
Speaker 1: Vilhelm and the tzar in it and going what would

1096
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: you guys do here?

1097
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:52,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, ancestors guide me.

1098
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: And again, but you know, part of what's going on

1099
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 1: here is this timeless decision theory bullshit, right. Ziz believes

1100
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:03,879
Speaker 1: that she makes it clear at this point when they

1101
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,320
Speaker 1: start having a conflict that the stakes will immediately escalate

1102
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 1: to life or death. Gwinn won't risk fucking with her, right,

1103
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:13,840
Speaker 1: but by doing this, she also immediately creates a situation

1104
00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: where she feels unsafe. However, in that conflict, gwyn yields,

1105
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 1: and Ziz concludes that the technique works right, and so yes, yes,

1106
00:56:22,719 --> 00:56:24,840
Speaker 1: what she thinks is her man is strong and this

1107
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:28,440
Speaker 1: is a good idea for handling all conflicts. Right. So

1108
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:30,920
Speaker 1: I'm going to increasingly teach all these people who are

1109
00:56:30,920 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: listening to me that this is the escalation loop that

1110
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: you handle every conflict with, right. Great stuff. One of

1111
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: the young people who got drawn as is at this

1112
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:43,960
Speaker 1: time was Maya Passek, who blogged under the name Squirrel

1113
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,440
Speaker 1: in Hell. She wrote about mainstream rationalist stuff, citing Yakowski

1114
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:50,160
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk, but in her blog there's like a

1115
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 1: pattern of depressive thought. In one twenty sixteen post, she

1116
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:57,160
Speaker 1: mused about whether or not experiencing joy and awe might

1117
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 1: be bad because it biases your perception. So this is

1118
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: this is a young person who I think is probably

1119
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:05,680
Speaker 1: is dealing with a lot of depressive yesses and the

1120
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:10,040
Speaker 1: classic stinking thinking, right, and maybe the community is not

1121
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 1: super helpful to her. She was working to create a

1122
00:57:13,160 --> 00:57:15,919
Speaker 1: rationalist community in the Canary Islands. She's kind of trying

1123
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 1: to do the same thing Ziz did, But like in

1124
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: an island where it's cheaper to live, is this something.

1125
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 2: That can exist a lot of places like.

1126
00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 1: Share Yeah, I mean yeah, if you've got cheap rent,

1127
00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: you can get a bunch of like weirdos who work

1128
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:31,600
Speaker 1: online to move into a house with you. Right, Yeah,

1129
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 1: Like that's that's always possible. She found Zizz's blog and

1130
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:40,040
Speaker 1: she starts commenting on it. She's particularly drawn to Zizz's

1131
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 1: theories on manna and Zin's theory in Gwynn's theory about

1132
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 1: hemispheric personalities and one of her most direct cult leader moments.

1133
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,000
Speaker 1: Ziz reaches out directly to this to Maya as she's

1134
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 1: like posting on her blog and emails her saying, I

1135
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:56,120
Speaker 1: see you like some of my blog posts. Truly a

1136
00:57:56,200 --> 00:58:02,720
Speaker 1: sinister opening. Yeah, my true companion, Gwyn and I are

1137
00:58:02,760 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: taking us somewhat different than Maria. That's the organization, one

1138
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,800
Speaker 1: of the rationals organization approaches, they call each other, that's

1139
00:58:09,800 --> 00:58:13,120
Speaker 1: how they get for their true companions, true opinions. At

1140
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: this point, or taking a somewhat a different approach than

1141
00:58:17,040 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: the Myria approach to saving the world without much specific

1142
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: test technical disagreements. We are running on somewhat pointed to

1143
00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:25,360
Speaker 1: by the approach. As long as you expect the world

1144
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:29,040
Speaker 1: to burn, then change course. Right, So basically we still

1145
00:58:29,080 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 1: expect the world to burn, so we can't keep doing

1146
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:32,920
Speaker 1: what the other rationalists are doing. And she lays out

1147
00:58:32,960 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 1: to this, this girl she meets through a blog post

1148
00:58:36,520 --> 00:58:40,120
Speaker 1: her plan to find abnormally intrinsically good people and jail

1149
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:43,880
Speaker 1: break them into Gervais's sociopaths. She invites Maya to come

1150
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 1: out and it's I don't think this happened, but they

1151
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 1: do start separately journeying into unbucketing, and Maya gets really

1152
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 1: into this uni hemispheric sleep thing, and Ziz is kind

1153
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:56,920
Speaker 1: of like coaching her through the process. She tells Maya

1154
00:58:57,000 --> 00:58:59,920
Speaker 1: that one of her hemispheres is female, because Maya's a transor,

1155
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:03,120
Speaker 1: and Ziz tells her one of your brain hemispheres, each

1156
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:05,560
Speaker 1: of which is a separate person, is female, but the

1157
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:10,000
Speaker 1: other is male and quote mostly dead, and your suicidal

1158
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,120
Speaker 1: impulses are caused by both the pain of being trans

1159
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: and also the fact that there's this dead man living

1160
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 1: in your head that's like taking up half of your

1161
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:23,160
Speaker 1: brain's space, and so you really need to debucket in

1162
00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: order to have a chance of surviving, right, Okay, So.

1163
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:29,240
Speaker 2: She needs to be jail broken to be free.

1164
00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 1: To be free, and Maya will basically replace her sleep

1165
00:59:32,560 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 1: entirely with this uni hemispheric sleep crap, which exacerbates not sleeping,

1166
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:40,080
Speaker 1: exacerbates your depressive swings, and leads to deeper and deeper

1167
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 1: troughs of suicidal ideation. She is believed to have died

1168
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: by suicide in February of twenty eighteen. She posts a

1169
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 1: what is essentially a suicide note that is very rationalist

1170
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:56,440
Speaker 1: in its verbiage literally titled decision theory and suicide, and

1171
00:59:56,480 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 1: this is the first death directly related to in Gwen's ideas.

1172
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: But I think it's important to note that, like the

1173
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 1: role mainstream rationalism plays in all of this, suicide is

1174
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:10,120
Speaker 1: a common topic at se FAR events, and people will

1175
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 1: argue constantly about whether or not, like a low value individual,

1176
01:00:14,200 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: it's better for them to kill themselves, right, is that

1177
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 1: like of higher net value to the world. And it

1178
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 1: was also used as like a threat to stop women

1179
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 1: who were abused by figures in the community from speaking up.

1180
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:27,040
Speaker 1: And this is from that Bloomberg article. One woman in

1181
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: the community, who asked not to be identified for fear

1182
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:32,200
Speaker 1: of herprisals, says she was sexually abused by a prominent

1183
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:35,160
Speaker 1: AI researcher. After she confronted him, she says she had

1184
01:00:35,240 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: job offers rescinded and conference speaking gigs canceled, and was

1185
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 1: disinvited from AI events. She said others in the community

1186
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:44,880
Speaker 1: told her allegations of misconduct harmed the advancement of AI safety,

1187
01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:48,280
Speaker 1: and one person suggested an agentic option would be to

1188
01:00:48,360 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: kill herself. So there is just within rationalism this discussion

1189
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:54,840
Speaker 1: of like it can be agentic, as in, like you

1190
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 1: are taking high agency for your to kill yourself if

1191
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:01,400
Speaker 1: your net if you're going to be a net harm

1192
01:01:01,520 --> 01:01:03,640
Speaker 1: to the cause of AI safety, which you will be

1193
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:07,280
Speaker 1: by reporting this AI researcher who molested you, right, and.

1194
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:15,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, because you're taking them man, Yeah.

1195
01:01:13,080 --> 01:01:16,760
Speaker 1: Shit, these people aren't Like all this whole community is

1196
01:01:16,760 --> 01:01:19,080
Speaker 1: playing with a lot of deeply dangerous stuff and a

1197
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:22,120
Speaker 1: bunch of people are going to have their brains kill,

1198
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:26,800
Speaker 1: either kill themselves or have suffer severe trauma as a

1199
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:29,440
Speaker 1: result this, all of this, Yeah.

1200
01:01:29,480 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 2: Escaping this is even putting yourself back together after living

1201
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:35,560
Speaker 2: in this way seems like it would be such a task.

1202
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:37,960
Speaker 1: Again and likely any cult part of the difficulties like

1203
01:01:38,080 --> 01:01:41,240
Speaker 1: teaching yourself how to speak normally again, how to not

1204
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:42,600
Speaker 1: talk about all this stuff?

1205
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:45,840
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, not identify as a vegan sith.

1206
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:48,720
Speaker 1: Right, right, because like I gotta say, like there's and

1207
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:50,560
Speaker 1: people who are really in the community will note like

1208
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:54,040
Speaker 1: a dozen different other concepts and terms in addition to

1209
01:01:54,080 --> 01:01:56,800
Speaker 1: like vegan sith and gervais as sociopaths and shit that

1210
01:01:56,840 --> 01:02:00,000
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about that are important to this is ideology.

1211
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:03,720
Speaker 1: But like you just can't. Like I had to basically

1212
01:02:03,800 --> 01:02:08,440
Speaker 1: learn like the like a different language to do these episodes,

1213
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: and I'm not fluent in it, right, Like you have

1214
01:02:10,640 --> 01:02:13,480
Speaker 1: to triage like what shit do you need to know?

1215
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:16,720
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, it's so deep, it's night, so deep.

1216
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:20,600
Speaker 1: Deep and silly. Let's do an ad break and then

1217
01:02:20,640 --> 01:02:27,320
Speaker 1: we'll be done and we're back. So I'm just going

1218
01:02:27,400 --> 01:02:29,560
Speaker 1: to conclude this little story and then we'll end the

1219
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: episode for the day. So this person, Maya, has likely

1220
01:02:35,160 --> 01:02:39,280
Speaker 1: killed themselves at the start of twenty eighteen, and Zis

1221
01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:42,800
Speaker 1: reacts to the suicide in her usual manner. She blogs

1222
01:02:42,800 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 1: about it. She took from what had happened, not that

1223
01:02:45,680 --> 01:02:49,080
Speaker 1: like debucketing might be dangerous and uni hemispheric sleep might

1224
01:02:49,080 --> 01:02:53,360
Speaker 1: be dangerous, but that explaining hemispheric consciousness to people was

1225
01:02:53,400 --> 01:02:56,880
Speaker 1: an info hazard. She believed that people who were single,

1226
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:00,240
Speaker 1: good like Maya were at elevated risk because learning that

1227
01:03:00,280 --> 01:03:02,600
Speaker 1: one of the whole persons inside them was evil or

1228
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:06,760
Speaker 1: mostly dead could create a reconcilable conflict, leading to depression

1229
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:10,080
Speaker 1: and suicide. And she she comes up with a name

1230
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:12,880
Speaker 1: for this. She calls this passex doom. That's what she

1231
01:03:13,040 --> 01:03:16,080
Speaker 1: like names the info hazard that kills her friend who

1232
01:03:16,080 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: she is like fucking with their head. So that's nice, Yeah,

1233
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:28,680
Speaker 1: as nice as anything else in this story. Is I

1234
01:03:28,720 --> 01:03:30,400
Speaker 1: think you might have been the doom here.

1235
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:35,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, I it's you with the whole problem. But now,

1236
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:42,360
Speaker 5: but now it's an info hazard to explain. Yes, a person's.

1237
01:03:42,280 --> 01:03:44,480
Speaker 1: Like to explain your theories.

1238
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:47,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah to a person who can't handle it.

1239
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:50,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she thinks she comes to the conclusion it's

1240
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: a particular danger to explain it, like to single good

1241
01:03:53,400 --> 01:03:55,520
Speaker 1: trans women, who are the primary group of people that

1242
01:03:55,600 --> 01:03:58,120
Speaker 1: she is going after in terms of trying to recruit folks.

1243
01:03:58,400 --> 01:04:01,520
Speaker 1: So she like admits her belief is that this this

1244
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:04,440
Speaker 1: thought thing I've come up with is particularly dangerous to

1245
01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:08,280
Speaker 1: the community I'm recruiting from. But it's the only it's essential.

1246
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 1: This information is absolutely essential to saving the world. So

1247
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:13,120
Speaker 1: you just have to roll the dice.

1248
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:13,800
Speaker 6: Yeah.

1249
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:16,720
Speaker 2: It isolates herself within her own group that she's created.

1250
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:20,360
Speaker 1: Well, yes, And it also she is then consciously taking

1251
01:04:20,360 --> 01:04:22,560
Speaker 1: the choice. I know this is likely to kill or

1252
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 1: destroy a lot of the people I reach out to,

1253
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:26,640
Speaker 1: but I think it's so important that it's like worth

1254
01:04:26,680 --> 01:04:33,000
Speaker 1: taking that risk with their lives. Yep, good stuff.

1255
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1256
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:35,400
Speaker 1: Anyway, how are you feeling?

1257
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:36,720
Speaker 2: Got plug?

1258
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:42,760
Speaker 5: I am I I am okay, I'm I'm I. You

1259
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:46,960
Speaker 5: know what, I'm deeply sad for these people who are

1260
01:04:47,000 --> 01:04:51,400
Speaker 5: so lost, and I'm also pretty interested because this is crazy,

1261
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:53,480
Speaker 5: but I'm okay.

1262
01:04:54,240 --> 01:04:59,800
Speaker 1: I'll be great, happy to happy, to happy to have

1263
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:03,800
Speaker 1: to see that. Well, everybody, this has been Behind the

1264
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:08,919
Speaker 1: Bastards a podcast about things that you maybe didn't think,

1265
01:05:09,680 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: maybe didn't need to know about how the Internet breaks

1266
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 1: people's brains. But also a lot of people surprisingly close

1267
01:05:15,840 --> 01:05:17,959
Speaker 1: to this community are running the government now, so maybe

1268
01:05:17,960 --> 01:05:20,160
Speaker 1: you do need to know about it. Sorry about that

1269
01:05:20,320 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 1: info hazard.

1270
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:27,200
Speaker 6: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1271
01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:30,840
Speaker 6: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1272
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:34,240
Speaker 6: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1273
01:05:34,280 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 6: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1274
01:05:37,480 --> 01:05:41,560
Speaker 6: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1275
01:05:41,640 --> 01:05:45,320
Speaker 6: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1276
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:46,960
Speaker 6: at Behind the Bastards