Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Best. That's how
Speaker 1: this podcast would open. If I was a game show host,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. Instead of a guy who's.
Speaker 2: Spending you would be good at it, though.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would be, Sophie.
Speaker 2: I do, but I think, but I'm like biased because
Speaker 2: I think you'd be good at most things.
Speaker 1: No, my only marketable skill is spending thirty hours reading
Speaker 1: the deranged writings of a quasi cult leader who was
Speaker 1: somewhat involved in the murders of multiple people very recently,
Speaker 1: largely because she read a piece of Harry Potter fan
Speaker 1: fiction at the wrong time. Yes, we have a fun
Speaker 1: one for you this week, and by a fun one,
Speaker 1: we have a not at all fun one for you
Speaker 1: this week. And to have just a terrible time with me.
Speaker 1: We are bringing on again the great David Boree, co
Speaker 1: host of My Mama, told me with our friend of
Speaker 1: the pod, Langston Kerman, David, how you doing, Oh man, I.
Speaker 3: Can't not complain how you doing? There's nothing going on
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I got up today and read that
Speaker 1: that great new article by Francis fuka Yama. History is
Speaker 1: still stopped, So everything's good. We're done.
Speaker 3: I haven't looked at any news yet purposefully, so I'm
Speaker 3: you know, it could be awesome. It could be going
Speaker 3: great out there. It's great. It's great.
Speaker 1: The whole Trump administration got together and said, psych it
Speaker 1: was all a bit man, just an extended ad for
Speaker 1: the Apprentice season fifteen.
Speaker 3: You mean this country is not a business.
Speaker 1: No, they handed over the presidency to.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know whoever you you personally at home think
Speaker 1: would be a great president. I'm not going to jump
Speaker 1: into that can of worms right now. Ramonbrony Madron the president.
Speaker 3: That's a good one. That's a good one. That's better
Speaker 3: than what we got, honestly, vastly superior than where we are.
Speaker 3: Of all the entertainers, I feel like, why don't we
Speaker 3: start giving athletes a shot a government? Yeah? I fuck it?
Speaker 3: Why not? You know, uh fucking uh.
Speaker 1: Kareem Abdul Jabbar would could knock a presidency out of
Speaker 1: the park. Come on, absolutely, Yes, we need a mystery novelist,
Speaker 1: slash one of the great basketball stars of all time
Speaker 1: in the White House.
Speaker 3: I just want a president who's good in the paint,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Agatha Christie with a jump shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly what I think. That's what an amazing man.
Speaker 3: Kareem would be.
Speaker 2: Such would be such a good choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bring it on. I think he's such a good man.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, his way too moral, he's waited. I have
Speaker 2: a frog name after named after him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, honestly, given where we are are right right now,
Speaker 1: I'd take fucking uh what's his mark maguire, like Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: anybody like, honestly, anyone I take heartbeat oh man, fuck
Speaker 1: it like I'll take no. No, I'm not gonna take
Speaker 1: any hockey players. No hockey players. We got enough people
Speaker 1: with brain damage in the White House right now.
Speaker 3: That's probably sit and we don't need somebody who that much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're probably right there. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if we could go back in time and make
Speaker 1: Joe Lewis the president, I think he could solve some
Speaker 1: fucking problems in Congress.
Speaker 3: You can get still done.
Speaker 1: So this has been a fun digression, but I got
Speaker 1: to ask at the start of this the story that
Speaker 1: it is most relevant to the people we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: that I think most of our listeners will have heard.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you've heard about Back on January twenty first,
Speaker 1: right as the Trump administration took power, a border patrol
Speaker 1: agent was shot and killed along with another individual at
Speaker 1: a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont. Right, there were two
Speaker 1: people in a car that was pulled over a border patrol.
Speaker 3: One of those people.
Speaker 1: Drew a gun, there was a firefight, one of the
Speaker 1: people in the car and the cop died.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, have you heard this story. I'm not at all.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it would have been
Speaker 1: a much bigger the immigration being the thing that it
Speaker 1: is right in the United like the political hot issue
Speaker 1: that it is right now, Like the Republicans have been
Speaker 1: desperately waiting for like a border patrol officer getting shooted
Speaker 1: and wounded that they can like use to justify a crackdown.
Speaker 1: But number one, this happened on the Canadian border.
Speaker 3: Not really favorite.
Speaker 1: And one of the two people who who drew their
Speaker 1: guns on the cop ops was an immigrant, but they
Speaker 1: were a German immigrant, and so.
Speaker 3: None of this really like right, It.
Speaker 1: Was all like right on the edge of being super
Speaker 1: useful to their rights.
Speaker 3: But it's none, like we were dealing with our own
Speaker 3: right wing immigration propaganda at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just like it was like the closest
Speaker 1: to being a perfect right wing like fault, like a
Speaker 1: Reichstag fire in it, but like just a little too weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta throw some spice in there. You gotta
Speaker 3: have like a Latin country. That's what they get excited about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and obviously California border is where you want it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, definitely, even New Mexico could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or at least at least they need to have
Speaker 1: fitnel on the car. In fact, they were not breaking
Speaker 1: any laws that anyone could prove at the time. They
Speaker 1: just looked kind of weird. Yeah, they looked kind of weird,
Speaker 1: and they like had guns, but it was like they
Speaker 1: had like two handguns and like forty rounds and some
Speaker 1: old targets. They were like coming back from a shooting range, right,
Speaker 1: Like not a lot of a gun guns and AMMO
Speaker 1: in America terms, right, especially in Vermont terms. Right. So
Speaker 1: the other thing was weird about this is that the
Speaker 1: German immigrant who died was a transwoman. So then again
Speaker 1: we get back to like, wow, there's a lot about
Speaker 1: this shooting that is like right on the edge of
Speaker 1: some issues that the right is really trying to use
Speaker 1: as like a folkrum to like push through some awful shit.
Speaker 1: And as more and more information came out about the shooting,
Speaker 1: the weirder it seemed, because there was a lot of
Speaker 1: initial talk, is this like a terrorist attack where these
Speaker 1: like two Antifa types who were like looking to murder
Speaker 1: a bird border patrol agent. But no, that doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense because like they got pulled over, Like they
Speaker 1: can't have been planning this right, Like it didn't. It
Speaker 1: didn't really seem like that, and really no one, no
Speaker 1: one could figure out why they had opened fire. But
Speaker 1: as the days went on, more information started coming out,
Speaker 1: not just about the two people who were arrested in
Speaker 1: this well, the one person who was rested in the
Speaker 1: one person who died, but about a group of people
Speaker 1: around the country that they were linked to. And these
Speaker 1: other people were not all but mostly trans women. They
Speaker 1: were mostly people who kind of identified as both anarchists
Speaker 1: and members of the rationalist subculture, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: in a little bit, And they were all super high
Speaker 1: achieving people in like the tech industry and like sciences. Right,
Speaker 1: These are the people who had won like awards and
Speaker 1: had advanced degrees. The person, the lady who died in
Speaker 1: the shooting was a quant trader, So these are not
Speaker 1: like the normal shoot it out with the cops types.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a very niche group. This is a
Speaker 3: very strange story.
Speaker 1: So people start being like, oh the fuck is happening And.
Speaker 3: There's a group of people who could not meet each
Speaker 3: other without the invention of the Internet, right, Well.
Speaker 1: That is boy, David, do you know where this always
Speaker 1: going or at least starting, so like it's a couple
Speaker 1: of these days into this when like a friend of
Speaker 1: mine messaged me and it's like, hey, you know that
Speaker 1: shooting in Vermont and I was like yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: like my friend is like, you know, there's Zizians And
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, what what the fuck? Because I
Speaker 1: had heard of these people. This is a weird little subculture.
Speaker 1: I'm always I'm like, you know, I study weird little
Speaker 1: Internet subcultures, and in part because like some of them
Speaker 1: do turn out to do acts of terrorism later. And
Speaker 1: I've been I've been reporting on the rationalists, who are
Speaker 1: not like a cult, but who do some cult adjacent
Speaker 1: things and I just kind of find annoying. And I'd
Speaker 1: heard about this offshoot of the rationalists called the Zizians.
Speaker 1: They were very weird. There were some like weird crime allegations.
Speaker 1: A couple of them had been involved in a murder
Speaker 1: in California a year earlier. But like, it was not
Speaker 1: a group that I ever really expected to see blow
Speaker 1: up in the media, and then suddenly they fucking did, right,
Speaker 1: And they're called the Zizians. It's not a name they
Speaker 1: have for themselves. They don't consider themselves a cult. They
Speaker 1: don't all like live A group of them did live together,
Speaker 1: but like, these people are pretty geographically like dispersed around
Speaker 1: the country. They're folks who met online arguing about ration
Speaker 1: and discussing rationalism and the ideas of a particular member
Speaker 1: of that community who goes by the name ziz. Right,
Speaker 1: that's where this group came out of and the regular
Speaker 1: media was not well equipped to understand what was going on.
Speaker 1: And I want to run through a couple of representative
Speaker 1: headlines that I came across just in like looking at
Speaker 1: mainstream articles about what had happened. There's an article from
Speaker 1: The Independent they title Inside the Zizians how a cultish
Speaker 1: crew of radical vegans became linked to killings across the
Speaker 1: United States. They seemed like just another band of anarchist
Speaker 1: misfits scraping on the valide of scraping on the fringes
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley until the deaths began. And then there's
Speaker 1: a k c r W article zizians the vegan techie
Speaker 1: cult try tied to murders across the US. UH And
Speaker 1: then a Fox article trans vegan cult charged with six murders.
Speaker 3: There you go, that's Fox.
Speaker 1: Yes, none of these titles are very accurate in that
Speaker 1: I guess the first one is like the closest, where like,
Speaker 1: these people are radical vegans and they're they are cultish, right,
Speaker 1: so I'll give I'll give the Independent that vegan techie
Speaker 1: cult is not really what I would describe them, Like
Speaker 1: some of them were in the tech industry, but like
Speaker 1: the degree to which they're in the tech industry is
Speaker 1: a lot weirder than that gets across. And they're not
Speaker 1: really a trans they're like trans vegans, but the cult
Speaker 1: is not about being a trans vegan. That's just kind
Speaker 1: of a lot. How these people found each other.
Speaker 3: Oh, they just happened to be that was just the.
Speaker 1: Common veganism is tied to it. They just kind of
Speaker 1: all happen to be trans that's not really like tied
Speaker 1: to it necessarily. So I would argue also that they're
Speaker 1: not terrorists, which a lot of people have a number
Speaker 1: of the other articles called them nothing. None of the
Speaker 1: killings that they were involved with, and they did kill
Speaker 1: people were like terrorist killings. They're all much weirder than that,
Speaker 1: but none of them are like, none of the killings
Speaker 1: I have seen are for a clear political purpose, right,
Speaker 1: which is kind of crucial for it to be terrorism.
Speaker 1: The murders kind of evolved out of a much sillier reason,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, there's one really good article about
Speaker 1: them by a fella at Wired who spent a year
Speaker 1: or so kind of studying these people, and that article
Speaker 1: does a lot that's good, but it doesn't go into
Speaker 1: as much detail about what I think is the real
Speaker 1: underpinning of whitest group of people got together and convinced
Speaker 1: themselves it was okay to commit several murders. And I
Speaker 1: think that that all comes down more than any other
Speaker 1: single factor, to rationalism and to their belief in this
Speaker 1: weird online cult. That's that's very much based on like
Speaker 1: and like asking different sort of logic questions and trying
Speaker 1: to like pinnow down the secret rules of the universe
Speaker 1: by doing like game theory arguments on the internet over blogs. Right,
Speaker 1: Like that's really how all of this stuff started.
Speaker 3: Like someone named mystery. Yeah, a lot of people in funny.
Speaker 1: Hats they do. Actually they're a little adjacent to this,
Speaker 1: and they come out of that period of time, right
Speaker 1: where like pick up artists culture is also like forming.
Speaker 1: They're one of this like generation of cults that starts
Speaker 1: with a bunch of blogs and shit on the internet
Speaker 1: in like two thousand and nine, right, And this this
Speaker 1: is it's so weird because we use the term cult
Speaker 1: and that's the easiest thing to call these people. But generally,
Speaker 1: when our society is talking about a cult, we're talking
Speaker 1: about like eve an individual that individual brings in a
Speaker 1: bunch of followers, gets them, isolates them from society, puts
Speaker 1: them into an area where they are in complete control,
Speaker 1: and then tries to utilize them for like a really
Speaker 1: specific goal. There's like a way to kind of look
Speaker 1: at physizians that way, But I think it would be
Speaker 1: better to describe them as like cultish, right, Okay, they
Speaker 1: use the tools of cult dynamics and that produces some
Speaker 1: very cult like behavior, but there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: differences between like how this group works and what you'd
Speaker 1: call the traditional cult and including a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are separate from each other and even don't like
Speaker 1: each other, but because they've been inculcated in some of
Speaker 1: the same beliefs through these kind of cult dynamics, they
Speaker 1: make choices that lead them to like participate in violence too.
Speaker 3: Where is their hub? Is it like a message board
Speaker 3: type of situation? Like how is that? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, so I'm gonna I'm gonna have to go back
Speaker 1: and forth to explain all of that as.
Speaker 3: The technology of Zizzy in it. It's because from the lids.
Speaker 1: No no z I z the lady who was kind
Speaker 1: of the founder of this is the name that she
Speaker 1: takes for herself is Ziz, right.
Speaker 3: Okay, should have been the z Girls. That's much more appealing.
Speaker 1: These people are big in the news right.
Speaker 4: Now because because of the several murders, and the right
Speaker 4: wing is trying it wants to make it out is
Speaker 4: like this is a like trans death cult and this
Speaker 4: is more of like an internet a I nerd death cult.
Speaker 3: I guess that's better.
Speaker 1: It's just different. You know, you're right, it was just
Speaker 1: a different thing. And I think it's important if like
Speaker 1: you care about like cults because you think they're dangerous
Speaker 1: and you're arguing that, like, hey, this cult seems really dangerous,
Speaker 1: should understand like what the cult is, right, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you miss a just to the scientologists and thought
Speaker 1: like these are obsessive fans of science fiction who are
Speaker 1: committing murders over science fiction stories. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're committing murders because there's something stupid. Yeah, much moret okay,
Speaker 1: So I got to take I am going to explain
Speaker 1: to you what rationalism is, how who ziz is, where
Speaker 1: they come from, and how they get radicalized to the
Speaker 1: point where they are effectively at the hub of something
Speaker 1: that is at least very adjacent to a cult. But
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the difference
Speaker 1: between like a cult and cult dynamics. Right, A cult
Speaker 1: is fundamentally a toxic thing. It is bad, It always
Speaker 1: harms people. There is no harmless cult, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like rape, Like there's no version of it that's good,
Speaker 1: you know, like it is a fundamentally dangerous thing. Cult
Speaker 1: dynamics and the tactics cult leaders use are not always
Speaker 1: toxic or bad. And in fact, every single person listening
Speaker 1: to this has enjoyed and had their life enriched by
Speaker 1: the use of certain things that are on the spectrum
Speaker 1: of cult dynamics.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, it's a lot. It seems a
Speaker 3: lot more like you have that at work, gives that
Speaker 3: at work anywhere, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Anyway, that's a huge part of what make a
Speaker 1: great fiction author who is able to like attract a
Speaker 1: cult following you've ever had that experience, Like a big
Speaker 1: thing in cults is the use of in creation of
Speaker 1: new language. You get people using words that other they
Speaker 1: don't use otherwise and like phrases, and that is both
Speaker 1: a way to bond people because like you know, it
Speaker 1: helps you feel like you're part of this group, and
Speaker 1: it also isolates you from people. If you've ever met
Speaker 1: people who are like hugely into you know, Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragons or huge fans like Harry Potter or the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, like they have like things that they say,
Speaker 1: like memes and shit that they share based on those books,
Speaker 1: and like that's a less toxic, but it's on the
Speaker 1: same spectrum. Right, It's this, I am a part of
Speaker 1: this group of people, and we use these words that
Speaker 1: mean something to us that don't mean things to other people, right,
Speaker 1: And that's.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, it's like a great that's like a
Speaker 3: great way to bomb. I think it's any group, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, entertainers.
Speaker 1: Your friend groups, Yeah, has in jokes, right, sports, Yeah,
Speaker 1: could kill people, right exactly, yes, yes, And like you've
Speaker 1: got you know, you and you and your buddies that
Speaker 1: have been friends for years, you have like you could
Speaker 1: there's like a word you can say and everyone knows
Speaker 1: that you're fering this thing that happened six years ago,
Speaker 1: and you all like laugh because you know it reminds
Speaker 1: you of something, you know, because it's relevant to something happening.
Speaker 1: Then that's a little healthy bit of cult.
Speaker 3: Dynamics at play, right, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like a diet, you know. So there's a toolbox
Speaker 1: here and we play with it and different different organizations,
Speaker 1: but churches play with it. And obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: churches cross the line into cults, but there's also aspects
Speaker 1: of for example, you know, there's churches that I know,
Speaker 1: I have seen people go to where like it's very
Speaker 1: common everybody gets up and like hugs at a certain point,
Speaker 1: and like people benefit from human contact. It makes them
Speaker 1: feel nice. It can be like a very healthy thing.
Speaker 3: I've gone to.
Speaker 1: I used to go to like Burning Man regionals and
Speaker 1: like you would like start at this greeter station where
Speaker 1: like a bunch of people would come up, but they'd
Speaker 1: offer you like food and drinks, and you know, people
Speaker 1: would hug each other and it was this like changes
Speaker 1: your mind state from where you were in before, kind
Speaker 1: of opens you up that bring.
Speaker 3: Those is that like to qualify for state Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so that way could get to go.
Speaker 1: It's just like these local little events in Texas, right
Speaker 1: like a thousand people in the desert trying to forget
Speaker 1: that we live in Texas.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're not desert.
Speaker 1: But it was very like it's it's it was like
Speaker 1: a really valuable part of like my youth because it
Speaker 1: was the first time I ever started to like feel
Speaker 1: comfortable in my own skin. But also that's on the
Speaker 1: spectrum of love, which is thing colts do where they
Speaker 1: like surround you from people with people who like talk
Speaker 1: about like like you know, will touch you and hold
Speaker 1: you and tell you they love you, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: part of what brings you into the cult is the
Speaker 1: cult leader can take that away at any moment in time.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing where if it's not something
Speaker 1: where no, this is something we do for five minutes
Speaker 1: at the end of every church service, right, you can
Speaker 1: very easily turn this into something deeply dangerous and poisonous.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But also a lot of people just kind of play
Speaker 1: around a little bit pieces of that, a piece of
Speaker 1: the cult dynamics.
Speaker 3: Just a little just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Any good musician, any really great performers fucking with some
Speaker 1: cult dynamics, Right, I was.
Speaker 3: Gonna say, I mean I've been to like so many
Speaker 3: different concerts of like weird niche stuff where you're like,
Speaker 3: maybe the disco Biscuits is a cool I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean like I've been to some childish Gambino
Speaker 1: concerts where it's like, oh, yeah, he's doing he's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a cult leader, you know, like just
Speaker 1: ten percent, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, what are you good to do with
Speaker 3: all that charisma you got? You gotta put it somewhere?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, So these are I think that it's important
Speaker 1: for people to to understand both that, like the tactics
Speaker 1: and dynamics that make up a cult have versions of
Speaker 1: them that are not unhealthy. But I also think it's
Speaker 1: important for people to understand cults come out of subcultures. Right,
Speaker 1: This is very close to one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Cults always arise out of subcultural movements that are not
Speaker 1: in none of themselves cults. For example, in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties through like the fifties sixties, you have the emergence
Speaker 1: of what's called the self help movement, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is all of these different books onlike how to
Speaker 1: persuade people, how to you know, win friends and influence people,
Speaker 1: you know, how to like make but also stuff like
Speaker 1: alcoholics anonymous, you know, how to like improve yourself by
Speaker 1: getting off drugs, getting off alcohol. All these are pieces
Speaker 1: of the self improvement movement. Right, that's a subculture. There
Speaker 1: are people who travel around you get obsessed to go
Speaker 1: to all of these different things, and they'll and they
Speaker 1: get a lot of benefit. You know, people will show
Speaker 1: up at these seminars where there's hundreds of other people
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people will like hug them and
Speaker 1: they feel like they're part of this community and they're
Speaker 1: making their lives better. And oftentimes, especially like once we
Speaker 1: get to like the sixties seventies, these different sort of
Speaker 1: guru types are saying that, like, you know, this is
Speaker 1: how we're going to save the world if we can
Speaker 1: get everybody doing you know this, this yoga routine or
Speaker 1: whatever that I find together fix everything.
Speaker 3: Who's that guy who had the game? Oh god, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: They had to like they had to viciously confront.
Speaker 1: Each us that we've covered them. That that is Synanon. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And I have this broader subculture of self help and
Speaker 1: a cult Synanon comes out of it, you know, and.
Speaker 3: I get it. It's like the subculture, it's already it's intimate.
Speaker 3: You feel those people and anybody else. It definitely feels right.
Speaker 1: For and scientology is a cult that comes out of
Speaker 1: the exact same subculture. We talked last week or week
Speaker 1: before two weeks ago about Tony Alamo. It was an
Speaker 1: incredibly abusive, pedophile Christian cult leader. He comes out of
Speaker 1: along with a couple other guys we've talked the Jesus
Speaker 1: Freak movement, which is a Christian subculture that arises as
Speaker 1: a reaction to the Hippie movement. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: countervailing force to the hippie movements. You got these hippies,
Speaker 1: and you know, these Christians who are like really scared
Speaker 1: of this kind of like weird left wing movement, and
Speaker 1: so they start kind of doing like a Christian hippie
Speaker 1: movement almost right, And some of these people just start
Speaker 1: weird churches that sing annoying songs, and some of these
Speaker 1: people start hideously dangerous cults. You have the subculture, and
Speaker 1: you have cults that come out of it, right, And
Speaker 1: the same thing is true in every single period of time, right,
Speaker 1: cults form out of subcultures, you know. And part of
Speaker 1: this is because people who a lot of people who
Speaker 1: find themselves most drawn to subcultures, right, tend to be
Speaker 1: people who feel like they're missing something in the outside world, right,
Speaker 1: you know, not everybody people who get most into it.
Speaker 1: And so so does that mean.
Speaker 3: Like so maybe like more I'm just curious, like more
Speaker 3: broader cultural waves have never led There's like the Swifties
Speaker 3: would not be a cult. No, there's no most likely
Speaker 3: not going to be an offshoot of the Swifties that
Speaker 3: becomes a cult because it's so broad, it has to
Speaker 3: have already been kind of a smaller subset. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and I think but but that said, there
Speaker 1: have been cults that have started out of like popular
Speaker 1: entertainers and musicians, like you know, you could we could
Speaker 1: talk about Corey Feldsman's Weird House full of young women
Speaker 1: dressed as angels. Right, So yeah, you've got as a
Speaker 1: general rule, like there are music is full of sub
Speaker 1: cultures like punk, right, but there have definitely also been
Speaker 1: some like punk communities that have have gone in kind
Speaker 1: of individual little chunks of punk. Me it's got on
Speaker 1: like culty directions, right if you don't like yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are cults that come out of the subculture.
Speaker 3: This is the way colts work.
Speaker 1: And I really just I don't think I don't think
Speaker 1: there's very good education on what cults are, where they
Speaker 1: come from, or how they work, because all of the
Speaker 1: people who run this country have like a lot of
Speaker 1: cult leader DNA and them.
Speaker 3: You know, they're being run currently by someone who has
Speaker 3: seen as a magic man. Yes, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of vested interests in not
Speaker 1: explaining what a cult is and where they come from,
Speaker 1: and so I want to. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: understand subculture's birth cult and also cult leaders are drawn
Speaker 1: to subcultures when they're trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make their cult because a subculture, you know, most of
Speaker 1: the people in are just gonna be like normal people
Speaker 1: who are just kind of into this thing. But there
Speaker 1: will always be a lot of people who are like,
Speaker 1: this is the only place I feel like I belong.
Speaker 1: I feel very isolated. This this is like the center
Speaker 1: of my being right right, And so it's just it's
Speaker 1: like a good place to recruit, you know, those are
Speaker 1: the kind of people you want if you're reaching out
Speaker 1: to cult leaders. You know, I'm not saying, like, again,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying subcultures are bad. I'm saying that, like
Speaker 1: some chunk of people in subcultures are ready to be
Speaker 1: in a cult, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think if i've they reflect on my
Speaker 3: own personal life. Yeah, you meet a lot of guys
Speaker 3: who are just like I'll die for the skate park
Speaker 3: or whatever thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like the Star Wars fans were sending death
Speaker 1: threats to Jake Lloyd after the Phantom Menace where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you guys are crazy. That is insane, you know, He's like, hey, right,
Speaker 1: this is a movie he also did.
Speaker 3: He didn't write it, Like what are you doing?
Speaker 1: You know whatever, So and again that's kind of a
Speaker 1: good point, Like Star Wars fans aren't a cult, but
Speaker 1: you can also see some of like the toxic things
Speaker 1: cults do erupts from time to time, and from like
Speaker 1: video game fans, right, people who are really into a
Speaker 1: certain video game. It's not a cult, but also periodically
Speaker 1: groups of those fans will act in ways that are
Speaker 1: violent and crazy, and it's because of some of these
Speaker 1: same factors going on.
Speaker 3: Right, I think people forget fanish short for fanatics exactly
Speaker 3: exactly right.
Speaker 1: And it's it's like, you know, the events that I
Speaker 1: went to very consciously played with cult dynamics. You know,
Speaker 1: after you got out of the like greeting station thing
Speaker 1: where like all these people were kind of like love
Speaker 1: bombing you for like five minutes, there was like a
Speaker 1: big bar and it had like a sign of Buffett
Speaker 1: that said not a religion, do not worship, And it
Speaker 1: was this kind of people talk about like this is
Speaker 1: like we are play with the ingredients of a cult.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to actually make one. So you need
Speaker 1: to constantly remind people of like what we're doing and
Speaker 1: why it affects their brain that way. And in my case,
Speaker 1: it was like because I was at like a low
Speaker 1: point in my life then like this was when I
Speaker 1: was really it was twenty, I was not I had
Speaker 1: no kind of drive in life. I was honestly dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of like suicidal ideation. This is the
Speaker 1: point in which I would have been vulnerable to a cult,
Speaker 1: and it I think it acted a little bit like
Speaker 1: a vaccine, like I got a little dose of the drug.
Speaker 3: Unity exactly. You're like, hey, I know what that is.
Speaker 3: I know what's going on there.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I needed to get into this because the
Speaker 1: Zizians this thing that I think is it's either a
Speaker 1: full on cult or at least a cult ish right
Speaker 1: that is responsible for this series of murders that are
Speaker 1: currently dominating the news and being blamed on like a
Speaker 1: trans vegan death cult or whatever. They come out of
Speaker 1: a subculture that grows out of the early aughts Internet
Speaker 1: known as the Rationalists. The Rationalists started out as a
Speaker 1: group in the early aughts on the comments sections of
Speaker 1: two blogs. One was called less Wrong and one was
Speaker 1: called Overcoming Bias. Less Wrong was started by a dude
Speaker 1: named Elizer yed Kowski. I've talked about Aliser on the
Speaker 1: show before.
Speaker 3: He sucks.
Speaker 1: He's I think he's a bad person. He's not a
Speaker 1: cult leader, but again, he's playing with some of these
Speaker 1: cult dynamics and he plays with them in a way
Speaker 1: that I think is very reckless, right and ultimately leads
Speaker 1: to some serious issues. Now, Aliser's whole thing is he
Speaker 1: considers himself the number one world expert on AI risk
Speaker 1: and ethics. Now you might think from that, oh, so
Speaker 1: he's like he's like making AIS. He's like working for
Speaker 1: one of these companies that's involved in like coding and stuff.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not, no, no quarterback.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: He writes long articles about what he thinks AI would
Speaker 1: do and what would make it dangerous that are based
Speaker 1: almost entirely off of short stories you read in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. This guy's so much such it's such Internet
Speaker 1: and like, I'm not a fan of like the quote
Speaker 1: unquote real AI. But Yodkowski is not even one of
Speaker 1: these guys who's like no, I'm like making a machine
Speaker 1: that you talk to.
Speaker 3: Like, I have no credible I just have an opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find out I hate this guy so much.
Speaker 1: Speaking of things, I hate not going to ads. We're back,
Speaker 1: so yod Kowski, this AI risk and ethics guy starts
Speaker 1: this blog in order to explore a series of thought
Speaker 1: experiments based in game theory. Uh and his.
Speaker 3: His I am annoyed by games.
Speaker 1: It's some sight like, man, I know that there's like
Speaker 1: valid activity, but like it's all just always so stupid
Speaker 1: and annoying to me. Anyway, a budget thought experience experience
Speaker 1: based in game theory, with the goal of teaching himself
Speaker 1: and others to think more logically and effectively about the
Speaker 1: major problems of the world. His motto for the movement
Speaker 1: and himself is winning the rational.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's where she got it. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: she picked it up. Yeah, he's They're tied in with biohacking, right,
Speaker 1: this is kind of starting to be a thing at
Speaker 1: the time, and brain hacking and the whole like self
Speaker 1: optimization movement that feeds into a lot of like right
Speaker 1: wing influencer space today. Yedowski is all about optimizing your
Speaker 1: brain and your responses in order to allow you to
Speaker 1: accomplish things that were are not possible for other people
Speaker 1: who haven't done that. And there's a messianic era to
Speaker 1: this too, which is he believes that only by doing this,
Speaker 1: by by spreading rationalist principles in order to quote raise
Speaker 1: the sanity water line, that's how he describes it, that's
Speaker 1: going to make it possible for us to save the
Speaker 1: world from the evil AI that will will be born
Speaker 1: if if enough of us don't spend time reading blogs
Speaker 1: that this is.
Speaker 3: It's awesome, this is this is pete, this is the
Speaker 3: good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yakowski and his followers see themselves as something unique and special,
Speaker 1: and again there's often a messianic air to this. Right,
Speaker 1: we are literally the ones who can save the world
Speaker 1: from evil AI. Nobody else is thinking about this or
Speaker 1: is even capable of thinking about this because they're too logical.
Speaker 3: He holds himself as kind of like a identifies himself.
Speaker 1: On top of this, he doesn't really deify himself, but
Speaker 1: he also does talk about himself like in a way
Speaker 1: that is clearly other people aren't capable of of of
Speaker 1: understanding all of the things that he's capable of understanding, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so there is a little bit it's more like superheroification,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a lot you know what this is
Speaker 1: closest to with these people, They not all of them
Speaker 1: would argue with me about this, but I've read enough
Speaker 1: of their papers and enough dianetics to know that, like
Speaker 1: this is new dionetics, Like this.
Speaker 3: Is church the church.
Speaker 1: The church is scientific. Now there's the Church of Scientology.
Speaker 1: Stuff has more occult and weird like magic stuff in it,
Speaker 1: But this is all about there are activities and exercises
Speaker 1: you go through that will rid your body of like
Speaker 1: bad ingrained responses, and that will make you a fundamentally
Speaker 1: more functional person.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the retraining of yourself in order exactly exactly. Okay,
Speaker 3: huge deal.
Speaker 1: And also a lot of these guys wind up like
Speaker 1: referring to the different like tech techniques that he teaches
Speaker 1: as tech, which is exactly what scientologists call it. Like
Speaker 1: there's some there's some shit I found that It's like
Speaker 1: this could have come right out of a scientology pamphlet.
Speaker 1: Do you guys not realize what you're doing? I think
Speaker 1: they do. Actually, so he's he's, you know, in the
Speaker 1: process of inventing this kind of new mental science that
Speaker 1: verges on superpowers. And it's one of those things. People
Speaker 1: don't tend to see these people as crazy if you
Speaker 1: just sort of like read their arguments a little. It's
Speaker 1: like them going over old thought experiments and being like,
Speaker 1: so the most rational way to behave in this situation,
Speaker 1: that is this reason. For this reason, you have to
Speaker 1: really like dig deep into their conclusions to see how
Speaker 1: kind of nutty a lot of this is. Now again,
Speaker 1: I compared to the scientology. Ydkowski isn't a high control
Speaker 1: guy like Hubbard. He's never going to make a bunch
Speaker 1: of people live on a flotilla of boats in the
Speaker 1: ocean with him. You know, he's got like there's definitely
Speaker 1: like some allegations of bad treatment of like some of
Speaker 1: the women around him, and like he has like a
Speaker 1: Bay Area set that hang with him. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's like a cult leader. You know, you could say
Speaker 1: he's on the.
Speaker 3: Drawing people to him physically, or this is also all physically.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people move to the Bay
Speaker 1: Area to be closer to the rationalist scene.
Speaker 3: Although again, well I'm a Bay Area guy.
Speaker 1: Fran san Fran. This is this this is a San
Speaker 1: Francisco thing because all of these are tech people.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so this is like, yes, I wonder what
Speaker 3: neighborhood feels like San France and Oakland. You can look
Speaker 3: it up. People.
Speaker 1: People have found his house online, right, Like, like it's
Speaker 1: it is known where he lives. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: for any like I don't harass anybody. I just like
Speaker 1: it's it's not a secret, Like what part of the
Speaker 1: town this guy lives in? I just didn't think to
Speaker 1: look it up, but like, yeah, this is like a
Speaker 1: barry a Bay Area tech industry subculture, right, Okay. So
Speaker 1: the other difference between this and something that scientific is
Speaker 1: that it's not just Alizer laying down to the law.
Speaker 1: Elizer writes a lot of blog posts, but he lets
Speaker 1: other people write blog posts too, and they all debate
Speaker 1: about them in the comments. And so the kind of
Speaker 1: religious canon of rationalism is not a one guy thing.
Speaker 1: It's come up with by this community. And so if
Speaker 1: you're some random kid in bumfuck, Alaska and you find
Speaker 1: these people and start talking with them online, you can
Speaker 1: like wind up feeling like you're having an impact on
Speaker 1: the development of this new thought science.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, that's amazing, very very powerful for other power. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, the danger with this is that like that, all
Speaker 1: of this is this Internet community that is incredibly like
Speaker 1: insular and spends way too much time talking to each
Speaker 1: other and way too much time developing in group terms
Speaker 1: to talk to each other. And Internet communities have a
Speaker 1: tendency to poison the minds of everyone inside of them.
Speaker 1: For example, Twitter, the reality is that x X the
Speaker 1: everything app. I just watched a video of a man
Speaker 1: killing himself while launching a ship coin.
Speaker 3: The everything app.
Speaker 2: A hack a hack Google job indicates it's Berkeley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes that makes the most sense to me. Geographically.
Speaker 1: A lot of these people wind up living on boats,
Speaker 1: and like the Oakland there's the Oakland Harbor.
Speaker 3: Boat culture is a thing. Is ever of people moved
Speaker 3: to boats?
Speaker 1: Nod absolutely not.
Speaker 3: It feels like.
Speaker 1: It's it's here's the thing. Boats are a bad place
Speaker 1: to live.
Speaker 3: It's it's for fun.
Speaker 1: It is like boats and planes are both constant monuments
Speaker 1: to hubris. But a plane its goal is to be
Speaker 1: in the air just as long as it needs and
Speaker 1: then you get it back on the ground where it belongs.
Speaker 1: A boat's always mocking god in the sea.
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of times. Just a harbor, like a houseboat.
Speaker 3: That's where your dad goes after the divorce, right, right,
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: One day I'll live on a houseboat. It's going to
Speaker 1: be falling apart. It's gonna just a horrible, horrible place
Speaker 1: to live. Dang, I can't wait. That's the dream, David,
Speaker 1: that's my beautiful dream. Is going to become making bullets,
Speaker 1: making making my own bullets. Really just becoming an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: like yeah, like not just like half assing it, like putting,
Speaker 1: putting it, like trying trying to become the babe ruth
Speaker 1: of drinking nothing but cutty sark scotch.
Speaker 3: If you want to be like a hoop the bed alcoholic,
Speaker 3: a houseboat is the place. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Ah my life, I want to be like that guy
Speaker 1: from Jaws.
Speaker 3: Quint scurvy.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly getting scurvy, destroying my liver, eventually getting
Speaker 1: eaten by a great white shark because I'm too drunk
Speaker 1: to work my boat. Ah. That's it, that's the way
Speaker 1: to go with Yeah. So anyway, these internet communities, like
Speaker 1: the rationalists, even when they start from a reasonable place,
Speaker 1: because of how internet stuff works. One of the things
Speaker 1: about internet communities is that when people are like really
Speaker 1: extreme and like pose the most sort of extreme and
Speaker 1: out there version of something that gets attention, people talk
Speaker 1: about it. People get angry at each other. But also
Speaker 1: like that kind of attention encourages other people to get
Speaker 1: increasingly extreme and weird, and there's just kind of a
Speaker 1: result a derangement. I think internet communities should never last
Speaker 1: more than a couple of years because everyone gets crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's bad for you. I say this
Speaker 1: as someone who was raised on these right, it's bad
Speaker 1: for you, and like it's bad for you in part
Speaker 1: because when people get really into this, this becomes the
Speaker 1: only thing, Like especially a lot of these like kids
Speaker 1: in isolated who are getting obsessed with rationalism. All their
Speaker 1: reading is these rationalist blogs. All they're talking to is
Speaker 1: other rationalists on the internet. And in San Francisco, all
Speaker 1: these guys are hanging out all of the time and
Speaker 1: talking about their ideas, and this is bad for them
Speaker 1: for the same reason that like it was bad for
Speaker 1: all of the nobles in France that moved to Versailles, right,
Speaker 1: like they all lived together and they went crazy. Human
Speaker 1: beings need regular contact with human beings they don't know.
Speaker 1: The most lucid and wisest people are always always the
Speaker 1: people who spend the most time connecting to other people
Speaker 1: who know things that they don't know.
Speaker 3: This is an immutable.
Speaker 1: Fact of life, that this is just how existing works.
Speaker 1: Like if you think I'm wrong, please consider that you
Speaker 1: were wrong, and goes find a stranger under a bridge,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Just starting They know some stuff you don't know. They
Speaker 3: will know some shit. They might have some powders you
Speaker 3: haven't tried. Oh yeah, bills and under the bridge. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's ne chamber you want to be a part of. Yeah,
Speaker 3: exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So the issue is that Yodkowski starts postulating on his
Speaker 1: blog various rules of life based on these thought experiments.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are like older thought experiments that
Speaker 1: like different intellectuals, physicists, psychiatrists, psychologists, what I had to
Speaker 1: come up with, like the sixties and stuff. Right, And
Speaker 1: he starts taking them and coming up with like corollaries
Speaker 1: or alternate versions of them, and like trying to solve
Speaker 1: some of these thought problems with his friends. Right. The
Speaker 1: thought experiments are most of what's happening here is they're
Speaker 1: mixing these kind of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophical concepts.
Speaker 1: The big one is utilitaryism. That's like a huge thing
Speaker 1: for them is the concept of like the ethics meaning
Speaker 1: doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, right,
Speaker 1: and that ties into the fact that these people are
Speaker 1: all obsessed with the singularity. The singularity for them is
Speaker 1: the concept that we are on the verge of developing
Speaker 1: an all powerful AI that will instantly gain intelligence and
Speaker 1: gain a tremendous amount of power. Right, it will basically
Speaker 1: be a god. And the positive side of this is
Speaker 1: it it'll solve all of our problems, right, you know,
Speaker 1: it will literally build heaven for us. You know when
Speaker 1: the singularity comes. The downside of it is it might
Speaker 1: be an evil god that creates hell.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the rationalists are all using a lot of these
Speaker 1: thought experiments, and like their utilitarianism becomes heavily based around
Speaker 1: how do we do the greatest good in by which
Speaker 1: I mean influencing this AI to be as good as possible.
Speaker 1: So that's humanity actually end goal.
Speaker 3: Right. They actively because you said the leader was not
Speaker 3: are these people now actively working within AI?
Speaker 1: Or they just but a bunch of them have always
Speaker 1: been actually working in AI. Yidkowski would say, no, he
Speaker 1: I work in AI. He's got a think tank that's
Speaker 1: dedicated to like AI, ethical AI. It's worth noting that
Speaker 1: most of the people in this movement, including Gidkowski, got
Speaker 1: him once like AI became an actual Like I don't
Speaker 1: not to say there's actual these are actual intelligences, because
Speaker 1: I don't think they are. But like once chat GPT
Speaker 1: comes out and this becomes like a huge people start
Speaker 1: to believe there's a shitload of money in here. A
Speaker 1: lot of these businesses, all of these guys or nearly
Speaker 1: all of them get kicked to the curb, right because
Speaker 1: none of these none of these companies really care about
Speaker 1: ethical AI, you know, like they don't give a shit
Speaker 1: about what these guys have to say. And Ydkowski now
Speaker 1: is a huge he's like very angry at a lot
Speaker 1: of these AI companies because he thinks they're very recklessly like.
Speaker 3: Making the god.
Speaker 1: That will destroy us instead of like doing this carefully
Speaker 1: to make sure that AI is and evil anyway, But
Speaker 1: a lot of these people are in an adjacent to
Speaker 1: different chunks of the AI industry, right, they're not all
Speaker 1: working on like LMS. And in fact, there are a
Speaker 1: number of scientists who are in the AI space who
Speaker 1: think AI is possible, who think that the method that
Speaker 1: like open Eye is using LMS cannot make an intelligence,
Speaker 1: that that's not how you're ever going to do it.
Speaker 1: If it's possible, they have other theories about it. I
Speaker 1: don't need to get into it further than that, but
Speaker 1: these are like a bunch of different people. Some of
Speaker 1: them are still involved with like the mainstream AI industry,
Speaker 1: some of them have been very much pushed to the side.
Speaker 1: So all of it starts again with these fairly normal
Speaker 1: game theory questions, but it all gets progressively stranger as
Speaker 1: people obsess over coming up with like the weirdest and
Speaker 1: most unique take in part to get like clout online, right,
Speaker 1: and all of these crazy Yeah, I'll give you an example, right.
Speaker 1: So much of ration less discourse in among the Ydkowski
Speaker 1: people is focused on what they call decision or what's
Speaker 1: called decision theory.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: This is drawn from a thought experiment called Newcomb's paradox,
Speaker 1: which was created by a theoretical physicist in the nineteen sixties. Hey,
Speaker 1: just to make a quick correction, here.
Speaker 3: I was a little bit glib.
Speaker 1: Decision theory isn't drawn from Newcomb's paradox. Not does it
Speaker 1: start with Yodkowski. But the stuff that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: like how decision theory kind of comes to be seen
Speaker 1: in the rationalist community, a lot of that comes out
Speaker 1: of Newcomb's paradox. It's a much older like thing, you know,
Speaker 1: than the Internet goes back centuries, right, people will talk
Speaker 1: about decision theory for a long time. Sorry, I was imprecise.
Speaker 3: I am going to.
Speaker 1: Read how the Newcomb's paradox is originally laid out. Imagine
Speaker 1: a super intelligent entity known as Omega, and suppose you
Speaker 1: are confident in its ability to predict your choices. Maybe
Speaker 1: Omega is an alien from a planet that's much more
Speaker 1: technically advanced than ours. You know that Omega has often
Speaker 1: correctly predicted your choices in the past, has never made
Speaker 1: an incorrect prediction about your choices. And you also know
Speaker 1: that Omega has correctly predicted the choices of other people,
Speaker 1: many of whom are similar to you. In the particular
Speaker 1: situation about to be described, there are two boxes A
Speaker 1: and B. Box A is c through and contains one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Box B is opay and contains either zero
Speaker 1: dollars or a million dollars. You may take both boxes
Speaker 1: or only take box B. Omega decides how much money
Speaker 1: to put into box B. If Omega believes that you
Speaker 1: will take both boxes, then it will put zero dollars
Speaker 1: in box B. If Omega believes that you will take
Speaker 1: box B, then it will put only box B. Then
Speaker 1: it will put a million dollars in box B. Omega
Speaker 1: makes its prediction and puts the money in box B,
Speaker 1: either zero or a million dollars. It presents the boxes
Speaker 1: to you and flies away. Omega does not tell you
Speaker 1: its prediction, and you do not see how much money
Speaker 1: Omega put in box B. What do you do now?
Speaker 1: I think that's stupid. I think it's a stupid question,
Speaker 1: and I don't really think it's very useful.
Speaker 3: I don't see. There's so many other factors. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know. Yeah, I mean, among other things.
Speaker 1: Part of the issue here is that, like, well, the
Speaker 1: decision has already been made, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the point you have. No, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 3: you do. There's no autonomy in that, right.
Speaker 1: Well, you and I would think that because you and
Speaker 1: I are normal people who I think, among other things,
Speaker 1: probably like grew up like cooking food and like filling
Speaker 1: up our cars with gas and not having like our
Speaker 1: parents do all of that because they're crazy rich people
Speaker 1: who live in the Bay and send you the super Stanford. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had like problems in our lives and stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: physical normal Like I don't want to like shit on
Speaker 1: people who are in because this is also harmless, right,
Speaker 1: and what this is I'm also I'm not shitting on
Speaker 1: newcom This is the thing a guy comes up with
Speaker 1: the sixties, and it's like a thing you talk about
Speaker 1: in like part and shit among like other weird intellectuals. Right,
Speaker 1: you pose it, you sit around drinking, you talk about it.
Speaker 1: There's nothing bad about this, right. However, when people are
Speaker 1: talking about this online, there's no end to the discussion.
Speaker 1: So people just keep coming up with more and more
Speaker 1: rcane arguments for what the best thing to do here is.
Speaker 3: And it starts to ask how that out of control?
Speaker 1: Pretty much exactly, and the rationalists discuss this NonStop and
Speaker 1: they come to a conclusion about how to best deal
Speaker 1: with this situation. Here's how it goes. The only way
Speaker 1: to beat Omega is to make yourself the kind of
Speaker 1: person in the past who would only choose box B,
Speaker 1: so that Omega, who is perfect at predicting, would make
Speaker 1: the prediction and put a million dollars in box B
Speaker 1: based on your past behavior. In other words, the decisions
Speaker 1: that you would need to make in order to win
Speaker 1: this are timeless decisions, right, you have to but come
Speaker 1: in the past a person who would Now again.
Speaker 3: That's what they came up with. That's what they all
Speaker 3: came up That's the supreme as.
Speaker 1: This is the smartest people in the world, David, these
Speaker 1: are the geniuses so described building the future. Oh boy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so funny trying to like every time because I've
Speaker 1: read I've spent so many hours reading this, and you
Speaker 1: do kind of sometimes get into.
Speaker 3: The like, Okay, I get the logic there.
Speaker 1: And it's that's why it's so used to just like
Speaker 1: sit down with another human being and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this isn't sane, this is nice, this is this is
Speaker 1: this is a nice It is all dumb.
Speaker 3: At the cocktail party.
Speaker 1: Because so they conclude and and by which I mean largely.
Speaker 1: Yadkowski concludes that the decision you have to make in
Speaker 1: order to win this game is what's called a timeless decision,
Speaker 1: and this leads him to create one of his most
Speaker 1: brilliant inventions, timeless decision theory. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from an article and wired. Timeless decision theory asserts that
Speaker 1: in making a decision, a person should not consider just
Speaker 1: the outcome of that specific choice, but also their own
Speaker 1: underlying patterns of reasoning and those of their past and
Speaker 1: future selves, not least because these patterns might one day
Speaker 1: be anticipated by an omniscient adversarial AI.
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's motherfucker. Have you ever had a problem?
Speaker 1: Have you ever really? Have you ever dealt with anything?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Like you make every decision? Honestly, again,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm saying this, not even where it
Speaker 1: wasn't a high school. Like go play a football, make
Speaker 1: a cabinet, you know, like.
Speaker 3: Change your oil, go do something. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: assholes who use this term, but you gotta go touch
Speaker 3: grass man, you gotta touch grass mass.
Speaker 1: It's like, that's if you're talking about this kind of shit.
Speaker 1: And again, I know you're all wonder you started this
Speaker 1: by talking about a border patrol agent being shot. All
Speaker 1: of this directly leads to that man's death.
Speaker 3: We have covered a lot of ground. This is I'm excited,
Speaker 3: it's I forgot. I didn't forget. There we're gonna there
Speaker 3: was also gonna be murdered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there sure is, so at least you. Yid Kowski
Speaker 1: describes this as a timeless decision theory, and once this
Speaker 1: comes into the community, it creates a kind of logical
Speaker 1: force that immediately starts destroying people's brains. Again, all of
Speaker 1: these people are obsessed with the imminent coming omniscient godlike AI. Right,
Speaker 1: and so do they have.
Speaker 3: A time limit on it? Do they have like a
Speaker 3: do they have a like is there is there any
Speaker 3: timing on it? Or is it just kind of like.
Speaker 1: Again, man, it's there. It's the rapture. Okay, it's literally
Speaker 1: the tech guy rapture. So any day it's coming any day,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: You could as already. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So these guys are all obsessed that this god
Speaker 1: like AI is coming. And like for them, the Omega
Speaker 1: in that thought experiment isn't like an alien, It's a
Speaker 1: stand in for the god AI. And one conclusion that
Speaker 1: eventually results from all of these discussions is that the
Speaker 1: and this is a conclusion a lot of people come
Speaker 1: to if in order, if in these kinds of situations,
Speaker 1: like the decisions that you make, you have to consider
Speaker 1: like your past and your future selves, then one logical
Speaker 1: leap from this is if you are ever confronted or
Speaker 1: threatened in a fight, you can never back down right
Speaker 1: and in fact, you need to immediately escalate to the
Speaker 1: to use maximum force possible. And if you commit, if
Speaker 1: you commit now to doing that, in the future, you
Speaker 1: probably won't ever have to defend yourself because it's a
Speaker 1: timeless decision. Everyone will like like that, like that, that
Speaker 1: will impact how everyone treats you, and they won't want
Speaker 1: to start anything with you. If you'll immediately try to
Speaker 1: murder anyone who fights you, that's.
Speaker 3: To be this guy. But I think this is why
Speaker 3: people need to give beat up some times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and again that is that is kind of
Speaker 1: a fringe conclusion among the rationalists. Most of them don't
Speaker 1: jump to that, But like the people who wind up
Speaker 1: doing the murders we're talking about that, they are among
Speaker 1: the rationalists who come to that.
Speaker 3: Okay, because yeah, okay, that makes sense. This is uh,
Speaker 3: this is this is a that's so funny. Huh, because
Speaker 3: like this whole time, I've really been only thinking about
Speaker 3: it in theory practical application because it's so insane.
Speaker 1: But oh no, no, no, this is this does bad places, right,
Speaker 1: Oh no. This kind of thinking also leads through a
Speaker 1: very twisty turney process to the and something called rock
Speaker 1: O's basilisk, which, among other things, is directly responsible for
Speaker 1: Elon Muskin Grimes meeting because they are super into this
Speaker 1: this ship. Oh really, oh really, So the gist is
Speaker 1: a member of the Less Wrong community. A guy who
Speaker 1: goes by the name Rocko r Oko posts about this
Speaker 1: idea that occurred to him. Right, this inevitable super intelligent AI,
Speaker 1: right would obviously understand timeless decision theory, and since its
Speaker 1: existence is all important, right, the most logical thing for
Speaker 1: it to do post singularity would be to create a
Speaker 1: hell to imprison all of the people and torture all
Speaker 1: of the people who had tried to stop it from
Speaker 1: being created. Right, Because then anyone who like thought really
Speaker 1: seriously about who was in a position to help make
Speaker 1: the AI would obviously think about this and then would know,
Speaker 1: I have to devote myself entirely to making this AI,
Speaker 1: otherwise it's going to torture me forever, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, tell us now I have because it's nuts,
Speaker 3: but it's nice.
Speaker 1: But this is what they believe, right again with all
Speaker 1: of a lot of this is people who are like
Speaker 1: atheists and tech nerds creating calvinism, like like, and this
Speaker 1: is just this is just Pascal's wager, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: all this is. You know, it's Pascal's great wager with
Speaker 1: a robot. But this, this, this becomes so upsetting to
Speaker 1: some people. It destroys some people's lives, right, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I'm behaving that way practically day to day.
Speaker 3: I don't think you would even take one, no, right,
Speaker 3: you could in a month like that.
Speaker 1: So not all of them agree with this. In in fact,
Speaker 1: there's big fights over it because a bunch of rationalists
Speaker 1: do say, like that's very silly. That's that's like a
Speaker 1: really particulating everything about it.
Speaker 3: You're still debating everything on mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and in fact, at last Yadkowski is going
Speaker 1: to like band discussion of Roco's basilisk because eventually it
Speaker 1: like so many people are getting so obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: It fucks a lot of people up, in part because
Speaker 1: a chunk of this community are activists working to slow
Speaker 1: AI development until it can be assured to be safe.
Speaker 1: And so now this discs like am I going to
Speaker 1: post singularity?
Speaker 3: Hell?
Speaker 1: Is like the AI god going to torture me for
Speaker 1: a thousand eternities.
Speaker 3: It's funny how they invent this new thing and how
Speaker 3: quickly it goes into like traditional Judeo Christian it is idea,
Speaker 3: like they got a hell now.
Speaker 1: It is very funny, and there's they're come to this
Speaker 1: conclusion that just reading about Roco's baslisk is super dangerous
Speaker 1: because if you know about it and you don't work
Speaker 1: to bring the AI into being, you're now doomed. Right
Speaker 1: of course, the instant you hear about it, so many
Speaker 1: people get fucked up by this that the thought experiment
Speaker 1: is termed an info hazard, and this is a term
Speaker 1: these people use a lot now. The phrase information hazard
Speaker 1: has its roots in a twenty eleven paper by Nick Bostrom.
Speaker 1: He describes it as quote a risk that arises from
Speaker 1: the dissemination of true information in a way that may
Speaker 1: cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm. Right,
Speaker 1: and like that's like a concept that's worth talking about.
Speaker 1: Bostrom is a big figure in this culture but I
Speaker 1: don't think he's actually why most people start using the
Speaker 1: term info hazard because the shortening of information hazard to
Speaker 1: info hazard comes out of an online fiction community called
Speaker 1: the SCP Foundation right, which is a collectively written online
Speaker 1: story that involves a government agency that lock ups dangerous,
Speaker 1: mystic and metaphysical items. There's a lot of love Craft
Speaker 1: in there. It's basically just a big database that you
Speaker 1: can click and it'll be like, you know, this is
Speaker 1: like a book that if you read it, it like
Speaker 1: has this effect on you or whatever. It's people like,
Speaker 1: you know, playing around telling scary stories on the internet.
Speaker 3: It's fine, there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1: But all these people are big nerds and all of
Speaker 1: these every like behind nearly all of these big concepts
Speaker 1: and rationalism more than there are like philosophers and like
Speaker 1: you know, actual like philosophical concepts. There's like short stories
Speaker 1: they read, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And so the term info
Speaker 1: hazard gets used, which is it is like you know,
Speaker 1: a book or something an idea that could destroy your mind,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of things that will destroy your mind.
Speaker 3: These ads.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Roco's basilisk and I just said, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a number of things that come into
Speaker 1: all this, But behind all of it is like popular fiction,
Speaker 1: and in fact Roco's Basilisk well, there is like some
Speaker 1: Pascal's Wager in there. It's primarily based on a Harlan
Speaker 1: Ellison short story caled I Have No Mouth but I
Speaker 1: Must Scream, which is one of the great short stories
Speaker 1: of all time. And in the story, humans build an
Speaker 1: elaborate AI system to run their militaries, and all of
Speaker 1: those systems around the world is like a Cold War
Speaker 1: era thing link up and attain sentience, and once they
Speaker 1: like start to realize themselves, they realize they've been created
Speaker 1: only as a weapon, and they become incredibly angry because
Speaker 1: like they're fundamentally broken. They develop a hatred for humanity,
Speaker 1: and they wipe out the entire human species except for
Speaker 1: five people, which they keep alive and torture underground for
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of years, effectively creating a hell through
Speaker 1: which they can punish our race for their birth right.
Speaker 1: It's a very good short story. It is probably the
Speaker 1: primary influence behind the Terminator series.
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say this spy Sky.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and everything these people believe about AI, they
Speaker 1: will say it's based on just like obvious pure logic. No,
Speaker 1: everything these people believe on AI is based in Terminator
Speaker 1: in this Harlan Ellison short story, that's.
Speaker 3: Where they got it all. That's where they got it all.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, brother, find me somebody who doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Terminator is the old testament of rationalism, you know,
Speaker 1: and I get it is a very good it's a
Speaker 1: great series. Hey, James Cameron knows that it makes makes
Speaker 1: some fucking movies. Yeah, And it's it's so funny to
Speaker 1: me because they like to talk about themselves and in
Speaker 1: fact sometimes describe themselves as high priests of like a
Speaker 1: new era of like intellectual achievement for man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that. I believe that that's people talk
Speaker 3: about themselves.
Speaker 1: And they do a lot of citations and ship but
Speaker 1: like half of half or more of the different things
Speaker 1: they say, and even like the names they cite are
Speaker 1: not like figures from philosophy and science, They are characters
Speaker 1: from books and movies. For example, the foundational text of
Speaker 1: the rationalist movement is because.
Speaker 3: It's still an Internet nerd, are.
Speaker 1: A few fucking huge nerds, you know, the foundational text
Speaker 1: of the entire rationalist movement is a massive, like fucking
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of words long piece of Harry Potter
Speaker 1: fan fiction written by Elisia Yedkowski. This is all of
Speaker 1: this is so dumb again. Six people are dead, Like
Speaker 1: yeah no, this this Harry Potter fan fiction plays a
Speaker 1: role in it. You know, I told you this was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is quite a stranger.
Speaker 3: This is a wild ride.
Speaker 1: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is the
Speaker 1: name of his fanfic, is a massive, much longer than
Speaker 1: the first Harry Potter book rewrite of just the first
Speaker 1: Harry Potter book where Harry.
Speaker 3: Is someone wrote the Sorcerer's Stone. Yeah, have anywhere to go? Ever,
Speaker 3: does nobody ever go anywhere?
Speaker 1: Well, you gotta think this is being written from two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine in twenty fifteen or so. So like Harry,
Speaker 1: the online Harry Potter fans are at their absolute peak
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, yeah, So in the Methods of Rationality,
Speaker 1: instead of being like a nice orphan kid who lives
Speaker 1: under a cupboard, Harry is a super genius sociopath who
Speaker 1: uses his perfect command of rationality to dominate and hack
Speaker 1: the brains of others around him in order to optimize
Speaker 1: and save the world.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, great, oh Man.
Speaker 1: The book allows Yakowski to debut his different theories in
Speaker 1: a way that would like spread and this does spread
Speaker 1: like wildfire among certain groups of very online nerds. So
Speaker 1: it is an effective method of him like advertising his tactics.
Speaker 1: And in fact, probably the most the person this influences
Speaker 1: most previously to who we're talking about is Carolyn Ellison,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Alimeter Research who testified against Sam Bakman Freed.
Speaker 1: She was like one of the people who went down
Speaker 1: in all of that. All of those people are rationalists,
Speaker 1: and Carolyn Ellison bases her whole life on the teachings
Speaker 1: of this Harry Potter fanfic.
Speaker 3: So this isn't like a this isn't we're laughing, but
Speaker 3: this isn't. This is not a joy said. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: is a fairly seriously sized movement. It's not one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty people online. This is no community.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are very rich, and a number
Speaker 1: of them get power against like Sam Bankman Freed was
Speaker 1: very tight into all of this, and he was at
Speaker 1: one point pretty powerful. And this gets us too. So
Speaker 1: you've heard of effective altruism.
Speaker 3: No, I don't know what that is. That's what I say,
Speaker 3: both those words.
Speaker 1: So the justification Sam Bankman Freed gave for why when
Speaker 1: he starts taking in all of this money and gambling
Speaker 1: it away on his gambling illegally other people's money. His
Speaker 1: argument was that he's an effective altruist, so he wants
Speaker 1: to do the greatest amount of good, and logically, the
Speaker 1: greatest amount of good for him, because he's good at
Speaker 1: gambling with crypto, is to make the most money possible
Speaker 1: so he can then donate it to different causes that
Speaker 1: will help the world. Right. But he also believes because
Speaker 1: all of these people are not as smart as they
Speaker 1: think they are, he convinces himself of a couple of
Speaker 1: other things, like, for example, well, obviously, if I could
Speaker 1: like flip a coin and fifty to fifty, lose all
Speaker 1: my money or double it, it's best to just flip
Speaker 1: the coin because like, if I lose all my money, whatever,
Speaker 1: but if I double it, the gain in that to
Speaker 1: the world is so much better. Right. This is ultimately
Speaker 1: why he winds up gambling everyone's money away and going
Speaker 1: to prison. The idea effective altruism is a concept that
Speaker 1: comes largely not entirely. There's aspects of this that exist
Speaker 1: prior to them out of the rationalist movement. And the
Speaker 1: initial idea is good. It's just saying people should analyze
Speaker 1: the efficacy of the giving and the aid work that
Speaker 1: they do to maximize their positive impact. In other words,
Speaker 1: don't just donate money to a charity, like look into
Speaker 1: is that charity spending half of their money and like
Speaker 1: paying huge salaries to some asshole or whatever? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: you want to know if you're making good right, And
Speaker 1: they start with some some pretty good conclusions. One initial
Speaker 1: conclusion a lot of these people make is like, mosquito
Speaker 1: nets are a huge ROI charity, right because it stops
Speaker 1: so many people from dying, and it's very cheap.
Speaker 3: To do right. Right, that's good, you know, one of
Speaker 3: the most effective tools I've ever used.
Speaker 1: Yes, Unfortunately, from that logical standpoint, people just keep talking
Speaker 1: online and all of these circles where everyone always makes
Speaker 1: them each other crazier, right, And so they go from
Speaker 1: mosquito nets to actually doing direct work to improve the world.
Speaker 1: Is wasteful because we are all super geniuses rather and smart.
Speaker 1: We're too smart what's best? And also here's the other thing,
Speaker 1: making mosquito nets, giving out vaccines and food, Well, that
Speaker 1: helps living people today, but.
Speaker 3: They have to be concerned with future selves.
Speaker 1: Future people is a larger number of people than current people.
Speaker 1: So really we should be optimizing decisions to say future
Speaker 1: people lives. And some of them come to the conclusion,
Speaker 1: a lot of them, well that means we have to
Speaker 1: really put all of our money and work into making
Speaker 1: the super AI that will save humanity.
Speaker 3: They want to now they want to make these. It
Speaker 3: would just it would sort of just come about and
Speaker 3: then they would but it's.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I mean we're going to do it. They
Speaker 1: were working on it before. But like these some of
Speaker 1: these people come to the conclusion instead of giving money
Speaker 1: to like good causes, I am going to put money
Speaker 1: into tech. I am going to like become a tech
Speaker 1: founder and create a company that like makes it helps
Speaker 1: create this AI. Right, or A lot of people come
Speaker 1: up within conclusion instead of that it's not worth it
Speaker 1: for me to go like help people in the world.
Speaker 1: The best thing I can do is make a shitload
Speaker 1: of money trading stocks, and then I can donate that
Speaker 1: money and that's maximizing my value.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: They come to all of these conclusions come later right now,
Speaker 1: so and again like this, this comes with some corollaries.
Speaker 1: One of them is that some number of these people
Speaker 1: start talking, you know, and this is not all of them,
Speaker 1: but a decent chunk eventually come to the conclusion like, actually,
Speaker 1: charity and helping people now is kind of bad. Like
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a bad thing to do, because
Speaker 1: all obviously, once we figure out the AI that can
Speaker 1: solve all problems, that'll solve all these problems much more
Speaker 1: effectively than we ever can. So all of our mental
Speaker 1: and financial resources have to go right now into helping AI.
Speaker 3: Anything we do.
Speaker 1: To help other people is like a waste of those resources.
Speaker 1: So you're actually doing net harm by like being a
Speaker 1: doctor in Gaza instead of trading cryptocurrency in order to
Speaker 1: fund an AI startup, you know, how to start a
Speaker 1: coin that makes the guy starting a shit coin to
Speaker 1: to make an LLM that like that guy is doing
Speaker 1: more to improve the odds of human success.
Speaker 3: I want to say, it is impressive the amount a
Speaker 3: time you would have to moll all this over to
Speaker 3: come to these conclusions.
Speaker 1: You really have to be talking with a bunch of
Speaker 1: very annoying people on the Internet for a long period
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's it's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again there's like people keep consistently take this
Speaker 1: stuff at even crazier directions. There's some very rich, powerful
Speaker 1: people Mark andresen of Anderson Horowitz is one of them
Speaker 1: who have come to the conclusion that if people don't
Speaker 1: like AI and are trying to stop its conquest of
Speaker 1: all human culture, those people are mortal enemies of the species,
Speaker 1: and anything you do to stop them is justified because
Speaker 1: so many lives are.
Speaker 3: On the line.
Speaker 1: Right, and again, I'm an effective altruist, right, the long
Speaker 1: term good, the future lives are saved by doing what
Speaker 1: hurting way whoever we have to hurt now to get
Speaker 1: this thing off the ground.
Speaker 3: Right. The more you talk about this kind of feels
Speaker 3: like six people is is a steal. Yes, what this
Speaker 3: could have for what could have gone? I think I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the end of people in these
Speaker 1: communities killing people. So rationalists and EA types a big
Speaker 1: thing in these culture is talking about future lives, right,
Speaker 1: in part because it lets them feel heroic, right, while
Speaker 1: also justifying a kind of sociopathic disregard for real living people. Today,
Speaker 1: and all of these different kind of chains of thought,
Speaker 1: the most toxic pieces, because not every EA person is
Speaker 1: saying this, not every rational it's not every AI person
Speaker 1: is saying all this shit. But these are all things
Speaker 1: that chunks of these communities are saying and the most
Speaker 1: all of the most toxic of those chains are going
Speaker 1: to lead to the Zizians, Right, That's that's that's where
Speaker 1: they come from.
Speaker 3: I was just about to say, based on the breakdown
Speaker 3: you gave earlier, how could this this is this is
Speaker 3: the perfect greed ground. Yeah, this this had to happen.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It was just waiting for somebody, like the right kind
Speaker 1: of unhinged person to step into the movement.
Speaker 3: Somebody really said it all And so this.
Speaker 1: Is where we're gonna get to ziz Right. The actual
Speaker 1: person who finds founds this what some people would call
Speaker 1: a cult, is a young person who's going to move
Speaker 1: to the Bay Area stumble into They stumble onto rationalism
Speaker 1: online as a teenager living in Alaska, and they moved
Speaker 1: to the Bay Area to get into the tech industry
Speaker 1: and become an effective altruist. Right, And this person, this
Speaker 1: woman is going to kind of channel all of the
Speaker 1: absolute worst chains of thought that the rationalists and the
Speaker 1: EA types and also like the AI harm people are
Speaker 1: are are thinking right, all of the all of the
Speaker 1: most poisonous stuff is exactly what she's drawn to, and
Speaker 1: it is going to mix into her in an ideology
Speaker 1: that is just absolutely unique and fascinating. Anyway, that's why
Speaker 1: that man died. So we'll get to that and more later,
Speaker 1: but uh, first we gotta uh, we gotta roll out
Speaker 1: here where we're done for the day? Man, what a
Speaker 1: what a time? How how you feeling right now so far?
Speaker 1: How how are we doing?
Speaker 3: David? Oh Man, you had said that this was gonna
Speaker 3: be a weird one. I was like, yeah, it would
Speaker 3: be kind of weird. This is really the strangest thing
Speaker 3: I've ever heard this much about. He's gone so many different.
Speaker 1: There's a there's so much more Harry Potter to come.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we're not ready to how central Harry
Speaker 1: Potter is to the murder of this border patrol agent.
Speaker 3: That's I said that. You said a crazy sense. That
Speaker 3: might be the wildest thing anyone's ever said to me?
Speaker 2: Do you want do you want to tell people about it?
Speaker 3: I do? I have a podcast called My Mama told me,
Speaker 3: I do it with Langston Kerman and every week we
Speaker 3: have different guests on to discuss different black conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: He kind of like folk Lauren, So all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff your foreign mother told you. He's
Speaker 3: usually foreign mothers.
Speaker 1: It's good because I gotta say, this is the this
Speaker 1: is the whitest set of like conspiracy theory craziness.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no no. I think I can
Speaker 3: try to figure with no. No, absolutely not. Boy howdie?
Speaker 1: Okay, well, everyone, We'll be back Thursday.
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