[CaffeineLD50]

The cult elements of isolation (boat/van life), alienation from self (trans, split brain), false moral superiority (vegan), demands for purity in action (vegan), sense of false higher purpose (AI basilisk), false possession of method for empowerment (rationalism) are there. The hatred of landlords et al (anarchism) and use of drugs (psychedelic, others?) seems to be my guess for the violence part.

Lots of highly exploitative groups don't get to violent assaults. That's got me wondering why.

[PaulHoule]

I think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manson_Family but I know a lot of people use psychedelic drugs and don't resort to violence.

With the hyperbolic rhetoric about false threats, I'm surprised we haven't seen more violence from "rationalists"; if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

[fc417fc802]

Well if we're being rational about it - how confident are we in the accuracy of that assessment, how likely is our attack to succeed, and how likely is our attack to have a positive impact? Worse, what is the probability that our attack instead has a negative impact?

[somenameforme]

Is it even rational to assume one is rational? Of course I think I am, but I also think basically nobody else is. Yet I'm sure they think the are, and similarly doubt I am. So is the issue that I'm a snowflake and everybody else is wrong, or is the issue that rationality does not really exist (though that does not mean it's not worth striving towards)?

It seems only rational to doubt ones rationality.

[balamatom]

Well put. That realization alone makes you wiser than strictly required.

[fc417fc802]

> Is it even rational to assume one is rational?

Depending on your definition. But taken literally, no, obviously not.

Regardless of your skill level, would you ever assume that you were playing a perfect (in the information theoretic sense) game of chess?

Whether chess or real life, all of us merely make the best choices we can given our skill and the information available to us. That includes imperfectly modeling the other agents in the world around us. In that sense, "being rational" means something like "deliberately analyzing the situation" and "more rational" means something like "a superior approach to analysis".

[lupusreal]

> if they really believed we were in that imminent danger, violent attacks would have been the rational thing to do.

That's what these guys figured. But if we're being rational and realistic, all it accomplishes is getting your group killed or imprisoned.

[PaulHoule]

Depend if you chose the right target, pretty clearly they didn't.

[AnimalMuppet]

Start further back. Depends on whether you are actually in imminent danger. Then, if you are, then you have to choose the right target.

[CaffeineLD50]

The fabrication of imminent danger as a means to break people out of the norm and into their matrix reality may make their ability to evaluate real imminent dangers perhaps?

They were terrified of some AI Roko's Basilisk they imputed some fantastic power to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

[lupusreal]

They had issues with so many different groups and causes they may as well have been raging against society as a whole. A dozen or so kooks resorting to violence against the world will only ever end with their demise. They thought themselves rational but were in fact totally insane to think their course of action was anything other than elaborate suicide.

[CaffeineLD50]

I don't think its necessarily suicidal if the leadership is competent.

Mao Tse Tung when he decided to become a "mountain bandit" and formed the basis for future Red Army may have had no greater advantage. Except he was a military genius and these guys were just geniuses.

[CaffeineLD50]

Yes, agreed. Lots of drug using gay vegan anarchists don't assault landlords or kill people.

But drugs seem to be a way that people are destabilized outside of norms.

[CaffeineLD50]

Manson was a biker gang affiliate and lifelong criminal. The Zizians appear to be mostly middle class kids, not street dealers pimps and wanna be thugs.