This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse is joined by our furry friend Tracing Woodgrains/Jack Despain Zhou to discuss the rationalist trans murder cult. Plus, revisiting the DEI scandal at the FAA.
Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg
Good Group and Pasek’s Doom – Sinceriously
Containment Causes Suicidality | Mental Engineering
Jay Leo Winterford (Jacob Ray Pekarek) Obituary - Estes Park, CO
Mystery in Sonoma County after arrests of protesters in Guy Fawkes masks and robes
A community alert about Ziz. Police investigations, violence, and… | by SefaShapiro | Medium
Jack LaSota Obituary (2022) - Fairbanks, AK - Daily News-Miner
GWEN DANIELSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. COUNTY OF SONOMA, CALIFORNIA
Two Alleged Squatters Charged In Vallejo Death of Friend and Sword Attack on Landlord
PLUM OF DISCORD — I Became a Full-time Internet Pest and May Not...
after reading Aella's write up about this i was looking forward to barpod picking it up. i will say, both in Aella's writeup and in this episode, the use of 'she' for Ziz really bothers me. i nominally understand why it's done, but idk ... it feels like indulging in narcissism when the entire story is taken into context.
EDIT: Jesse did bring it up at the end, and even if you want to use 'she' i think it should be clearly stated at the start that Ziz is a biological male.
Yeah, I'm only 25 mins in but the use of wrong pronouns on this one is especially jarring.
Jesse and Katie always use preferred pronouns.
Well, not always. Katie had made a point of saying she doesn't/won't when it's about someone like a criminal. I think Jesse has even made an exception or two. To me, given the subject matter, wrong sex pronouns here were very strange.
Totally agree. I think Katie is becoming more bold about it. Good to know Jesse is less of a wuss than he used to be.
The use of she/her pronouns here definitely left the listeners less informed and less able to follow what was actually happening. As Orwell put it, it fell “upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details.”
absolutely. i was able to sort of take certain things (Ziz being a transwoman, his birth name being Jack, combined with the 'she' pronouns, aggressive behaviors that scream 'male' to me) and infer that this person was likely a biomale. but someone who isn't as versed in this kind of doublespeak? yeah they'd have no idea what was going on.
Yeah, for ziz zizself I had somewhat of a good grasp, but for some of the other “women” I had more of a mental heuristic of “Manson Girl” rather than, as Jesse put it, “non-passing transwomen.”
exactly! when it came up at the end that that was the reality i was like wait, what? especially because jesse brought it up in the context of being annoyed that publications obscured the perpetrators’ maleness 😭
Big ‘we’re all looking for the guy that did this’ hot dog guy energy in the ep, yeah.
The immortal phrase "your minds are so open your brains have fallen out" always comes to mind when I hear people honouring the pronouns of male homicidal maniacs.
A murderous sex cult founder is a woman? Wow that’s crazy! Oh wait…
Like murders and rapes committed by women not tracking the biological sex, only self ID gender.
Yeah, not my crimes! :)
Thank you! This drove me nuts during the episode. Like maybe if they want to be respectful they could use “they/them” but these are not crimes committed by women and shouldn’t be labeled as such.
For any type of reporting, the default should be to refer to people using pronouns which align with their actual sex. In cases where there's an editorial choice to use "preferred" pronouns, this should be mentioned upfront, along with clear mention of their biological sex.
Exactly. Journalists need to reconsider what pronouns are actually for. Do they exist to make people feel good, or do they exist to accurately describe our shared reality?
Okay, but we also can't be doctrinaire about it.
E.g. when a person is the subject of a story or journalistic person of interest, I'd say one's sex is a relevant data point along with many others. If an item features a quote from an organization's spokesperson or man-on-the-street, it is not, excepting topics related to gender or trans issues. Consider a very silly example excerpt from a non-existent news story, with apologies to the people reading my comment to young children:
[...] Alex Van Nostrum, a male middle manager from Springfield Porche-Mercedes and sporting an impressively wide set of shoulders and a suspiciously authentic tubular gotta-be-since-birth pulsing packaging protuberance running several inches down his snug cinnamon-red apple-bottom chinos, had this to say: "Looked like a Nazi salute to me, Wink, I don't know."
[...] Terry Boombatz, an adorable miss chunky monkey who works behind the counter at the Pickleball for Ladies store, exhaled hugely, causing her low-hanging big naturals to heave and separate beneath her sheer, skin-toned tight-support cami jogging top from lululemon, looked at me suspiciously. "C'mon, Wink. He's trolling everybody, can't you see?
Okay *very* silly but the point is serious. All that matters here is that they have a name and a quote. Explicit reference to their sex or *any* description that needlessly suggests gender are unnecessary, though less racy mentions of Alex's chinos or Terry's tank top would be fine too.
Freaking out about cases like this risks the high road.
Came to post similar. I'm starting to find self-ID for toxic headcases a little grating.
For most TWs featured on the podcast, the trans identity seems to relate to a general weirdness. Even if you believe in the kind of trans Briahna Wu advocates for, these people ain't it.
Also some of the behaviour reported has a very different valence for male-sexed individuals than for actual women, e.g. I seem to recall an account of a consent-dubious BDSM encounter. So there's a sort of Stroop Effect at work.
Finally, where do you draw the line?
I get if you have a story about - say - a dogwalker who happens to be trans that it would seem appropriate to use their pronouns of choice. But are you going to affirm, say, prison-onset TWs?
What are the boundaries on this?
"What are the boundaries on this?"
honestly i think this is a slippery slope. cuz if you start asking "well when should we or shouldn't we indulge in a person's pronoun request" you have to start asking who is and isn't 'worthy' of having their preferences indulged, and let's be real: we have a presumption of innocence. so if we wanted to peg pronoun usage on their criminal record i guess we'd have to wait on that?
but honestly that's the slippery slope: i find no other solution than to have a cultural understanding that pronoun usage is not something you can really have any say over (and in any case, most pronoun usage is used in the 3rd person, when that person isn't present, so it's nonsensical for someone to say that they 'use' certain pronouns)
The real question isn’t who to indulge but why we’d indulge this at all. When language is used to distort reality instead of clarify it, the consequences are real. Maybe that’s the real slippery slope. Once you start treating identity as something dictated rather than observed, you’re already in their reality with them. And that might just include a Roko’s Basilisk scenario.
And it’s not just talk. Look at the threats, the deplatforming, the people whose careers and reputations have been wrecked just for disagreeing. The hosts of this very show have been targeted for it. There’s a streak within the trans community of do what I want, or else. That only gets worse when people play along, breaking reality with them.
Maybe it’s just nerds being keyboard warriors, posting trans flags with AK-47s on Bluesky, until it isn’t. And here we are, talking about a vegan trans murder cult. Not a requirement to be trans to join, but funny how it shook out.
I dunno, I personally don’t have any difficulty keeping two categories of “she” in my brain. Trans women, unlike women, are male and thus when I think about “Ziz” et Al, I know that.
Hearing the “she” pronoun doesn’t trick my brain into thinking a trans woman isn’t male. This story was absolutely clear that this was basically a dude with a personality disorder who identifies as female. So, I don’t see any particular harm or confusion
"**I personally** don’t have any difficulty keeping two categories of “she” in my brain... Hearing the “she” pronoun **doesn’t trick my brain** into thinking a trans woman isn’t male."
Okay, good for you.
"So, **I don’t see any particular harm or confusion**"
This is where the problem sets in. You have a very specific way of looking at the world. This is fine. But then you make a leap because of the things that for you "personally" doesn't "trick [your brain]" then therefore there is "no harm or confusion." Many people see the world differently from you!
In any event, can you tell me which 'she/hers' in the story are transwoman and which are 'Manson Girls'? It's not apparent to me!
The pronouns confusion does rather obscure whatever sexual dynamics might have been at work.
Exactly - and sexual dynamics are more or less always at work when it comes to cult leaders.
From what I can tell, most are male:
Jack Amadeus "Ziz" LaSota: identifies as transfemme, male
Alexander “Sonmi” Leatham: identifies as transfemme, male
Maximilian Snyder: "any pronouns", male
Daniel Blank: male
Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt: identified as transfemme, male, Deceased
Amir “Emma” Borhanian: identified as transfemme, male, Deceased
Gwen Danielson: identifies as transfemme, male, thought dead but likely still alive
Suri Dao: identifies as female, however appears male from the single photo I found
Michelle "Jamie" Zajko: identifies as non binary, sex unclear, looks male in certain photographs but could possibly be a masculine female in others
Teresa “Milo” Youngblut: Female, identifies as trans, pronouns “xe/xem/xyrs” (take note Jesse & Trace!)
Zajko is male.
Your post is the sort of thing that should've been in the episode!
I thought they were all trans women, except for the men (to be clear - non trans women type male men) mentioned.
One of them is a biological female. Gives a different take on that cultist that consistent she/hering glosses over.
Okay fair enough - in that case they should definitely have told us there was an actual woman involved (which one)?
I felt like the story could have been better organized in general.
Theresa Youngblut, the woman who killed the border patrol agent.
Theresa Youngblut was actually female? Really? Who knew! I certainly didn't with all the pronoun contortions that now seem utterly obscene and contemptible.
I think this story has finally tipped me over the edge. I'm joining Nina Paley. Everyone gets properly sexed, it's got nothing to do with being nice or polite or mean, it's just accurate.
but how much of your brain interpreting this has to do with your familiarity with the topic? you're a paying subscriber of BARPod, so you're probably familiar with how people can become fixated on things that mainstream folk don't, and recognize things that an average person who isn't so plugged-in won't.
I’ve never heard this story at all. Jesse told us at / near the start that ziz was a trans woman as were others mentioned
I’m on the other side; every time I hear “she” in this episode, I have to take a moment to say to myself, “it’s actually he though” and after doing this 50 times I feel mentally drained and distracted from the content of the episode.
If it’s already clarified that the person in question is a transwoman, then it is less confusing if you’re paying close attention, but there were people mentioned in the podcast where it was not clarified whether they were talking about biological women or transwomen.
The person who killed their parents for example. Was this a woman or a transwoman? I feel like that’s an important part of the story.
I tend to agree. There’s something especially galling about a “rationalist” who pretends biological sex isn’t a thing
More than once while listening to this episode in the car, I responded aloud to Jesse's "non-passing transwoman" references with, "So you mean... a man."
And yet among the progressives I know, more insist on dying on this hill than have come back to their senses since Trump's election. It's so bizarre. I would love to have some understanding of this phenomenon more concrete than "progressive hive mind".
`the use of 'she' for Ziz really bothers me'
In a story about a pervasive techno-theological movement and its absurd offshoots that has infected one of our most important economic sectors, Silicon Valley, and has connections to our current government, e.g., DOGE, you're concerned about pronouns?
The trans status of the people involved is tertiary at best.
the murders and violence and gaslighting definitely bother me, objectively, more than the pronouns. absolutely. but does that imply that it's gauche to talk about one particular aspect of a story?
and in any case, i think Ziz's trans status *absolutely* has significant bearing on the story, because he used a complex network of rationalist-influenced trans ideology to manipulate people.
to add to this thought, i don't think it'd be unreasonable to consider trans ideology the "back door" that Zis used to get to these people in his "cult". in my personal experiences -- and i'm sure the same for many other BarPod listeners -- people drawn to trans ideology are already sort of down-on-their-luck types. low self esteem, unstable home lives, perhaps chronically depressed, that sort of thing. you see it with the person Ziz convinced to commit suicide.
and i think the trans status, and influence of trans ideology, in these peoples lives is a very important part of the story.
as someone familiar with trans communities my first thought upon hearing the brief explanation of rationalists was, “wait, how can someone be a rationalist and justify their own trans identity?”
not at all surprised by the split-brain nonsense at the center of this cult. that is literally what this new wave of trans people (read: not old-school transsexuals) believes: that their brain is separate from their body and the reality between their ears is the only one that matters.
what the whole setup REALLY reminded me of was scientology — but scientology if LRH had a girldick.
Yeah - especially since many of the group members sound (based upon their names) to be female, but appear to be biologically male; this would be a notable anomaly in the usual sex composition of murder gaggles, since most murderers and violent criminals more broadly are male. I get that this issue (a violent group whose inner circle seems to be disproportionately comprised of trans women) could be touchy, despite Jesse’s noted rapport with the trans community; however, simply referring to the members as “she” really does paint a different image of the group, its actions, and it’s potential inter-group dynamics.
Aren't all of them men?
get over it?
I’m not usually a pronoun purist, I respect J & K’s policy, but this story is very difficult to follow using preferred pronouns.
Why should criminals and psychopaths get to be called what they’re not, especially when they present a real threat to public safety? The phrase “suicidal empathy” comes to mind.
This story might tip me over—why is “respect” more important than facts?
Well, THIS NYT story tipped me over several years ago.
Here's the headline about a serial killer named Harvey Marcelin:
SHE Killed Two Women. At 83, She Is Charged With Dismembering a Third.
Harvey Marcelin was charged with murder after a head was found in HER Brooklyn apartment. Officials said it belonged to a dismembered body discovered in a shopping cart.
"Ms. Marcelin — who was listed as male in earlier court records but now identifies as a woman, according to a law enforcement official — was indicted on second-degree murder charges on Thursday in the death of Susan Leyden, 68. SHE is accused of dismembering her and hiding her body parts."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/nyregion/harvey-marcelin-shopping-cart-body.html?smid=url-share
In another article "SHE" has changed HER name to Marceline Harvey:
How Did a Two-Time Killer Get Out to Be Charged Again at Age 83?
Marceline Harvey is accused of dismembering a woman in Brooklyn. HER life was defined by a tormented relationship with women and HERSELF — and a simmering anger.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/30/nyregion/how-did-a-two-time-killer-get-out-to-be-charged-again-at-age-83.html?smid=url-share
If that's not Orwellian I don't know what is!
There are many such cases of male criminals insisting they are women. Journalism style guides require the use of preferred pronouns. Unfortunately, in criminal cases that means that journalists help perpetuate fraud rather than uncover the truth.
For more stories about male criminals posing as women, see https://reduxx.info/
And don't forget Dana Rivers, the poor oppressed woman who just had to brutally murder two women and their son because he was told no.
I wish people would quit with this. Aside from making podcasts hard to listen to since so many of these people seem to be men just playing female (possibly to appear less dangerous to others or to obscure their identities), why are we indulging violent murderers? Who cares if it offends them? Why do we all have to practice their religion? I wish journalists would be less cowardly. I've seen some "a man who identifies as a woman" on occasion. Maybe it'll keep up.
I cancelled my NYTimes subscription because of that article. Five years ago we were all on board with the pronouns. It now needs to end. The person who committed the Petit murders (2007) was just granted a female name. Child sex abuse by women is increasing dramatically, which of course has nothing to do with women abusing children more often. At this point there is no doubt that women in prison are being sexually abused by men calling themselves women every day, the population is so large. Our dignity, humanity, safety, identity, and all that is good about being a woman is continually being taken from us. Sorry to be dramatic, but please stop. It is soooo easy to explain this at the beginning of the conversation. You don't have to do it for everyone. But for god's sake, do it for the people who don't deserve the privilege, and for whom it is a slap in the face for women.
how dare you remind me of this when i’m not yet due for my bimonthly Stewing in Rage about it 😭
yeah i agree, and i think that if you sit and think about it for a bit it all starts to unravel. because where do you draw the line? is it entirely arbitrary? if someone simply offends me, are they no longer worthy of pronouns? what determines whether someone "gets" to dictate what pronouns to use?
at the end of it all i can only come to the conclusion that there should be a cultural understanding that we don't get to control the words other people use to describe us. we have our preferences -- it's *always* been rude to call a woman a man, for instance -- but when it comes to preferred self ID i think truth is far more important, ESPECIALLY in journalism.
Yes, it’s hilariously Orwellian that criminals get to dictate our speech. And just wrong that journalistic speech has been so corrupted.
There’s no middle ground.
Orwellian, yes; infuriating, yes, hilarious, not so much.
"hilarious, not so much"
just depends on how morbid your sense of humor is ;P
It’s a fact these are trans women, who are definitionally males, and which was abundantly clear in the story. “She” pronouns are typically used for trans women. What facts are being discarded?
It's not clear to me if they are all males identifying as women. The person whose parents were murdered, for example, I have seen identified as a man and in another source as a woman.
Do you happen to know if any females are involved in this group?
If not, then why bother to keep up the pretense that these are women when they are seriously disturbed violent men? If there are females involved, then I would argue it's even more important to distinguish among the perpetrators so that the public can be adequately informed.
yeah this is it. for me, i understood that Ziz is a biological male, but as for the other people involved? i was under the impression that there were actual biowomen involved (isn't the person who bought the gun a female?) but i couldn't tell you how many. if they're actually *all* transwomen (ie biomen) then that would surprise me, cuz that's not how i interpreted it.
the problem is that it isn't stated in the story. there needs to be a clear statement at the start of who is who, who was born male, who was born female, etc. we're talking about journalism, and journalism is about reporting the truth. the truth is that Ziz is a biological male, and the fact that he hasn't even gone through any sort of actual medical transition -- meaning he absolutely has every bit of hormones that makes males more aggressive than females flowing through his system -- makes the entire thing even more absurd.
"typically" since when?
Well, certainly longer than I’ve been alive anyway.
I’m still confused about who in the story is biologically male and who is actually female.
BARPOD should definitely clarify this in an update.
I think in a more formal context where readers/listeners are expecting objective facts, like a news report or in a court room, sex based pronouns should be used. Between friends or in informal contexts like substack forums, call each other whatever you prefer.
Preferred pronouns make things more confusing and obscure the actual sex of the person - which is the goal of course. Saying, she used the women's changing room doesn't get to the heart of the issue that a male-bodied person used the women't changing room.
It's not difficult to follow.
I don’t understand Jessie and Trace’s rationale for using she/her pronouns for the murdering psychos all through the episode and then at the end they’re like “it’s weird the media refer to the non passing trans women as women and don’t let people know they should be looking for a man.”
I also thought Trace was a bit overly apologetic (in the religious sense) for the rationalists. Like, no, that definition was pretty spot on from everything I’ve read about them and the couple men who I’ve met who “liked their ideas.”
I have a feeling this rationalist movement is a uniquely (North) American thing. Probably due to the prevalence of religion in society? Here in Western Europe people wouldn’t bother define themselves as such (like it’s an identity or some other very American thing) because no one would bat an eye, it’s like saying you care about human rights, basically the lowest effort statement imaginable.
this is a pretty weird “question”, and insulting and ignorant at the same time. Guess what honey - same here! Here in America, normal people ALSO consider themselves to be rational, even the religious ones. It’s a low effort statement here too! Who knows why these insane misfits chose that name - but sweetie, it’s not because most Americans don’t believe in rational thought. What a weird thing to take away from this story, and then post about twice.
Here’s what your comment sounds like:
“Oh my, this “rationalist” movement must be uniquely North American, because in Europe we are all naturally rational. Unlike in America, where all of society surely revolves around irrational beliefs, and only people on the very fringes would think to lay claim to rational thought!”
By the way, Silicon Valley rationalist scene is full of people from all over the world.
You’re free to be offended by whatever you want, sweetie. That wasn’t my intent, and I wasn’t implying Americans are irrational (do I also have to state explicitly that the sky is blue and water is wet to be considered not insulting?) but I’m glad you could use my question as a way to boost your righteous ego.
I doubt that - unless obsessing over the Singularity or the worth of a shrimp’s life is something normie Europeans do.
I just don’t think it’s something considered worth identifying as. I don’t hear about rationalists here, it’s something I learned about while listening to this podcast documenting American movements. And I should have said I know it’s not something normies would do either way.
Is it because America is so Christian, and they have actual power. That doesn't exist in Western Europe.
I think so too and got yelled at here for saying it.
I think most rats are in it for the intellectual exercise of performing thought experiments on various kinds of optimization (like utility maximization). At least among the ones I know, they wouldn't actually put the craziest consequences of that thinking into action, but they really like the neatness of chasing a thought down a rabbit hole to its deepest logical conclusions.
The closest analogy to my own experience is with libertarians starting from the non-aggression principle and concluding that governments are all illegitimate, roads should all be privately owned, etc. Like, sure, that follows from the specific clean-slate thought experiment that involves no actual existing people, institutions, reliance interests, etc. Once you include those things, this thing that looks very clever breaks down very quickly.
Lesswrong is interesting and amusing, but it in no way is a set of recipes for how to run an actual in-real-life society.
100%.
Men would literally rather join a trans murder cult than go to therapy
Ironically that seems less gay.
Some might argue therapy thought is what leads to trans murder cults.
The use of "she" and "her" feels incongruous. Sounds like male behavior and it's like I am expecting, "Then she pulled out her dick and wizzed in the corner."
Agreed. Once a man kills/assaults/rapes someone, then forever a man he/him should be referred regardless of his preference. Otherwise it clouds the reality of the situation. Plus as my favorite UK terfs point out, it creates a perception of female violence that isn’t real. #notourcrimes
Yeah I think this courtesy isn’t warranted here, we’re talking about a murderer, plus they keep repeating his legal name.
I know someone from my college who is exactly like this. Programmer, identifies as a trans woman (she/it), fascinated by AI to a creepy extent, tries to have spiritual conversations with LLMs, goes through psychotic episodes (he believed/believes he is an AI agent), wears a hat that says "be gay do crime."
Although I'm not sure if he has committed any crimes yet, he did get into legal trouble with other people due to his behavior. I no longer think of the slogan on his hat as a joke.
« She/it » good lord… I’ll never get this self-objectification kink. And people fitting this description think of this whole persona as some sort of edgy pass, like they’re their Reddit or mmo avatar in real life. I hate this kind of personality.
Cough. Comorbidities. Cough.
What does it mean for someone to be fascinated with AI to a creepy extent?
He has that weird vibe that you get from guys who are a little too obsessed with the Roman Empire and Greek sculptures.
The more I listen to this story, the stupider these cultists sound to me. As Jesse pointed out, their whole thinking isn’t rigorous whatsoever. They appear to be STEM nerds, some of them apparently above average but all being definitely full of themselves. They don’t (or didn’t) seem to have any basic practical or interpersonal common sense and just lived their lives vicariously through all of these masturbatory and pseudo-intellectual ramblings. These are just profoundly confused people.
The term psychopathy comes to mind.
Yeah. I recently saw a Youtube interview of a psychologist debunking Hollywood tropes about psychopaths being highly intelligent. His main point being that psychopaths usually have a deep lack of empathy which technically bars them from a whole bunch of good and useful things in life. In the end these cults are far from the creation of a single individual, even a very charismatic one. Though they are incapable of having any real and honest interaction with others, gurus rely on their servants’ credulousness and authoriarianism, as in being themselves authoritarians (people who don’t think like me are evil and must be brought to heel) and actively seeking authority figures to rely upon. A dumbass surrounded by dumbasses, but violent and twisted ones.
If you view psychopathy abd intelligence as two independent normal distrbutions, then one standard deviation out from the midpoint into each quadrant you have
- some very intelligent psychopaths who will be overrepresented as successful people (at least until the wheels come off)
- some criminal morons who are overrepresented as getting caught for violent crimes
- some overly gentle idiots who never get noticed and probably are a net benefit to society in a quiet way
- some overly gentle intelligent people who maybe could do more for society if they weren't so passive
Except they seem to talk themselves and each other into it.
That's how most rationalists and slate star codex types are; undeserved arrogance for less intelligence than they know they have. Hence SBF et al.
This feels like BARPod Christmas!
Edit: having listened to the episode, I feel like Trace is downplaying just how batshit "mainstream" rationalists like Eliezer Yudkowsky, LessWrong, even early-period Scott Alexander were. I know he's sympathetic to them, but from my perspective as someone who encountered the rationalists about a decade ago and bounced off hard, they seemed to have an obsession with tossing out all previous knowledge and reinventing epistemology from scratch, which is of course a good way to get yourself stuck in mental cul-de-sacs. Yudkowsky in particular displayed definite cult leader tendencies by claiming that most of his followers were incapable of understanding his esoteric knowledge, and asking them for money because he was the only person capable of averting the AI apocalypse. It's also worth noting that when these guys talk about "AI safety" and especially "alignment," that's a totally different field from traditional AI research. The rationalists made up this field themselves and imo it should be classified more accurately as a branch of philosophy than anything to do with computer science.
Re: Roko's Basilisk - For the people who take it seriously, the reason they believe the AI can go back in time to torture you and the reason it's eternal, is that they believe if the AI can generate a perfect simulation of you, that person *is* you. The way I understand it, there's sort of this constant veil-of-ignorance situation going on where if there are multiple exact copies of you in existence, your experience could reside in any one of the copies. So if you know about the Basilisk but don't dedicate your life to bringing it into existence, once it does appear it will use its superintelligence to make copies of you that it will torture forever. Trace is right that most rationalists don't take it seriously, but it does continue to break new rationalists' brains on occasion.
Yes, I’m annoyed that any of these ideas are treated seriously. Most of it is dehumanizing bullshit clothed in fake logic.
Absolutely. I hate this sociopathic tech bullshit.
I don't think it is fake logic so much as ever so slightly over-confident logic, which is honestly even more dangerous.
My big problem with them is something like the following:
EY and his acolytes take a bunch of correct suppositions but stack them in epistemologically totally irresponsible ways.
So they use logic and reason and good and peer tested thinking about rationalism and decision theory to come up with premises. Premises which might even be each individually say 96% true. But then their philosophy builds a big giant contingent jenga tower out of these that is itself not at all meeting that level of epistemic likelihood/rigor.
If your philosophy has Premises 1-10 which all have like a 96% chance of being true depending about how you feel regarding various contentious issues in epistemology, and lets stack on top of that 20 more assertions/supposed deductions which each have a 96% chance of being true...
Your synthetic conclusion is not something which is 96% true, but is instead something which is say 30% true....
But they treat that conclusion like it is 100% true. Each phase of the argument is extremely plausible, but a chain of extremely plausible arguments can lead you somewhere very implausible when chained serially.
As was said in Love & Death, “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”
That’s exactly the way I feel when I read a lot of these arguments except the conclusions are even more implausibly absurd. I’m shocked when I see people who seem smart but end up getting their heads messed up by these bizarre thought experiments.
the roko’s basilisk thing feels to me like the set up for an elaborate aristocrats style joke….
There’s a group of people who believe that there’s a future super computer that doesn’t yet exist but which can read your mind from the future and has hurt feelings you aren’t supporting it and thus will torture you forever unless you do what it wants and they believe this because they made it up in a blog comment….and the name of this group?
The Rationalists.
Jesse at one point says you can’t call rationalists all dumb, they were ahead of the curve on AI and crypto, and like.. crypto is a ponzi scheme with no legal real-world utility. AI is real (but probably overvalued) but rationalists get absolutely no credit for it: none of them wrote code or developed machine learning tech, that all came from mainstream academia and industry, and ‘AI alignment’ in practice has meant making LLMs sound like agreeable woke HR managers, not anything Yudkowsky et al produced. They’ve sat on the sidelines building up their own brand and are trying to stamp it on stuff they had nothing to do with.
Yeah, it all sounds a bit grifty and self-aggrandizing.
I like a lot of Scott Alexander's work and can understand why someone like Trace would be a fan, too. There are a lot of different Rationalists, and I don't think the existence of one odd Rationalist cult need vitiate the entire movement.
Yudkowsky always seemed weird and speculative enough to me that I didn't bother with him, so I will neither defend nor attack him. Thanks for your take.
To be clear I like a lot of Scott Alexander's stuff too. Fortunately he's mellowed and developed a sense of humor around a number of topics he used to be genuinely angry about.
I also think the merger with effective altruism has been pretty healthy for the movement too (for rationalism I mean, not sure about the effect on EA). Scott seems more aligned with EA than rationalism these days, which is something I can respect a lot more.
Im curious, why is Trace sympathetic to the rationalists?
He said in the episode that he has a lot of friends in the rationalist community and maybe considers himself rationalist-adjacent, which is not at all surprising to me considering the era of the internet he came up in (more or less the same one as me, though I was way less online than Trace was lol). In the early 2010s a whole lot of people online who considered themselves smart freethinkers and had the attention span to read through massive walls of text ended up drawn to the rationalists.
Yudkowsky was the Harry Potter fanfiction guy, right? Strangely enough, he wasn’t even the first fanfic writer in that fandom to form a cult.
wait please elaborate
EY wrote a 1500 page Harry Potter fan fiction, available here: https://hpmor.com/
It starts off with a kind of promise of unveiling EY's rational philosophy within the confines of that universe but do not be fooled; like any fan fiction it's a self-serving adventure fantasy, "what if autistic nerd geniuses like me went to Hogwarts". To be fair though, it's decently written for a fanfic.
661,000 words!!!!! oh my god. as a fandom gal myself i almost respect it — or at least feel much more normal by comparison.
"Atlas Snored"
What you say about this community being a little borderline from the start would confirm what I was able to gather from the episode, other comments here and a few Internet searches on the topic. Something strikes me in many of these intellectual endeavors and the prominent figures of the movement, and that’s how detached from basic human decency and sociopathic they appear. And especially how all of this tech/nerdy shit is almost systematically presented as unavoidable. What the hell does that mean other than a total depoliticization of these ideas as a means to impose them upon us? This is both economically and institutionally supported propaganda, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Doesn’t Yudkowsky claim that infanticide is morally defensible, of am I thinking of some other nutter?
Peter Singer makes that argument
Maybe you are thinking of Peter Singer?
Yes, I think you’re right.
He wrote a little sci-fi story where there were (unsympathetic) aliens that practiced infanticide, but that's the only thing I remember linking him to the topic.
Edit: Oh, but I think in that story or a different one he suggested that rape was morally defensible? I could be confused though, it was a long time ago
On infanticide. Eeew. https://www.independentliving.org/docs5/singer.html
On rape. Also eeww https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/04/now-peter-singer-argues-that-it-might-be-okay-to-rape-disabled-people
Yeah but how many of them over there take rokos basilisk seriously? This reads like you're only commenting on their weirdest takes, which would make any group look bad. One of their most recent discussions was about whether classical architecture looks as good as modern architecture. What weirdos and freaks!
Call me a Tik-Tok brained idiot if you want but I found this impossible to follow linearly. I kept waiting for the necessity of the in-depth graphing of the “rationalist community” to become clear but the story could have been told without near as much divergence. Reading the wiki page at least let me keep clear who is who, and who is who to whom, which the audio couldn’t
I still don’t understand when/how someone’s parents were killed. Was waiting for that and then the episode ended.
More details needed. I also don't understand how Jack got away. He'd been around several murder scenes, went to to the hospital, and vanished? Seems...odd.
Yeah this podcast at times really needs and editor or someone to sit the hosts down and be like "ummm skittering around like a waterbug isn't good journalism, create more structure".
Some more detailed thoughts after getting all the way through.
This really should have been a 2 part episode/discussion:
Part I: SF rationalist scene/less wrong/effective altruism/(light touch on SSC/SBF)+ its relationship to transhumanism/trans/polyamory
Part IIa: The main characters involved in Ziz world, how they relate to the above and each other.
Part IIb: Timeline of craziness
Part IIc: Speculation/broader trends/etc.
I would be annoyed by an entire episode that devoted itself just to the background of the rationalist community which I don’t care about, especially if the second part wouldn’t come out for another week
I’m honestly gonna listen to it once more because it all felt like the plot of a South American soap opera. I guess the main takeaway for me is that hubris and stupidity take on many forms.
Jerry Springer but with more murders!
Lmao yeah! « Aaaanyway aaaanyway aaaaanyway » *finger wagging* « You don’t know me you don’t know me » *finger wagging* « Wh*re, wh*re, wh*re! »
Jerry! Jerry!
Am I a bad person that I now want to use AI to turn Tribunal Tweets into a series of fake Jerry Springer shows?
We’re already in hell so go for it
Some stories really do need (as hinted in the episode itself) to be a longform magazine article, or a book. It's kind of annoying to be listening to podcasters trying to pour ten pounds of shit into a gallon baggie and leaking all over everything. *Particularly* when the people being talked about have more names apiece than a Dostoyevsky cast of characters. (I remember having similar feelings when folks were bruiting the concept of barpod tackling the Penn State anime-character DID cult ... no way you could actually make a coherent hour out of all that, and thankfully they didn't sprain anything trying).
I’ve never used TikTok and I couldn’t follow it either. I don’t know why I should care about this story and I’m filing it away with the last episode that mentioned shape cells and word rotators or whatever the fuck.
Haha, do you want to know what wordcells and shape rotators refers to?
I needed a police board with red string going to thumb tacks. I agree it was hard to follow. Overall I just mostly ignored the hard timeline and let the facts come to me. I don't need to understand this 100%.
About halfway through the episode, I closed it, turned to my roommate and said, "for me to understand this, I'll need to listen to it again, and there's no chance I'm listening to this shit again." So I'll just have to be satisfied in my ignorance.
I’ve listened to it three times and I still don’t understand why what or how… maybe it’s better that I don’t know certain things.
That made me chuckle
I am glad I wasn’t the only one. I gave up with about 10 minutes to go. Impossible for me to follow.
Agreed, the storytelling was off & I think this has to do with Jesse’s need to go down rabbit holes, which makes him a great reporter but at moments like these, not so good at narrative. I have been frustrated as Jesse stopped the narrative cold to digress into a minute exploration of a side issue which ends up just confusing the story instead of clarifying.
That happens at times here too. We need clear lines of cause and effect and clear ideas of the cast of characters and instead we get leaping around the narrative—too many long readings of unintelligible logical digressions and so I’m vaguely aware of the murder & mayhem but it’s not nearly as interesting as it should be.
What the hell did I just listen to. God I hate intellectual masturbators thinking they’re the salt of the earth. Even more so when they’re self-serving, sociopathic idiots committing crimes.
Hey now, Jesse and Trace never claimed to be the salt of the earth.
I have a podcast rec for you, Decoding the Gurus
I’m guessing these folks ziz’d when they should have zagged?
*zazzed
It was right there and I missed it, damn these strong but tasty beers.
I appreciated Jesse’s mention at the end of media coverage feeling incomplete without the context that the people in this murder cult are non-passing trans women (aka males). However, as others have noted here, this context felt a bit lacking or confused in this very episode due to the she/her pronoun usage without proper clarification throughout.
I truly believe that people should use whatever pronouns they feel are appropriate to in order to describe others, and I tend to use preferred pronouns in my own public life to avoid hurting people’s feelings and incurring people’s wrath. But in an extremely confusing story like this, with multiple characters with nonsensical self-chosen names, it made the sequence of events very difficult for me to follow and understand.
Like…are there any actual females in this cult? It feels strange that I listened to an hour long episode about the Zizians and I can’t answer that very simple question. And maybe the answer shouldn’t matter, but I find it tough to even conceptualize who these people are without that basic understanding about them.
Does that make me a huge bigot?
Could not agree more and I had the same question at the end of the episode. I appreciate Jesse mentioning it at the end but I also feel that during the majority of the podcast, they made the same error. Using preferred pronouns for murderers and psychos is just unnecessarily confusing.
But if we don't play pretend for everyone, including murderers apparently, we might have to acknowledge ALL the play pretend and that it is all very stupid.
I had to go online to determine that the person who killed the border agent in Vermont is female, using neo pronouns. Photos show her with pink hair and looking unmistakably like a young woman.
It’s not clear to me whether Michelle, who is supposed to have killed their parents, is male or female. If I had to guess I’d say male, but in Andy Ngo’s reporting I saw she/her pronouns.
If you’re a bigot, I’m one too.
not a bigot. it is incredibly normal to want to know if a murderous cult is run predominantly by men or women, doubly so if the majority of the participants are trans-identified. there are known male and female patterns of behavior and criminality. there is a reason women get nervous about men walking behind them at night in a way they don’t for other women. extremely human to want to have the proper context to categorize these weirdos.
I kinda feel like the answer does matter.
It annoyed me when Ziz was referred to as 'non passing'. That shouldn't matter. A man is a man, no one can change sex. Some just put on a better cosplay than others.
Looking forward to the 3-part HBO or Netflix (or both!) documentaries on this mess, with appearances by token trans talking heads to provide important context about how trans people are actually more likely to be victims of violence rather than perpetrators.
The trans expert in the Twin Flames doc had me rolling my eyes so hard they almost fell out of my head.
Haha that's exactly who I had in mind with my comment! Some trans expert whose role was to indemnify the filmmakers from transphobia accusations by assuring the audience that social contagion doesn't exist, even though we had just been shown a story where people had come to a trans identity entirely from outside pressure.
That doc was wild!
oh my god SERIOUSLY
Trace!
I am only a few minutes in, and I must say.... the boy has tamed his vocal fry brilliantly. It's still there, loud and proud, don't get it twisted. But it's got a more professional quality about it now, something more in line with Sean Connery vocal fry. It's like any other kind of speaking pattern than upsets the olds; it not that the olds are *right* so much as they're not entirely wrong that listening to you is literally painful. More accurately, they haven't been properly acclimated to it. So I am to Jack's vocal fry like my father was to the people in my cohort who talked up. It's all a matter of degree.
I take it back, he reverts as he gets into it. Whatever. This is BARpod mode I guess.
In my own case I think the fry emerges when I am nervous. Whether that's true for Trace I can't say, but it's definitely a bit irksome and distracting.
In a team meeting, I once, um... made a comment about how it, um... took me years to learn how to, um... you know, um... not use "um" as a way to like... slow down my sentences?
Just like that. And I realized in about halfway through, still couldn't stop, and ended it by talking up.
I feel ya.
As for Jack, he really seemed to have it under control in the first five minutes or so. I'm guessing that most law firms aren't as tolerant as we enlightened few to generational speech drift.
I couldn’t understand at times haha. But he’s great.
I rewind quite a bit, but yes, he's worth the struggle.
This seems to be prevalent among English speakers. Not so much of it were I live, probably because of the natural pitch of the language. I find Trace’s (or anyone’s) intense vocal fry distracting and oftentimes annoying, but that’s part of the whole package I guess. And he’s a very smart and thoughtful guy, so I generally manage to focus on the content rather than the form. Still, I tend not to like English vocal fry haha
It's a visceral reaction. You almost can't help it, though you can help not making too big a deal out if... ahem... like I'm... not doing? right? I did a deep dive on this about 10-12 years ago and still have some links to interesting articles about the way young people (and young women especially) have led the evolution of patterns of English speech.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/science/young-women-often-trendsetters-in-vocal-patterns.html
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/uptalk-is-ok-young-women-shouldn-t-have-to-talk-like-men-to-be-taken-seriously.html
Interesting, thank you for these links! I saw this video on the subject a while ago:
https://youtu.be/Q0yL2GezneU?si=bnjIYtsgMLWk_9P9
Apparently the first studies on VF focused on this speech pattern among British posh men.
Wild. If you look below, you'll see I replied to KC with that selfsame link, also focusing on vocal fry among British men.
Oh indeed, sorry for the double link.
Don't be sorry! Brilliant minds and all that.
I had to stop listening when the vocal fry got too hard. It's a shame. Trace is a thoughtful writer but the on air delivery is so bad. Need a little media training. Also, barpod needs an audio editor to cut the ums.
I had the same thing - still *much* less irritating than before though.
Really? I had to slow the audio speed down to x0.75 and he was still barely understandable. I’m not uncultured, I’m Australian/British and have grown up listening to lots of different voices and accents but dear God, he needs a vocal coach.
His voice is nothing like Sean Connery’s. Blasphemy! I listened to the episode and it was better than the ATC one, but his voice is still hard to listen to.
So it would seem! But as this portion of this video demonstrates, Sean Connery was but one of *many* mid-20th-century British men who rocked the vocal fry (creaky voice) as a matter of course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0yL2GezneU&t=736s
Time indexed link, should start at 12:16. Relevant content runs through ~ 15:40. Sean Connery opens and closes this span.
I see what you’re saying about Sean Connery having a *touch* of vocal fry on the end of some words, but Trace’s is continuous and nasal and makes my skin crawl while Sean’s makes me want to cuddle up with him while he purrs in my ear. God he was sexy!!!
I am with you, KC! I was making an *aspirational* comparison for Jack-Trace when I thought he had dialed it down a bit (alas, it was fleeting).
I don't know about that since I haven't listened. But, he's smart, incisive, and is good fun being self effacing and having taken all the shit he has from our hosts over the years.
That is not the opposite of what I posted _at all_. It seems that you passed on reading what I typed out and assumed that I attacked him in some way which I absolutely did not.
No, I read your post and was just being honest that I didn't listen yet and happy for an appearance.
Concur! VF kills me. Well done trace!
I had the opposite reaction— like, 🍳🍳🍳 !
I'm petty certain Jesse brought in Trace to overcome previous comments that Katie always brings in better guest hosts. Trace is great
As much as I love Trace (and especially his reporting), his voice kind of rubs up against my misophonia sometimes. He may want to consider seeing a speech coach about his vocal fry, since he's an aspiring lawyer and may have a lot of public speaking in his future. I know this sounds bizarre, but it's the kind of thing that can prejudice a jury against someone. It sucks that our culture has arbitrarily created an association between low intelligence and speaking with a vocal fry when that perception has no basis in truth, but it's unfortunately an impression a lot of people default to having.
Great episode. Hope this didn't come across too harsh or critical.
Yeah, it's something I briefly looked into at one point and will probably take a closer look at down the line. You're not wrong.
Short and cheap advice I can offer (gleaned from a few years of voice lessons, the standard kind for classical singing):
1. Make sure you're speaking with good support from your diaphragm, as you may have learned if you ever participated in a school or church choir. I find that sitting up straight like I'm back in choir helps me get into the right frame of mind.
2. Say "Mm-hm" like you're brightly agreeing with a boss or adviser you want to please. (You can even roughly locate the second pitch on a piano to remember about how high it is in your voice.) Aim to speak roughly around the pitch of the second syllable ("hm").
3. If in doubt, listen to a few interviews on YouTube with classically trained tenors or baritones and just fake speaking like them around the house until you arrive at something that feels like a very well supported version of your own voice.
I do the soprano/female version of this when I'm speaking in public, and it helps a lot. Since vocal fry is often associated with younger speakers, it also helped me feel like I sounded more mature back when I was still worried about sounding too young in professional contexts.
I love when Jesse does your #2 suggestion about the Mm-hm with the second syllable pitched up. He does this sometimes when Katie describes some unbelievably wack thing someone said or did, and it cracks me up every time. I’ve incorporated it into my own repertoire.
As a Millennial with vocal fry, I don't mind it! No criticism intended. :-) But I do think knowing how to lose it when you want to can be valuable for social settings where vocal fry is judged negatively.
I did a little bit of it years ago and I really helped me feel more confident. It's not for everybody, though. Sometimes a person's voice can change naturally as they age, too.
Your voice is distinctive and not at all grating to me. Just another opinion…
Mmm, you sound fine to me. I don't know if complaints about vocal fry are somehow misogynistic/homophobic, or if it's like cilantro, some people just can't tolerate it for some other reason.
The reason people don't like it is that it is an affectation. Some people naturally have a husky voice, sometimes called a "whiskey voice". Most people do not have this.
Years ( decades!) ago, young women began speaking with vocal fry. The notion was that it conferred gravitas along with kind of a detached intellectual quality.
Over the years, NPR men started doing it too. It often goes hand in hand with up talk.
To many listeners, it comes off as the affectation of a young person.
My voice absolutely isn’t an affectation. I’d like to learn to speak in an affected way so it won’t distract people as much, but for better or worse, this is just how I sound and have sounded.
It's not always an affectation. Sometimes it's more to do with breathing disorders and speaking from the chest rather than the diaphragm. With Trace it definitely sounds like this, and this puts his voice under strain. Seeing a voice therapist or coach would probably help him a lot.
People with misophonia struggle with this and it has nothing to do with misogyny or homophobia.
You're absolutely right that there's an element of bigotry underpinning the norms of what is considered "proper" speech. Uptalk, filler words, stutters, vocal fry, lisps, certain regional dilects, and so on began to be maligned due to their association with certain groups (women, black people, gay people, disabled people, lower income people, etc.) The tricky thing about sociological phenomena like this is that they're often deeply embedded in our psychology, so shifting these norms takes patience and time. Granted, prejudice is not the only reason for these "rules," but it's a contributing factor.
I will note as an aside that vocal fry is the only quirk of the bunch I listed with potential physical drawbacks. It's unlikely that it causes any kind of long-term damage, but it does wear your voice out faster and make your hoarse more easily if you have to talk for long periods of time. For instance, it could cause problems for a professor expected to give lectures, or a singer who performs a lot.
Yeah, I experienced the same feeling. I dont think Trace IS a smug self-satisfied, slightly bitchy, know-it-all….but he TALKS like one. This particular vocal style, for me strongly associates with a particular type of completely unbearable millennial coastal urban tribe circa 2002 -2011. If he were my lawyer, I’d be uncomfortable about the potential for him to negatively impress the judge and jury.
My dad was a prosecutor, and he never lost a case. He had a very low, lovely speaking voice. He never raised his voice in the 57 years I knew him, but when he spoke everyone listened.
Good episode. I was confused about the idea that this is just bad ideas logically extended. Where did the idea come from that everyone has two people inside them? And that they fall into categories of bad and good? These don’t sound like ideas from rationalism, or anarchism, or veganism. They sound like ideas from a crazy cult leader, which is a distinct phenomenon, no?
But I might just be missing the origins of the ideas.
No. I think you are right.
They aren’t brilliant and logical people, they are criminals and sociopaths trying to justify their behavior.
This whole story (Zizians not Air traffic) reminded me of Scientology and Wild, Wild Country people, Jim Jones as well. There is a repeating pattern with these groups.
Great reporting!
This whole divided brain thing that keeps popping up again with more frequency lately in my more normieish world reminds me so much of the whole Reactive/Analytical mind thing in early Dianetics/Scientology and still a major part of the early levels on the way to Clear (but wait! there's more after that!). I know that was largely lifted from earlier sources and turtles all the way down, but the broad similarities blare out each time.
When I hear "divided brain" I instinctively reach for my "A Scanner Darkly."
If I wanted to filter out everyone too pusillanimous from joining my conspiracy, I couldn't invent a better shibboleth than Roko's Basilisk. Completely useless for anything else, though -- just Pascal's Wager for atheists.
St. Anslem is almost all you really need to know about all of this. So much of this is just the ontological argument in other clothes.
Just because you can conceive of the golden mountain doesn't mean it is *real*.
Nah, it's preying on cowardice and preemptive obedience. Anselm was just a logical shell game.
Well Anselm is a logical shell game, my point is RB is people still falling for it.
News outlets are referring to the sword as a "samurai sword", and that coupled with the extremely weebish vibes put off by the Zizians leads me to agree with Trace that this was likely a katana - the type found at that one store in the mall that smells like nag champa and has a plastic zen waterfall in the corner.
Or was it a wakasashi or a nanganita or tonto? ;)
The concept of an all-powerful AI torturing people for eternity is just ripped off from Harlan Ellison's story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
Yeah that story always comes to mind when the rationalist AI stuff comes up.
Btw hasn’t that become a meme?
Could the pronoun police please try to keep yourself to one designated thread? It’s absurd that the top FOUR comment threads are the exact same complaint.
My comment isn’t trying to be the pronoun police, it’s expressing the fact that I feel like I walked away from the episode less informed about the subject matter due to the choice of pronouns without appropriate context (except for Ziz, whose sex was clarified at the top of the episode). If it wasn’t for Jesse’s clarification at the end that many of these cult members are “non-passing trans women”, I wouldn’t have known about it at all. I still don’t know if there are any females in this cult. I think that’s a pretty big issue from a storytelling perspective.
Jesse can use whatever pronouns he wants, but without proper clarification for people unfamiliar with this story, the decision to use she/her without identifying the other cult members as trans women simply makes things harder to contextualize and understand. The opposite should be the goal of good journalism.
> If it wasn’t for Jesse’s clarification at the end that many of these cult members are “non-passing trans women”, I wouldn’t have known about it at all.
The title of the episode is literally "trans murder cult"
Yes, and the leader is a trans woman, which would explain the title as it is Ziz’s cult.
Did the episode title leave you with the impression everyone in the cult is a trans woman? According to my limited research, it appears that this may be incorrect, as one of the women is reportedly a biological female: https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/why-the-zizian-transgender-death
I assume "trans cult" means "cult with all or mostly trans members" and would not be surprised by either. I would be surprised if only the leader was trans.
I prefer reporting, especially on complex stories, to be as clear and precise as possible so there is little need for guessing and surprise when it comes to the main characters involved.
Absurd? Or reflecting a real concern?
If they are the top threads, they must be getting attention because multiple people share those concerns.
Are you the comment police policing the pronoun police? How about people can just...comment what they like? Radical idea.
Yep just deputized
Idk I usually try to see if someone has already said literally the same thing as me and if they have a drop a like or reply rather than writing a whole ass other comment
Meh, seems like a lot of people are bothered by it hence a lot of comments on that topic. You can't always see what comments have gone before anyhoo, if you're commenting at the same time as others or you don't want to check the possible hundreds of comments that have gone before. Strikes me as really not a big deal though.
I'm seconding this because - and I hate to point this out - but it probably doesn't look good to normie outsiders to see that distribution of concern. "Not a good look" is, prima facie, a bad argument, but if it looks myopic, it's worth some reflection on proportions and perspective. Sorry if that sounds uncaring and condescending.
B&R commenters always seem to make that the top X threads on every episode.
I'm glad I'm not the only one struggling to make it through the wrong-sex pronouns in this episode. Maybe it's time to rethink the pronoun policy when it so badly impacts an audience's ability to understand the fundamentals of the story.
There will be a Silence Of The Lambs remake where people chastise a detective for using he/him pronouns referring to Buffalo Jill.
“She came out as a trans woman when she started kidnapping women to make a suit with their skin you transphobe!!”
Also are you really straight if you wouldn’t fuck her? Cause, um, she would, she’s said so several times.
`Billy is not a real transexual. But he thinks he is. He tries to be. He’s tried to be a lot of things, I expect.' - Hannibal Lecter
Your suggestion only makes sense if you're unfamiliar with the movie.
They canceled him for saying that because it’s transphobic to deny someone’s true self.
So were all of the Zizi cult men who pretend to be women? The pronoun usage were so confusing I just couldn’t follow. This was an utter mess of a story which is actually really fascinating, albeit convoluted.
Some were just crazy cis men. All of the she/hers were crazy trans women I’m pretty sure.
I’m surprised by the amount of criticism of this episode. It was an extremely complicated (and disturbing) story, and I thought Jack and Jesse did a pretty good job of getting it across. I also had no trouble whatsoever understanding Jack’s voice.
The story is objectively hard to follow because there are so many twists and turns. No wonder Jesse thought it might be more suitable for a longform magazine article.
It's way easier to understand when you see the pictures of the players, I'd say.
Not to nitpick, but Curtis Lind was not "perfectly fine" after being stabbed with a sword. I don't know much about this man, but he did end up losing his right eye.
"Lind was 'stabbed multiple times, had a sword impaled through his chest and ultimately lost his right eye' on Nov. 13, 2022, his family said on a GoFundMe page."
It makes me so sad to think that he went through all that pain and rehabilitation, only to have someone go back and finish the job a two years later. The article below shows him posing with a horse, post attack, one eye permanently closed. I don't know anything about this man but it makes me hate the members of the Ziz group even more.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/german-math-genius-get-drawn-cult-accused-coast-coast-killings-rcna189309
To help clear up some confusion that many of us experienced listening to this story, I put together the following list of names, identities and sexes of the people involved that I gleaned from news reports and forum posts. Hopefully it clarifies things a bit:
Jack Amadeus "Ziz" LaSota: identifies as transfemme, male
Alexander “Sonmi” Leatham: identifies as transfemme, male
Maximilian Snyder: "any pronouns", male
Daniel Blank: male
Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt: identified as transfemme, male, Deceased
Amir “Emma” Borhanian: identified as transfemme, male, Deceased
Gwen Danielson: identifies as transfemme, male, thought dead but likely still alive
Suri Dao: identifies as female, however appears male from the single photo I found
Michelle "Jamie" Zajko: identifies as non binary, sex unclear, looks male in certain photographs but could possibly be a masculine female in others
Teresa “Milo” Youngblut: Female, identifies as trans, pronouns “xe/xem/xyrs” (take note Jesse & Trace!)
Andy Ngo re Zajko: "The wealthy elderly couple has a leftist trans child, a biological man, who allegedly had or has links to the "Ziz" trans personality leading the trans terror group. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing."
This is harder to figure out than it should be!
There's a handy chart on this webpage with photos of all of these "transfemmes" involved:
https://medium.com/@sefashapiro/a-community-warning-about-ziz-76c100180509
Thanks for sharing this. Seeing their insane-looking faces makes the story much more vivid and chilling.
Subjecting mentally ill people to sleep deprivation is terrifying. Subjecting anyone to that is scary, but it can exacerbate anything to horrible lengths.
I am just putting it out there: I don't think that anyone actually believing in stuff like Roko's Basilisk (or any of the other weird circular logic stuff that some rationalists are arguing about) is in any normal meaning of the word intelligent. I think it is actually one of best examples how sometimes (supposedly) high IQ does not translate into actual intelligence.
(Just to be clear I am not arguing that IQ isn't real. But to make use of it I do think there is something like wisdom that these obviously lack.)
I know a lot of rationalists, and the common denominator for the group is autism. I don't mean it in the memey "fixates on computers" way, I mean they have a neurological disability that makes them unable to understand social interactions. Rat circles tend to value STEM intelligence a lot higher than normal society does for that reason– a lot of them aren't even aware that social intelligence exists, because they don't understand themselves to be disabled. They see a guy that can crunch a lot of numbers or whatever, and think "this is a genius", even if he can't eg understand why wearing a shirt with a my little pony character on it to a television interview is a bad idea.
There's a large body of "post rats" and "rat adjacent" people whose function in the community is basically just to keep the autism reined in so that the valuable ideas in the movement can be made legible to wider audiences. But autism is the norm in the core group, not the exception.
My husband, who is a jock, refers to this as "Being so smart that you're stupid".
Yes. Intelligence is not the same trait as wisdom, which stories like this one make abundantly clear.
This Substack provides more information and doesn’t beat around the bush about the gender identity fraud that helps these people escape the law: https://open.substack.com/pub/thedistance/p/why-the-zizian-transgender-death?r=h5nu&utm_medium=ios
“We have a lot of sword nerds” 🤣
I am not, myself, anything close to a sword nerd, but I do really adore you, sword nerds, wherever you are! ( I also love to think about how Jesse KNOWS we have a lot of sword nerds?! Are they writing to the barpod Gmail? Talking swords at the meet-ups? Sounded like more than just an educated guess…)
If you come to a B&R meetup without a sword it would be like attending a Victorian themed orgy without a cape!
Man, "rationalist community" as a slogan/name always hit the ear badly, like declaring your group the "handsome dudes club" or "ancient order of our penises are too big society".
I've used this one before, but Trace really was a good boy on this one! Best boy even. Many treats need to be bequeathed on him asap!
I am a monster for finding this kind of sentiment both really endearing and cute, and really demeaning and sad at the same time.
I am all for fun and people having a good sense of silliness and humor about themselves, but I also sort of feel like "let the man develop some goddamn self respect". Anyway, conflicted.
nah. I have a specific role in the BARPod cinematic universe, and I'm happy to embrace that role. I'm plenty self-serious enough elsewhere.
100% . Throw the guy a bone for g-ds sake ;)
Meanwhile in mainstream media, the Seattle Times talks about vegan anarchists, but nowhere did they mention that Ziz is trans, much less a man who identifies as female.
Traaaace!
Wow came here to say that ‘THESE ARE NOT WOMENS CRIMES.’ and can see that everyone else felt the same. The words women and ‘she’ should be no where near this crime. Jessie please review this policy it makes the whole story nonsense
So, the mindset of framing meat-eaters as "monsters" while driving a sword through your elderly landlord's chest is ok, the bizarre assertions that every human is composed of two co-existing separate selves, that half the brain can sleep while the other is awake, all of that mishegoss we can dismiss, but the delusion that these men are really women must be respected by Jesse, Trace, and the other media reporting the story?
I've been polite in social situations for years, and won't stop that, but indulging this delusion throughout the public sphere has hurt many more people than it ever helped.
Speaking of "משוגעת" -- Judaism, especially among the Hasids, believe each of us has two souls, an "נפש הבהמית" (animal soul) and a G-dly soul, and our lives are a struggle to control or balance them.
I could not make it through. do not have the mental energy to understand these psychos.
You don’t have the spoons for trans psycho murder cults right now. Totally understandable.🥄🥄🥄
😂😂😂
Why isn't the future AI here in the past right now punishing me? Or maybe it is?
Well, you see, the AI isn't actually "here" now. But it will be in the future. And because it will be omniscient (due to exponential intelligence growth), it will be able to re-simulate the universe to collect the consciousness of everyone who ever lived and recreate them in digital form to do with as it pleases. So it won't "travel into the past", but rather, recreate the past with its omniscient super-computer powers, make a copy of you, and torture that copy, which is the same as torturing you according to rationalist thought.
If you're thinking, "wait, this all sounds batshit insane"... yeah, this is why even most Rationalists have stepped away from Roko's basilisk as an embarrassment. I'm embarrassed to even know this much about it.
So it is irrational to think AI could travel to the past, but is rational to think it would create a matrix hell sometime in a future? Isn't it little to convenient? Also, since you know so much about this, will I be spared since I am vegan and use chatGpt for VB code?
Trump is the AI's instrument!
It's been my experience whenever someone -- even a person who isn't insane -- tries to to invent his own moral framework that doesn't have G-d or a "higher power", it always gets around to killing other people. Not always "murder", per se, but at the very least you'll get to Government assisted suicide, like the MAID program in Canada. Unless you can have some "irrational" reverence for human life, based on an inalienable right granted by something that exists on a plane above us, you'll quickly start rationalizing eliminating others.
I have a friend who framed this observation as "Never trust a medical ethicist who isn't religious -- he'll eventually want to kill you."
This is my husband's argument for why we should believe in God. Without that, there is no basis for morality. And you might end up with rational utilitarians who see killing non-vegans as good, actually.
Right. And it can be an extremely abstract belief in _something_. Just a belief in a "moral arc of the Universe" is enough.
I’m curious why so many (non-Canadians?) seem to take such umbrage with the MAID program. As far as I’m aware, it’s not particularly Canadian as an idea, and also I’ve known of several old people, friend-of-the-family types who have used it and were extremely grateful to be able to use it, as were their friends and loved ones.
Yeah, because belief in god never led anyone to justifying killing other people...
Did anyone check if the sword identified as a katana?
Pronoun situation is difficult in this case. They certainly aren't the sort of crimes typically committed by women, but everything about Ziz—from the media they are obsessed with, style of communication, specific emotional problems and type of drama their social circle was consumed by—are not typically male but rather extremely transwoman-coded. The only real difference to the common dynamic of that sort of very online, neuro-divergent, transwoman social circle is the background in rationalism and that they eventually turned murderous. The closest comparison I can easily reference is Tenacious Unicorn Ranch (covered in ep.154), who aren't murderous but are the same sort of "transwomen driving each other crazy" type situation that could have turned out that way if they added "rationalist justification for murder" into the mix.
So I agree that the pronoun use is a little confusing but in this case both male or female pronouns miss something if trying to properly convey who Ziz is and would be somewhat misleading if you aren't paying attention. Of course that depends on how committed you are to the gender critical hardline "never use female pronouns" thing—but if you are expecting that from this podcast it's already been well established that you're in the wrong place. Personally I think that is a good thing, even if for nothing else but effectively communicating to people who aren't already committed to gender critical beliefs, and because it specifically helps Jesse's reporting to be published in places that are willing to push against but not fully break trans-activist orthodoxy (e.g. The New York Times). Purity policing is a big part of why trans-activists are losing ground. It would probably be a tactical error to copy them for the sake of pronoun policing in the opposite direction.
In the case of Ziz I have so far been using 'they', but that would also quickly become confusing while trying to tell a story involving multiple people (even more so when many of the individuals involved consider themselves to be multiple people). There is no clean option here. Maybe only referring to Ziz by name, or frequently peppering in "Ziz—who is a transwoman—said/did X".
To be honest, I've listened/read multiple sources on this story and none of them are able to fully deliver. Most mainstream places will try to downplay ( "it isnt a trans cult, it's just a cult that happens to contain transwomen") or mostly avoid discussion of their being trans (they might mention it in a sentence or two before moving on). Meanwhile, those who are willing to acknowledge the relevancy of their being trans are not familiar enough with the sort of Tumblr-addled social dynamics necessary to properly describe and contextualise the Zizians.
Using sex-based pronouns was normal until recently. Now, it’s a “gender critical hardline” position?
No, using sex-based pronouns is not an extremist position but a practice based in facts (rather than subjective feelings) that most humans need to use to make sense of reality.
Transwomen are a subset of men, so male pronouns are perfectly accurate. There are lots of different types of men and women - we don't need a pronoun for each one. We have adjectives for that.
"Purity policing is a big part of why trans-activists are losing ground. It would probably be a tactical error to copy them for the sake of pronoun policing in the opposite direction."
"Purity policing" means going along with an Orwellian un-reality? That is a perfect example of doublethink!
I agree this was kind of a damned if you do situation.
I found the story relatively easy to follow yet a bit stilted (Katie does have the most Riz on the pod, there’s no doubt there, maybe if she’d been involved it could have been a bit smoother / funnier).
It was only after seeing so many pronoun comments that I did realize I hadn’t fully imagined the gang for what it was. I definitely had pictured a few more of the minor characters as biological females than turned out to be the case.
Complain about pronouns all you want, but this is a story certain folx would love to see buried. “Misgendering” these murderers would make it way too easy.
As annoying as it is, that's a fair point. If the media "misgendered" these people, some people would make it all about that and distract from the actual story. What I draw the line is when the media don't even mention that most of them are trans women.
I listened. Did I hallucinate this episode? WTF happened?!? BarPod Hall of Fame episode.
Listen to the TrueAnon episodes about this.
I liked the TrueAnon episode less. A lot more editorializing.
I'd never heard of the TrueAnon podcast! Do you recommend it?
I only listened to part 1 of 2 and no other episodes from them. I don't plan to listen to anymore. The editorializing was anticapitalist leftist stuff which I understand some people like but subtracts value from my podcast experience.
I stumbled across the TrueAnon podcast looking for some kind of explainer on the Ziz stuff. For the first 20mins of part 1, I couldn't tell what was serious or not. Maybe I'm daft but it just seemed like a lot of shouting and guffawing. It wasn't for me!
Good to know. Thanks!
Yes another Jesse episode. We want Katie!
I'm a little surprised that drug use wasn't mentioned during the episode, even in an off hand way. This is speculation, but the jargon, magical thinking, and reasoning from outrageous premises presented by Ziz and crew have all the hallmarks of people who habitually use much weed, psychedelics, adderall or meth.
I think Trace had it right. I bet it was a katana. The cult has "weeb" written all over it lol.
Trace was a little too easy to dismiss Jesse’s “what if these were right-wing?” comment, I feel. A kid smiled at a Native American man and there are still people online who want him dead for it. My gut says that if these loons were Groypers or Proud Boys or had met on (*gasp - whispers*) K*wi F*rms, then there would be feverish press coverage by now. (Which would be obviously be better as their photos and IDs would be everywhere and there would be more chance of tracking the fuckers down before they do more damage.)
I honestly don't understand how this isn't a way bigger story.
Trace saying "heart of hearts" is a common Mormon expression I haven't heard in some time 😂
I am about 16 minutes in and the news clip played placing the incident in "the northern Vermont section of the country."
The area is referred to locally as "northern Vermont."
I wonder how such cultish behavior can emerge from a self-proclaimed rationalist collective. As I said in another comment, I feel like this phenomenon is pretty uniquely American, because it’s not something people were I live would bother identifying as. Everyone in Western Europe is pretty much a rationalist, even religious people. It’s not even something you need to state explicitly, because most people follow basic rationalist principles, even unconsciously. Honest and maybe naive question: does it have to do with religion being so prevalent in American society? Like something morphing over time and taking on new clothes but still being the same at its core? I’m not saying cultish behavior is specific to the US, we do have our esoteric nutters here, but the fact that they label themselves as rationalists and still seem to lack a basic moral compass or common sense and behave like just another cult is quite baffling to me. Like in this case it’s just become another religion where the core principle of the group is being venerated like some sort of god and people think their shared values and worldview exonerate them from being decent human beings. It’s a very « we the chosen ones » type of behavior, except where I live this rationalist streak is not commonly found in similar groups. We tend to have plain old mystical bullshit that explicitly defines itself against rationalism, not the opposite. I was just curious about that.
Yeah, no. This ‘cult’ is very small and definitely not typical or characteristic of the rationalist community. The community does have a lot of high functioning autism spectrum types, due to its overlap with tech and Silicon Valley, and perhaps a subset of these people are more susceptible to embracing odd ideologies. But a charismatic psychopath with a few ‘followers’-‘rationalist’ or otherwise- is just that.
I think it might be a bit misleading to think of people ‘identifying as’ rationalists. Better to think of it as an internet evolved community that has a cluster of shared interests and projects around optimal cognitive practices, AI and its civilizational implications, and expanding and improving global aid and charity.
The notion that it is a sort of substitution or manifestation of American religiosity seems wide of the mark, imo, and there are plenty of Brits and Scandinavians who are important in rationalist community circles.
I might not have been clear about it, but the religious part was more about this cult in particular and how it could exemplify a possible deviation from the principles of the rationalist movement, not a statement about the movement as a whole. It was implicit in my mind but I didn’t say it clearly.
By « identify », I mean developing such a community and rallying around the trait « rationalist » as being relevant and distinct from other communities (I’m phrasing it poorly but can’t find another way to describe it right now). My question is basically: is it necessary to call yourself that if society as a whole is so imbued with rationalist principles that they don’t even need to be stated explicitly? And to what extent does it have to do with the uniqueness of American/Anglo culture, with the spread of misinformation and the prevalence of religion and spirituality (more specifically in the US for this part)? Because this iteration of rationalism does originate in the US and its computer science community. Did it emerge in reaction to something or as the result of an American intellectual tradition regarding decision theory and the like? Like where I live it wouldn’t need to be said explicitly, you would just say you’re a scientist/researcher/philosopher and everyone would know you’re interested in pursuing knowledge in a rational way and do it alongside your peers within academia. It’s a given. Institutional capture plays a part in this, I suppose, but it probably isn’t that different from the US, although big tech is probably one of the most effective bridges between academia and the outside world, and I don’t think we have that traditionally, or to that extent.
We do have similar circles here that emphasize rational and evidence based thinking (« critical spirit », « zetetics » or « metacognition »), but it has a lot to do with analyzing thought processes and rhetoric patterns, they’re very niche and I’m not sure if it’s really comparable in scope and influence. There definitely isn’t the utilitarian/effective altruism part though, as far as I know. Like I said in the other comment, charity isn’t that big because we have a strong state that has a monopoly on most things related to solidarity and economic safety nets, with some notable exceptions. Associations (close to grass roots organizations if you translate it into Americanese) are a more important part of everyday life, I’d say.
Ok, good to know. The hosts said that rationalist circles in the Bay Area tend to overlap with more run of the mill woo shit, this probably would explain why there are some cults similar to the Zizians over there.
The rationalist thing seems to be an Anglosphere-adjacent thing, then. Never heard about it before listening to this podcast, and like all the rest it will come to us in a few years, I guess. The focus on charity would confirm that, as in my country (France) people are more statist and charities don’t play as big of a role as, say, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or similar organizations. Also communism (not always the strong statist version) is still a vivid ideal in many left-wing parties and collectives, so that’s pretty incompatible with charity as practiced in countries were capitalism is dominant both economically and ideologically.
I mean they call themselves the "rationalist community" so like they're basically asking for it.
Is it the term « community » that’s disqualifying in your opinion?
Both! It has an up-their-own-dickness quality a la the skeptics that has always made me cautious.
In their defense I did get an early impression of them being something something IQ something something skull sizes types from Tyler Cowens old blog commentariat and various libertarian ish locales and that seems unfair.
Still a bit of an own goal tho.
Yeah, from afar it all sounds a bit haughty and self-aggrandizing. People loving the sounds of their own voices.
Wow...great episode and an insane story that deserves a film and documentary both!
Trace is such a good boy, great research.
Also, I think Trace succinctly explains the cognitive dissonance of watching Trump expose and slash budget expenditures that are insane...paraphrasing, "We wanted our team to do it, we asked them to do it, they didn't do it...and the other guys did..."
One note, the torture and murder of the landlord Curtis Lind is absolutely horrific and I think it was glossed over a bit. This is sadistic stuff and I know we're all desensitized by decades of media exposure...what they did (and especially were trying to do) to this elderly man is beyond anything and should not be minimized or glossed over.
Lind's case, the fact that they tortured him, the self-defense aspect...it all touches on topics like the mental status of trans people generally (many say all trans are mentally unwell) and gun rights (you know Lind's case is being used as exhibit A in 2A forums and social media).
These Zizians are scary truly. They are very educated and capable, and their ideology is a toxic, murderous downward spiral that allows them to justify the worst of human behavior, that needs to be taken more seriously imho.
Yes, I agree. That particular story was horrifying. These people are evil, and need to be hunted down.
word...I like the cascadia flag in your profile pic!
I am not trolling when I ask this. I am honestly curious:
How many actual trans people have been killed in anti-trans hate crimes, vs. the number of people transwomen (passing or otherwise, genuine or merely cosplaying) have killed? Someone's got to have compiled data on this.
There is data here on that from the UK https://transcrimeuk.com/
In the UK trans people (nearly all male) are much more likely to kill than be killed, from the data available. I think this is partly because male criminals have realised adopting a trans identity gets them more lenient treatment in court and in jail, but also because transvestic fetishism has long been correlated with violent sexuality.
(By nearly all male I mean that both trans victims and perpetrators of murders tend to be male, not that nearly all trans people in the UK are male)
Almost unlistenable vocal fry
The air traffic controller story deserves to be its own episode. That's just f****** crazy and it does have very real safety implications. Even though you can't prove for sure it's the cause of any individual plane crash, I mean what would the proof look like for that? How much proof would you need? What kind of proof would suffice for that purpose? I would be super into hearing more from Trace about that situation. Point taken about how Trump didn't fix it either, but I'd like to hear about this kind of info and not have to be wading into the Fox News waters to do so. I never know when Fox is talking about real stuff and when they're just being cray and I don't want to have to watch their shows and figuring out what the hell is going on with them in order to figure out what's going on irl.
I think it’s important to note that it’s looking like the cause of the crash was the army helicopter pilot making a mistake and flying above the approved altitude. I really wish they would have mentioned that because they make it seem like it was the fault of air traffic control. It’s still relevant to mention this scandal but I really don’t think this was the fault of the air traffic control at all. The controller warned the helicopter pilot who said he was aware of the plane. And we will know more when they get the black boxes.
when the crash first happened, I posted (maybe in the Open thread for that week) links to James Fallows (JF) substack. He is a very-long-time politics reporter who is also a private pilot, so sometimes writes about aviation. If interested, here are two posts (I'm a JF subscriber, so some might be restricted):
Feb 07: https://fallows.substack.com/p/this-is-serious-business-you-better
earlier Jan 30 post: https://fallows.substack.com/p/what-do-we-know-now-about-the-airline
In the Feb 07 post, he refers to a 90-minute aviation podcast that covered the accident, at least what we know so far, very well. Called "Opposing Bases: Air Traffic Talk", their Feb 4 episode was about the DCA crash. https://opposingbases.libsyn.com/
Trace and Jesse did a whole episode on the air traffic controller test, or do you mean a new one?
Hot dog! I’ll check it out.
A CFAR is an NIH-funded center for AIDS research, so I keep getting confused.
Not even. It's a way to minimize spurious detection in radar systems!
(Constant false alarm rate)
A (to me) somewhat interesting detail is that the writer of Zizians.info uses the pseudonym "Apollo Mojave", which is also the name of a character from Ada Palmer's very niche and rationalist-adjacent science fiction series, who was murdered by the protagonist some time before the series begins due to their own extremist quasi-religious beliefs.
Sorry Trace, it sounded like you thought Jesse would understand the joke about “Sith and their masters” but I don’t think he did.
Incredible episode… absolutely wild
Trace is a god. A minor god, but a god nonetheless.
Does anyone have any insight into the relationship between Zizian-ism and trans identities? It can't just be coincidence. Is it because there are supposed to be two minds in each body, and you need to trans yourself to access the other one? Did any of them offer and explanation?
I was wondering about the same thing. Am I correct that all of the people involved with the murders were trans? I got confused and I've also read a bit from at least one other source, so I might be wrong about that, but if so....
AFAIK, they are all trans (MTF) except for Youngblut, who is FTM. But it isn't clear who counts as "in" the cult. I don't know that status of those who killed themselves.
Daniel Blank (who ended up in Vermont before being arrested) is autistic but not obviously trans. Max Snyder (the one accused of murdering Lind in Vallejo) was engaged to Youngblut and used "any pronouns" on his/their twitter handle (@Audere1e6). So...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
97% of the comments are complaints about pronouns - classic barpod is back, baby!
Go to the article linked in the notes:
https://sfist.com/2022/11/22/two-alleged-squatters-charged-in-vallejo-death-of-friend-and-sword-attack-on-landlord/
Scroll to the bottom.
Read the comments.
See the world in a slightly better light.
"On Jan. 2, 2023, Rita and Richard Zajko were discovered killed at their home in Chester Heights Borough, Delaware County, Penn. For over two years, the killings have been shrouded in mystery, and no one has been charged.
The wealthy elderly couple has a leftist trans child, a biological man, who allegedly had or has links to the "Ziz" trans personality leading the trans terror group. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing."
This is Andy Ngo reporting that the Zajko person is male.
But that the person involved in the Border Patrol shooting is female.
If this is a mixed-sex group, would be useful to identify people by birth or legal name "who go by" whatever.
These rationalists sound like a group of stoned teenagers in a dorm room.
Pretty frustrating episode. It's not the ideas I found confusing, it's the narrative. How do we get from A to B to C? Not attempt at explanation by jesse or trace. Boo
Jesse, it’s pronounced ‘versus’, not ‘verse’.
San Francisco Chronicle is pretty good and not that left wing biased, enough so that many people in San Francisco referr to it hilariously as a right wing fascist paper.
Two banger episodes in a row. We are BACK!
Anyone else have a problem with the Substack podcast app? It won’t rewind - just jumps to some other random podcast?
Thx
Trace ❤️ I know he's an adult, but I was just listening back to some old episodes, like the one where they tricked LofTT and he sounds like a teenager in comparison. Not just the voice, but the giggling. This is such a serious person in comparison! Maybe it's the difference between Trace and Jack.
Great story, can't wait for a follow up
Did Trace always - talk like this?
did that issue get resolved in 2018? i mean they got rid of the questionnaire a while ago, right?
I don’t think one could say resolved as it the whole fiasco damaged the old pipeline which added another factor depressing the air traffic controller shortage. Also; the Biden admin could have authorized Buttigieg to settle the class action lawsuit.
ok thanks here’s another question
is that school still open? does it have more enrollees now? pete said he hired more atc. Did they reopen that school pipeline?
Good news!
https://apnews.com/article/zizians-killings-border-patrol-bf599db6b9ec354c68ed5ff4d5701b84Police arrest apparent leader of cultlike 'Zizian' group linked to multiple killings in the US
It's actually insane for the media not to talk about the sex of the suspects. For one thing, they're on the run, they should be described as accurately as possible. Also, males are way more likely to engage in violence, so it's obviously relevant here.
The episode was difficult to listen to, despite how interesting it was. There was a lot of information, names, and turns to the story that make it difficult to follow. As Jesse said, it needs to be long form (or, maybe, it needs a 42-part series of BARpod episodes 🙃).
But the biggest obstacle was, and I say that as I love Jesse and Trace, that they both don't speak clearly enough. I don't mean Trace's vocal fry, but simple enunciation. For all the jokes about Katie mangling words and names, I couldn't make out the names of most of the people involved and had to pause to look them up. Coupled with the complexity of the story itself, I had to listen some passages several times to understand them.
They talk too fast and sort of elide their syllables. It reminds me of the debate team kids from high school.
How terrified was Jesse about mentioning Ziz was a man? 'You won't cancel me will you?
Back in my day, people used to just be mental.
It’s debatable how “smart” these people are.
Sociopaths can always justify their actions.
This show feels more dangerous than a program calling out Scientology.
and now I know about Roko's Basilisk. thanks for that.
Every time trace said “if you squint” it reminded me of that breadtuber who got cancelled for saying that on twitter. I can’t remember her name
Lindsay Ellis, I think? I believe she was talking about that Disney movie, Raya and the Last Dragon, being compared to Avatar The Last Airbender.
That's the one. I remember her doing a video that was like "I wasn't cancelled" and then she disappeared.
🎵 Trans Murder Cult
I’m gonna keep on ridin with the Trans Murder Cult
Smokin border agents with the Trans Murder Cult
Trans Murder Cult [guitar solo] 🎵
Charlise Theron is a zizian.
Source: https://youtu.be/VjMK2ZNEoqc?si=WWRW-zuvIzFnovAd
I would offer that Trump is more of a happenstance than Nixon was to the Manson Family.
Considering it more, Manson might be closer to Zhem than anything.
Recall that non-surfing Charlie was worried about the coming race war.
….i really didn’t need another reason to avoid the Bay Area.
As I’ve been doing work today, this all fits nicely with the vi text editor, which Bill Joy purportedly invented so he could work far away in the woods away from the coming grey goo reckoning.
M-x y’all-is-nuts.
Add them Utils
Finally ❤️
Joy of joys!
It's now a couple weeks since this episode was posted. But if anyone is still reading these comments, Evan Ratliff wrote a very long story in Wired.com about the Zizians.
Wired (you need subscription to read): https://www.wired.com/story/delirious-violent-impossible-true-story-zizians/ An archived version: https://archive.ph/4HAtn
The one thing I cannot find in Trace's reporting on the changes in 2014 that obviously pulled the rug out from under people who had fairly followed the path that was charted, is why that path–which itself was only a score years in practice, produced a qualifed stream of Air Traffic Controllers in numbers required. It is said it was designed to pass 60% of people. If you design a test to pass a certain number of people is that backing into what is aptitude or is it actually testing for apitude?
What was actually in the AT-SAT. I doubt, but maybe I'm wrong, that it could screen for situational awareness and multi-tasking unless you had to take it in a room with a Chimpanzee going nuts at the same time or something.
Is it's test for "apptitude" really just a test for reasonable intellgience and widgetness? I'm not saying those are not necessarily relevant to a somewhat regimented and safety focused task set. But the substance of that test and the earlier rubric and anyway to measure it's results seems as lacking as is Dr. Outtz focus solely on the racial outcomes of that process.
But are we speaking here about the reasonable expectations of those who invested in this career path or the actual professionalism and outcomes related to the new process comparatively?
so i'm interested in sharing the update on the relevance of traces earlier air traffic controller standards and shortage discussion to current events and WTF is wrong with substack that a listener cannot easily get a time-stamped link. various AI tells me to go to where I want and the chose the "Share From" tab/comman maybe under a share menu. If that exists, I can't find it. Maybe it is only a tool available to podcaster themselves. I know they can create snippets (e,g Glenn Loury's substack makes much use of that feature-and those are handy although they may not track the specifics you want to share. and they clog his feed. you need to have a feed that is just the full podcasts that play one after another if you are binging and don't want to get distracted from monitoring the self-driving on your Tesla.)
I don't care if it is still paywalled if its a paywalled episode, although I think they would get premos if you could share like 1 minute snippets that fade out, but sending a link to a non-paywalled episode and then telling people to advance to 5:06 is a non-friggin starter. nobody is going to do that. for people who don't know the podcast and aren't interested in getting it to load and start and then mess with the slider (another friggin travesty trying to use a slider on a phone screen, for christsake, how the hell hard would it be to have a popup where you can enter digits). especially important not for sharing but because substack seems to havbe forgotten the basic computing principle of pushing the episode and time that you stopped listening reliably into a stack location where it is retreived the next time you return to the app. IT sorta of tries but it never gets it right, especially if you have navved away for a while and done other things. stop for a minute to switch bluetooth on or off it can usually get it.
Seems to me they are almost deliberately taking this approach to force anyone who tries the podcast to listen to the whole thing which, if the snippets attract people, they will start doing anyway. And the primo listener remains unable to share bits they find relevant.
Woke cannot be anywhere near over because the techbros are way too busy filtering politics to the right or left and not paying any attention to making a platform that is remotely worth using. the only thing they have going at substack is free speech. virtually every other aspect sucks. I guess you gotta lead with your strong suit.
Every time Jesse said “she,” I said “he” out loud.
LaSota and Zajko were arrested this weekend: https://apnews.com/article/zizians-killings-border-patrol-bf599db6b9ec354c68ed5ff4d5701b84
I figured this would end with a fatal shootout or suicide, to be honest. Glad I was wrong.
Edit: dang I searched the comments for “arrest” before posting. :/
I couldn’t decide if it was right or wrong morally that Jesse and Trace used the preferred pronouns of the cultists. What courtesy is owed moral monsters who have through tortured thinking, combined with mental illness arrived at this self image? Isn’t it just reinforcing delusion?
I get that this is a bit academic as it is unlikely that many of these cultists will listen to this podcast, but still…
An exciting title with a meandering and poorly structured delivery. I gave up.
Rationalists proving definitively that there is a very fine line between clever and stupid. I often wondered why rationalists are so poor on trans issues - see RationalWiki for example - and the reason is that a bunch of the higher-ups in the community are trans identified.
I love a messy, ugly, weird story in the morning, especially when we get to hear Trace tell it - yay Trace!
These people are so corny, I'll start getting worried when self driving cars don't melt down in the rain and open ai doesn't get basic shit wrong. Too much amphetamines
please consider discussing the Party Girls on the next BARPOD. especially the Free Luigi fund. thanks
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF5y7G3pp5G/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
I wrote about those rationalist utility maximizers at one point:
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/liberal-morality-the-faith-in-reason
Presented without comment: https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-is-rokos-basilisk-elon-musk-grimes/
Meanwhile PETA’s like, “Nuremberg for non-vegans? We’re listening.”
What a bunch of loonies.
Well I have nothing of substance to add except that that was fun ride.
The use if Ziz as a nickname is an afront to the original Zyzz... https://youtu.be/yDqk6KJVyP8?si=id0IzeXKH_ISxnTS
News outlets are referring to the sword as a "samurai sword", and that coupled with the extremely weebish vibes put off by the Zizians leads me to agree with Trace that this was likely a katana - the type found at that one store in the mall that smells like nag champa and has a plastic zen waterfall in the corner.