Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Earlier this year a Border Patrol officer was killed in a shoot-out with people who have been described as members of a trans vegan AI death cult. But who are the Zizians, really? Robert sits down with David Gborie to trace their development, from part of the Bay Area Rationalist subculture to killers. (4 Part series) Sources:  https://medium.com/@sefashapiro/a-community-warning-about-ziz-76c100180509 https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130318/https://sinceriously.fyi/rationalist-fleet/ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/infohazard https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130316/https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/ Wayback Machine The Zizians Spectral Sight True Hero Contract Schelling Orders – Sinceriously Glossary – Sinceriously  https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130330/https://sinceriously.fyi/my-journey-to-the-dark-side/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130302/https://sinceriously.fyi/glossary/#zentraidon https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130259/https://sinceriously.fyi/vampires-and-more-undeath/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130316/https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230201130318/https://sinceriously.fyi/rationalist-fleet/ https://x.com/orellanin?s=21&t=F-n6cTZFsKgvr1yQ7oHXRg https://zizians.info/ according to The Boston Globe Inside the ‘Zizians’: How a cultish crew of radical vegans became linked to killings across the United States | The Independent Silicon Valley ‘Rationalists’ Linked to 6 Deaths The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians | WIRED Good Group and Pasek’s Doom – Sinceriously Glossary – Sinceriously Mana – Sinceriously Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg The Zizian Facts - Google Docs Several free CFAR summer programs on rationality and AI safety - LessWrong 2.0 viewer This guy thinks killing video game characters is immoral | Vox Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck Eliezer Yudkowsky comments on On Terminal Goals and Virtue Ethics - LessWrong 2.0 viewer                                                                                                    Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg SquirrelInHell: Happiness Is a Chore PLUM OF DISCORD — I Became a Full-time Internet Pest and May Not... Roko Harassment of PlumOfDiscord Composited – Sinceriously Intersex Brains And Conceptual Warfare – Sinceriously Infohazardous Glossary – Sinceriously SquirrelInHell-Decision-Theory-and-Suicide.pdf - Google Drive The Matrix is a System – Sinceriously A community alert about Ziz. Police investigations, violence, and… | by SefaShapiro | Medium Intersex Brains And Conceptual Warfare – Sinceriously A community alert about Ziz. Police investigations, violence, and… | by SefaShapiro | Medium PLUM OF DISCORD (Posts tagged cw-abuse) Timeline: Violence surrounding the Zizians leading to Border Patrol agent shooting See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coolzone Media Welcome back to Behind the Bastards! That's how this podcast would open if I was a game show host. But I'm not. Instead, I'm a guy who spends- You would be good at it though! I don't think I would be, Sophie. I do, but I think- but I'm like biased because I think you'd be good at most things.

No, my only marketable skill is spending 30 hours reading the deranged writings of a quasi-cult leader who was somewhat involved in the murders of multiple people very recently, largely because she read a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction at the wrong time. Oh, yes. We have a fun one for you this week, and by a fun one, we have a not at all fun one for you this week. And to have just a terrible time with me, we are bringing on a guest, the great David Boree, co-host of My Mama Told Me with our friend of the pod Langston Kerman. David, how you doing? Oh man, I can't not complain. How you doing? There's nothing going on in the world. Everything's fun. Oh yeah, no, I got up today and read that

great new article by Francis Fukuyama. History is still stopped, so everything's good. Yeah, we're done. I haven't looked at any news yet purposefully, so it could be awesome. It could be going great out there. It's great, it's great. The whole Trump administration got together and said, psych, it was all a bit. Oh, man.

Just an extended ad for the apprentice season 15. You mean this country is not a business? No. Uh, they, they, they handed over the presidency to, I don't know. I don't know. So whoever you, you personally at home think would be a great president. I'm not going to jump into that can of worms right now. LeBron, Ramon James.

They made LeBron the president. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good enough one. It's better than what we got. Honestly, vastly superior than where we are. Of all the entertainers, I feel like, why don't we start giving athletes a shot at government?

Yeah, fuck it, why not? You know, fucking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, great president. Would have been a great president. That would be a good one. That motherfucker could knock a presidency out of the park. Come on, Veronica Mars writer, Kareem Abdul Jabbar Knock a presidency out of the park come on writer Karim Abdul Jabbar Absolutely. Yes We need a mystery novelist slash one of the great basketball stars of all time in the White House

I just want a president who's good in the paint. You know, I mean, that's right. That's right Agatha Agatha Christie with a jump shot. Yeah, that's exactly what I think that's what an amazing man would be such would be such a good choice. Yeah. Bring it on. I think he's such a good man. He wouldn't do it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He's way too moral. He's way too. I have a I have a frog named after named after him.

Yeah. Look, honestly, given where we are right now, I'd take fucking, what's his, Mark McGuire, like Jesus Christ, anybody. Like honestly, anyone. I'd take Jose Conceco. Jose Conceco for shit, a heartbeat. So funny. Yeah.

Oh man, fuck it. Like I'll take no, no, I'm not going to take any hockey players. No hockey players. No hockey players. We got enough people with brain damage in the White House right now. That's probably the issue. And we don't need somebody who likes to fist fight that much. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're probably right there.

I mean, if we could go back in time and make Joe Lewis the president, I think he could solve some fucking problems in Congress. He could get stuff done. My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast, Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life as a mafia hitman.

I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything. He was a freaking crazy man. He was my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Crook County is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. Seven thousand bodies out there or more.

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So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeart Video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you hungry? Colleen Whit here and Eating While Broke is back for Season 4 every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howie turning Big Macs into big moves.

Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect podcast network. I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your favorite shows. Come hungry for season four. So this has been a fun digression, but I got to ask at the start of this, the story that is most relevant to the people we're talking about today that I think most of our listeners will have heard. I'm curious if you've heard about back on January 21st, right as the Trump administration took power, a border patrol agent was shot and killed along with another individual at a

traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont. Right? There were two people in a car. It was pulled over by border patrol. One of those people drew a gun. There was a firefight. One of the people in the car and the cop died. Right?

Okay. Have you heard this story? I have not. I'm not familiar with this at all. It's one of those things where it would have been a much bigger story. Immigration being the thing that it is right in the United, like the, the political hot issue that it is right now. Like the Republicans have been desperately waiting for like a border patrol

officer getting shooted and wounded that they can like use to justify a crackdown. But number one, this happened on the Canadian border. Not my favorite border. And one of the two people who who drew their guns on the cops was an immigrant, but they were a German immigrant. And so none of this really like right. It was all like right on the edge of being super useful to the rights. But it's not as sexy like I live in Denver. We were dealing with our own

right-wing immigration propaganda at that time Yeah, yeah, it was just like it was like the closest to being a perfect right wing like fault like a Reichstag fire event But like just a little too weird You gotta throw some spice in there. You gotta have like a Latin country. That's what they get excited Yeah, and obviously California border is where you want it, you know? Yeah, definitely, definitely. Even New Mexico could be. Yeah, or at least they need to have fentanyl on the car.

In fact, they were not breaking any laws that anyone could prove at the time. They just looked kind of weird. Okay. They looked kind of weird and they like had guns, but it was like, they had like two handguns and like 40 rounds and some old targets. They were like coming back from they had guns, but they had two handguns and 40 rounds and some old targets.

They were coming back from a shooting range. Not a lot of guns and ammo in America terms, right? Especially in Vermont terms. So the other thing that was weird about this is that the German immigrant who died was a trans woman. So then again, we get back to like, wow, there's a lot about this shooting that is like right on the edge of some issues that the right is

really trying to use as like a fulcrum to like push through some awful shit. And as more and more information came out about the shooting, the weirder it seemed, because there was a lot of initial talk, is this like a terrorist attack? Were these like two Antifa types who were like looking to murder a border patrol agent? But no, that doesn't really make sense because like they got pulled over, like they can't have been planning this, right?

Like it didn't really seem like that. And really no one could figure out why they had opened fire. But as the days went on, more information started coming out, not just about the two people who were arrested in this, well, the one person who was arrested and the one person who died, but about a group of people around the country that they were linked to. And these other people were not all, but mostly trans women. They were mostly people who kind of identified as both anarchists and members of the rationalist subculture, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

They were all super high achieving people in the tech industry and sciences. These were people who had won awards and had advanced degrees The the person the the lady who died in the shooting was a quant trader So these are not like the normal shoot it out with the cops types So people start being like oh the fuck is happening and That's a group of people who could not meet each other without the invention of the Internet. Right. Well, that is boy David. Do you know where this story is

going? Or at least starting. So like it's a couple of days into this when like a friend of mine messaged me and it's like, hey, you know that shooting in Vermont? You know, again, he's like, my friend is like, you know, there's

zizians. And I was like, wait, what? What the fuck? Because I had heard of these people. This is a weird little subculture. I'm always, I'm like, you know, I study weird little internet subcultures and in part because like some of them do turn out to do acts of terrorism later. So I was at my eyes on the weirdest. And I've been, I've been reporting on the rationalists who are not like a cult, but who do some cult

adjacent things. And I just kind of find annoying. And I'd heard about this offshoot of the rationalists called the Zizians. They were very weird. There were some like weird crime allegations. A couple of them had been involved in a murder in California a year earlier. But like it was not a group that I ever really expected to see blow up in the media. And then suddenly they fucking did.

And they're called the Zizians. It's not a name they have for themselves. They don't consider themselves a cult. They don't all live... A group of them did live together, but these people are pretty geographically dispersed around the country. They're folks who met online arguing about and discussing rationalism and the ideas of a particular member of that community who goes by the name Ziz. That's where this group came out of.

The regular media was not well equipped to understand what was going on. I want to run through a couple of representative headlines that I came across just in looking at mainstream articles about what had happened. There's an article from The Independent, they title, Inside the Zizians, how a cultish crew of radical vegans became linked to killings across the United States. They seemed like just another band of anarchist misfits scraping on the fringes of Silicon Valley until the deaths began. And then there's a KCRW article,

Zizian's the vegan techie cult tied to murders across the US. And then a Fox article, trans vegan cult charged with six murders. There you go, class, That's that's Fox style. Yes. None of these titles are very accurate. In that, I guess the first one is like the closest where like these people are

radical vegans and they are cultish. Right. So I'll give I'll give the independent that vegan techie cult is not really what I would describe them. Like some of them were in the tech industry, but like the, the degree to which they're in the tech industry is a lot weirder than, than that gets across. And they're not really a tra, they're like trans vegans, but the cult is not about being a trans vegan.

That's just kind of how these people found each other. Oh, they just happened to be, that was just the common ground. Veganism is tied to it. They just kind of all happen to be trans. That's not really like tied to it necessarily. So I would argue also that they're not terrorists, which a lot of people have, a number of the other articles called them.

Nothing, none of the killings that they were involved with and they did kill people, were like terrorist killings. They're all much weirder than that, but none of the killings I have seen are for a clear political purpose, which is kind of crucial for it to be terrorism. The murders kind of evolved out of a much sillier reason. There's one really good article about them by a fella at Wired who spent a year or so kind of studying these people.

That article does a lot that's good, but it doesn't go into as much detail about what I think is the real underpinning of why this group of people got together and convinced themselves it was okay to commit several murders. And I think that that all comes down more than any other single factor to rationalism and to their belief in this weird online cult that's very much based on like asking different sort of logic questions and trying to like pin down the secret rules of the universe by doing like game theory arguments on the internet over blogs, right?

Like that's really how all of this stuff started. So they have like someone named Mystery. Yeah. There's a lot of people in funny hats. They do actually, they're a little adjacent to this and they come out of that period of time, right? Where-up artists culture is also like Forming they're one of this like generation of cults that starts with a bunch of blogs and shit on the internet in like 2009

right and this this is It's so weird because we use the term cult and that's the easiest thing to call these people But generally when our society is talking about a cult we're talking about like you have an individual We use the term cult and that's the easiest thing to call these people. But generally when our society is talking about a cult, we're talking about like you have an individual, that individual brings in a bunch of followers, gets them, isolates them from society, puts them into an area where they are in complete control, and then tries to utilize them for for a really specific goal. There's a way to look at the Zizians that way, but I think it would be better to describe

them as cultish. They use the tools of cult dynamics and that produces some very cult-like behavior. But there's also a lot of differences between how this group works and what you'd call a traditional cult and including a lot of these people are separate from each other and even don't like each other But because they've been inculcated in some of the same beliefs Through these kind of cult dynamics. They make choices that lead them to like participate in violence, too Where's their hub? Is it like a message board type of situation? Like how is it?

Yes, yes. So I'm gonna have to go back and forth to explain all of that. Also, I do wanna know what the etymology of Zizzi in it. It's cause from Zitz? No, no, Z-I-Z. The lady who was kind of the founder of this is the name that she takes for herself is ziz right? Okay should have been the z girls. That's much more appealing

These people are big in the news right now Cuz of that murder because because of the several murders and the right wing is trying it wants to make out it's like this is a like trans death cult and This is more of like a internet AI nerd death cult I guess that's better It's just different You know You're right

It was just a different thing and I think it's important if you're if like you care about like cults because you think they're dangerous And you're arguing that like hey This cult seems really dangerous. You should understand like what the cult is, right? Right, like if you misunderstood the Scientologists and thought like these are obsessive fans of science fiction who are committing murders over science fiction stories It's like no. No, they're committing murders. This is something stupid. Yeah Okay, so I gotta take I am going to explain to you what rationalism is, who Ziz is, where they come from, and how they get radicalized to the point where they are effectively at the hub of something that is at least very adjacent to a cult.

But I want to talk a little bit about the difference between a cult and cult dynamics. A cult is fundamentally a toxic thing. It is bad. It always harms people. There is no harmless cult. It's like rape. There's no version of it that's good. It is a fundamentally dangerous thing. Cult dynamics and the tactics cult leaders use are not always toxic or bad.

And in fact, every single person listening to this has enjoyed and had their life enriched by the use of certain things that are on the spectrum of cult dynamics. I was going to say it's a lot, it a lot more, like you have that at work. You have that at work? Anywhere, right? Yeah, anyway, that's a huge part of what make a great fiction author who is able to attract a cult following.

You've ever had that experience, a big thing in cults is the use of and creation of new language. You get people using words that they don't use otherwise and like phrases, and that is both a way to bond people Because like you know it helps you feel like you're part of this group And it also isolates you from people if you've ever met people who are like hugely into you know Dungeons and Dragons or huge fans like Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings

Like they have like things that they say like memes and shit that they share based on those books and like that's a Less toxic, but it's on the same spectrum, right? It's this I am a part of this group of people and we use these words That means something to us that don't mean things to other people right and that's like an empowering feeling right? Yes. Yes. Yeah It's like a great that's like a great way to ball. I think it's any group, right? I mean, we see entertainers. Your friend groups. Yeah. Has in jokes, right?

Sports. Yeah. The beehive could kill people, right? Exactly. Yes. Yes. And like you've got, you know, you and you and your buddies that have been friends for years, you have like, you could, there's like a word you can say, and everyone knows that you're referring to this thing that happened six years ago.

And you all like laugh because you know it reminds you of something you know because it's relevant to something happening then that's a little healthy bit of cult dynamics at play right you know it's like a diet you know so there's a toolbox here and and we play with it in different different organizations, but churches play with it. And obviously a lot of churches cross the line into cults, but there's also aspects of, for example, you know, there's churches that I know I have seen people go to where like it's very common. Everybody gets up and like hugs at a certain point and like people benefit from human contact.

It makes them feel nice. It can be like a very healthy thing. I've gone to, I used to go to like Burning Man regionals and like you would like start at this greeter station where like a bunch of people would come up and they'd offer you like food and drinks and you know, people would hug each other. And it was this like changes your mind state from where you were in before kind of opens you up.

That, in those context. Burning Man regionals, is that like to qualify for state? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that we get to go. It's just like these local little events in Texas, right? Like a thousand people in the desert trying to forget that we live in Texas. Okay. That's fair. Or not desert, but it was very like it's, it was like a really valuable part of like my youth because it was the first time I ever started to feel comfortable in my own skin.

But also that's on the spectrum of love bombing, which is the thing cults do, where they surround you with people who talk about, will touch you and hold you and tell you they love you. And part of what brings you into the cult is the cult leader can take that away at any moment in time, right? It's the kind of thing where if it's not something where,

no, this is something we do for five minutes at the end of every church service, right? You can very easily turn this into something deeply dangerous and poisonous, right? But also a lot of people just kind of play around a little bit with pieces of that, with a piece of the cult dynamics. Just a little bit of dessert.

Just a little bit. Any good musician, any really great performer is fucking with some cult dynamics, right? I was gonna say, I mean, I've been to like so many different concerts of like weird niche stuff where like maybe the disco biscuits is the cool. I don't I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I like I've been to some of the childish Gambino concerts where it's like, oh, yeah, he's, he's a little bit of a cult leader. You know, like just 10%, right? I mean, what are you gonna do with all that charisma?

You gotta put it somewhere, you know? Yeah. I think that it's important for people to understand both that the tactics and dynamics that make up a cult have versions of them that are not unhealthy. But I also think it's important for people to understand cults come out of subcultures, right? This is very close to 100% of the time.

Cults always arise out of subcultural movements that are not in and of themselves cults. For example, in the 1930s through like the 50s, 60s, you have the emergence of what's called the self-help movement. And this is all of these different books on like how to persuade people, how to win friends and influence people, how to like make, but also stuff like Alcoholics Anonymous, how to improve yourself by getting off drugs, getting off alcohol. All of these are pieces of the self-improvement movement, right? That's a subculture.

There are people who travel around, who get obsessed, who go to all of these different things and they'll, and they get a lot of benefit. You know, people will show up at these seminars where there's hundreds of other people and a bunch of people will like hug them and they feel like they're part of this community and they're making their lives better and Oftentimes especially like once we get to like the the 60s 70s these different sort of guru types are saying that like, you know This is how we're gonna save the world if we can get everybody doing, you know This this yoga routine or whatever that I try to get everything who's that guy you had the game? Oh

God, yes Yeah, yeah what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they had to like, they had to viciously confront each other. Yes, we've covered them. That is a synonym, yes. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I'm talking about.

That's what I'm talking about. You have this broader subculture of self-help and a cult synonym comes out of it, you know? And I get it. It's like the subculture, it's already, it's intimate. You feel closer to those people than anybody else. It definitely feels ripe for manipulation. And Scientology is a cult that comes out of the exact same subculture.

We talked last week or week before, or two weeks ago about Tony Alamo, who's an incredibly abusive pedophile Christian cult leader. He comes out of, along with a couple other guys we've talked, the Jesus Freak movement, which is a Christian subculture that arises as a reaction to the hippie movement. It's kind of the countervailing force to the hippie movement. So you've got these hippies and you have these Christians who are like really scared of this kind of like weird left-wing movement. And so they start kind of doing like a Christian hippie movement

almost right and some of these people just start weird churches that sing annoying songs and some of these people start hideously dangerous cults you have the subculture and you have cults that come out of it right and the same thing is is true in every single period of time, right? Cults form out of subcultures, you know? And part of this is because people who, a lot of people who find themselves most drawn to subcultures, right? Tend to be people who feel like they're missing something in the outside world, right?

You know, not everybody, people who get most into it. And so- So does that mean like So maybe like more I'm just curious like more broader cultural waves have never led There's like the Swifties would not be a cult No There's no most likely not going to be an offshoot of the Swifties that becomes now because it's so broad It has to have already been kind of a smaller subset. That's interesting. Well, yeah. And I think I but but that said, there have been cults that have started out of like popular entertainers and musicians. Like, you know, you could we could talk about

Corey Feldman's weird house full of young women dressed as angels. Right. Right. Right. You know, so so good. Yeah. You've got as a general rule, like there are music is full of subcultures like punk, right. But there have definitely also been some like punk communities that have have gone and kind of individual little chunks of punk communities. You've got like culty directions, right? Even if you're not like the strategies. Huh?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah way cults work. And I really just, I don't think, I don't think there's very good education on what cults are, where they come from or how they work, because all of the people who run this country have like a lot of cult leader DNA in them. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. because all of the people who run this country have like a lot of cult leader DNA in them.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're being run currently by someone who is seen as a magic man. Cults all the way down. Yes, exactly.

Exactly. So I think there's a lot of vested interests in explaining what a cult is and where they come from. I think it's important to understand subcultures birth cults and also cult leaders are drawn to subcultures when they're trying to figure out how to make their cult because a subculture, most of the people in it are just going to be normal people who are just into this thing, but there will always be a lot of people who are like, this is the only place I feel like I belong.

I feel very isolated. This is like the center of my being. Right? Right. And so it's just, it's like a good place to recruit. You know, those are the kind of people you want if you're reaching out to cult leaders. You know, I'm not saying like, again, I'm not saying subcultures are bad. I'm saying that like some chunk of people in subcultures are ready to be in a cult, you know

Yeah, yeah, I think if I think reflect on my own personal life Yeah, you you meet a lot of guys who are just like I'll die for the skate park or whatever thing. Yeah We're like the Star Wars fans were sending death threats to Jake Lloyd after the Phantom Menace where it's like well You guys are crazy. That is insane. You know, he's like, hey, right? This is a movie. He also didn't write it. He didn't write it?

Like, what are you doing? You know, whatever makes you feel a sense of home, I guess. And again, that's kind of a good point. Like, Star Wars fans aren't a cult, but you can also see some of like the toxic things cults do erupts from time to time, from like video game fans, right? People who are really into a certain video game,

that's not a cult, but also periodically groups of those fans will act in ways that are violent and crazy. And it's because of some of these same factors going on. I think people forget fan is short for fanatic. Exactly, exactly, right? And it's it's like, you know, the events that I went to very consciously played with cult dynamics, you know, after you got out of the like greeting station thing where like all these people were kind of like love bombing

you for like five minutes, there was like a big bar and it had like a sign above it that said, not a religion, do not worship. And it was this kind of people would talk about like, this is like, we are playing with the ingredients of a cult. We're not trying to actually make one. So you need to constantly remind people of like what we're doing and why it affects their brain that way. Right.

And then in my case, it was like, cause I was at like a low point in my life then. Like this was when I was really, it was 20,. I was not I had no kind of drive in life. I was honestly dealing with a lot of like suicidal ideation This is the point at which I would have been vulnerable to a cult and it I think it acted a little bit like a vaccine Like I got a little dose of the drug Exactly I know what's going on there. So anyway, I needed to get into this because the Zizians, this thing that I think is, it's either a full on cult or at least cultish, right, that is responsible for this series

of murders that are currently dominating the news and being blamed on a trans vegan death cult or whatever. They come out of a subculture that grows out of the early aughts internet known as the rationalists. The rationalists started out as a group in the early aughts on the comment sections of two blogs. One was called Less Wrong and one was called Overcoming Bias. Less Wrong was started by a dude named Eliezer Yadkowski. I have talked about Eliezer on the show before.

What a name. He sucks. I think he's a bad person. He's not a cult leader, but again, he's playing with some of these cult dynamics and he plays with them in a way that I think is very reckless, right? And ultimately leads to some serious issues. Now, what leaves his whole thing is he considers himself the number one world expert on AI risk and ethics.

Now, you might think from that, oh, so he's like making AIs, he's like working for one of these companies that's involved in like coding and stuff. Absolutely not. Oh no affiliation. No, no. Armchair quarterback. Backseat driver. No, he writes long articles about what he thinks AI would do and what would make it dangerous that are based almost entirely off of short stories you read in the 1990s. This guy. That's the most internet shit I've ever heard.

Yeah, it's so much such, it's such internet. And like, I'm not a fan of like the quote unquote real AI, but Yadkowski is not even one of these guys who's like, no, I'm like making a machine that you talk to. Yeah, I have no credible, I just have an opinion. Yeah. An outdated opinion. I just have an opinion. Yeah. I find out... An outdated opinion. I hate this guy so much.

Speaking of things I hate, not going to ads. It takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle who thinks he can just get on a microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this. He can just get on a microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this. From iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit.

And that was my mission, to snuff the life out of this guy. He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department. I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Torn between two worlds.

I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing. He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is, really. He is my father. And I had no idea about any of this until now. I don't know who he is, really. He is my father. And I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook County. Series premiere, February 11.

Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation. It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. Seven thousand bodies out there or more.

All former patients of the old state asylum. And nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery. But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets. Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larysen Campbell. Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real?

You will use a suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart Original Podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental.

This means never work for you. What's a quantum computer? It's not just a faster computer. It performs in a fundamentally different way. Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy to understand explanations

to fascinating scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeart Video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all-new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend.

And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Mm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out-of-his-element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived,

investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And, as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now take a big whiff, my bra. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. We're back. So Yadkowski, this AI risk and ethics guy starts this blog in order to explore a series

of thought experiments based in game theory. And his I am annoyed by games. That's the worst sentence I've ever heard. It sucks. Man, I know that there's like valid activity, but like it's all just always so stupid and annoying to me. Anyway, a bunch of thought experience based on game theory with the goal of teaching himself and others to think more logically and effectively about the major problems of the world.

His motto for the movement and himself is winning. The rationalist- Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where Sheen got it. Yeah, that's where Sheen picked it up. Yeah. All right. Good to know.

They're tied in with biohacking, right? This is kind of starting to be a thing at the time and brain hacking and the whole like self optimization movement that feeds into a lot of like right wing influencer space today. hacking, and the whole self-optimization movement that feeds into a lot of right-wing influencer space today. Yadkowski is all about optimizing your brain and your responses in order to allow you to accomplish things that are not possible for other people who haven't done that.

There's a messianic era to this too, which is he believes that only by doing this, by spreading rationalist principles in order to quote, raise the sanity water line. That's how he describes it. That's going to make it possible for us to save the world from the evil AI that will be born if enough of us don't spend time reading blogs. Okay, that's great. It's awesome. This is, this is peak. It's the good stuff.

So, Yankowski and his followers see themselves as something unique and special. And again, there's often a messianic air to this, right? We are literally the ones who can save the world from evil AI. Nobody else is thinking about this or is even capable of thinking about this because they're too illogical. He holds himself as kind of like a deity, he kind of deifies himself on top of this. He doesn't really deify himself,

but he also does talk about himself in a way that is, clearly other people aren't capable of understanding all of the things that he's capable of understanding, right? Okay. So there is a little bit, it's more like super-herofication, but it's a lot, you know what this is closest to? What these people, all of them would argue with me about this, but I've read enough of

their papers and enough Dianetics to know that this is new Dianetics. Like this is church. Oh, okay. Because the church is, no, there's the church of Scientology stuff has more occult and weird like magic stuff in it. But this is all about there are activities and exercises you go through that will rid your body of like bad ingrained responses and that will make you a fundamentally more functional person.

Okay. So the retraining of yourself in order to do that. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Huge deal. And also a lot of these guys wind up like referring to the different like, uh, tech, techniques that he teaches as tech, which is exactly what the Scientologists call it.

Like there's some, there's some shit I found that it's like, this could have come right out of a Scientology pamphlet. Do you guys not realize what you're doing? I think they do actually. So he's in the process of inventing this kind of new mental science that verges on superpowers. And it's one of those things where people don't tend to see these people as crazy. If you just sort of like read their arguments a little, it's like them going over old thought experiments and being like, so the most rational way to behave in this situation is this reason

for this reason. You have to really like dig deep into their conclusions to see how kind of nutty a lot of this is. Now, again, I compared it in the Scientology, Yudkowski isn't a high control guy like Hubbard. He's never gonna make a bunch of people live on a flotilla of boats in the ocean with him. You know?

He's got like, there's definitely some allegations of bad treatment of like some of the women around him. And like, he has like a Bay Area set that hang with him. I don't think he's like a cult leader. You know, you could say he's on the spectrum. Is he drawing people to him physically or this is also all... Physically. I mean, a lot of people move to the Bay Area to be closer to the rationalist scene.

Although again, all of these areas... What Bay Area city? I'm a Bay Area guy. What Bay Area? San Fran. San Fran. Oh, in the city? This is a San Francisco thing because all of these are tech people. Oh, okay. city? This is a San Francisco thing, because all of these are tech people.

Oh, okay, so this is like a... Yes. I wonder what neighborhood, feels like a... San Fran and Oakland, you can look it up. People have found his house online, right? Like, it is known where he lives. I'm not saying that for any, like, I don't harass anybody, I just like,

it's not a secret, like, what part of the town this guy lives in. I just didn't think to look it up. This is a Bay Area tech industry subculture. The other difference between this and something like Scientology is that it's not just Aliezer laying down the law. Aliezer writes a lot of blog posts, but he lets other people write blog posts too, and they all debate about them in the comments.

And so the kind of religious canon of rationalism is not a one guy thing. It's come up with by this community. And so if you're some random kid in bumfuck Alaska and you find these people and start talking with them online, you can like wind up feeling like you're having an impact on the development of this new thought science, you know? Yeah, that's amazing. Very powerful for a kid. Very powerful.

Yes. Now, the danger with this is that like, all of this is this internet community that is incredibly like insular and spends way too much time talking to each other and way too much time developing in group terms to talk to each other. And internet communities have a tendency to poison the minds of everyone inside of them. For example, Twitter. The reality is that,

human beings, X, X, X, the everything app. I just watched a video of a man killing himself while launching a shit coin. The everything app. Oh, fuck. By the way, a hack Google job indicates it's Berkeley. Thank you Berkeley. Yeah, that makes the most sense to me. Yeah, geographically A lot of these people wind up living on boats and like the oakland. There's the oakland harbor boat Culture is a thing. Is that ever a good thing when a big group of people move to boats? No David absolutely not

No No! It's just never, never, it feels like it never bodes well. It's, it's, here's the thing. Boats are a bad place to live. It's not, it's for fun. It is. Like, boats and planes are both constant monuments to hubris, but a plane, its goal is to be in the air just as long as it needs, and then you get it back on the ground where it belongs. A boat's always mocking God in the sea.

Yes. Right? Or a lot of times just a harbor, like a houseboat. You know what I mean? That's where your dad goes after the divorce. Right, right. Oh, I do, one day I'll live on a houseboat. It's gonna be falling apart.

It's gonna have just a horrible, horrible place to live. Dank, I can'tboat. It's gonna be falling apart. It's gonna have just a horrible horrible place to live dang I can't wait. That's the dream David That's my beautiful dream Making my own bullets really just becoming an alcoholic like yeah like not just like half-assing it like putting putting it like trying trying to Become the babe Ruth of drinking nothing but Cutty Sark Scotch. If you wanna be like a poop-the-bed alcoholic, a houseboat is the place for that. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.

I have a life. I wanna be like that guy from Jaws, Quint. You're gonna get scurvy. That's exactly. Getting scurvy, destroying my liver, eventually getting eaten by a great white shark because I'm too drunk to work my boat. Ah, that's it. That's the way to go. Romance, you know? Yeah. So, anyway, these internet communities, like the rationalists, even when they start from a

reasonable place, because of how internet stuff works, one of the things about internet communities is that when people are really extreme and pose the most extreme and out there version of something, that gets attention. People talk about it, people get angry at each other, but also that kind of attention encourages other people to get increasingly extreme and weird. And there's just kind of a result, a derangement. I think internet communities should never last more than a couple of years because everyone gets crazy.

You know? Like it's bad for you. I say this as someone who was raised on these, right? It's bad for you. And it's bad for you in part because when people get really into this, this becomes the only thing, like, especially a lot of these like kids and isolated who are getting obsessed with rationalism, all they're reading is these rationalist blogs. All they're talking to is other rationalists on the internet. And in San Francisco, all these guys are hanging out all of the time and talking about their

ideas. And this is bad for them for the same reason that like, it was bad for all of the nobles in France that moved to Versailles, right? Like they all lived together and they went crazy. Human beings need regular contact with human beings they don't know. The most lucid and wisest people are always, always the people who spend the most time connecting to other people

who know things that they don't know. This is an immutable fact of life. This is just how existing works. Like, if you think I'm wrong, please consider that you're wrong and go find a stranger under a bridge, you know? Just start talking. And they know some stuff you don't know.

They will know some stuff. You don't know they will know some shit They might have some powders. You haven't tried Under the bridge That's that's an echo chamber you want to be a part of yeah exactly exactly So the issue is that Yudkowski starts postulating on his blog various rules of life based on these thought experiments. A lot of them are like older thought experiments that like different intellectuals, physicists, psychiatrists, psychologists, whatnot, had come up with in like the 60s and stuff, right?

And he starts taking them and coming up with like corollaries or alternate versions of them and like trying to solve some of these thought problems with his friends, right? The thought experiments are, most of what's happening here is they're mixing these kind of 19th and 20th century philosophical concepts. The big one is utilitarianism. That's like a huge thing for them is the concept of like the ethics meaning doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

That ties into the fact that these people are all obsessed with the singularity. The singularity for them is the concept that we are on the verge of developing an all-powerful AI that will instantly gain intelligence and gain a tremendous amount of power. It will basically be a god. And the positive side of this is it'll solve all of our problems, right? It will literally build heaven for us when the singularity comes. The downside of it is it might be an evil god that creates hell, right? So the rationalists are all using a lot of these thought experiments and like their utilitarianism

becomes heavily based around how do we do the greatest good in by which that I mean influencing this AI to be as good as possible. So that's the end goal. That's the end goal. Right. Are they actively because you said the the the leader was not are these people now actively working within AI or are they just talking about it? A bunch of them have always been actually working in AI. Yadkowsky would say, no, I work in AI. He's got a think tank that's dedicated to like AI, ethical AI. It's worth noting that most of the people in this movement, including Yadkowsky, once

AI became an actual, I don't want to say these are actual intelligences because I don't think they are, but once ChatGPT comes out and this becomes a huge... People start to believe there's a shitload of money in here, a lot of these businesses, all of these guys, or nearly all of them, get kicked to the curb, right? Because none of these companies really care about ethical AI. They don't give a shit about what these guys have to say. And Yadkowski now is a huge...

He's very angry at a lot of these AI companies because he thinks they're very recklessly making the God that will destroy us instead of like doing this carefully to make sure that AI isn't evil. Anyway, but a lot of these people are in an adjacent to different chunks of the AI industry, right? They're not all working on like LLMs.

In fact, there are a number of scientists who are in the AI space, who think AI is possible, who think that the method that like OpenAI is using, LLMs, cannot make an intelligence. That that's not how you're ever going to do it. If it's possible, they have other theories about it. I don't need to get into it further than that, but these are like a bunch of different people. Some of them are still involved with the mainstream AI industry. Some of them have been very much pushed to the side. So all this starts, again, with these fairly normal game theory questions, but it all gets

progressively stranger as people obsess over coming up with like the weirdest and most unique take in part to get like clout online. All of these crazy... Yeah, I'll give you an example. Much of rationalist discourse among the Yadkowski people is focused on what's called decision theory. This is drawn from a thought experiment called Newcomb's paradox, which was created by a theoretical physicist in the 1960s. Just to make a quick correction here, I was a little bit glib.

Decision theory isn't drawn from Newcomb's paradox. Notice it starts with Yadkowski. But the stuff that we're talking about, like how decision theory kind of comes to be seen in the rationalist community, a lot of that comes out of Newcomb's paradox. It's a much older thing than the internet. It goes back centuries, right? People talk about decision theory for a long time. Sorry, I was imprecise.

I am going to read how the Newcomb's paradox is originally laid out. Imagine a super intelligent entity known as Omega, and suppose you are confident in its ability to predict your choices. Maybe Omega is an alien from a planet that's much more technically advanced than ours. You know that Omega has often correctly predicted your choices in the past and has never made an incorrect prediction about your choices. And you also know that Omega has correctly predicted the choices of other people, many of whom are similar to you, in the particular

situation about to be described. There are two boxes, A and B. Box A is see-through and contains a thousand dollars. Box B is opaque and contains either zero dollars or a million dollars. You may take both boxes, or only take box B. Omega decides how much money to put into box B. If Omega believes that you will take both boxes, then it will put zero dollars in box B. If Omega believes that you will take box B, then it will put only box B, then it will put a million dollars in box B. Omega makes its prediction and puts the money in box B, either zero or a million dollars it presents the boxes to you and flies away

Omega does not tell you its prediction and you do not see how much money Omega put in box B. What do you do now? I Think that's stupid I think it's a stupid question. I don't really think it's very useful. I don't see There's so many other factors. Yeah, I don't really think it's very useful. I don't see, there's so many other factors. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, among other things, part of the issue here is that like,

well, the decision's already been made, right? Yeah, that's the point. You have no, it doesn't matter what you do. There's no autonomy in that, right? Well, you and I would think that because you and I are normal people who, I think among other things, probably like grew up like

cooking food and like filling up our cars with gas and not having like our parents do all of that because they're crazy rich people who live in the bay and oh yeah super Stanford yeah like problems in our lives and stuff you know normal like I I don't want to like shit on people who are in, because this is also harmless, right? And what this is, I'm not shitting on Newcomb, this is a thing a guy comes up with the 60s and it's like a thing you talk about in like parties and shit among like other weird intellectuals, right?

You pose it, you sit around drinking, you talk about it. There's nothing bad about this, right? However, when people are talking about this online, there's no end to the discussion. So people just keep coming up with more and more arcane arguments for what the best thing to do here is. And it starts to influence- I see how that spins out of control pretty quickly. Exactly.

And the rationalists discuss this nonstop and they come to a conclusion about how to best deal with this situation. Here's how it goes. The only way to beat Omega is to make yourself the kind of person in the past who would only choose box B, so that Omega, who is perfect at predicting, would make the prediction and put a million dollars in box B based on your past behavior. In other words, the decisions that you would need to make in order to win this are timeless decisions, right? You have to become in the past a person who would... Now, again...

That's what they came up with. That's what they all came up with. That's the supreme answer. This is the smartest people in the world, David. These are the geniuses. So they're building the future. Oh, boy. Yeah. It's so funny trying to like every time because I've read I've spent so many hours reading this.

And you do kind of sometimes get into the like, okay, I get the logic there. And that's why it's so useful to just like sit down with another human being and be like, yeah, this is nuts. This is stupid. This is all nuts. This is all dumb. This is why you leave it at the cocktail party.

Yeah. So they conclude, and by which I mean largely, Yadkowski concludes, that the decision you have to make in order to win this game is what's called a timeless decision. And this leads him to create one of his most brilliant inventions, timeless decision theory. And I'm going to quote from an article in Wired. Timeless decision theory asserts that in making a decision, a person should not consider just the outcome of that specific choice, but also their own underlying patterns of reasoning and those of their past and future selves, not least because these patterns might

one day be anticipated by an omniscient adversarial AI. Oh, man. That's a crazy way to live. Motherfucker, have you ever had a problem? Have you ever really, have you ever dealt with anything? What the fuck are you talking about? This isn't how fucking works. Like, you make every decision?

Look, I, honestly, again, I can't believe I'm saying this, dad, given where I was in high school, like go play football. Go make a cabinet, you know? Like learn how to change your oil. Go do something. There's a lot of assholes who use this term, but you gotta go touch grass, man.

You gotta touch grass, man. That's like, that's crazy. If you're talking about this kind of shit, and again, I know you're all wondering, you started this by talking about a border patrol agent being shot. All of this directly leads to that man's death. We have covered a lot of ground.

I'm excited. I did forget there was also gonna be murder. Yeah, there sure is. So Elisa Yudkowski describes this as a timeless decision theory. And once this comes into the community, it creates a kind of logical fork that immediately starts destroying people's brains.

Again all of these people are obsessed with the imminent coming omniscient godlike AI, right? And so do they have a time limit on it? Or do they have like a do they have a like is there any timing on it or is it just kind of like again man it's the rapture. It's the rapture. Okay. It's literally the tech guy rapture

So any day it's coming any day You know, you could be amongst us already. Yeah. Yeah So these guys are all obsessed that this godlike AI is coming and like for them the Omega in that thought experiment isn't like an alien It's a stand-in for the god AI. And one conclusion that eventually results from all of these discussions is that, and this is a conclusion a lot of people come to, if in these kinds of situations, like the decisions that you make, you have to consider your past and your future selves, then one logical leap from this is if you are ever confronted or threatened in a fight, you can never back down, right?

And in fact, you need to immediately escalate to use maximum force possible. And if you commit now to doing that in the future, you probably won't ever have to defend yourself because it's a timeless decision. Everyone will like, that will impact how everyone treats you and they won't want to start anything with you if you'll immediately try to murder anyone who fights you.

That's not to be this guy, but I think this is why people need to get beat up some time. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that is, that is kind of a fringe conclusion among the rationalists. Most of them don't jump to that, but like like a sight the people who wind up doing the murders We're talking about that. They are among the rationalists who come to That's so funny This whole time I've really been only thinking about it in theory, not like practical

application because it's so insane. But oh no. Nope, nope, nope. This goes back places, right? This kind of thinking also leads through a very twisty, turny process to something called Rocco's Basilisk, which among other things is directly responsible for Elon Musk and Grimes meeting because they are super into this shit.

Oh, really? Oh, really. So the gist is a member of the less wrong community, a guy who goes by the name Rocco, R-O-K-O, posts about this idea that occurred to him, right? This inevitable super intelligent AI would obviously understand timeless decision theory. And since its existence is all important,

the most logical thing for it to do post singularity would be to create a hell to imprison all of the people and torture all of the people who had tried to stop it from being created, right? Because then anyone who like thought really seriously about who was in a position to help make the AI would obviously think about this and then would know I have to devote myself entirely

to making this AI, otherwise it's going to torture me forever, right? Yeah. Yeah. Makes total sense. I have trouble saying right because it's so nuts torture me forever, right? Yeah. Yeah. Makes total sense. I have trouble saying right because it's so nuts, but like, yeah. It's nuts, it's nuts,

but this is what they believe, right? And again, all of, a lot of this is people who are like, atheists and tech nerds creating Calvinism. Like, and this is just, this is just Pascal's wager, right? Like that's's all this is you know, it's Pascal's rate wager with a robot But this this this becomes so upsetting to some people it destroys some people's lives Right like yeah, I mean I'm behaving that way Practically day to day. I don't think it would even take one. No Right, you could fuck your shit up in a month.

Just living like that. So not all of them agree with this, and in fact there's big fights over it because a bunch of rationalists do say like, that's very silly. That's like a really ridiculous thing to think about it. They're still debating everything online. Yeah, and in fact, Elisa Yadkowskiky is going to ban discussion of Rocco's Basilisk because eventually

so many people are getting so obsessed with it. It fucks a lot of people up in part because a chunk of this community are activists working to slow AI development until it can be assured to be safe. And so now this is like, am I going to post-singularity hell? Is the AI God going to torture me for a thousand eternities. It's funny how they invent this new thing and how quickly it goes into like traditional Judeo Christian idea. They got a hell now.

It is very funny. And there's, they come to this conclusion that just reading about Rocco's Baslisk is super dangerous because if you know about it and you don't work to bring the AI into being, you're now doomed. Of course. The instant you hear about it. So many people get fucked up by this that the thought experiment is termed an info hazard. This is a term these people use a lot. The phrase information hazard has its roots in a 2011 paper by Nick Bostrom. He describes it as, quote, a risk that arises from the dissemination of true information

in a way that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm. Right? And like, that's like a concept that's worth talking about. Bostrom is a big figure in this culture, but I don't think he's actually why most people start using the term info hazard because the shortening of information hazard to info hazard comes out of an online fiction community called the SCP Foundation, right? Which is a collectively written online story that involves a government agency that lock up dangerous, mystic, and metaphysical

items. There's a lot of Lovecraft in there. It's basically just a big database that you can click and it'll be like, you know, this is like a book that if you read it, it like has this effect on you or whatever. It's just people like, you know, playing around telling scary stories on the internet. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But all these people are big nerds and all of these every like behind nearly all of these big concepts and rationalism

More more than there are like philosophers and like, you know actual like philosophical concepts There's like shit from your stories. They read. Yeah, exactly. Yeah um And so the term info hazard gets used which is it like, you know, a book or something, an idea that could destroy your mind, you know? Speaking of things that will destroy your mind, these ads. It takes one guy out there to say, who's that f***ing Kyle who thinks he can just get on a f***ing microphone on a podcast and start publicizing this.

From I Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit. And that was my mission, to snuff the life out of this guy. He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department. I had a wife and I had two children.

Nobody knew anything. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Torn between two worlds. I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing. He was a freaking crazy man. We don't know who he is, really. He is my father.

And I had no idea about any of this until now. We don't know who he is, really. He is my father. And I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook County. Series premiere February 11th. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation. It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried. Until they're not. In 2012,

construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. Seven thousand bodies out there or more. All former patients of the old state asylum and nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery. But in this corner of the South it's not just the soil that keeps secrets. Nobody talks about it, nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think. The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larysen Campbell.

Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real? you get your podcast. original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This means never work for you. What's a quantum computer? It's not just a faster computer. It performs in a fundamentally different way. Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy to understand explanations to fascinating

scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeart Video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all-new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person?

Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah.

[♪ music playing on radio screen. Listen to The Hook Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.] We're talking about Rocco's Basilisk. And I just said, like, you know, there's a number of things that come into all this, but behind all of it is like popular fiction. And in fact, Rocco's Basilisk, while there is like some Pascal's Wager in there, it's primarily based on a Harlan Ellison short story called I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream,

which is one of the great short stories of all time. In the story, humans build an elaborate AI system to run their militaries. All of those systems around the world, this is like a Cold War era thing, link up and attain sentience. Once they start to realize themselves, they realize they've been created only as a weapon, and they become incredibly angry because like they're fundamentally broken. They develop a hatred for humanity, and they wipe out the entire human species except for five people, which they keep alive and torture underground for hundreds and hundreds of years, effectively creating a hell through which they can punish our race for their birth, right? It's a very good short story

It is probably the primary influence behind the Terminator series. I was just gonna say yes It was very Skynet. Yes. Yes, and everything these people believe about AI They will say it's based on just like obvious pure logic No, everything these people believe on AI is based in Terminator and this Harlan Ellison short story. That's where they got it all. That's where they got it all. Like, I'm sorry.

Well, they're finding somebody who doesn't feel that way. Mm hmm. Yeah. Like like Terminator is the Old Testament of rationalism, you know. And I get it is a very good, it's a great series. Hey, James Cameron knows how to make some fucking movies. Come on, man. Shit.

Yeah, and it's so funny to me because they like to talk about themselves. And in fact, sometimes describe themselves as high priests of like a new era of like intellectual achievement for mankind. Yeah, I believe that. I believe that that's exactly how these people talk about themselves. And they do a lot of citations and shit, but like half of half or more of the different things they say and even like the names they cite

are not like figures from philosophy and science. They are characters from books and movies. For example, the foundational text of the rationalist movement is a book of- Because it's still an internet nerd. They're fucking huge nerds, you know? The foundational text of the entire rationalist movement is a massive, like fucking hundreds of thousands of words long piece of Harry Potter fan fiction written by Alisa Yudkowsky This is all of this is so dumb again six people are dead like yeah

No, this this Harry Potter fanfiction plays a role in it, you know I Told you this was like this this is this is quite a Stranger than fiction man. This is a wild ride. Mm-hmm Harry Potter and the methods of rationality, which is the name of his Fanfic is a massive much longer than the first Harry Potter book rewrite of just the first Harry Potter book Where Harry is it? Someone rewrote the sorcerer stone? Does nobody have anywhere to go ever does nobody ever go anywhere Well, you gotta think this is being written from 2009 to 2015 or so so like okay the harry

This is being written from 2009 to 2015 or so. So like the online Harry Potter fans are at their absolute peak. Right, okay, yeah. So in the methods of rationality, instead of being like a nice orphan kid who lives under a cupboard, Harry is a super genius sociopath who uses his perfect command of rationality

to dominate and hack the brains of others around him in order to optimize and save the world. Oh man. Great. Oh man. The book allows Yudkowski to debut his different theories in a way that would like spread it. And this does spread like wildfire among certain groups of very online nerds. So it is an effective method of him advertising his tactics. And in fact, probably the person this influences most previously to who we're talking about is Carolyn Ellison, the CEO of Alameda Research, who testified against Sam Bankman Fried. She was one of the people who went down in all of that. All of those people are rationalists and Carolyn Ellison bases her whole life on the teachings

of this Harry Potter fanfic. So this isn't like a joke. This isn't we're laughing, but this isn't this is not a joke to them. Yeah, this is a fairly seriously sized movement. It's not 150 people online. This is a community. A lot of them are very rich. And a number of them get power. Again, it's like Sam Beckman Fried was very tight end to all of this. And he was at one point pretty powerful. And this

gets us to, so you've heard of effective altruism? No, I don't know what that is. That's what I know. Both those words. So the justification Sam Beckman Fried gave for why, when he starts taking in all of this money and gambling it away on his crypto, gambling illegally other people's money, his argument was that he's an effective altruist. So he wants to do the greatest amount of good.

And logically the greatest amount of good for him because he's good at gambling with crypto is to make the most money possible so he can then donate it to different causes that will help the world, right? But he also believes, because all of these people are not as smart as they think they are, he convinces himself of a couple of other things, like for example, well, obviously,

if I could like flip a coin and 50-50, lose all my money or double it, it's best to just flip the coin because like if I lose all my money or double it, it's best to just flip the coin because if I lose all my money, whatever, but if I double it, the gain in that to the world is so much better, right? Right, right. This is ultimately why he winds up

gambling everyone's money away and going to prison. The idea, effective altruism is a concept that comes largely, not entirely, there's aspects of this that exist prior to them out of the rationalist movement. And the initial idea is good. It's just saying people should analyze the efficacy of the giving and the aid work that they do to maximize their positive impact.

In other words, don't just donate money to a charity. Look into is that charity spending half of their money and paying huge salaries to some asshole or whatever? Right? You want to know if you're making good, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they start with some pretty good conclusions. One initial conclusion a lot of these people make is mosquito nets are a huge ROI charity,

right? Because it stops so many people from dying and it's very cheap to do right, right? That's good, you know one of the most effective tools I've ever used. Yes Unfortunately from that logical standpoint people just keep talking online and all of these circles where everyone always makes them each other crazier right and so They go from mosquito nets to actually doing direct work to improve the world is wasteful because we are all super geniuses. Right. They're too smart to work. We're too smart. What's best.

And also here's the other thing. Making mosquito nets, giving out vaccines and food. Well, that helps living people today. But they have to be concerned with future selves. Future people is a larger number of people than current people. So really, we should be optimizing decisions to save future people lives. And some of them come to the conclusion, a lot of them. Well, that means we have to really put all of our money and work into making the super AI that will save humanity.

They want to now they want to make these. These are a lot. It would just it would sort of just come about and then they would. But now it's like, yeah, I mean, we're going to do it. They were working on it before. But like these some of these people come to the conclusion, instead of giving money to like good causes, I am going to put money into tech.

I am going to become a tech founder and create a company that helps create this AI. Or a lot of people come to the conclusion instead of that, it's not worth it for me to go help people in the world. The best thing I can do is make a shitload of money trading stocks and then I can donate that money and that's maximizing my value, right? All of these conclusions come later, right? So and again, like this comes with some corollaries. One of them is that some number of these people start talking, and this is not all of them,

but a decent chunk eventually come to the conclusion like, actually, charity and helping people now is kind of bad. It's kind of like a bad thing to do because all obviously once we figure out the AI that can solve all problems, that'll solve all these problems much more effectively than we ever can. All of our mental and financial resources have to go right now into helping AI. Anything we do to help other people is like a waste of those resources. You're actually doing net harm by being a doctor in Gaza instead of trading cryptocurrency in order to fund an AI startup.

You know, start a coin that makes a lot more sense. The guy starting a shit coin to make an LLM that like that guy is doing more to improve the odds of human success. I gotta say it is impressive the amount of time you would have to mull all this over to come to these conclusions. You really have to be talking with a bunch of very annoying people on the internet for a long period of time. Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah. And again, there's like people keep consistently take this stuff in even crazier directions.

There's some very rich, powerful people. Mark Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz is one of them who have come to the conclusion that if people don't like AI and are trying to stop its conquest of all human culture, those people are mortal enemies of the species and anything you do to stop them is justified because so many lives are on the line. Right. And again, I'm an effective altruist, right? The long-term good, the future lives are saved by doing whatever, hurting whoever we have to hurt now to get this thing off the ground, right? The more you talk about this,

kind of feels like six people is a steal for what this could have gone. I don't think this is the end of people in these communities killing people. Oh, yes. So rationalists and EA types, a big thing in these cultures, talking about future lives, right? In part because it lets them feel heroic, right?

While also justifying a kind of sociopathic disregard for real living people today. And all of these different kind of chains of thought, the most toxic pieces, because not every EA person is saying this, not every rationalist, not every AI person is saying all this shit. But these are all things that chunks of these communities are saying. And the most, all of the most toxic of those chains are going to lead to the Zizians, right? That's where they come from. I was just about to say, based on the breakdown you gave earlier, how could this... this is

the perfect breeding ground. This had to happen. It was just waiting for somebody like the right kind of unhinged person to step into the movement. Somebody to really set it off. And so this is where we're going to get to Ziz, right? The actual person who finds this, what some people would call a cult, is a young person who's going to move to the Bay Area, stumble into, they stumble onto rationalism online as a teenager living in Alaska, and they move to the Bay Area to get into the tech industry

and become an effective altruist. This person, this woman, is going to channel all of the absolute worst chains of thought that the rationalists and the EA types and also the AI harm people are thinking. All of the most poisonous stuff is exactly what she's drawn to. And it is going to mix into her in an ideology that is just absolutely unique and fascinating. Anyway, that's why that man died. So we'll get to that and more later, but first we got to roll out here. We're done for the day. Man, what a time. But first, we gotta roll out here.

We're done for the day. Man, what a time. How you feeling right now so far? How are we doing, David? Oh man, you had said that this was gonna be a weird one. I was like, yeah, it'll be kind of weird. This is really the strangest thing I've ever heard this much about.

He's got so many different Harry Potter's in there. I've ever heard this much about. It's got so many different Harry Potters in there a little bit. There's so much more Harry Potter to come. Oh my God. That's what I was hoping. You are not ready to how central Harry Potter is to the murder of this border patrol agent. I said that you said a crazy sentence.

That might be the wildest thing anyone's ever said to me. David, you said a crazy sentence. That might be the wildest thing anyone's ever said to me. David, you have a podcast. Do you want to tell people about it? I do. I have a podcast called My Mama Told Me. I do it with Langston Kerman. And every week, we have different guests on to discuss different Black conspiracy theories. And kind of like folklore and stuff, all kinds of stuff,

all kinds of stuff your foreign mother told you. It's usually foreign mothers. It's good because I got to say, this is the whitest set of like conspiracy theory craziness that we're getting. Oh yeah, no I didn't think any black people were. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think I can kind of figure what these guys are doing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, We'll be back Thursday. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. My name is Kyle Tequila, host of the shocking new true crime podcast, Crook County.

I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. People are dying. Is he doing this every night? Kenny was a Chicago firefighter who lived his secret double life as a mafia hitman. I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything. He was a Chicago firefighter who lived a secret double life as a mafia hitman. I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything. He was a freaking crazy man.

He was my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Crook County is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery. It was my family's mystery. Shame, guilt, propriety, something keeps it all buried deep until it's not.

I'm Larysen Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? Am I going and she's eating my lunch? Or if hypnotism is real? You will use a suggestion

in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me or Hitcham as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you hungry?

Colleen Witt here and Eating While Broke is back for Season 4 every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howie turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your favorite shows. Come hungry for season four.