[huberway]

Can we talk about how the Rationalists seem to attract mentally unstable people to their trainings in mental technology, while also targeting the young with so-called rationality camps?

If at the apex of an organization you have a person who has organized his life in such a way as to have sex with several other people, and if many people involved in the movement pay a tithe to the organization or charities it designates, and if many of the members of this organization go crazy thinking about the impending hell (of AGI), how is this different from a cult?

[bhaney]

Am I missing something? The only mention of "rationalists" in this article is a note about how this cult leader considers rationalists to be her enemies. What's the relevance of your hostility towards them?

[Viliam1234]

About ten years ago, Ziz participated in a workshop (multiple workshops? not sure) organized by the so-called rationalist community in the Bay Area. Later she was banned from the community, organized a protest against it, got briefly arrested, faked her suicide and disappeared... now appeared again...

She also recruited some of her cult members from the community (not sure which ones).

So, if you want, you can frame it as the rationalist community being a dangerous place that attracts sick people. Or you could frame is as anarchists being violent, vegans being intolerant, or trans women being crazy... because the Zizans are all of that. Everyone is free to chose their own story about them.

It may or may not be important that most rationalists / anarchists / vegans / trans women are not crazy murderers, so maybe the story is mostly about Ziz being Ziz and succeeding to get a few (less than ten) followers.

[nl]

They are apparently a "a radical offshoot of the rationalist community"[1].

I suspect that as with many off-shots they hate the original community.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vermont-border-agent-death-expo... is a better, longer form of this article

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Maland

[nl]

"Ziz"'s old blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20230315071531/https://sinceriou...

It seem they were a fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky and maybe Nick Bostrom (although a bit unclear) but they hate MIRI

LessWrong has a summary of their involvement: https://www.lesswrong.com/w/j-lasota-ziz

[justlikereddit]

Yet another episode of "people who think Elizer Yudkowsky isn't a lunatic are as batshit insane as he is".

Calling themselves rationalists are more ironic than a concentration camp having a sign promising freedom to those who work.

[throw16180339]

It's a cult whose members think they're too smart for cults.

[mmooss]

That unfortunately describes many people in a political grouping that focuses on disinformation and disruption.

[willy_k]

Says the subscriber to the other one. Both sides are rank with this, there are surface differences and differences in MO but this has become the default state of both. If one vehemently disagree with that, their side has done its job well.

[mmooss]

You dictate what someone else thinks and if they disagree with you, they must be manipulated. That's quite a powerful position to be in.

[willy_k]

Your previous comment implies the same. Regardless, I’m not saying that anyone who disagrees is necessarily, just observing that the natural consequence of said manipulation would be to hold a dogmatic insistence that “it’s them, not me”.

[mmooss]

It's mis- or disinformation to say that all sides, all people are the same. It's the ultimate cover for people doing wrong - it eliminates any 'wrongness'.

A corrupt politician might say, 'everyone is corrupt'. Now their flaw is wiped away, in a relative sense. But it's not true.

[rtkwe]

It has a lot in common with cults and religions, "we've found a way of thinking that can let you make perfect decisions and figure out things in new fields quickly sometime even figuring out things that elude 'experts' in that field". It's not inherently cultish but that idea can attract the same kinds of people who might get sucked into other cults but don't because they're atheist or agnostic.

[palisade]

That cult is kind of the opposite tho, they were looking forward to the impending hell of AGI and thought they were doing things that would get on the good side of the evil overseer AI of the future. If anything they weren't going crazy over it they felt comforted.

[plagiarist]

They are too rational for religion but desperately need meaning (or whatever) so they convinced themselves they could literally talk directly to god (after he exists he will simulate their exact personalities at this exact moment in time).

[arresin]

These are the people too smart for regular cults?

[Wololooo]

The unfortunate truth is that everyone can be manipulated and everyone can be conditioned.

It just takes time and/or the right circumstances.

This includes propaganda.

[rtkwe]

They probably believe(d) they are/were but cults exploit a lot of fundamental human biases, desires and weaknesses. Pretty much anyone could fall in with a cult given the right approach. IMO all believing you're too smart for a cult gets you is a blind spot that lets the right cult sneak up on you even easier.

[lmm]

Pick your favourite cult checklist and see how much applies. Rationalists certainly have some cult-like characteristics, but e.g. practically any environmentalist group has all the ones you list and more (especially the targeting the young part). In particular the Rationalists I know don't discourage questioning and dissent (quite the opposite), don't focus much on bringing in money or members, don't give their leaders any exalted status or obey them unquestioningly (quite the opposite), don't encourage people to break the law or disobey the proper authorities, and don't try to isolate people from their outside friends or family.

[nl]

I suggest you read the section starting "The Zizians, believe it or not, are not the only cult-like groupuscule to have emerged from the heady stew of the Rationalist community" from [1]

Some quotes:

> (Alignment Group) would attempt to articulate a ‘demon’ which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival groups, its nature and effects, and get it out of our systems using debugging tools

> there were also psychotic breaks involving demonic subprocess narratives,” and where people in positions of power would “debug” underlings. “I experienced myself and others being distanced from old family and friends, who didn't understand how high-impact the work we were doing was,”

> Scott Alexander, maybe the most prominent Rationalist besides Yudkowsky, suggested that the problem was not really M.I.R.I. or C.F.A.R. so much as that Taylor was in a cult-like group centered around a former M.I.R.I. head

> I don’t know that I have the patience or energy to really get to the bottom of it all except to say: It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me! And I haven’t even gotten into the Burning Man camp Black Lotus or the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth

etc

[1] https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationali...

[lmm]

I'd read it already, thank you very much.

> The Zizians, believe it or not, are not the only cult-like groupuscule to have emerged from the heady stew of the Rationalist community

Many communities have cultlike offshoots. What frequency, what proportion are we talking about? And surely the fact that mainstream Rationalists have been loudly denouncing and warning people about the Zizians for the past 5 years counts for something.

> (Alignment Group) would attempt to articulate a ‘demon’ which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival groups, its nature and effects, and get it out of our systems using debugging tools

> there were also psychotic breaks involving demonic subprocess narratives,” and where people in positions of power would “debug” underlings.

Yeah, that's crazy. I don't think any of the people I know would get involved in anything like that. Again, is that "normal Rationalists" or is that what a snake-handler sect is to Christians?

> I don’t know that I have the patience or energy to really get to the bottom of it all except to say: It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me!

This is the kind of thing you'd say if you wanted to smear a group but knew the dirt was actually pretty limited.

[nl]

Just noting I was just quoting it, but it seems accurate.

My personal view is that Rationalism is more like a religion, and there are spin-offs that are cults.

> And surely the fact that mainstream Rationalists have been loudly denouncing and warning people about the Zizians for the past 5 years counts for something.

Religions usually are very vocal to denounce breakaways as apostates.

The OP said:

> If at the apex of an organization you have a person who has organized his life in such a way as to have sex with several other people, and if many people involved in the movement pay a tithe to the organization or charities it designates, and if many of the members of this organization go crazy thinking about the impending hell (of AGI), how is this different from a cult?

It seems your main objection is to the "many" word in "if many of the members of this organization go crazy".

>> It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me!

> This is the kind of thing you'd say if you wanted to smear a group but knew the dirt was actually pretty limited.

People can read what this "it sounds pretty culty to me" was about and decide for themselves: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupation...

Some quotes:

> (The way the page is written, I get the impression that the word "infohazardous" markets the content of the glossary as "extra powerful and intriguing occult material", as I noted is common in my recent post about infohazards.)

> Given that I thought I may had started World War 3 and was continuing to harm and control people with my mental powers, I seriously considered suicide.

> There is a very disturbing possibility (with some evidence for it) here, that people may be picked off one by one (by partially-subconscious and partially-memetic influences, sometimes in ways they cooperate with, e.g. through suicide), with most everyone being too scared to investigate the circumstances.

etc etc

Decide for yourself if "pretty culty" is a reasonable label.

[oooyay]

There's a lot of things that I'd qualify as "religious" that I probably wouldn't as a kid, even in my very Catholic upbringing. Most of the companies I've worked for command loyalty and have rituals that border on religious ceremonies. They use legal avenues rather than social avenues for control, but who's to say the modern corporate ethos isn't a cult? I feel semi-confident in saying that broadly of Fortune 500 companies and especially technology industry companies (and their leaders.)

That isn't to say rationalists on the whole are one thing or another, but rather my hypothesis is as society gets more desperate and divided this kind of order is a natural consequence.

[Manuel_D]

From what I can glean, the Zizians were largely rejected by rationalists and ultimately had a falling out.

[throwme0827349]

I think this is about as reasonable as conflating all hippies with Manson, or all Christians with the Waco people.

I have met a few "rationalist" types, and I went to a "rationalist" meetup in San Francisco, although they called it something else and didn't care for that label, but couldn't really get other people to stop calling them that.

The overall vibe was like a tech meetup crossed with a church picnic. There were a lot of programmers and grad students there to do a little professional networking, talk about books they like, whether they should be donating to charity a little, which charities worked best, and how to avoid throwing away the leftover cookies.

The subject of AI millennialism was not broached in my presence, all though I did meet some people who were working on AI. If there were any psychos or cult leaders there (or trans people for that matter), I didn't notice, and no one tried to recruit me to anything. It was a totally normal and pleasant experience.

[dehugger]

What do trans people have to do with psychos and cult leaders? That seems like a bit of a non sequitur.

[lolc]

I think the context is that allegedly Ziz cult recruitment targeted trans people.

[fortran77]

> Can we talk about how the Rationalists seem to attract mentally unstable people to their trainings in mental technology, while also targeting the young with so-called rationality camps?

Probably not, at least not here.

[sva_]

> seem to attract mentally unstable people

This AGI doomerism, which is now also popularized on YouTube etc, is very closely related to the kind of existential questions that mentally unstable people probably ask themselves.

The bar of entry is pretty low, as you need no skills really. You can bootstrap ideas that sound convincing to yourself from nothing pretty quick. That's my hot take anyways.

[prododev]

AI doomerism I've seen largely boils down to pretty standard critiques of capitalism -- who controls the means of production (the capital class), who will benefit most from increases in productivity (capital class), who is going to end up poorer (working class).

Unless you mean the folks who believe AI will become AGI and start hurting people directly. Those folks are pretty fringe.

[lupusreal]

Sva did say AGI doomerism, which I think is distinct from the more mundane and grounded concerns about how extant "AI" systems will effect the labor market, and related concerns. The LessWrong people talking about AIs exterminating humanity because we failed to worship it correctly, not the artists complaining about AI mimicking their style and turning art into a commodities available to anybody.

[hollerith]

Is there any AI-doomer group or individual that in your opinion is neither "mentally unstable", cult-like, "crazy" nor duped by a cult leader?

By "AI-doomer", I mean any person or group that believes that AI research is a threat to human survival.