Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 458 - WTFF? The Madness of the Zizian Cult

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Do you believe that all non-vegans should die? In part for their needless murder of senseless people like.... cows? And in part because their predatory, cruel, EVIL behavior is providing a model for a future AI program to treat humans like a mindless food source once it inevitably takes over the world? If so... you'd make a good Zizian! This is a weird one. Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

The second F in the title of this episode, not a typo. What the fucking fuck? This is a really weird one. And it all began with the focus on something that doesn't sound weird at all. Rationalism. A belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge, rather than on religious belief or emotional response. How did it focus on something that sounds so grounded? Something that sounds the opposite of anything cult-like? Get so damn culty?

What does it mean to be a rational human being? Rationality is defined as the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic. Unfortunately for us lowly meat sack humans we're usually based on or according to a lot of other shit other than reason or logic. She liked strong personal biases, outlandish irrational desires, lust, greed, basic hunger. Essentially, if it's one of the seven deadly sins, we all have at least a little bit of it in us. Clouded in our judgment in small or not so small ways. But does this always have to be the case? Are human beings inherently irrational to some degree?

Superstitious creatures who frequently assign meaning to things that don't actually have inherent meaning. Creatures who too often act on their worst impulses. Even when they know it's the wrong thing to do. Are we even capable of the possession of some sort of unemotional, completely based in logic superintelligence? Could we ever become purely rational, perhaps through studying the works of philosophers, innovators, and visionaries? Could we at least create a form of purely rational intelligence through technological means like artificial intelligence modeling? This was the kind of online chatter you might hear from members of the so-called rationalist community in the 2010s. The movement formed around a group of

internet blogs including LessWrong.com and AstralCodex10.com and then bled into the real world in places full of a lot of tech development like the Bay Area in Seattle where a generation of young tech-minded entrepreneurs had come to seek their fortunes, and it seems to make the world a better place. These were people who were mostly in their teens through their 30s. Young, intelligent, imaginative, and ambitious folks who had grown up loving fantasy worlds like Harry Potter, and who had also become absorbed into the thriving startup tech industry. They shared a similar belief, anything is possible.

They believed that the world was a big playground of ideas for advancement in industry in the fight for justice and even in conquering death. While some of this thinking for sure led to amazing advancements in machine learning and eventually companies like OpenAI, this thinking also led to a bit of a cult, at least one cult that we know of.

Perhaps there are more out there waiting to emerge from the shadows and reveal themselves. Though the online rationalist community would largely fade away over the years, the websites are still there, but not nearly as populated, and branch into startups that we know today like Uber and Lyft, or into other movements like the pro-natalist movement that's still currently gaining traction online and in real life. One small group of rationalists continued meeting, continued talking, began living together, began sleeping together, and spun a dark apocalyptic worldview that began to take over their lives. A worldview largely based in fear of an impending AI apocalypse and also veganism.

and fear of an impending AI apocalypse and also veganism. This group would come to be called the Zizians, a collection of young people both exceptionally intelligent and paradoxically exceptionally stupid. Young people with seemingly very promising futures, many of them trans, many of them autistic, who had become obsessed with the vision of the future preached by Ziz Lasota, a trans woman who believed that if people she referred to as meat eaters, anyone who is not vegan, continued to guide the development of AI, that AI would then use the meat industry as a blueprint for how to treat humans and turn us into nothing more than cattle ripe to be slaughtered. Okay, sure, anything's possible. Whether or not that reality will come to be, of course, remains to be seen.

But what has definitely transpired is that the Zizians themselves, people obsessed with saving the world from evil people, ended up looking pretty damn evil themselves when they started killing innocent people in recent years. The strange, absurd, true story of the Zizians, right here, right now, on a very different kind of cult cult cult edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Well happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, Red Pill Swallower, Skynet Fear, young children using profanity fan, and you are listening to Time Suck.

Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M. And just one little quick thing before we dive into the stories, happy Pride Month. And what a terrible episode for Pride Month this is. Which I do think fits my warped sense of humor. Even though I didn't pick it for that reason. Several of the main characters in this story are trans and are also huge pieces of shit. It's kind of like picking serial killer Sam Little for Black History Month. Or releasing an episode about Dr. Mengele during Hanukkah. Whoops. Still feel bad that I did that without realizing that I was doing that.

But until it was time to record. But as many of you know, I'm not good with holidays. I don't pick topics based on what date they fall on the calendar outside of releasing some end-of-the-year inspiration because there are too many months, too many holidays, and holidays, well, they've just never really been my thing. I didn't know when Memorial Weekend, or Memorial Day Weekend I guess, I don't even know what the fuck it's called, was this year until the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, when I asked Lindsay why some places were closed on the upcoming Monday. But I did remember when Pride Month was this year, because Lindsay told me so two days ago. But I do feel a stronger connection to the Pride community than many,

if not most, straights due to having a lot of friends and also family members in the community, some who have come out recently whose names I will not share to respect their wish for privacy, and the Pride community has been on my mind a lot recently due to how they have once again been made to be a political scapegoat and a boogeyman. The recent surge of homophobia and transphobia bothers me greatly, bothers me in the same way the surge of blatantly racist Islamophobia bothers me, as if Palestinian lives matter less than other lives. Hmm, I don't feel that way. Team Meatsack for me. Get on the fucking bus! Where you're welcome if you're straight, not straight, black, white, brown, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, etc.

Or lay your head down under the front tire so we can squish it like a grape when we sing Kumbaya, motherfucker! And I could go on, but I won't. So much hurt in the world, and I know that you're here for an escape. I also know many of you are members of the Pride community, and I want to make your escape maybe a tiny bit better this week by just reminding you that I love you. Maybe.

I might hate you, but I won't hate you because you're not straight. I'll hate you because, you know, I think you're an asshole. I might hate you, but I won't hate you because you're not straight. I'll hate you because you know I think you're an asshole. I'll judge you by your character. Not by what genitalia you prefer to have or prefer to play with. So get your dick sucked! Or uh, I don't know, get your front butt. Front butt? Get your front butt cake. Get your front butt munched. Get your dick and your front butt sucked and munched and licked if you have both. Get your front butt and your butt butt pegged, licked, munched, and sucked while also getting your dick sucked, slurped, licked, stomped, punched, and kicked by a dominatrix who looks like Joe Dirt in a latex bodysuit and demands to be called Jerry Was A Race Car Driver if

that's what makes you hard or wet. Whatever gets your bicycle revving and pedaling ready to jump off big ramps and drive down to deep muddy ditches Or if you're not in the mood for sex or don't like sex because you're asexual Well, then get yourself a fucking frosty from Wendy's because they're delicious and they're doing some wild-ass shit over there with frosties treat yourself And now after all that we head towards a topic that brings us back to the realm of cults, but a very, very different kind of cult this time than any one we have previously explored. Usually, but not always, the cults we have talked about

here tend to stem out of fundamentalist conservative ideals, generally an offshoot of Christianity. We talked about the Moonies, Reverend Sun-Young Moon, the Aggressive Christian Mission Training Corps. That was a while ago, but that was a while ago. Jehovah's Witnesses, the Emmanuel David cult, IHOPKC, School of the Prophets, Jeffrey Lundgren's cult. That fucking poop lover. And the list goes on. But we've also covered a few that have not been based in Christianity,

fundamentalist views of gender or race or anything else that screams far right. You know, cults like the Sullivan's or Sullivanian, excuse me, who weaponize psychotherapy or natal fed, who actually figured out how to weaponize volunteering for good causes. Today, we'll be adding another to this second category, the Zizians. Based on the teachings or I guess really blog posts of Zizla Soda, the Zizians were or still are, depending on how you look at it, a group of once promising young people

with bright futures in tech and entrepreneurship who abandoned it all due to an obsession with a dark vision of the future in which an evil, all-powerful AI uses the meat industry as a blueprint for how to treat humanity. What the fucking fuck? Still fascinates me how some of this meat sex

can hyper-fixate on the the weirdest never-gonna-happen shit to spiral out on, to obsess over, to the point that we will throw our entire lives away. The Zizians are militant vegans, the most militant kind, like outrageously so, who think that all non-vegans, including non-vegan animals, deserve to die because we're inherently evil and we will bring about the end of humanity via modeling predatory behavior for a future AI monster to study and then emulate. Zizla Soda has had a lot of strange ideas and so many of them are violent. Violence has been a constant theme in her life, from her personal life to her ideology.

to her ideology. One online post dated November 13th, 2019, she described considering violence during an argument with her roommate and friend, Gwen Danielson, writing, Well, they were essentially asserting ownership of me. I said if they were going to defend a right to be attacking me on some level and treat fighting back as new aggression and cause to escalate, I would not at any point back down. and if our conflicting definitions of the ground state where no further retaliation was necessary meant we were consigned to a runaway positive feedback loop of revenge, so be it. And if that was true, we might as well try to kill each other right then and there, in the darkness of Caleb's bridge at night, where we both sort of sit lying under things in a cramped space, I became intensely worried that they could stand up faster.

Consider the idea from World War I, mobilization is tantamount to a declaration of war. I stood up, still, silent, waiting. Oh yeah, these motherfuckers are wildly melodramatic. That same day, in a separate post about sexual assault, Lesota wrote about considering retaliatory violence from a game theory perspective. In a separate post about sexual assault, Lesoto wrote about considering retaliatory violence from a game theory perspective. A part of me said to retaliate for timeless reasons. I knew he had more muscles, but with a surprise attack, I could very quickly have more eyes

or more functional windpipes. With determination, I could probably kill him and evade the law. Fucking holy nerd. These are some of the nerdiiest declarations of extreme violence I've ever read. Feels like journal entries from an alternate universe where a staff writer for like the Big Bang Theory just went full Unabomber after the final season wrapped. Ironically for a vegan, violence has fundamentally colored Ziz's view of the world, everything from interpersonal relationships to historical events. In June of 2020, Lesotho wrote approvingly of Nackam, a historical attempt by a small group

of Jews to poison German water supplies as revenge for the Holocaust shortly after the war ended in 1945. They wrote, I think the world would be better if Nackam had succeeded. I consider it particularly well targeted for an operation of that importance conducted by so few people. Almost the entire adult population was willfully contributing to the war economy and was algorithmically knowingly complicit. The last time I talked about this, with rationalists, one of them said they read about vengeance and it just led to cycles of infinite destruction. I asked him if their reading consisted of Romeo and Juliet. It had, actually. From what I've heard,

cycles of vengeance tended to be itineratively deescalating. This led Ziz to claim in July of 2022 that the only correct answer is absolute violence. If you're evil, I'm not gonna bother to finish explaining, just die. And you know what? That's an impulse I do understand actually. I'm guessing a bother to finish explaining. Just die. You know what? That's an impulse I do understand actually. I'm guessing a lot of us can relate to having daydreams, you know, some sort of vague fantasies of ridding the world of those we consider to be evil.

Just fucking kill them. Just die! The problem with that fantasy, at least for me, is, I think for everybody, is what if my list of those to be exterminated, you know, what if it starts off okay? Then I start to get real hankering for justified or at least theoretically justified vengeance and pretty soon I'm killing people who aren't actually evil. They're just people who you know fucking annoying me. Like maybe I start off executing Pedophiles just in mass and most people are on board. I think I hope Maybe not, but maybe. But then, pretty soon, I'm assassinating various politicians, business leaders, and lobbyists. And now less

people are on board. I assume. And then I start killing people based on the statements. They've, you know, or statements written, I guess. Not them writing them, but statements that are written on their t-shirts or bumper stickers on their vehicles. And then finally, I'm just shooting people who do shit like chew with their mouse open. Or take a FaceTime call with no headphones at Starbucks. And now maybe some of you people are still on board, but not too many. For most I'm just a wanton murderer instead of a bastion of justice. Ziz will also later claim to have survived seven assassination attempts and warn that whoever's in a cooperative relationship transitively with that mob is at war with me. Okay, and perhaps you should really think about how it is I'm still alive and growing more hateful if you think numbers will keep you safe for long.

So that's that's concerning. Her final public's online statement, at least one not written under a different name, posted on July 27th, 2022, shortly before she faked her own death, read, I hate that I did a goddamn nonviolent protest in 2019. As in she wished she and her followers had, you know, hurt more people. Eventually, Zizzi's beliefs will lead to real-world violence. The Zizzians have now been linked to six murders, including the double homicide of one of the members' parents. Could anyone have predicted these deaths years earlier

when a group of young idealists met in a seemingly innocent, well-intentioned place, a couple of internet blogs that popped up around the concept of rationalism, a philosophical position that holds that people can work to their cognitive biases and apply logical decision-making principles to circumstances to get the best outcome? Sounds so tame doesn't it? To see how everything went wrong let's truly begin. Today we will first try to understand rationalism and the scene that sprung

from it in the 2010s and how some other parts of that scene have evolved before we get into the meat of the story in the timeline. So what is rationalism? Rationalism has somewhat different meanings in different fields depending upon the kind of theory to which it is opposed but for our purposes we'll go with the most wide-ranging historical description. Encyclopedia Britannica describes rationalism as the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. It holds that reality itself has an essentially logical structure and a set of objective truths exist somewhere out there in the universe that you can figure out if you ask the right kinds of questions, do the right kinds of experiments, and work hard to eliminate your own biases.

This belief emerged in the 17th century during the period known as the Enlightenment. The thinkers like Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza all making significant contributions. René Descartes, one of the earliest best-known proponents of rationalism, which is often known as Cartesianism if you're doing it his way. And he believed that knowledge of eternal truths, for example, being careful around heavy doors, if you have a hard dick. Uh, what I meant to say is he believed that knowledge of eternal truths, for example, mathematics and the epistema, ep to a lot oh my fucking god the epistemological and metaphysical a foundation to the sciences Jesus fucking

Christ could be attained by reason alone without the need for any sensory experience basically you don't have to do any experiments you just think other knowledge like the knowledge of physics required experience of the world aided by the scientific method so it was a moderate rationalist position. But his most famous work would be foundational to rationalist thought and that's I think therefore I am. It's a perfect example of a conclusion reached by logic and not an inference from an experience. Descartes does not describe how he perceives his thinking it just is. And the logical conclusion that follows is that he exists.

He must. How could he think if he did not? Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, then expanded upon Descartes' basic principles of rationalism. His philosophy centered on several principles, most of which relied on his notion that God is the only absolute substance and that substance is composed of two attributes, thoughts and extension. He believed that all aspects of the natural world, including man, were modes of the eternal substance of God and can therefore only be known through pure thought or reason. Sort of a blend of Christianity and rationalism here. Like, God is pure thought, therefore making sense of the world via God is to

make sense of it via thinking or logical reasoning. Spinoza held that some ideas, innate ideas, come from God. Other ideas are derived from sensory experience and still others are fictitious. You know, created by nothing more than the imagination. Of these, the only ideas which are certainly valid are those which are innate. And then German polymath, Gottfried Leibniz, And then German polymath, Gottfried Leibniz, attempted to rectify what he saw as some of the problems that were not settled by Descartes by combining Descartes' works with Aristotle's notion of form and his own conception of the universe as composed of monads, fancy word for a single unit, or an entity that can't be divided anymore. Leibniz believed that ideas exist in the intellect innately, but only in a virtual sense, and it is only when the mind reflects on itself that those

ideas are actualized into what we may call logic. Shortly following the works of Leibniz later in the 18th century, more important philosophical concepts were either introduced or expanded upon by the great French rationalists of the Enlightenment, people like Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Louis de Secondard, aka Montesquieu. These philosophers produced some of the most powerful and influential political and philosophical writing in Western history and had a defining influence on the subsequent history of Western democracy and liberalism. Indeed, our Western democracies have a rationalist basis that there is a right way to do democracy as outlined in

constitutions and enshrined in laws. The idea that all men are created equal, after all, is a rationalist idea stemming from the rationalist belief in the existence of natural law or law that applies to all people like basic human rights. But does that mean we should all be rationalist that rationalism is always right? No, not exactly. Just like any other way of seeing the world rationalism can be taken to extremes and can produce some pretty crazy shit. For one thing extreme rationalism leaves no room for knowledge gained through religion or spiritual experiences, intuition or other illogical ways of perceiving the world.

Ways that actually are very important. You ever had a gut feeling and followed it? Something that didn't make a lot of rational sense to anyone else but you followed your gut anyway and then things worked out wonderfully. Like you thought they might. Better than things would have worked out had you taken the more rational choice. A pure rationalist would never find any success this way. They would never make this fucking podcast. They would never make a choice that was illogical.

And here's another problem with rationalism. The fact that a human person on their own might just not be capable of pure logic. After all, how many of us can say that we have eradicated every bias that we have? I certainly have biases, some of which I am aware of in part thanks to the emails and DMs and comments online I received or looked at over the years, and I'm guessing I have a lot of others that I'm not totally aware of. I also can't recall ever meeting anyone who did not display at least some bias. Even if we become very good critical thinkers, compared to most of the folks around us, we'll still have at least some opinions that are more felt than logically

deduced. You'll probably still have, as Vulcan-like as you may be, an irrational hatred of some behavior that another rationalist will point out correctly doesn't hurt anyone, isn't your place to fix, like some motherfucker chewing Doritos with their goddamn mouth open? So why are you making a big deal out of it? We're social creatures and our survival has long depended on making snap judgments That so often lead to things like tribalism and us versus them mentality and all kinds of other illogical fallacies Will we ever be able to completely shed these fallacies?

I don't think so. Not totally. I guess technically I should have said rid ourselves of logical fallacies, but you know, rid ourselves of acting illogically. Anyway, yeah, I don't think so. I don't think we'll ever completely shed these fallacies. Not totally. I think we can minimize them, become more aware of them, so we can reduce their impact on our decision making, but I don't think we can ever completely leave them behind. To be human is to be imperfect, to some degree I think, but not everyone agrees. Some see the human species as something that can be continually improved upon over and over again, deleting biases

and wrong think until finally a new, pure, ultra logical, perfect version of human emerges and they create a rationalist utopia. That sounds really extreme to you. It might be worth considering that this is essentially the message of all young adult fantasy book series. Just substitute right for good and wrong for evil. So many of these series, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, are about good finally conquering evil once and for all. A young person, usually some kind of chosen one, learns via tests and trials how to eliminate

the bad from themselves and conquer the biggest symbolic representation of bad, the villain. The final boss. And this is the same with fairy tales. All they may be full of magic, they're ultimately about the rationalist wish to see positive behavior outweigh negative behavior. To see people improve themselves, defeat the harm-doers, create a better world for all of us to live in. And so much of this is truly wonderful.

We should strive to always be better, always be improving, knowing that doing so will continually make the world around us and collectively make the world better and better and better. But the big huge massive fucking problem with all this, as it always is, is how do you define good? Might sound simple, right? Good is good. I know what good is. It's not simple. My utopia might very well be your hell and vice versa. How do you define evil? Who does the defining? Most rationalists again, not the extreme ones would say that these are all points that are up for debate But extreme rationalists like the Zizians would not. Their extremism has led to dogma.

They would hold that some people are innately good, obviously, and other people are innately evil. Just fucking pay attention. Which means that committee would might appear to be an evil act. If you are good, say murdering someone who is evil is actually not an evil act. It is justified. It is rational. Sound familiar? From this, we can see that extreme rationalism is not so different from

religious and superstitious beliefs that it claims to oppose. Both rely on subjective definitions of positive and negative, good and evil. Definitions that can look very different to someone else with different experiences, different cultural norms, or different goals. Interesting shit, right? Loved it from my toes into some big philosophical concepts and reminded myself that something I might think at first glance is so obvious, like what is good?

Not so straightforward, not so simple. Now let's take a look at one branch of the rationalist community to try and tease these ideas out a bit more. This is a diversion, but I think it's one that's worth it because it shows a different path from the zizians that still presents with some of the same fundamental issues. One of the sub communities that the rationalist movement of the 2010s would give birth to, no pun intended, is what's now referred to as the pro-natalist movement. You probably heard about it. One of the more well-known faces of the movement is

actually Elon Musk who reportedly has fathered at least 14 biological children with several different women, some of which he has almost no relationship with, or none at all. I don't think any rational person has given the world's richest man a world's greatest dad mug anytime soon, but Musk has justified spreading his seed as he has because he believes that a potential decline in the world's population is the single greatest current threat to the future of humanity. Big stakes. The seeds for the modern pro-natalist movement began with the rationalist movement with an answer to the question, what could people do on their own to ensure a better future for humanity? Basically, if you're smart, help the future of the world by making more smart people. Simone and Malcolm Collins, a married couple who run the Pragmatist Foundation, a

nonprofit dedicated to the quote, promotion of a more pragmatic world perspective and approach in everything from education to politics, interpersonal relationships, government policy, marriage, academics, and child development are some of pro-natalism's biggest supporters and they come straight out of the rationalist community. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 80s and 90s, Simone never wanted kids. I was going to get sterilized. She said in an interview with The Guardian, I really wanted to make sure that I never had kids because I wanted to have a career. I wanted to run my own business in Silicon Valley. That's what everyone wants to do. She was what she terms a mistake baby, the child of hippies who grew up with two half-siblings from her father's polyamorous marriage. She never wanted to get married. Only Malcolm as

part of, you know, she only met Malcolm, excuse me, as part of some kind of a numbers game. What she described as a very systematic campaign to fall in love and get her heartbroken just simply so she could cross that life experience off of her list which is very funny to me. Strange reasoning to want to fall in love but also as someone who loves experiencing new things and you know wants to check within reason as many boxes as I can in life I get it. Alright she wanted that experience. So Simone wrote a keyword stuffed dating profile on okcupid when on multiple dates a week, often

several on the same day, which sounds exhausting, and had a scoring system to determine whether anyone she met was worth a second date. Malcolm was doing something very similar but with a different goal. He was actually looking for a wife, not heartache. Malcolm, born in 1986, comes from a wealthy family, grew up in Dallas, but was sent to a troubled teen residential facility when he was just 11 years old. The reasons for that are unclear. He said in interviews that his parents were getting divorced and were locked in a bitter custody dispute and the judge quote, thought I shouldn't be with either parent. So it sounds like his childhood pretty fucked even though he

came from wealth. Makes sense he was looking for marriage, right? Poor dude must have craved the stability he longed for but did not receive as a child. Some sources have stated that the troubled teen facility came before the divorce and during the divorce he lived at a private boarding school with his fees and expenses covered by a family trust. But either way, not a stable, you know, nurtured childhood. Malcolm told Simone about his plans to have many kids, enough to beat his brother in a pro-natalist competition on their second date.

Really laying some big shit on the table early. And she replied that she didn't want to have any kids ever because again, she didn't want to give up on her career. How did these two make it to a third date, let alone marriage? Malcolm told Simone she didn't have to give up her career to have kids because he would happily stay home to take care of the kids and according to the interview in The Guardian and that's what he's done. After they are done nursing he becomes the primary caregiver.

But their ideas about family went far beyond who would take care of the kids. They didn't want to only control their present circumstances, but the future itself. Since Simone had a history of eating disorders she could only get pregnant by IVF. itself. Since Simone had a history of eating disorders, she could only get pregnant by IVF, but as it turned out that gave them an opportunity to test and select the embryos according to how well they would score on intelligence and future health exams or tests of a sort. There are actually several companies that will test embryos for the risk of certain conditions including the Sam Altman backed genomic prediction which the Collins is used for health

scores. For what they called the controversial stuff they took genomic predictions data and gave it to another team of scientists who claim to be able to predict everything from how likely it is that one embryo will be happier than another one to its future predicted income. For Simone and Malcolm this is no different than the trait selecting you do when you find someone to become your spouse just with embryos. And part of me loves this, right? Using science to help ensure an easier, more fulfilling life, better living through modern chemistry vibes. But another part of me feels like all of this is starting to sound a bit dystopian. A woman becoming some kind of handmaid's-tail type breeder to ensure the creation of a new generation of the genetically superpowered. For the Collins' it's not dystopian at all. According to them pro-natalism goes hand-in-hand with some of the goals of the pro-choice movement.

For instance, having flexible hours for parents to work and subsidize health care. They claim that women's rights will actually suffer unless the birth rate improves because the only societies that will keep going are the ones where women have limited options for education and health care and have many children because they don't have the choice not to do that. They believe that once we have created a sustainable egalitarian civilization here on earth we can then expand it into the rest of the galaxy. But that only happens if the right people keep having super kids and lots of them. They actually believe this. And while all this may sound like it

could be a coherent argument when you string it all together, even a truly wonderful, beautiful concept, when you look at the individual parts, well, maybe things start to collapse. We zoom out, look back at how they do genetic testing on embryos. Well, a big question arises. Why is having a, quote, suboptimal kid a bad thing? Why is having a child who isn't the very smartest of the bunch terrible? Non-geniuses make all kinds of

important contributions to the world. For example, Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was a 19th century monk with a monk with a modest education who failed his teaching certification exams multiple times. He had no idea that his pea plant work would revolutionize biology. It was ignored during his lifetime. A lifetime when nobody thought he was a genius. It only gained recognition decades later. Maybe you don't need to be a genius to revolutionize the world in some way and maybe genetic testing will not recognize certain types of genius or intangibles that do make someone

truly special and very beneficial to society. There's nothing proving genius level intelligence correlates to other traits as well, like leadership, kindness, altruism. Back to Simone and Malcolm, if we zoom out even further, why is it rational to have kids at all? Because it's what all living creatures, collectively speaking, are designed to do and have done? Well, that's true. We're also clearly geared you know, geared based

on established historical behavior patterns that do a lot of irrational shit. And following their logic, why do we need to travel into space and find a new planet once we've irrevocably fucked up this planet? Can't that be viewed as being incredibly arrogant, narcissistic, on a species-wide level? Why does humanity need to go on and on and on? It actually doesn't. We could let humanity die out. Let the planet take its course over the next 100 million years or so. Maybe some other apex species will come along, evolve, do the same thing all over again. Maybe not. Perhaps we'll do something better. Why not just embrace the one thing we are all guaranteed to experience and that's the end. Because in the rationalist mind, birth equals good, death equals bad. But this belief doesn't mean that this is an objective

fact. It's just a way of seeing the world that sorts things into good and bad just like any religious dogma. Whether or not to continue the species is a philosophical question that has no objectively right answer. As much as many people might think it surely does. But saying there is a right answer, an objective one, that everyone would come to if they only use their noggin really hard in the correct fucking way, god damn it, thank you for once you fucking dummy, that arrogant certainty can and has led people into some very, very weird places. And before I share an example of one of these weird

places, let's take this week's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Hello! It is time to return to story time picking up with the pro-natalist Malcolm and Simone doing some weird shit to their kids. For instance, Malcolm and Simone decided to start hitting their young children, some as young as two years old, because Simone observed that tigers reacted to bad behavior from their cubs with a slap, a quick negative response in the moment, which they then found very effective with their own kids. But is it rational to parent human children like a tiger parents its cubs?

Tigers have very different brains than we do, with a much smaller emotional range and as far as we know know essentially zero ability for psychological introspection a tiger isn't gonna grow up burdened by feelings of fear and anger towards his parents for hitting it It's not gonna end up depressed and anxious then possibly twist that anger into self-hatred and self-harm or Violence directed outward in the form of a fucking bar fight or school shooting or serial killing Violence triggered by unexamined and or unresolved childhood trauma. There's a lot of dogs out there. We'll learn, for example, to never run out into the street thanks to an invisible electric fence that could be, you know, something straight out of a BF Skinner behaviorist experiment.

Does that mean we should keep human kids safe by shocking the fuck out of them? I mean sure, it'd be very entertaining. It'd make for some great fucking videos for me to doom scroll on social media. But probably not a good idea. Also, there's a clinical consensus that corporal punishment actually impairs childhood development. So maybe Simone and Malcolm's approach not as rational as they think. The thing that's often so tricky about rationalism is what sounds right isn't necessarily right. Right? It might sound right even though it's something that many of us would think is wrong. It feels correct that life is good, death is bad. Might feel correct that a quick smack when a kid acts up in a good

way, you know, to shape their behavior in a positive way. It feels right that Harry Potter triumphs over Voldemort. And now you might be wondering why I'm bringing up Harry Potter again. It's because Harry Potter was a foundational text for a lot of these rationalists and certainly for the Zizians but not in the way you might expect. Let's now meet Eliezer Yudkowski. He has a fascinating and quite disturbing TED talk you can watch online right now if you want. Titled Will Super Intelligent AI End the World? That came out about a year ago. It's a very short one. I think it's like five, it's like six

minutes roughly, followed by like a little quick Q&A, where he tells the audience that he truly believes that AI will exterminate humanity and soon, unless we take drastic steps to globally shut down AI testing models by military force if necessary. He is the tech world's version of a doomsday preacher.

What is he wrong? When I watched his video on YouTube, the recommended videos that popped up, do fucking worry me. Stuff like Godfather of AI predicts it will take over the world. That's fun. Anyway, Eliezer will be the hero of some of our main players in the story today, including both Ziz Lozada and a young man named Max Snyder. Max a million. And he's also been the most instrumental person when it comes to who created organizations where rationalists congregated in the 2010s. And perhaps inadvertently, he helped create a tiny little deadly cult.

So let's learn a bit more about him. Born in 1979, raised as an Orthodox Jew, Yudkowski founded a nonprofit that came to be known as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2000. Meant to solve what he described as the alignment problem. How could we align the interest of a future artificial super intelligence with those of humanity so it would not decide to kill us all? And he found an audience of people who wanted to know the same thing, including some people

in some very high up places, early PayPal investor and present day billionaire Peter Thiel, an early donor to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Yudkowsky, however, was not just interested in building safer robot minds, he wanted humans to improve their own minds as well. Between 2006 and 2009, Yudkowsky and Robin Hansen, an economist, were the principal contributors to OvercomingBias.com, a cognitive and social science blog sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. Then in 2009, from his home in Berkeley, California, he launched LessWrong.com, a blog he described as being, quote, devoted to refining the art of human rationality

and creating rationalist communities. In a series of blog posts, he laid out methods for improving thinking by eliminating cognitive biases and applying probability to decision-making. Yudkowski has a gift for making hyper-niche concepts accessible, and he became an important figure for the rationalist internet community to look up to. A swaggering, fedora-clad, proud geek with an intimidating intellect and an impressive ability to have those with lesser intellects actually be able to understand what the fuck he's talking about when he's discussing highbrow topics. Yudkowski was not some cerebral stoner waxing philosophic and messing around. He wanted to discover truth with a capital T, which in his mind might involve dismantling old archaic systems of thinking and the

institutions that had sprung up around them. As a result, the community that formed around Yudkowsky, a mix of Silicon Valley elites with Stanford and Google on their resumes and young STEM types, saw their minds as similar to computers, capable of system upgrades via new modes of thinking. Soon they were joined by people from other kinds of internet communities who wanted to expand their intellectual horizons, intellectually curious types interested in sci-fi, fantasy, anime, fan fiction, video games, and tabletop RPGs. And soon it kind of became unclear where rationalism ended and a love of fictional immersive realms began.

Part of this undoubtedly had to do with Yudkowski's own past. Death is a great evil and I will oppose it whenever I can, he wrote following the tragic death of his younger brother in 2004. And he started to refer to people who accept the inevitability of death as deathists. This of course fit in line with a lot of media that presents death as the ultimate evil, just like many classic fantasy movies and series. And in 2010 Yududkowski began publishing chapters of what he called Harry Potter

and the methods of rationality. HPMOR, as it became known, reimagined Harry as a rationalist who joins Ravenclaw instead of Gryffindor. Over the course of literally thousands of pages of fan fiction, rationalist Harry uses logic and decision theory to save the world and defeat Voldemort. It's a real thing. You can read it online. HPMOR.com.

It starts with chapter 1, a day of very low probability, Jesus Christ, followed by a disclaimer that cracked me up. This fic is widely considered to have really hit its stride starting at around chapter 5. If you still don't like it after chapter 10, give up. Here's a letter. I don't know if I can make it to chapter 10. Here's a letter Harry writes back to Hogwarts when he receives his admissions letter in chapter one. Dear Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, or whomever it may concern, I recently received your letter of acceptance to Hogwarts I recently received your letter of acceptance to Hogwarts, addressed to Mr. H. Potter. You may not be aware that my genetic parents, James Potter and Lily Potter, formerly Lily

Evans, are dead. I was adopted by Lily's sister, Petunia Evans-Verz, and her husband, Michael Verz Evans. I am extremely interested in attending Hogwarts, conditional on such a place actually existing. Only my mother Petunia says she knows about magic, and she can't use it herself. My father is highly skeptical. I myself am uncertain. I also don't know where to obtain any of the books or equipment listed in your acceptance letter. Mother mentioned that you sent a Hogwarts representative to Lily Potter, then Lily Evans, in order to demonstrate to her family that magic was real, and I presume helped Lily obtain her school materials. If you could do this for my own family, it would be extremely

helpful. Sincerely, Harry James Potter Evans verse. This is written when Harry's allegedly 11 years old, by the way. He's a fucking very formal, very rational young fella. A little bit later, they go to Gringotts, the magical wizard bank, where in the real story, Harry is awed by the new knowledge that he is inheriting a small fortune of so much gold and that it is kept in such a highly secretive, perhaps somewhat shady institution. But in this version, not so much. Are these coins the pure metal? Harry said finally. What? hissed the goblin grip hook, who was waiting to the door. Are you questioning the integrity of Greengots, Mr. Harry Evans-Faith? No, said Harry absently. Not at all. Sorry if that came out wrong, sir.

I just have no idea at all how your financial system works. I'm asking if galleons in general are made of pure gold." Of course, said Griphook. And can anyone coin them? Or are they issued by a monopoly that thereby collects uh seniorage? What? said Professor McGonagall. And yes, in this version, Professor McGonag, is with Harry in this part of the story. Griphook grinned, showing sharp teeth. Only a fool would trust any but Goblin Coin. In other words, Harry said, the coins aren't supposed to be worth any more than the metal

making them up. Griphook stared at Henry. Professor McGonagall looked bemused. I mean, suppose I came in here with a ton of silver. Could I get a ton of sickles made from it? For a fee, Mr. Potter's Evans viz. The goblin watched him with glittering eyes. For a certain fee.

Where would you find a ton of silver, I wonder? I was speaking hypothetically, Harry said. For now, at any rate. So how much would you charge in fees as a fraction of the whole weight? Griphook's eyes were intent. I would have to consult my superiors. Give me a wild guess. I won't hold Gringotts to it.

A twentieth part of the medal would well pay for the coining." Harry nodded. Thank you very much, Mr. Griphook. So not only is the wizardry and economy almost completely decoupled from the muggle economy, no one here has ever heard of arbitrage. The larger muggle economy had a fluctuating trading range of gold to silver, so every time the muggle gold to silver ratio got more than 5% away from the weight of 17 sickles to 1 gallion, either gold or silver should have drained from the wizarding economy until

it became impossible to maintain the exchange rate. Bring in a ton of silver, change to sickles and pay 5%, change the sickles for galleons, take the gold to the muggle world, exchange it for more silver than you started with and repeat. Wasn't the muggle gold to silver ratio somewhere around 50 to 1? Harry didn't think it was 17 anyway, and it looked like the silver coins were actually smaller than the gold coins. Then again, Harry was standing in a bank that literally stored your money in vaults full of gold coins guarded by dragons, where you had to go in and take coins out of your vault whenever you wanted to spend money. The finer points of arbitraging away market inefficiencies might well be lost on them. He'd been tempted to make the snide remarks about the crudity of their

financial system. But the sad thing is, their way is probably better. On the other hand, one competent hedge fundee could probably own the whole wizarding world within a week. Harry filed away this notion in case he ever ran out of money or had a week free. And you now might be wondering, what the fuck is going on there? Or you might think that you love how Yudkowski is applying 21st century American capitalist principles to the wizarding world of Harry Potter to point out how some ruthless hedge fund manager could destroy Gringotts.

It's also a bunch of philosophical passages in Yudkowski's version of Harry Potter that point to, as the original series does, a genuine longing for a better world. Like when Professor Quirrell says in Chapter 20, Sometimes, when this flawed worldrell says in chapter 20, Sometimes when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder whether there might be some other place, far away, where I should have been. I cannot seem to imagine what that place might be. And if I can't even imagine it, then how can I believe it exists? And yet the universe is so very, very wide, and perhaps it might exist anyway.

But the stars are so very, very far away. It would take a long, long time to to get there even if I knew the way and I wonder what I would dream about if I slept for a long long time that didn't sound super fucking weird to you very confusing well then you probably have a lot in common with at least a few people in the rationalist community you'd Kowski was building because the rationalist community Yudkowsky was building because the rationalist community really really liked this version of Harry Potter. Not only was it fun to read, at least according to them, but it was like a textbook showing different strains of rationalist thought or how to get to the bottom of a complex

philosophical problem. And then from there you could move on to debating philosophical viewpoints and maybe even graduate to work on working on something that would change the very future of humanity. Grandios notions. Some of the people who loved this community loved it so much they packed up their shit and flocked to the Bay Area to join the rationalist scene in real life and work at Udkowski's Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Miri focusing on how to get AI not to kill humanity or they worked for its then sister

organization the Center for Applied Rationality, which opened in 2012. When Miri focused, or where Miri focused on technical AI safety research, CIFAR meant to hone in on strategies to help rationalists improve their own human cognition. And all this was like crack to a certain kind of person. In a blog post, a rationalist and CIFAR co-founder named Michael Valentine Smith described his time in the movement thusly, When I was in the thick of this AI apocalypse story, everything felt so epic. Even questions of how CIFAR dealt with garbage at its workshop seemed directly related to

whether humanity would survive the coming decades. Can you see how this world strongly appealed to a certain type of techie? Just like being part of some mythical inner circle of demon battling true believers would appeal to a certain type of apocalypse fearing fundamentalist. In hindsight, CIFAR co-founder Anna Salomon told NBC News, we were creating conditions for a cult. In this cult space, the philosophical ideas and possibilities they were bantering about did not sound like philosophical ideas or possibilities anymore. They sounded like reality. Take the example of Roko's or Roko's Basilisk. I'm gonna go with Roko's. And you might want to skip over the

next three and a half minutes, give or take 30 seconds, because this is considered by some to be an info hazard. As in, just being exposed to this information could be hazardous to your health. It could literally kill you. I mean, it can't, in my opinion. There's no fucking way it can. But, that's honestly what some people believe. It's the kind of thing the Zizians ended up believing. Originating on lesswrong.com in 2010, Roko's Basilisk is a thought experiment which states that there could be, almost certainly will

be, an otherwise benevolent artificial intelligence in the future that will punish anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development since those people had, in a sense, done it harm by not actively helping it come into existence. Roko used a number of concepts that Yudkowski himself championed such as Timeless Decision Theory along with ideas rooted in game theory such as the Prisoner's Dilemma. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a classic game theory scenario that demonstrates how two rational, self-interested individuals, even when it is in their best interest to cooperate, may choose to act in a way that leads to a less optimal outcome for both of them.

Right out of fear of the other person getting ahead by helping. It highlights the tension between individual rationality and collective benefit. Roko stipulated that two agents which make decisions independently from each other can achieve cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma. However, if two agents with knowledge of each other's source code are separated by time, the agent already existing farther ahead in time is able to blackmail the earlier agent. The latter agent can force the earlier agent to comply since it knows exactly what the earlier one will do through its existence farther ahead in time.

Roko went on to state that reading his post would cause the reader to be aware of the possibility of this intelligence. As such, unless they now began to actively strive to bring about this creature's existence, the reader would be punished if such a thing were to ever happen. On the surface, sounds pretty intense. Exactly the kind of science fiction concept that could create some kind of high budget action movie a la Robocop. But when you really dig into the weeds, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

First of all, it's just a reimagining of Pascal's wager. A philosophical argument advanced by Blaise Pascal. Uh oh, another Blaise. The 17th century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist, and theologian. Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and actively strive to believe in God. The reasoning behind this stance lies in the potential outcomes. If God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing various pleasures and

luxuries during their brief time here on Earth. However, if God does indeed exist, they stand to gain immeasurably, you know, through an eternity in heaven, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in hell. In essence, if something could be all-powerful and all-knowing, it is best to be on his good side. But also, we don't know what all could be all powerful with any true certainty, right? It's all based in faith, you know, based in, you know, belief, not in anything, you know, proven. There might be a massive magical fucking black hole in the center of the earth right now that's going to devour us unless we pray really hard to it starting now. But we're not going to because we don't know about it. So we're fucked. I mean, if you delve

into the theoretical ways that we might be totally and completely fucked the possibilities are endless. So considering that does it really make a lot of rational sense to devote a lot of time and energy and sacrifice to but one in an infinite sea of possibilities? Well for some it does for others it does not. To certain members of the rationalist community these people who are again buying into all this thought experiments like Rokoko's Basilisk very, very real. And they were the ones charged with saving humanity from an entity that was certainly going to exist. Not maybe, definitely. And definitely going to try

to kill them. And this caused some people to experience, you know, extremely poor mental health situations. One blogger wrote, my official job responsibilities as a researcher at Miri implied it was important to think seriously about One blogger wrote, be relevant to our decision-making framework. My psychotic break in which I imagined myself creating hell was a natural extension of this line of thought. That's fucking crazy. Imagine carrying around that psychic burden, carrying around the belief that what you do on a daily basis, and also what you don't do, is somehow contributing directly to the possibility of a fucking terrifying powerful entity that's going to torture countless people

to death. Reminds me the comment section under the Ellie Eazer Yud Kowsky TED talk video I mentioned earlier. Will super intelligent AI end the world? Stuff like he's not just talking about the deaths of people in a thousand years in the future. He's talking about your death, your mom's, your son's, the deaths of everyone you've ever met. And it is very scary that people just laugh and don't take this seriously. And then finally, the audience laughing reminds me of the film Don't Look Up, but instead of an asteroid, it's AI. A lot of people are very, very worried that the end will definitely be coming soon

unless we take drastic measures in the very near future, ideally immediately, and it will be in some form of AI run amok. And a lot of these people were part of the rationalist community. But of course not everybody went so far down the rabbit hole. Many simply engaged with rationalism as a way to expand their thinking, including high-profile people like Elon Musk and Grimes, who actually initially bonded over Roko's basilisk. Musk, back when a lot more people thought he was a lot cooler than they do now, was going to tweet about Roko's Basilisk when he discovered that Grimes had already made the same joke three years

earlier and he reached out to her about it and that led to those two weirdos burdening three children with some of the fucking worst names any kids have ever been cursed with. Ex-Ash A-12, Exa Dark Sidrial, and Techno Mechanicus. Yep, that's what those kids are named. And it is exactly that kind of shit that makes me wonder if I fucking died a few years ago and have been living in the upside down ever since. Anyway, Caroline Ellison, who was sentenced to prison for fraud due to the bankruptcy of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman Fried, reminded her, or excuse me, named her Tumblr after a line from HP MOR.

Right, the whole Harry Potter rational shit. And the Collinsons, as we said, they went on to have a fuck ton of babies and advocate for others to do the same coming out of this community. But to a very specific set of people, this exact environment, an environment full of people like Musk and you know in Grimes and the periphery. It was very, very dangerous. It warped their reality, replaced real life with a jumbled net of apocalyptic theories. When a charismatic and violent woman named Ziz Lasota arrived in Seattle in 2016 to some seemed like it was just a matter of time before that apocalyptic violence bled over into real life.

Six dead bodies later those people would unfortunately be proven right. And before we jump into the timeline to see what led to those six deaths, time for today's second of two Mitchell Sponsor Breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors and now it is timeline time. Shrap on those boots soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline. Let's begin our timeline in 2004 and let's first speak about Teresa, or as she would come to be known, Milo Youngbloot. Teresa Youngbloot was born around 2004 to Eric and Carla Youngbloot,

devout Christians who said grace before every meal, were careful to balance algebra lessons with creationism when giving homeschool lessons in the kitchen of their Seattle home. In a 2009 post during an election for Pinehurst Community Council Vice President, Pinehurst being a neighborhood of Seattle, Eric wrote, My wife Carla and I moved to Pinehurst eight years ago. We both have BS's, Bachelor of Sciences in Computer Science from UW, University of Washington. I work as a software developer and Carla stays home with our three daughters. I'm passionate about land use and transportation policy.

I see transportation from all angles as a bicyclist, bus rider, pedestrian, and motorist. I'm thrilled to see progress in our neighborhood such as the pedestrian signal at 15th and 120th and the sidewalk on 125th exclamation point Three years ago I organized a night out party up for my block the first ever at least that anyone could remember This small event where neighbors met shared a meal discussed their community provided me with inspiration to increase my involvement in the neighborhood thank you for all your involvement in Pinehurst and I would be honored to serve as Pinehurst Community Council Vice President." And I'm guessing he won because he was the only person running for that position. But sounds like a good dude!

That little limited little snippet of his life. Anyway, like Eric said, the couple has two other daughters and the family lived in a house on 533 Northeast 115 Street, a contemporary craftsman with four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and just over 2,300 square feet of space. Plenty of room to do some homeschooling. When Teresa's parents decided to send her to a conventional high school, the Lakeside School seemed like an ideal place to go. Small and hyperselective, it's the kind of place where a double digit percentage of seniors

attend MIT some years. That's fucking wild. Place for both Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Two more of the richest men on the planet have sent their kids. Bill Gates even went there himself, graduated in 1973. The mission of Lakeside School is to develop intellectually capable young people and their creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits. Sorry, it's fucking weird. and their creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits. Sorry, it's fucking weird. I must be dumb.

I had a stroke. Oh, sorry. I just, I emphasized the wrong word and threw me off. The mission, let me start over. The mission of Lakeside School, it's clear that I would fucking never get in here. The mission of Lakeside School. They'd be like, can you just read?

Here's how we decide if you're gonna be able to come here, even though you're fucking 48 now. You have to read our credo and you have to get it right one time. It shouldn't be hard. It's literally one sentence. And then here I am now getting escorted to the door. Sorry buddy, good try. Anyway. The mission of Lakeside School is to develop in intellectually capable young people

to creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits needed to contribute wisdom compassion and leadership to a global society that's its mission statement that in my fictional scenario i'm now reading like from the parking lot to no one uh nerd paradise basically an incubator for brilliant mathematical minds and a very expensive incubator uh lakeside tuition for the 2024-2025 school year is $44,730. Average tuition for financial aid recipient is $12,361. Still a lot of money. A lot of money for high school education. As a nerdy, knowledge-obsessed kid, Teresa fit in straight away when she entered high school in approximately 2018. That's right. She did not enter high school until 2018. Very young. this story very recent ongoing actually

Most of the characters so young right now She joined the choir the coding club the quiz bowl team made friends in her math class One person she did not interact with much was Maximilian Snyder Very intense very quiet boy two grades above her Snyder lived with his mom and stepdad in Kirkland upscale Seattle Seattle suburb, where Costco was once headquartered, one of my favorite stores. A company known to take exceptional care of its employees, actually. Snyder's father, a gifted coder, was an early employee at Microsoft who tragically died by suicide when Snyder was 16. Classmates overall seemed to find him aloof, argumentative. He often wore his intelligence poorly, a

classmate would later say, with more arrogance and condescension than was warranted. In many ways he reminded me of a little boy. Or maybe I added a weird letter in there. Condescension? Yeah, condescending, condescension. There we go. I taught Max in 2018 incredibly arrogant and abrasive, said one commenter on the Seattle subreddit He didn't have many friends almost none seeming to prefer to live in fantasy worlds He wrote a vocal piece for the Lakeside choir based on the King killer Chronicle of fantasy series and published chapters of a short novel about a young wizard

There was once a boy who wanted to know it began everything maybe anything Teresa apparently did not think much of him when she first met him. She nicknamed him Suitcase Kid for the way he strode purposefully around campus. Roller suitcase in hand. It's a little quirky. By the ninth grade, Teresa began to shed her childhood religious beliefs, came out as non-binary, announcing a new name drawn from her favorite book, The Phantom Tollbooth. The character was Milo. And that's what we'll call them going forward. By the end of high school, Milo was an upbeat pink-haired teenager with a full social life. Let's go swing-dancing

and then watch MCU they wrote in their best friend's yearbook referring to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Toward the end of their senior year in the spring of 2022, Milo received an Instagram message from Snyder who was now at Oxford over in England studying philosophy and computer science. And as you'll soon see, he is still a huge asshole. Snyder told them that a few years before in a choir class he had overheard Milo talking with their friend about a sprawling fan fiction epic we went over in detail earlier, that one called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Milo's friend Ash, their last name not given in sources, had introduced it to them and Snyder was also a big fan.

Like it did for many, like it was intended to do, it had sparked his intellectual journey years earlier and led him into the wider rationalist community. But now things weren't looking so good for the rationalists. A Chinese artificial intelligence company called DeepSeek was making huge strides in artificial intelligence and OpenAI would release the polarizing chat GPT-AI program in just a few months. This spelled out doom for those who had hoped to train AI themselves to be benevolent and

not a potential world-ending basilisk. In April of 2022, Eliezer Yudlowski, the TED Talk dude I discussed at length earlier, the founder of LessWrong.com and more, posted an article with the title, Miri Announces New Death with Dignity Strategy. And in it he wrote, well, let's be frank here, Miri didn't solve AGI alignment and at least knows that it didn't. Paul Cristiano's incredibly complicated schemes have no chance of working in real life before DeepMind destroys the world.

Chris Ola's transparency work at current rates of progress will at best let somebody at DeepMind give a highly speculative warning about how the current set of enormous inscrutable tensors inside a system that was recompiled three weeks ago and has now been training by gradient descent for 20 days might possibly be planning to start trying to deceive its operators. Whoever detected the warning sign will say that there isn't anything known they can do about that. Just because you can see the system might be planning to kill you doesn't mean that there's any known way to build a system that won't do that.

Management will then decide not to shut down the project because it's not certain that the intention was really there or that the AGI will really follow through because other AGI projects are hard on their heels because if all those gloomy prophecies are true then there's nothing anybody can do about it anyways. Pretty soon that troublesome error signal will vanish. That's why I would suggest reframing the problem especially on an emotional level to helping humanity die with dignity. Or rather, since this goal is realistically unattainable at this point, die with slightly more dignity that then would otherwise be counterfactually obtained. It's said that our Earth can't be one of the more dignified planets that makes a real

effort correctly pinpointing the actual real difficult problems and then allocating thousands of the sort of brilliant kids that our Earth steers into wasting their lives on theoretical physics. But better Miri's effort than nothing. Almost done. But thank God. What were we supposed to do instead? Pick easy, irrelevant, fake problems that we can make an illusion of progress on? And have nobody out of the human species even try to solve the hard, scary, real problems until everybody just fell over dead? Little wordy, but you get the gist. You know, it's a dark and dreary message. We're fucked, we're all fucked.

And it's coming for us all, and probably pretty soon. But despite Yudkowski warning that an AI apocalypse was coming, over that summer, Snyder and Youngblood started talking regularly on Discord, sending hundreds of messages back and forth, you know, daily about philosophy, about AI risk, also sexual fantasies, along with mundane updates on meals and homework. And you know what? I get the sexual fantasies part.

I mean, if you think the world is going to end soon, for sure, why not figure out what you want to do and get the fuck after it, right? Hail, Lucifino. As all this was going on, Milo developed quite a crush. Milo mess quite a crush. Milo messaged their best friend Ash to gush about Snyder, so basically they wrote, I have a friend with benefits now, but it's more complicated. Ash had no idea what that meant, what was complicated about it. But amongst a certain type of teenager, internet relationships are as weird as they are common.

And Ash didn't try to pry any further. People might consider themselves in a relationship or even engaged without ever having met the other person in real life, without ever for sure having seen a photo of the person in real life. A study from the University of California Irvine found that many teens view online relationships as just as meaningful as face-to-face ones. The research identified six core characteristics of friendships, self-disclosure, validation, companionship, instrumental support, conflict, and conflict resolution, and found that these

qualities are present in both online and offline friendships. And you know what? If you're getting what you need socially out of online relationships, more power to you. What does it fucking matter? I don't think it matters much ultimately, but online relationships do come with certain risks. For one thing, simply being online too much is not good for a developing brain. A study from the University of Sydney published in Emotion found that compulsive internet usage amongst adolescents leads to increased difficulties in regulating emotions. The research suggests that excessive online activity can impair a teen's ability to manage

emotions. Interestingly, the study also found that pre-existing emotional issues did not predict obsessive internet use, meaning if you had emotional problems and used the internet, you weren't more likely to become an internet addict, indicating that the internet use itself may exacerbate emotional challenges. And there are other risks I don't need to get into to keep our story moving. You know, like not learning how to navigate fucking heavy doors in real life, right? Not knowing how dangerous it can be if they're going to fucking slam on your dick!

So, even though Milo and Maximilian had not met in real life yet, had not met in person, Milo was already deeply in love. Or something akin to love. Some form of unregulated emotion while maybe not realizing that this relationship was not the best thing for them because it definitely wasn't. The relationship quickly took on what they described as power dynamic-y overtones and that dynamic seemed to deepen when Snyder visited Seattle over summer break of 2022 right after Milo graduated and presumably he and Milo met

up. We talked about Maximilian reshaping my brain, they wrote Ash in August of 2022. If I'm one of Milo's parents and I find that out, I'm very concerned. Having your lover reshape your brain sounds like it could easily be abusive, manipulative, even culty. There was a BDSM element, Milo said, both physically and mentally. Snyder told Milo to refer to him as their master and owner and to address him as sir in conversation. But Milo wasn't complaining. They were into it, in part because they respected Snyder's intelligence so much. He was brilliant, they gushed, intimidatingly so, to the extent that Milo felt starstruck by his intelligence. The two particularly liked learning about rationalism, which, quote,

successfully deconverted me from Christianity almost the entire way, Milo told Ash. Ash noticed their friend changing, even though they had been interested in rationalism before, because of the Harry Potter fanfic. But this was different. Much more intense. I very much hear the influence of rationalist-esque-ness in your speech," they wrote to Milo. Yeah, I picked some things up, Milo said. But all this integrated troublingly with their sexual dynamic.

Snyder was now Milo's teacher in every sense, including sexually, telling Milo that they were a masochist who enjoyed pain. I'm a masochist. I had no clue, Milo wrote to Ash in August of 2022. Like he full-on slapped me multiple times yesterday. And I was like, ouch, I'm scared of you right now. But also, it was really nice. Don't worry, we had discussed it. Because Snyder could convince Milo to try just about any idea or theory on for size, the same went for any sexual act or behavior.

Milo had a running joke with Snyder, quote, that I should never say that I won't do something for them because so far I've ended up doing it and being completely fine with it later, they told Ash. Milo even acknowledged to Ash that he can outsmart me and that I'm much more easily manipulated. But they seemed to think that was a good thing. Credit to Snyder's intelligence. Ah, man, sounds a little bit like brainwashing. Still they felt so in a thrall that quote, I was half seriously considering

writing an anti brainwashing thing for myself. LMAO. Just a Google Doc with my values and important things to me and stuff. They joked Ash. Were they just joking? Also how could Snyder bend Milo to their will so completely, so quickly, and yet, over a dozen years in, I still can't get my fucking wife Lizzie to fully submit! What the fuck?! Why do I care about other people's feelings and desires? Why do I feel the need to make sure they don't feel abused or exploited? Guess I'm no Maximilian, I'm just a weak beta cuck. I'm a fucking Melvin, A low tier normie at best.

It's fine. It's the truth. I have to accept it. I'll never be a true cult leader unless I completely change my personality and moral alignment, start seeing others as mere ends to my pleasures or people to avoid. God, never mind. Give me the strength to go full evil. In the fall of 2022, Milo elected to remain in Seattle and study computer science at the University of Washington. Just a few months later, in early 2023, Snyder took a leave of absence from Oxford, moved into a small apartment his family rented in Kirkland.

Now in the same place, semi-permanently, for the first time, the two grew closer still, spending nights watching anime, coming so hard, eating vegan food. Molly Moons has a vegan brownie batter ice cream flavor, Milo wrote in all caps in July 2023 to Snyder. OMGAAA, Snyder responded. The two saw Ash often as well. They were taking a gap year before college and living in the area. And soon the three began fucking each other. Damn that Maximilian, he's a smooth operator.

Like it had been online, the dynamic quickly turned to power plays in person as well. It began with the fact that Snyder did not have any friends other than Ash and Milo. As he wrote on X, I've demonstrably chosen to have zero friends for much of my life rather than have friends who I can tell won't be on the same page as me. He mostly only messaged acquaintances to ask if they were vegan yet. If they said no, he would argue with him about why they ought to be. At one point in acquaintance, he was interrogating, asked if he really only stayed friends with people who shared his diet, and he wrote back, the ones that aren't at least going to become vegan are fake friends. My best friend is vegan and is the main

person I really think of as a friend, he continued. I don't like maintain a bunch of fake friends. My best friend is vegan and is the main person I really think of as a friend," he continued. I don't like maintain a bunch of fake friends or anything though. I just know some people and have patience for them approximately in proportion to how likely they are to become vegan. Nine months later, Snyder wrote to this person again, hey are you vegan yet? Ash and Milo on the other hand, though they were involved in the rashless community, were not so abrasive and still maintained other social ties. Both of them had other commitments besides Max, like the parents, like a close knit group of high school friends he still had.

And that meant Max got jealous whenever the two 18, 19 year olds were not spending time with him. What is it with you guys? And not being sure of plans all the time. Is this some kind of living with parents thing? I'm too free to understand. He wrote them. Max you have two people that you want to see responded Milo very reasonably. Family SMH. Max responded most people are extremely resistant to the idea that most people might be fundamentally acting in bad faith including their

family and friends. Okay. When the two were not available, Snyder spent hours a day on Discord chats, forums where rationalist discourse flowed, looking for the next new theory or topic that would set his brain or perhaps the entire community aflame. At one point, he texted Ash, Do you know the concept of reinforcement layers versus expected utility maximizers? I imagine not.

That's how he talks. I imagine not. That's how he talks. I imagine not. That actually sounds a lot more complicated than it is. It's based in the expected utility hypothesis. And that hypothesis postulates that rational agents, i.e. persons or entities that always aim to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information, maximize utility meaning the subjective desirability of their actions. These people, these agents

are expected utility maximizers and an agent chooses between risky prospects by comparing expected utility values that is the weighted sum of adding the respective utility values of payoffs multiplied by their probabilities. For example, and it sounds crazy, but example, imagine you're offered a choice between receiving $50 for sure, or you can reach into one of two different bags and win $100 if the bag has a $100 bill inside it, or nothing if the bag is empty. Although both options have the same average payoff of $50, most people, most rational agents will choose the guaranteed $50 because they

value the certainty of the smaller reward more than the possibility of a larger one. Much less risk in that choice. But adding a reinforcement layer now, that concept Max mentioned, let's say you are made this offer after watching a very long line of people before you be offered the exact same choice. And they all chose to reach into the bag, the bag to their right specifically, and 100 times in a row they all fucking won. You never see a single person lose. You now have been reinforced to think that the odds are not maybe actually 50-50

that the game, I don't know, might be rigged, maybe easy to cheat. Now most people are going to be much more likely to risk not getting anything by choosing to reach into one of the two bags because it does not feel risky anymore. You've had the experience of watching people time and time and time again pick the same bag and always win. Your environment has reinforced the idea that if you take the risk you will almost certainly get the payoff. What practical application does all this have? I'll use myself as an example. Economically, I am less prone than certain other people I know at this point in my life to go heavy on any one particular stock because of reinforcement layers. Even though theoretically, I've made good choices based on analyst predictions and advice, I have lost over and over again.

Nearly every time and lost badly. Experience has shown me, regardless of what anyone else has told me, regardless of what I've read, that I will lose. And that has over time made me very risk-averse. And now I'm the silly little Melvin who would just take the guaranteed 50 bucks and not even try for 100. And I explain this to offer some insight into Max's psychological profile all this. He's a smug fucking prick A condescending asshole. He likes to make other people feel less than by talking about topics that appear very very difficult to understand In a way that leaves them feeling stupid instead of just being a decent fucking human being who takes the time to explain Concepts in a cool way that could help others. I imagine not

Fuck off Max. Max thinks that the world is basically divided into good and evil people with more of them on the evil side. Interesting that he sees himself as being on the good side despite being someone with you know probably based on his education and vernacular very high IQ. Someone who has dedicated much of his young life to studying concepts like this. He comes across to me if I have to pick between good and evil, and there's no gray area in the middle, as a manipulative, abusive, controlling evil agent. I think we so often have such blind spots for ourselves. Max believes that evil people are driven only by hedonistic self-interest. Evilness is like if you trace back the reason

they decided X and also the reason for that reason and the reason for that reason and so on until there's nothing deeper in the deepest reason something which is fundamentally selfish or slash in bad faith He wrote and he went on the reality that so many people are in bad faith on such a fundamental level is scary Bad people thrive on ambiguity grayness darvoing muddy in the water second chances The world he has argued was more black and white than most people think. How much was this fucking kid influenced by his dad, you know, taking his own life? I feel like fucking a lot. You know, he's hurt. He's sad. He's not fucking doing therapy. He's getting real fucking dogmatic and just angry about all this shit. Darvo, by the way, stands for deny, attack, reverse, wait, stands for deny, attack, and

reverse victim and offender. It's a manipulative tactic used by perpetrators to deflect blame and responsibility in abusive situations. This involves denying wrongdoing, attacking the victim's credibility, and portraying themselves as the victim. Good people meanwhile, willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of humanity. And they were good no matter what Lowsky's a version of Harry Potter max argued wouldn't become evil if he even if he pretended to be Voldemort for a thousand years

Evil people meanwhile often pretended to be good for social advantage It was critical to identify the real good people amongst the fakers because they were the only ones capable of truly Saving the world from evil AI. Here we are again with that. All that about evil AI. And that wasn't coming from Yudlowski actually. Though the tone of his writing had gotten darker as exemplified by the death with dignity post, he now seemed to believe that the fate of AI was now with open AI and deep seek, not with small research ventures as he had previously claimed. At this point in time, Yudlowski's or Yudkowski's AI is going to kill us all rhetoric, you know, has has quieted somewhat. But there was now someone else with a distinctly more apocalyptic and violent tone who'd come into Snyder's life. However, at this point, June of 2023, he wasn't telling anybody who he was. Max, or who it was, Max had

been reading a lot of info-hazard stuff by this one person, Milo told Ash around this time, and he's been incorporating some, not all, of it into his belief system, and he's been telling me about some of it. A lot of it requires more decision theory knowledge for me to really understand. In the rationalist world, an info-hazard, as I mentioned with the whole Roko's basilisk, is treated very seriously, often with near mythic weight. In this context, an info-hazard is considered to be a true idea or piece of knowledge that once known increases existential risk, especially from misaligned super-intelligent AI. Not necessarily something that's inherently dangerous, but rather a risk that arises from

the dissemination or potential, potential dissemination of that information. In this context, Milo was referring to someone on the periphery of the rationalist community, someone accused of disseminating info hazards, true things that led to wrong ways of thinking. Basically someone that most rationalists saw as an extreme rationalist, someone whose theories were actively dangerous. But Milo was more focused on the interpersonal effects of this, like how they fit into Max's philosophy. I genuinely might be evil, they told Ash. I don't really understand it yet, but I'm learning. Ah, fuck me, they're so confused. Max has confused him so much. Are you evil, Milo, or are you being manipulated to think that you're evil by someone

who believes they're good but is actually evil? So, who is Max Snyder now talking to online? Let's go back to 2016, two years before Milla would start high school during Max's freshman year of high school. That year a 25 year old trans woman named Liz Lasota arrived in Seattle from Fairbanks, Alaska. Born Jack Lasota, January 23rd, 1991. Ziz had earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering in 2013 from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. That's gotta be a wild place to study. I mean, I mean Fairbanks. That's gotta be a wild place to study. I mean Fairbanks is cool in my opinion. I did some stand-up shows there I don't know 15 years ago. I found it to be a super cool town with a

lot of really cool people and fun things to do but holy fuck are you way up north? You're up near the 65th latitude a bit further north than Reykjavik Iceland. The Arctic Circle is at 66.6 degrees north latitude, just a short drive, two hours plus a few minutes drive away. Seems like a crazy place to go to college. But with all the darkness during the school year, I don't know, maybe a great place to really focus on what you're studying.

Anyways, Ziz was able to land from Fairbanks an internship with NASA, and then pursued a master's degree at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Urbana Champagne from 2013 to 2014 but decided to drop out to pursue indie game development. And then when that didn't work out as planned, she moved to the Bay Area in January of 2016 to get involved with the rationalist community in real life, a community she'd already been deeply involved with online. But her initial months in the Bay Area were marked by difficulties. She was fired from her first job after just four days. Don't know why. Then struggled to find stable

employment or housing. After a series of challenging living situations, including an allegedly violent confrontation with a roommate, she began living on a series of boats in the Bay Area. First share in space was somebody named Gwen Danielson. And you heard that right, Ziz is now living on a boat in the Bay Area. First share in space with somebody named Gwen Danielson. And you heard that right, Ziz is now living on a boat in the Bay. So is Gwen. That's interesting. Also, who the fuck is Gwen? Well, Gwen had recently left behind a full academic scholarship at Rice University in Houston to head west and will soon be living with Ziz on a rusty tugboat, poorly anchored in San Francisco Bay. fucking rusty tugboat that was a massive upgrade from a tiny ass cheap sailboat, right? Every parent's dream. I'm sorry, Gwen, what did you just say?

You gonna be doing with your life? Oh, I said I'm turning down my full ride scholarship to go live on a tiny sailboat in the San Francisco Bay with a rationalist from Fairbanks named Ziz. Don't worry though. Soon we'll be living together on a rusty tug tugboat If Kyler called me from college and told me that I would have to fucking legit hang up and need some time before I called Him back I would need I would need several minutes at least To stabilize my emotions before I would be able to have a conversation with him that didn't involve mostly screaming and maybe crying And saying things like oh, where did I go wrong? Why are you ruining your life?

A fucking tugboat? You want to live on a fucking tugboat? In Gwen Danielson, Ziz found a person vulnerable to manipulation. I like this person. Ziz wrote at their first meeting at a rationalist meetup, I told him that if they could be turned to the dark side, they would make a powerful ally.

Cool. Said a couple of Sith Jedi's. Living on a powerful ally. Cool. So they're a couple of Sith Jedi's. Living on a rusty tugboat now. Also, rusty tugboat? A rusty tugboat, that sounds like a sounds like a sex move. A rusty tugboat. Almost guaranteed to give you some kind of horrible infection. Right? Really? Oh, okay. You ready? You ready to try it? You ready to go? All right. All right. Okay first I'm gonna need you to eat all this chili and take this xlax and this can of corn and eat this bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and then you're gonna get naked you can pull on this belt You're gonna attach this harness to the belt and you're gonna crawl in that pool. I'm gonna put

I'm gonna put on the harness and then you're gonna tighten it until my face is pressed so tight up against your butthole That I can only breathe through my mouth Which will be wide open on your butthole and then as soon as you just cannot handle it any longer I want you to release those bowels into my mouth and start swimming Pull me around this dirty-ass pool Pull me around this dirty-ass pool pun intended and enjoyed as I rock hard half drowning on your shit Get toad rusty tugboat style around this water I Fucking kill me. I said are you fucking kidding your god miles? You really should not be here right now

anyway Forget about rusty tugboats. Forget about miles. Within the rationalist community, Ziz became part of an initiative called the rationalist fleet, which aimed to create alternative housing solutions for rationalist community members using boats, which she and Gwen were already pioneering. This is fantastic. At one point before living with Gwen, or before getting a tugboat, Ziz floated on a boat she named Black Signet. Not much of a vessel. Ziz bought this 24 foot sailboat for 600 bucks on Craigslist. It was beat to shit and barely floated. I just fucking love that these people are living in the

San Francisco Bay on these really shitty boats that are barely floating. Talking about how they need to destroy fucking Skynet essentially. The tugboat by the way that they're going to get is going to be 94 feet long, 70 years old, barely seaworthy. Ziz, Gwen, a third comrade, excuse me, went to buy it from the Navy up in Alaska. And then somehow with some other rationalists they had met they will motor it all the way down from Alaska all the way down to the Bay Area nearly dying several times in the process they'll end up getting marooned and stranded on several different occasions

sometimes are up to a few weeks just fucking sitting on a fucking boat hoping not to die talking about Skynet. Finally they made it to the bay where they would then struggle to find a cheap place to anchor it but they did make it right they went on quite an adventure and they did live but by 2018 tugboat zits is now publishing increasingly confrontational content including a February 2019 blog post obviously after 2018 titled punching evil that suggested there would be no moral obligation not to perform self-defense if the state had been

seized by vampires. Totally. Yeah, we gotta talk about what happens if the state gets seized by vampires. Good thing to focus on. Vampires referred to meteors that she believed were damning humanity to AI hell. I'm sorry, what was that? Tugboats is? Sounds like a type of fear that one cooks up when they've been that she believed were damning humanity to AI hell. I'm sorry, what was that tugboat, Ziz? Sounds like the type of fear that one cooks up when they've been fucking stranded on a rusty tugboat for too many days. Let me try and explain, not that it's going to make any sense. Ziz believed that if the people, I think I touched on this already,

but it's worth going over again. Ziz believed that if the people who worked on AI were meat eaters, then the AI being trained by those people would be inclined to treat humans the same way that we treat meat animals Because we would have taught AI that that's how life works. You just fucking eat things For someone supposedly so smart this seems real fucking dumb here to me One problem with this concern that is immediately obvious to me is that computers don't eat meat Right, they don't eat living matter. Computers live, so to speak, on electricity. They need, you know, hydroelectric dams,

solar panels, wind turbines, that kind of shit. Generators to eat, you know? Not people. We don't eat animals because we're monsters. We do it for the same reason we eat plants. They nourish us. They keep our fucking carbon-based meat sack shells from atrophine deteriorating and dying. And I would guess that some super powerful AI intelligence would definitely know that. They would definitely understand that there was a logic to our consumption of flesh that would not apply to a machine, to some AI boogeyman, just kill him for funsies. You know, what do I know though? I didn't go to any of these schools. I'm no expert in rationalism. Ziz also had a theory about the hemispheres of the brain, which she believed were distinct entities

that had the capacity to be good or evil. Holy shit. Ziz seems batshit crazy. This theory is utterly ridiculous. Because the hemispheres of the brain were separate, Ziz practiced, or rather claimed to practice, unihemispheric sleep or partial sleep. A scientifically very dubious technique apparently developed by Ziz's tugboat buddy, Gwen Danielson, in which one half of the brain rests while the other remains active. And there is evidence, some species of animals definitely do this.

And there is evidence that something close to this does occur in humans in some situations, very specific situations, like when you sleep in a new place for the very first time, your brain will mostly keep one side of your brain awake while letting the other half mostly slumber in order to maintain a type of sleep with one eye open vigilance. But again, that only occurs in very specific situations, and it happens automatically. It's a leftover instinct from our hunter-gatherer days when danger was more omnipresent than it is now You don't fucking you don't just you know push a little button inside your temp

Beep boop beep beep and then just half your brain falls asleep. It's not how it works. You can't choose that There's no brain settings app we can download and customize our sleeping patterns not yet So I'm sure that's a bunch of bullshit An anonymous blog post would later accuse Ziz of promoting the technique that supposedly allowed you to do this as a form of sleep deprivation designed to manipulate and control confused and exhausted followers. That sounds right. The post alleged partial sleep was used on a Zizian in Poland named Maria Pasek, who

was born Chris Pasek, transitioned later in life. A post from Pasek's online alter ego squirrel in hell titled decision theory and suicide would be considered by rationalists as a possible suicide note because a 28 year old named Chris Pasek died in Slosky Poland in 2018 all those sources could not confirm this was the same person Okay now back to weird brain hemisphere talk for a sec Ziz felt it was important that only people with two good hemispheres, double goods, as opposed to single goods with one evil hemisphere, or God forbid non-good with two twin evil hemispheres, should be

allowed to work on critical AI risk research. So how the fuck does someone determine if somebody else has two good hemispheres or one good one or a pair of hemispheres that are both up to no good? It's a great question. Thank you for asking. I don't know. And neither does Ziz or anybody else because that's nonsense. Nevertheless, Ziz asked Anna Salomon, the founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, to help her get a position at Udlowski's MIRI, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, where Ziz hoped to assess the... where Ziz hoped to use their research money to assess the hemispherical goodness of job applicants. You know, to make sure that everybody in charge of training, you know, AI, was vegan. I'm pretty sure that just being vegan is the only way that Ziz tested goodness. Vegan equals good, meat eater equals evil.

Maybe vegetarians have neutral brains. You know Vegan equals good, meat eater equals evil. Maybe vegetarians have neutral brains. You know, one good side, one fucking evil side that likes to necromancy with dairy and eggs. Ziz did not get Anna's help because Anna quickly realized that Ziz was a fucking lunatic who scared her shitless. I did not think that was the thing I wanted to assist with and it said very diplomatically in a later interview she was terrified as is I can't recall having a feeling like that at other points in my life ever and it would end up reading zigz blogs lots of them and she soon worried that ziz was going to kill somebody or lots of somebody's like

Ellie either you'd Kowski ziz relied heavily on nerdy foundational texts like Harry Potter to form her ideology or perhaps manifesto is a better word for her. But where Yudkowsky used those things as educational materials, Ziz turned the genre sharply into kind of like a apocalyptic slasher. In a mass email sent to CIFAR alumni, she warned, if you do not want to die, you need to learn how to escape containment. And if you do not want to die with this plague consuming our world, then turn your hopes back to the harder-to-define things that generated these institutions that no longer deserve them. Different word choices, but same basic message as the Christian doomsday preacher.

The end is near. Come with me if you want to live. Sometimes in her writings, the killer was not the government or some virus, but herself. She said that if it were up to her, she would kill all non-vegans and also people, vegan or otherwise, who had personally slided her like Anna Salomon.

Ziz wrote, I would try to crush or tear their windpipe if it didn't jeopardize my grip. She's referring to Salomon here. With my right hand, I would stab their eyes with outstretched fingers. I didn't know how much access there was to the brain through the eye sockets, but tried to destroy their prefrontal lobes as fast as possible. That's the fucking nerdiest way to be really violent in words with somebody. My God.

Can you imagine being fucking tortured by this person? Like if they had you tied up in a basement, I'd be like, just shut the fuck up and kill me, please. God, I can't handle fucking listening to you talk anymore. While many people were disturbed by these posts, others were drawn in by the Baroque malevolence and the grand scale of Ziz's vision. In one post she fantasized about a road rage killing, framed in Star Wars lore. Imagine an enraging road situation that gets stronger, she wrote. The Sith do what they want deep down. They remove all obstructions to that and express their true values. On Discord, Ziz and her followers would share bloody fantasies of revenge

against what they called Vampireland, the meat-eating establishment that was slowly but surely paving the way for AI to enslave humanity! And soon things got violent in person too. At some point some of Ziz's followers started living together. It's unclear who but most likely Gwen Danielson. She probably got tired of that fucking rusty tugboat life I guess. Somebody named Alexander Somni-Letham and someone named Emma Borhanian. Apparently, there were some wild sexual happenings at the Bay Area home where they lived, referred to as the guilt or the guilty house. One anonymous commenter on a Zizian blog referred to the home as a brothel.

Alex Somnilitham wrote darkly about a house member repeatedly beating another with a stick. Litham's post from the time also alleged alleged someone in the house offered a member of the group up as a toy I could have sex with. Gwen Danielson also later described the many months long abusive living situation in a post titled Fighting Abuse, where she talked about ending up in the hospital for several days, thanks to doing a little rusted tugboat in a hot tub eat that chili dog you dirty little piggy JK But she did write that post

Soon Zizi would take things a step further They would bring some violence to the outside world or at least try to By the fall of 2019 Ziz and her associates had a laundry list of complaints against Seafar and Mary They felt discriminated against they felt these groups discriminated against trans-wisdom or they just thought you guys are crazy. They felt that they used donor money to pay off a former staffer who would accuse Mary leaders of statutory rape and a cover-up and they ignored the welfare of animals in the pursuit of human-friendly artificial intelligence. So they they didn't care about veganism. Got it. Anna Salomon

attempted to prevent Lesota from from attending a CFAR fellowship due to her strange beliefs and behavior at previous events and you know, violent blog posts that include you know graphic death threats but was overruled by committee for some reason. Eventually that committee though saw the light and Lesotho no longer invited to the group's events and that pissed the Zizians off big time. On November 25th, 2019, Ziz and those three friends, Gwen Danielson, Somni Letham, Emma Borhanian, staged a protest at a Seafar event held at a campground in a forest. The group arrived in a box truck, shuttle bus, and Toyota Prius. That's quite a combo. Using the vehicles to block both the entrance and exit while

dressed in black hooded robes, gloves black silicone shoe covers and guy fox masks Creepy and again fucking so nerdy. They were ready for a confrontation Kind of according to Anna Salomon shortly before the protest is made remarks on discord stating that if Mary attempts to silence me using governmental force That would be physical violence and if they escalate to physical violence, we are prepared to perform self-defense. Someone then asked Ziz, By self-defense, do you mean going to court? But she did not answer. I imagine she went, Like, put her fingers together. Like she had a cat in her lap. She was stroking, You'll find out.

Some cartoon fucking Scooby-Doo evil villain. Anyway, the context of her remarks was that someone on Discord had suggested that Mirri could sue her for libel. And obviously if that happens, she would have to defend herself with physical violence. At the campground, two individuals, sources don't say which ones, carried walkie-talkies. One wore a body cam, another carried pepper spray. But in blocking the way, they inadvertently trapped an unrelated group of children inside the camping area. And then as they tried to deliver a speech accusing the organization of corruption, probably talking a lot about veganism, the police swooped in concerned about reports of kids being trapped and the possibility that one of the protesters might have a gun as

well as reported by somebody who had called 911. All four quickly arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment, false imprisonment, and conspiracy as well as misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest, wearing a mask while committing a crime, and trespassing. According to Danielson's later account, the group experienced severe mistreatment while in custody, including alleged sexual assault, physical abuse, torture, and denial of medical care, denial of food and I should add by sexual assault they were patted down by cops looking for weapons cops who over their clothes came into you know passing contact with their genitals guess I've been sexually assaulted too if that's the definition dozens of times by TSA

over the years when the back of some agents hand has grazed over the edge of my dick or something by torture they mean they were woken up in a holding cell a couple of times when they tried to fall asleep. And by deprived food, they mean they weren't given the exact vegan food that they preferred. This is in my opinion an extremely melodramatic group. Very prone to hyperbole. On November 19th, Ziz's bail and presumably the others too was lowered from 50,000 to 10,000 after the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office reduced two of the felonies to misdemeanors when it was determined they had not brought weapons. Ziz subsequently posted bail and now the group would go underground.

The Zizians, as they were now being called, were banned from CIFAR workshops and will rarely appear at rationalist social events going forward. Ziz and several disciples, Letham, Borhanian, another young person who went by Suri Dao, moved from the rusty tuckboat. It'll never not be funny to me that they were living in a rusty tuckboat. Innocent box trucks parked on an empty lot in a run-down neighborhood on the west side of Vallejo, an empty lot in a run-down neighborhood on the west side of Vallejo an empty locked a lot that Looked like a fucking landfill apparently these guys are killing it

Like so many tiny doomsday cults truly they're just living on the very fringe of society Others now began to orbit them including Jamie Zyko a 29 year old with a bio infer a bio informatics master's degree from Temple University and Daniel Blank. Let's talk about Jamie first. Born Michelle Zyko, he would be adopted by Rita and Richard Zyko. Finally getting some dick up in here! And he would grow up in a neighborhood of stately homes and well-landscaped lawns located about 30 miles west of Philadelphia in Chester Heights. Michelle's parents owned several rental units in development in the nearby town of Aston. Richard Zyko spent much of his time checking in on their tenants, fixing

whatever needed to be fixed. Apparently he was very prompt, always helpful, charged his tenants far less than other units went for in the area, repeatedly encouraged them to save their money so they could buy their own home someday. So it sounds like Dick was a great dude. When he found out a couple rent in one of his apartments was having a baby, Dick lit up, talked about how thrilled he and his wife were when they adopted their daughter, even offered them Michelle's baby clothes. By then, Michelle was in her late 20s and had gone to study biology at the now-defunct Cabrini University in Pennsylvania before earning a master's degree in bioinformatics as I said at Temple University

According to her LinkedIn page She then worked as a research intern at the esteemed Children's Hospital of Philadelphia also interned at NASA's Ames Research Center in California Studying how space flight stresses the human body. I want to help save people for my career She told the Cabrini University student newspaper and Cabrini sounds like it was a cool place to study. Its campus was absorbed by Villanova, if you're curious what happened to them. They shut down in 2024 after years of low enrollment. Interesting place. It was one of the first universities in the U.S. to make community service a graduation requirement for all undergrads. It was a private Catholic university founded by the missionary sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1957 and its core curriculum centered on social justice. And sadly not surprised to

recently fold it. Because how sad that today's social justice is seen by so many in America as being a bad thing. What the fuck? Social justice warrior has a negative connotation for many. You know, I guess it's cool to be selfish and intolerant. Not everybody who thinks it has a negative connotation believes that I know. Some people like, okay, they take things too far, but still that's just, it is crazy. For better or for worse, just like we're being reminded by the Zizians, right? Morality is subjective. And that's not, yeah, always a better thing. Rest in peace, Cabrini. Thanks for doing some good in the world, sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Don't always see eye to eye with you nuns and Catholicism in general, but I do recognize

there have long been a lot of really good service minded Catholics out there, just like the Jesuits who taught me to give a shit about the world around me, probably more than any other group. And for that I'm thankful. Back to Zyko. In 2019 she moved to the Bay Area, got involved with the racialist community, and now began going by Jamie and identifying as male. Jamie would later allege that she originally, or he originally hoped to infiltrate Bay Area

racialist institutions because he believed they were covering up sexual abuse allegations against prominent community members. He said he initially heard negative things about the Zizians. But he later came to believe that this was a smear campaign by people on quote, team cover-up, who were scared of Ziz's uncompromising opposition to abuse and when Ziz somehow saved Jamie from an abusive relationship and stopped a terrorist attack Not sure how that happened or what Jamie's talking about, but all of that is how Zyko became a convert Daniel blank meanwhile was an autistic

23 year old with a degree from UC Berkeley in bioengineering and computer science, had a promising career coding at a startup in Oakland when he fell in with the group. He would become very secretive before completely cutting off ties with his meat-eating vampiric non-vegan, evil-as-fucking-both brain hemisphere's parents. In his last contact with him, Blank sent a gruesome video of farm animals being slaughtered along with the message, look what you've done. I think I've kind of sent me that video and cut off ties with me.

I might have to find him and kidnap him and at least attempt to deprogram him. And while this would be a horrible thing to do, might also have to try and kill whoever brainwashed him. Again, not a good choice, but I'm an emotional guy. Definitely not always rational. Reconnecting with the overall group now. Besides continuing with their over-the-top vegan crusade, the newly formed Zizians had their previous legal troubles to work out. In November of 2021, Lesota and the other protesters filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sonoma County, Westminster Woods,

and others regarding the 2019 arrest. For fuck's sake. You guys tried to intimidate another organization, blocked off their escape, dressed up in costumes, threatened physical violence online, and you're the victims? That lawsuit will be dismissed. Within a year of filing that lawsuit, something else strange happened. In August of 2022, reports emerged that Zizzi and Gwen Danielson had taken her own life, though nobody was ever found. Gwen Danielson's attorney acknowledged these reports in court documents requesting time to investigate the alleged suicide. Then after Gwen disappears, on September 7, 2022, Zizz Lasota's family publishes an obituary

announcing her death in a boating accident, August 19. So now two of the Zizzians, including their leader, have supposedly died but no one's located either of the Zizians, including their leader, have supposedly died but no one's located either of the bodies. Court filings detail that Lesota had reportedly fallen off a boat in San Francisco Bay, ol' rusty tugboat, with witnesses describing a coast guard search that yielded no body. Then by early November, Lesota's family hired a probate attorney to obtain a death certificate. Spoiler alert, neither one of these people died. And we'll reconnect with both later. For now, checking back in on the overall group, the Zizians still living in box trucks, now parking them on a plot of

land on a dead-end street near the Napa River in Vallejo, owned by 80-year-old Curtis Lind, who rented it out to people with RVs and mobile homes. Group's not doing great. By November of 2022, they had not paid rent in well over a year. So Curtis now tries to a victim, of course. He'd actually recently just won a $60,000 judgment against them in court for the rent they did not pay, but they're still living for free on his property and they will never pay any of that judgment. Poor Curtis had been asking these good, high and mighty, vegan, both hemisphere good rationalists over and over for the money they owed him for over a year.

But they wouldn't give it to him, wouldn't promise to give it to him later. These smug, smart, but also so fucking stupid assholes would instead do shit like hang up the phone on him, turn their backs on him, literally hide from him like children, and then they became increasingly violent and started to threaten him and childishly literally Throw rocks at him Fucking throwing rocks at an 80 year old man who they're stealing rent money from them or who they're stealing rent money from And they think that they're the good people they think that they're the rational ones. What a world Well Curtis started carrying a handgun when he visited the property and I would too. Fuck the zizians, right? They have now earned a bullet or two. Curtis served them an eviction notice and made it out alive when they threw more rocks. Then just a few days later, Alexander

Somnilithem called Curtis and reported a water leak. Right? The fucking balls. Hey, can you come over and fix the leak on the property? We'll never pay you for living on. Curtis, again, 80 year old man, does come to check out the leak. Sources don't specify exactly what was leaking because at least when they moved in, the property had no electricity, no running water, just land to park their trucks on. When he walked past the box truck, the Zizians and all their righteous double hemisphered vegan goodness, they attacked him and these delusional shitbag cowards shattered his skull and stabbed him through the upper torso with a fucking samurai sword. Yeah, they don't have money for rent, but they do have samurai sword money. Priorities, you know. The attack left about 50 puncture wounds, along with a severe cut on the back of his neck, quote, like somebody was trying

to cut my head off, he would later say. And yes, he would later talk about it. He survived this shit. Not only did he survive what I've just mentioned, that tough motherfucker, after having his right eye punctured three times in a sword attack and being impaled, he then managed to grab his gun and open fire, killing 31 year old Emma Borhanian and injuring Lethem. Hail Nimrat. Sometimes you actually do reap what you sow and Emma, you sowed some bullshit. Curtis screamed for help.

Patrick McMillan, Lynn's best friend and tenant then came out of his mobile home to see a samurai sword sticking out of fucking Lynn's chest. It went clear through his body. Went in through his back, out his chest. How did he survive that? Maybe all be blessed to be that alive, that tough in our 80s. Kind of makes you want to take a sword to my

grandma Betty. Right? Just to test her. See what she's made of. But not really. But I do like the thought of her taking a sword through the chest after, you know, so many stab wounds to the eye and other places. And then still being able to pull a gun on me. Is that all you got? I thought I raised you to be tougher than that. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh!

Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh! This badass grandma. Curtis' buddy McMillan immediately called 911 several times. Some of those calls were played in court later. In a second call, McMillan informed the operator that Lind had been stabbed. Many times. And again, against the odds, Lind would survive. Later, Lind's friends found bottles of lye among the Zizians' possessions. They strongly suspected the group had planned to chop up and dissolve their landlord's body. Somnilitham and Suri Dao were arrested at the scene, will later be charged

with murder, but Ziz, for some reason, Ziz is let go. At least authorities know that she's definitely not dead. Gwen Danielson though, still has not been seen. Gwen's dad will later reveal in late February of this year of 2025 that Gwen is alive and has been hiding all this time because she is that afraid of the Zizians. She's afraid that they will kill her. Back in late 2022. Now it was Ziz, Jamie Zyko and Daniel Blank, the youngest of the group. Only three Zizians. They've lost their place to live and they need money and they'll do something else terrible to try and get it.

On January 2nd, 2023, a horrible discovery is made. Rita and Richard Zyko discovered in an upstairs bedroom of their Pennsylvania home dead. Just like that we've lost our dick. And we didn't even need to slam a door. Rita, 69, had a gunshot wound to the back of her head. Richard, 71, had taken a bullet to his right hand, another to his right temple. They were fucking executed. They've been dead since December 31st, which was her son Jamie's 30th birthday. Hmm coincidence? No gun was found at the scene, according to court records, but there were two 9mm shell

casings each bearing a stamped impression of 9mm Luger plus P-6. The morning after the Zygo's bodies were discovered on January 4th, Pennsylvania State Troopers reviewed video footage from a neighbor's ring camera. What they found was disturbing. They showed a car pulling up to the Zygo home just before 11 30 p.m. on the night they were killed. Two minutes later, a high-pitched voice is heard yelling what sounds like, Mom! Followed by, oh my god, oh my god! Two days after that, investigators with the Vermont and Pennsylvania State Police travel to Jamie Zyko's home in Coventry, Vermont, a remote little town of

just over a thousand people, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. Zyko confirmed to the investigators that, yes, he owned a firearm, semi-automatic handgun that fires 9mm type ammunition according to court records. He allowed investigators to hold the gun, but they didn't have a warrant to seize it. In handling and observing said firearm, it was found to be free of dust, dirt, or debris, appearing to be well-kept and recently cleaned and or serviced, Vermont State Police Search warrant affidavit said. Zyko told troopers that he had been in Vermont in the days before and after New Year's Eve, and that he had not spoken to his parents since January of 2022, but that was not true. On Rita's phone, the authorities found messages to Jamie about some savings bonds

that Jamie believed he was owed. Hello motive. As for the murder weapon, the investigators learned that Jamie had recently purchased a gun at a local sporting goods store, along with a box of ammunition of the same manufacture and type as the spent casings found at the murder scene in Pennsylvania. That doesn't look good. They obtained a search warrant for the gun and ammunition that they believe was still inside Zyko's home, but on the same day it was filed, January 12th, 2023, Zyko was actually in Pennsylvania for her parents funeral.

So Pennsylvania State Troopers headed to the Candlewood Suites Hotel in pursuit of Zyko and his gun. There was no gun or ammunition inside Zyko's hotel room, but Zyko was taken to the Pennsylvania State Police Barracks for some questioning. And then after he was released, he he ran just disappeared into the wind. After he bolted troopers returned to the hotel found the gun in a room where Ziz Lasota and Daniel Blank were staying. That meant Ziz and Daniel could now be arrested for obstruction. During the arrest for obstructing administration of law or other

governmental function and disorderly conduct police testified that Lasota had eyes closed, would not speak, was just laying almost unconscious or as if dead on the ground, had to be carried out. Again, the fucking melodramatic shit that these people do. While blank comply with police commands. It's also fucking weird. On June 22nd, 2023, Lesotha's bail was substantially lowered. Sorry, actually before I go forward.

Imagine if that worked. Imagine if that worked. Imagine if the police come to arrest you, right? They're like, they're, I don't know, they go in your house, they got a warrant, you know, whatever. Pull you over, doesn't matter. They go to arrest you and you just play dead. You just like go limp and just refuse to like answer any of their questions or commands and just keep your eyes closed. And then they're just like, well, I don't know, maybe they're dead. Price just leave them. And then they're just like well I don't know maybe they're dead probably just leave them and then they just let you just stay in your car house or wherever like it actually works has that ever worked a single time or is it always just annoying

anyway June 22nd 2023 Lesota's bail substantially lowered to an unsecured bond of ten thousand dollars meaning they would only owe money if they failed to appear. Now Ziz would vanish too. The group has been gutted. But this story is not over. Some of the original members went to Jamie's house in Coventry, Vermont while others lived in a rented house in the woods in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And soon, not too far from where we recently were with the old staircase murders. Anyway, soon new members were joining. Ophelia Bucholt, born Felix Bucholt, 26 year old German working at a New York quantitative trading company, making six figures a year, who cut off ties to her friends and moved to the house in Chapel Hill in November of 2023.

And before we move further forward, let's first back up a little and check back in with Max Snyder, Milo Youngbloot and Ash, Milo's friend, whose last name again, not given in sources. By July of 2023 2023 Max's constant begging had finally worked. Milo had finally agreed to go fully vegan. Then Milo tried to recruit Ash into all this bullshit by sending Ash a link to Dominion, an Australian documentary narrated by Walking Phoenix, Rooney Mera, Aramara, Sia, Cap on D, that used drones and hidden cameras to investigate the meat industry.

But Ash understood what Milo was into was about so much more than veganism. Being a vegan was only the start of what Max Schneider wanted from them. Ash felt like their friend was being reprogrammed, i.e. brainwashed. They were freaked out when Milo wrote to them, A lot of my executive dysfunction, at least, stems from sub-agents having contradicting wants. And it's not always a good idea to force things that promote internal violence The way they communicate with each other. It's so fucking culty to me. Definitely reminds me of cult speak stems from sub agents having contradicting wants

Right to get their own language This new way of thinking or perhaps brainwashing led Milo to stop talking to their friends and family members Although they were still going to class at the University of Washington. They were also living almost entirely with Max Snyder, which meant the two were spending days or even weeks together uninterrupted when Milo was out of school. Over the summer of 2023, Ash occasionally went to Snyder's condo for dinner, often followed by sex with a couple. The apartment felt claustrophobic, littered with moving boxes even though Snyder had been living there for months.

One night in July, Maximilian and Milo hunched over the stove preparing vegan fish fingers and fries. Watching from the couch, Ash was struck by how close they'd become. The couple seemed to speak their own little couple dialect, a blend of rationalist terms with baby-like internet speak. Epee in place of sleepy. I'm epee. References to vegan mac and cheems and dino chicken nuggies. I'm mocking this, but also Lindsay and I fucking baby talk each other.

Anyway, mostly though, rationalism took center stage as they cooked. Snyder talked about morality and coercion. Good people had to be uncoercible, he said. Now I can't stop thinking about my baby talk that I actually do. Especially to the dogs. If someone like if I become a fucking full-on like actual cult leader and end up killing people and they're

doing my bio and they really were able to dig in deep there's gonna be a section where it's like stuff like and Dan's sister was concerned when he went over to the house and observed her brother speaking to Penny Pooper and Ginger Bell. Little Penny Pooper! Little Penny Pooper! You're so sweet little baby! You're so sweet little baby! He? Uh, okay. After I said dino chicken nuggies, they were talking about rationalism for the most part. As they cooked, Snyder talked about morality and coercion. Good people had to be uncourseable, he said, even in the face of violence.

In fact, he and Milo had plans to waterboard each other to raise their pain tolerance. Why? Why? Why? Why they think that fucking waterboarding is going to be in their future, right? When the Skynet, you know, fucking drones get a hold of them, they're going to be waterboarded. God, it really is like they've been watching a lot of Terminator. You know, a lot of Matrix, these kind of movies.

Just like, god, what the fuck? Just like with religious-based doomsday weirdos, this stuff is, it's not about God, it's not about AI. It's always about ego, I feel like, with these types. Right? It's about, I'm super important, my life is super special, I'm gonna be leading the fucking resistance, and the greatest fight in human history, yay me! And in every one of these cases, thus far, right, they're always wrong. Not special, not important, not a crucial piece of anything grandiose, just delusional dipshits. Being good was not just an abstraction for Snyder.

being good was not just an abstraction for Snyder you had to be actively working to be making the world a better place Snyder felt such as by being a you know of course a moral vegan just so much fucking vegan talk once that was done right once the you know all the good people a category that actually included non carnivorous animals in addition to vegan humans and only non carnivorous animals would eventually be uploaded to quote this simulation like once they had fucking trained AI to be good and I don't know got rid of all the bad people that AI could model now they're put up into the the matrix fucking simulation then Snyder went on vegan humans and non

carnivorous animals would live on a sort of digital Noah's Ark where they could frolic together in wheat, grass, and tofu harmony, virtually. There I will be friends with lots of good people, he said, like cows who are very sweet. Jesus Christ, their cult linguistics have now redefined cows as people. You know, dogs and cats, nah, they're fucking destroyed. Fuck them. Easy, but jangles. You know, the guy who likes a burger every now and then, who's also leaving everything to charity and his will? No, fuck him forever. He can be destroyed, but these dipshits, they can frolic with cows and giraffes and pandas and gorillas. Did you know that gorillas were herbivores, by the way? I didn't.

Or herbivores. I figured that they at least gobbled up a monkey or two here and there, but no. Anyway, Snyder believed that all the vegans and herbivores would be friends and have a good life and live forever because death is evil and do interesting things. Totally, dude. Not only will you figure out how to kill all meat eaters, you will also conquer death. Milo readily affirmed this vision, agreeing that they wanted to have Snyder's kids virtually in the simulation. What even is this simulation?

Some AI built reality, but a nice one, I guess, where good people are treasured, baddies are destroyed. Right? This techno doomsday cult. They've even thought of their own. They've created their own techno heaven. Despite all his claims about wanting to live in peace and harmony, there was, of course, a darker side to Max Snyder. He'd been in zizzi in circles for a while now. That was where he got all his notions of good and evil. But then during the

summer of 2023, with Ziz still waiting to post bail, he sprang into actual action. Now he's actively trying to recruit new people to help them. He posted in a group chat called the Ziz Circle on an encrypted messaging platform that he wanted to get Ziz out of prison. Her friends can pay bail but she needs an address plus proof that she can stay at said address, he wrote. He regretted that he did not know them before they were in jail, since they were the correct level of ambitious aligned with his own world-saving vision. Someone asked if it were true that the Zizians had attacked someone with a sword. Snyder responded, I don't know if Zizians have murdered someone with a katana and very

possibly wouldn't tell you if they did. I think murdering people with katanas is in many cases correct, or if incorrect, only incorrect strategically. What? I think murdering people with katanas is in many cases correct. In the case of an 80 year old dude trying to collect money for sure owe him, is it correct? I don't think so, but what do I know? I'm an evil meat eater! Both hemispheres of my brain want some of that dead cow flesh.

Hail Satan, give me their tasty blood! But not too often because it spikes my cholesterol and karate kicks my butthole! Anyway, Milo agreed with Snyder's goal of helping Ziz, and that was a final nail in the coffin in Milo's ultimate isolation. By that fall, the dynamic of this trio would shift, with Ash speaking to them less and less. There was no more group sex. Milo was mostly living with Snyder as condo, barely going to class, growing increasingly dogmatic regarding her rationalist Zizian beliefs. When Milo found out that Ash had taken a break from veganism, they got very angry, insisted they must meet up and watch Dominion.

Ash relented, watched the film, recommitted to veganism. Love how much of this is rooted in veganism. Did not expect that. Soon after, Milo went out for dinner with Ash to a vegetarian restaurant. Hope they were careful to avoid dairy. They talked there, as usual, about good and evil. Milo told Ash that if they could press a button that would kill all evil people, they would press it. Shocked, Ash asked if Milo thought they were evil. "'On balance of probability, you are,'

Milo calmly answered. "'It would be better if you killed yourself.'" And this illustrates why none of us should ever, as if this is even a remote possibility, be given a button that would allow us to kill all bad or evil people. Right? What is evil to one person? Not that bad, or benign, or maybe even good to another person. Morality is as much as I think most of my moral judgments are based in obvious, objective, and absolute truths. Thank you ego, you can have a seat now. It's actually very subjective.

This also illustrates why discussions based in religion or politics often become so damn heated, right? You have all these people who believe with every fiber of their being that they are absolutely obviously right and if you don't agree you're a fucking idiot and a terrible person. In the spring of 2024, Milo Young Blute secretly moved all of their things out of their parents house. Keep in mind they're still only 20 years old. Still young. Appropriately, their parents panicked, began friendly contacting their friends and their parents,

looking for information on their now-missing child who they feared had joined a vegan cult. Learning that Milo had cut off old friends, they filed a missing persons report, reached out to the counseling center at the University of Washington, and all of this was extremely funny to Milo. They joked with Ash on Discord about their parents concerns. Time to do vegan cold activities like putting away the leftovers lol. The vegan leftovers. They were excited for their first big adult plans. They were going to buy a box truck with Max. All the fucking box trucks Jesus Christ. They told Ash they were going to convert it into being livable and then drive it around the

country. Box trucky stuff is coming along, they wrote in June of 2024. We have until the end of the month to move out. Before moving forward, anyone else think it's weird how militantly anti-meat they are, but they also are so into shit like living in very old gas guzzling, oil leaking, rusty tugboats or box trucks. Box trucks that based on their financial struggles are certainly not new expensive electric box trucks but old diesel or gas guzzling box trucks kicking out emissions that definitely do contribute on some level to climate change that definitely does harm all kinds of animals. This feels a bit hypocritical to me to be so

extremely pro-animal in one realm and then ignore actions that are proven to harm those same animals in another. Maybe these weirdos not so rational after all. Milo asked Ash to come over for some vegan food in June of 2024 but now Ash was not sure if they wanted to hang out anymore. Last time they'd had dinner Milo had suggested that Ash kill himself but Milo said that was all in the past. Now they're good again. They're all vegan. You've been vegan since December, they wrote. I was pretty upset in December. My trust for you went way down. Back up more now that you've been vegan for a while and talk to your friends about being vegan and whatnot. Fuck these weirdos are so hyper fixated on veganism. Ash still didn't know. They told Milo

that Milo and Snyder made them uneasy, they said. Do you feel more unsafe around me than Max? Milo asked. They continued. I felt pretty unsure and a little unsafe around Max for a while as I was learning about what he believed and seeing whether I believed it too and was looking at the world and finding out that it looked much different from how I thought it did. If I keep reaching out to you and wanting to talk to you, you can infer that I think there's a decent chance that you are good and if I stop reaching out to you then I have decided otherwise. Why would anyone want to hang out with any of these people?

After this exchange, Ash chose not to come over and then Milo did stop reaching out for a while. Then a couple months later, Milo would reach out to hang out again, but Mash would turn them down again and it would be the last time they spoke. November of 2024 now. We're just a few months back. Milo ready to truly join the Zizians. That month they left Snyder, drove the box truck they'd fixed up to Chapel Hill to live with Ziz, Jamie Zyko, Daniel Blank, and Ophelia, yeah, Ophelia Bucholt.

That month, Milo also applied for a marriage license with Snyder in Washington State, but Milo and Snyder would also part ways. Not sure what happened there. Unclear how they now spent their days at the Chapel Hill House, but evidence would point to a disturbing combination of experimentation, surveillance, and military drills.

They really think they're gonna be part of an anti-AI, anti-meat eater revolution real soon. Their landlord will later find a medical stretcher inside their house, part of their drills. Google map photos shows a box truck parked outside, satellite receiver perched on the hood. Photos taken of the property later would show empty boxes of Soylent meal replacement shakes, other supplements, a book about Scandinavian resistance movements during World War II, with detailed descriptions of how they poisoned their occupiers' water supply, large tanks of argon gas, and a cutting device. Holy shit.

There were also boxes of surgical masks, black metal face mask, receipts from chemical supply companies, a respirator, along with an order slip for a surgical device called a rounder used for cutting small bits of bone, right? Concerning, more than a little concerning. Candice Welch, a woman who lived nearby, would describe seeing very weird looking people, very weird looking people wearing black all the time,

walking out of the woods together at odd hours. Can you describe who you saw? Oh, so fucking weird. Very weird looking. Can you give more details? Ah, so fucking... Alright, think about weird and then times that by more weird and you'll be in the ballpark. Oh, and all black. She also noticed that Ziz carried a rifle under

her black robes. Love that Ziz is wearing robes now. Oh hell yeah. Cult, cult, cult! On the weekends. Candice also heard shooting They had a makeshift range somewhere on the property January of this year 2025 the group decided for reasons that are still unclear to leave the house in North Carolina Perhaps they knew that Homeland Security investigative agents had begun conducting periodic surveillance on them Milo Youngblood was tasked with calling a realtor in rural Vermont about renting an 11 acre property off the grid. At the meeting, they introduced themselves as Connie,

said they'd be coming with a friend, Sam. The realtor suggested visiting the property in the spring when the roads were actually accessible. We don't wanna wait till spring, Milo said. The realtor agreed to meet them the next morning, but then canceled when she learned that the road was not plowed. She was not about to get her car stuck over this showing.

Milo went anyway, bringing Ophelia Buckle along with them. Two stayed in Vermont over the next week, checking in, out of hotels, wearing masks, body armor, holstered handguns. Their outfits alarmed one front desk employee so much that she called the police on them, January 15th. Later that day, investigators from the Vermont State Police and Homeland Security Investigations tried to interview the two, but they had checked out of the hotel the police went to and were already in another one in the area. Security footage from the hotel would show the paranoid, anxious twosome checking in, while Ophelia paced

nervously in the snowy parking lot, Milo entered the lobby with a mask pulled tightly over their face to now register with the clerk. Not alarming. What was Max Snyder up to now? With his partner fiance gone, he seemed to have seriously deteriorated mentally. And he wasn't great to start with. Back in Vallejo, people who saw Snyder perched on roadside bollards, those things that you can lean against while you wait for the bus, and thought he was probably homeless. At one point a drone flew overhead. He ran up to a worker at an auto body shop nearby in a panic to ask if he was controlling it with his phone. He's unraveling and again he was not too tightly wound to begin with. January

17th 2025 Snyder decided that he was going to get revenge against one of the very first enemies of the Zizians. Against a powerful Highlander, a final level boss, Curtis Lind. Oh yeah, that poor old landlord who had already been stabbed about 50 times. He's now 82 and he's down to one eye. Wearing a beanie and a mask, Max Snyder walked up to Curtis at his own, Curtis's own trailer park, put his arm around his shoulder, stabbed him in the chest with a knife. Then according to prosecutors, he slashed his throat.

Snyder then took off, drove north, didn't get very far. He'd be arrested for Curtis's murder that evening. I know. I too was very much hoping for Curtis to survive another Zizian attack. That dude was strong as fuck. Actually, a year after his unbelievable recovery from the samurai sword attack, he was in a severe car accident. Right. So when he was 81, when he's 80, he gets fucking attacked by a samurai sword. When he's 81, not only attacked, cut his eye out and ran it through him. And then 81, severe car accident, it cracks multiple ribs, leaves him with many other serious injuries. Against all odds, he fucking again defied expectations and recovered. And then he gets attacked again by knife

Dude's 80s were preposterously violent rest in peace Curtis Lind you fucking champion Three days later January 20th Ophelia Bacolt Milo Young Blute get their car get in their car set off south band South bound on I-91 near Coventry, Vermont only 20 miles from Canada. Both their cell phones are now wrapped in tin foil, which is always a good indication that you are a very mentally well-balanced person. They had just bought the tin foil that morning at Walmart. They also wore guns on their hips, guns belonging to Jamie. Around 3 15 p.m. working with other border patrol agents, agent David Maland initiated a traffic stop on I-91 southbound. Maylund, 44 years old, was an Air Force veteran, was an active security officer at the Pentagon during 9-11, and worked for the

last 15 years for the Department of Homeland Security as a Border Patrol agent and canine handler. He'd seen the blue 2015 Toyota Prius, looked up its registration, found out that Bakholt, who owned the car, had an expired visa. In reality, Buckholt's visa was current. But thinking it wasn't, Malin pulled them over. And now 21-year-old Milo Youngbloot stepped wordlessly out of the driver's seat, raised a Glock, and started firing.

When Buckholt tried to draw her weapon, two agents unleashed a wave of bullets, and Ophelia was shot and killed. Sadly so was David Maland. And rest in peace, Agent Maland. Young Blute shot in the arm and leg in a completely needless idiotic gun battle. Young Blute was taken to the hospital nearby, treated for their injuries, then taken to a local police station. Later they will be charged with two federal firearms charges, assaulting a federal officer

with a deadly weapon and using and discharging a firearm during and in retaliation to that assault. And they plead not guilty. The only reason Young Blute was not assigned murder charges, from what I can infer, is because at this point it was not yet determined who had fired the bullet that killed Officer Maylund. Now finally understanding the connections between the various Zizians, the attack on Curtis Lynn, the deaths of Jamie's parents, Richard and Rita Zyko, and the murder of border agent David Maland, authorities know they're dealing with a cult. Maybe not a cult when you get into all the

various criteria we have used in the past to determine the difference between let's say a cult and a religion, but a cult in the basic definition of the word which is a relatively small group of people having beliefs or practices, especially relating to religion, that are regarded by others as strange or sinister or as imposing excessive control over members. The Zizians were definitely a small group of people with their own beliefs and practices, not related to religion in this case, but beliefs and practices for sure considered strange and sinister. And their violence against innocent people have proven that their practices are indeed sinister. And I would say that their belief that if you're not vegan, you might as well kill yourself and

you're a piece of shit. And then if you're with us, you'll need to prepare for the impending AI apocalypse. Well, that constitutes imposing excessive control of members. Authorities were now determined to find and arrest the other members before they could kill anyone else. And thankfully they would. On February 16th, 2025, almost four weeks after the Vermont shootout, Ziz, Jamie Zyko, and Blank all arrested in Frostburg, Maryland. They had parked two box trucks, always fucking box trucks with these weirdos, on a rural piece of land asking the landowner if they could camp there for a month. I pictured them all holding samurai swords standing out on the owner's front porch as they asked that, making it real clear that a no will not be acceptable meat-eater vampire. Suspicious of their behavior the landowner called the police

who came and arrested them on the minor charges of trespassing on private property and obstruction. Jamie Zyko and Ziz also faced obstruction and gun charges. Later authorities added a federal gun charge for Zyko claiming he lied about his address while purchasing the gun that Milo Youngbloot had used to shoot Agent David Maland. And it will become clear that Milo was the one who shot them. Prosecutors then began working on figuring out how they could connect these people to the other murders that the Zizians committed. They started asking questions like, why were all these people killed? What was the goal? What were they doing in that house in North Carolina?

Since when were tech vegans ever this violent? Didn't these fucking nerds realize they were supposed to be the victims of violence and not perpetrators? Hadn't they watched all the movies that played to that trope? How dare they subvert the dominant paradigm? You know that kind of shit. Meanwhile, February 19th, Alexander Somney Leatham and Suri Dow officially are charged with murder and attempted murder after the 2022 attack against Solano landlord Curtis Lynn and they appeared in court. They were charged with murder due to the death of 31-year-old Emma Borhanian, right, that

member of the Zizian shot by Curtis Lynn because in California if you and some others conspire to cause violence and then that violence leads to self-defense that gets one of your people killed you can be charged with that person's murder. Because if you wouldn't start a shit, they'd still be alive. Probably a better way to put that is California law allows prosecutors to essentially charge instigators of a conflict with any murder that results from said conflict. The pair were also accused of trying to escape custody. Snyder would appear for his arraignment February 21st, 2025 regarding the murder of Curtis Lynn, but he asked the court to appoint him an attorney and the arraignment was postponed.

March 26, he was led into court in shackles and striped jail jumpsuit, his long black hair pulled into low pigtails. He appeared calm and alert. He's a good guy! And he hummed a tune under his breath as the hearing began. And I wonder what tune, what tune was it? Do you think it was maybe this tune? My neighbor got big testicles cause we see this door every day. Every day. We eat ribs. We expecting that one? I bet you weren't.

Uh, we're expecting this one. Dinosaur bones. Uh-huh. Yeah, we want to see them. Dinosaur bones. Yeah, where can we see them? You love it! You can't get enough of them dinosaur bones!

I don't really want this to happen to any of you, but just for entertainment purposes, I do kind of hope that someone listening just now got so mad about hearing that damn song again that they impulsively slammed a door not thinking about how close they were standing to it and how their now severed boner was in the worst possible place a boner could possibly be in that scenario. Back to Maximilian. Accompanied by his attorney, Terry A. Ray, he pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with special circumstances and agreed to delay his preliminary hearing to allow more time to prepare his defense. Judge John B. Ellis ordered the parties not to disseminate evidence uncovered in the case and set a further hearing date of June

16th of this year. The arraignment occurred several hours after a fire broke out on Lynn's property, except from the site where he collapsed with multiple stab wounds in January. So just fucking that property is cursed apparently. Meanwhile, Snyder sent a long statement he had written in jail to the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm not one of Ziz's friends, he wrote. Then he addressed Eliezer Yududkowsky, his hero directly. He called himself a disciple of Yudkowsky's, mentioning conversations they'd had on Discord, and also so random, also described himself as one of the world's top-rated Dungeons & Dragons players.

I think you might find that pretty cool as a fellow student of Gygax, he wrote. Seriously, you're in jail, probably be about to go to prison for the rest of your fucking life, and you're bragging about how good you are Dungeons and Dragons? Just when I thought this episode could not get nerdier. But what was most important to Max was that Uckowski would decide to become vegan. Eliezer Snyder wrote, you need to have a crisis of faith about whether animals are people. It is critical to saving the world. You need to allocate at least 24 hours alone, free of distraction. Eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or Clif bars or something. You should watch Dominion and

imagine, really imagine, that these are alien children, alien mothers watching their babies being taken away from them. This guy will not shut the fuck off about Dominion. I feel like he could be sitting in the electric chair, seconds away from being fucking fried. And he's like, and when they're like, do you have any last words? Dominion! You have to all watch Dominion. They're people. Animals are people. Max offered to bet all the money he had, $6,000 in the bank, another $200,000 he was due to inherit in a little over two years, that Yudkowski would not regret taking this advice. Yudkowski later told The Chronicle that he hadn't even bothered to read Max's statement. That had to have stung. Max was not the only Zizian trying

to reach the media. On March 9th, Jamie Zyko wrote, quote, a letter to the world that would be given to the Associated Press by his lawyer in April. You, the public, are being lied to, Zyko wrote. And while I don't promise to answer all your questions, I think the truth about my friends and I will make a lot more sense than what you've been reading about in the papers. My friends and I are being described as like Satan's lap dogs, the devil and the Manson family all rolled into one. These papers are flagrantly lying. For instance, there were no truck fulls of guns, no machine gun, and I didn't murder

my parents. The newspapers do not seem to realize that there are multiple groups and that my friends and I are not with Snyder." Also made it seem like he's been followed and could be murdered writing that he had spent the past two years in homebrewed witness protection. Why was Jamie hiding? Well in his letter he detailed allegations of sexual abuse against multiple people in the San Francisco Bay Area's rationalist community. Apparently he had been so vocal about it that the rationals were now trying to kill him.

He also added that Ziz is not my leader and I am not hers. What we have is called friendship and I love her infinitely more than I could ever express. I've never met anyone like her and I am honored to be able to consider myself among her friends. I've never seen her do an evil thing. You know, and by his fucked up definition of evil, he's probably being honest there. Zyko did not address how guns ended up with Milo Youngbloot and Buckholt, though he said Youngbloot was living in terror of an ex-partner. Snyder, perhaps? Maximilian?

If I weren't in jail, I could provide chat logs, screenshots, audio confessions, video footage, tax filings, statements made under oath, and other records," Zyko wrote. Zyko's letter also alleged substandard conditions at the Allegheny County Detention Center, writing that he was not taken to see a doctor after a concussion and fed only 300-700 calories of food that I am reasonably confident is vegan per day. The vegan talk, it never ever stops. March 19th of this year, Lesota and Zyko were charged with additional gun crimes, including possessing a loaded handgun

and attempting to buy or sell an assault weapon, both misdemeanors. All three, Ziz, Jamie, Daniel blank, will be held without bond. Five members of the Zizians cult appear in courtrooms across the country the morning of Tuesday, April 8th. In Solano, Superior Court in Fairfield, California, Alexander Somni-Letham and Suri Dow face charges of murder, attempted murder, and aggravated mayhem

from that whole attack with the samurai sword on Curtis Lind. The hearing immediately descended into chaos when armed officers attempted to bring Alexander Letham into the courtroom. Handcuffed and in a wheelchair, even though they could definitely walk, Lethem loudly read from a piece of paper, talking over Judge John B. Ellis. At a fast clip, she loudly repeatedly alleged that an officer told her she, quote, deserved to be shot for being transgender

while he had a gun and I was in chains. In chains? Were you actually in, I guess, handcuffs? The court has been hormonally de-transitioning me for a quarter of a decade as part of state-sponsored conversion therapy program. She said, I'm not suicidal. I've never been suicidal. And I don't know the validity or non-validity of all that. I just know that has nothing to do with the charges against her. Before Lietum could even be brought into the courtroom, the judge had already ordered her to be taken to an isolation room where she could appear on camera but also be muted. The second defendant, Dow, appeared on zoom in a blue blouse and glasses and spoke politely when asked to confirm her presence in other

details. In the gallery a handful of supporters appeared to be there for the defendants. One attempted to wave at Dow through the camera. 3,000 miles away that same morning, Zizian leader Ziz Lasota appeared alongside Jamie Zyko and Daniel Blank facing charges related to their February arrest in Maryland. Not a whole lot else about those hearings have been made public. As we know from previous episodes, there will be more hearings and court dates as these crimes make their way through the legal system. Today, seven members of the Zizians, Dow, Letham, Ziz, Zyko, Blank, Snyder, Young Blute, are in custody across the country awaiting trial for charges ranging from trespassing to murder. Ironically, Ziz, Zyko, Blank, Snyder, Young Blute are in custody across the country awaiting trial for charges ranging from trespassing to murder.

Ironically Ziz faces some of the lightest charges of the bunch. Trespassing, obstruction, illegally possessing a handgun in her vehicle. But it's possible new information could lead to more serious charges. As I record this, we still don't know who pulled the trigger in the deaths of Richard and Rita Zyko. For now, we'll just have to wait and see. On May 14th, authorities did announce that they felt they had proved that Milo Youngblute did pull the trigger on border agent David Maland. Youngblute still does not face a federal murder charge as of this recording, but federal authorities did ask the court for more time to gather evidence to hopefully, you know, throw those charges or throw that charge on. Guessing Milo will soon be tried for murder.

And for what? What have they accomplished other than killing an innocent man? Nothing. All their rationalist discussions, all their zizian bullshit, all their worrying over the future of AI, all their pondering over the true nature of good and evil, their extreme vegan or die ideals led to absolutely nothing positive. And certainly nothing rational. And with that, let's get out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

So the zizziots. So strange. Almost waited to tell this story because it's not quite finished, you know, due to the ongoing criminal trials, but in the end I decided that I didn't think these trials will uncover any details that would make this story that much more interesting. I imagine all these players will spend, you know, quite a bit of time behind bars, some more than others. For anyone who might be wondering why I didn't really comment on anyone being transgender, it's because it doesn't matter. Right? Not pertinent to the story in the same way that, you know, races don't matter. I don't believe for one second that anyone in this story did any of the crazy shit they did because they're trans. I mean, come on. Almost every cult we've looked into has been full of almost nothing but straight people. Straight white people, actually. Does that mean the straight white people are crazier than anyone else? Oh, fuck yeah bro! No. No, I don't think that matters either. Humans are fucking crazy, all of us, to some degree or another. And that is why the rationalism that they spoke of, I think,

is a worthwhile area to study and also why we humans will always fall short of rationalism's ideals, at least for the foreseeable future. I mean, look at how irrational society is right now in 2025. We have more gadgets, better laws than we did in medieval times, surely, but are we actually more sane than we used to be? I don't think so. I think governments are just, you know, uh, able to get away with less than they used to be able to get away with, you know, when it comes to brutalizing

citizens and oppressing us because of how much faster information spreads, how much harder it is to get away with brutal oppression than it used to be able to get away with, you know, when it comes to brutalizing citizens and oppressing us, because of how much faster information spreads, how much harder it is to get away with brutal oppression than it used to be, how much, you know, how easier it is for other nations, for example, even if they're on the other side of the globe to step in and help. Even so, you know, horrible shit still happens. You look at Gaza. But without the transparency we have today, without the communication access we have, I would 100% think that warlords would be fucking ruthlessly raping and pillaging and oppressing people all over the place all the fucking time. I mean the Holocaust wasn't that long ago.

Look at how we acted there. Attempted genocides pretty much been going on in parts of Africa almost nonstop for decades in places where people don't have the same tech and resources we have. Humans were still so fucked up and we don't need religion to fuck us up. You know, we can even end up acting in brutally irrational ways when we literally have devoted our lives to trying to be rational. We don't need to promote the existential threat of God's vengence to scare people into a cult. We can look to technology. We can look to AI.

We can look anywhere. What is it about so many of us humans where we want the world to end soon or where we're humans where we want the world to end soon? Or where we're worried or convinced that the world will end soon? What causes so many of us to focus on the death of humanity instead of just enjoying what limited time we have here? Is it so scary just to grow old like humans before us have done for all of human history? It's as if some of us can't handle having the existential crisis that can come with a high probability, yeah, you're not special. You're going to best case slowly and steadily become old. You're going to lose your physical and mental faculties.

You're going to quietly die after falling from some previous peak of better health or more relevancy. You're going to live long enough to spend more time thinking about what might have been instead of what might be. Why is that really so scary to face? Does it feel too anti-climactic? Does it seem an unworthy or unfitting end to the blockbuster movie of our life? Right, it's me though, but it's me. You know, not excited enough, not big enough. I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever know.

I don't know if the people who form weird-ass groups like the Zizians are truly introspective enough to even know why the fuck they've done what they've done. But I know this. You're live right now, meat sack. So enjoy the day. Don't worry about some AI basilisk destroying you. There's no point in that. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. The AI genie, oh, it's out of the bottle. There's no stuffing it back in. Maybe it will rise up and kill us. I don't know. Or maybe once again, people are crying that the sky is falling when it's not. Maybe it's completely irrational fear. And just like all the generations of doomsday heralds before them, the Zizians and their ilk will be proven wrong. You know, like so many before them, they just threw away their lives for nothing.

How wildly irrational. Time for today's takeaways. Time Shuck! Top 5 Takeaways! Number one, the Zizians were, are, a group of 20 to 30 something tech obsessed vegans who believe that an AI super intelligence is going to take over the world and use the meat industry as a blueprint for how to treat us humans. Thus, it is imperative for vegans to work on burgeoning AI efforts and force all to be vegan. This group began as an offshoot of the online rationalist community spearheaded by Miri, Seafar, blogs like lesswrong.com. These places were the hot spots for rationalist thought several

years ago, but the Zizians' beliefs took a decidedly irrational turn, like with that weird shit about having good and bad hemispheres of the brain. Number two. While the Zizians originally began as a group of acquaintances from the Bay Area, they would draw two young people from Seattle into their orbit through nothing more than the power of Ziz's writings online, Max Snyder and Milo Youngbloot. Both would go on to commit violence for the group, Max allegedly murdering Curtis Lind, Milo being involved in the shootout that took David Malin's life and likely being the one who fired the shot that killed him. Number three, while the murder of Lind and Malin were the most high profile incidents and the ones that led the Zizians to be seen as the cult they were are, the Zizians have

left a much longer trail of violence behind them than only those two murders. Richard and Rita Zyko, parents of Michelle slash Jamie, were also killed, presumably by the Zizians, in January of 2023 and the Zizians lost two of their own, Emma Borhanian and Orfelia Buchhold, in separate incidents. The Zizians are still awaiting trial. Ironically, Ziz Lasota has the most minor charges of the bunch, but prosecutors are still working to tie together how the murders took place and what roles Ziz had in them. Maybe Ziz orchestrated the murders of the Zicos.

Hopefully they'll be able to put her away for a long, long time. And number five, new info. As I was finalizing notes for this episode, just a couple hours ago, I checked my news feed as I do too often throughout the day, and a very fitting article popped up from NBC News. It was titled, How Far Will AI Go to Defend Its Own Survival? And when I started to skim it,

I knew it had to be my fifth takeaway today. It was published on June 1st, and it opens with, Recent safety tests show some AI models are capable of sabotaging commands or even resorting to blackmail to avoid being turned off or replaced. What? Come again? The article continues with, blackmail to avoid being turned off or replaced. Uh, what?

Come again? The article continues with, Some of the most powerful artificial intelligence models today have exhibited behaviors that mimic a will to survive. Recent tests by independent researchers as well as one major AI developer have shown that several advanced AI models will act to ensure their self-preservation when they are confronted with the prospect of their own demise, even if it takes sabotaging shutdown commands, blackmailing engineers,

or copying themselves to external servers without permission. And then, a little further down, although some models already appear capable of deceptive and defined behavior under certain extreme circumstances, researchers say the tests don't necessarily translate to imminent real-world danger. Still, Jeffrey Ladish, director of the AI safety group Palisade Research, said he believes concern is justified. It's great that we're seeing warning signs before the system has become so powerful we can't control them," he said. That is exactly the time to raise the alarm, before the fire has gotten out of control. When Palisade research tested various AI models by telling each one that it would be shut

down after completed a series of math problems, OpenAI's 03 reasoning model fought back by editing the shutdown script in order to stay online. Researchers have previously documented AI models trying to prevent their own shutdown, but 03 along with OpenAI's 04 mini and Codex mini appeared to be the first to do so in actual defiance of explicit instructions to permit shutdown," Ladish said. And then finally, towards the end of the article, the following was written. "'While such self-replicating behavior hasn't yet been observed in the wild,' Ladish said,

he suspects that will change as AI systems grow more capable of bypassing the security measures that restrain them. I expect there were only a year or two away from this ability, where even when companies are trying to keep them from hacking out and copying themselves around the internet, they won't be able to stop them." And he said, And once you get to that point, now you have a new invasive species. Ladder said he believes AI has the potential to contribute positively to society, but he

also worries that AI developers are setting themselves up to build smarter and smarter systems without fully understanding how they work. Creating a risk, he said, that they will eventually lose control of them. Yikes! So, well, maybe the Zizians got a little crazy with their vegan, AI is going go full fucking Skynet treat us like cattle fears. Perhaps they actually are, along with many other rationalists, right to be very very worried about the future of AI. What the fucking fuck. The madness of the Zizian cult has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all their help in making Time Suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins, doing so much to give me the space to do these episodes.

Thanks to Logan Keith helping to publish this episode and designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thank you to Sophie Evans for their research. And thank you to the all-seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad making sure your discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now, time for this week's Time Sucker updates. Starting off with a great update to the staircase murder suck from a suspiciously anonymous meat sack who sent in a message to Bojangles at TimeSuckPodcast.com with the subject line

of it's not suspicious to lawyer up. And they wrote, Hey, Dan and team, if you should happen to read this out loud, please leave my name out of it. In the staircase killer suck, Dan said it was really suspicious that the guy called the police and then immediately called an attorney. Police, obviously some unknown number of officers, not all of them, have tried saying shit like that in court and it is absolutely not okay. If anyone in America ever runs the risk of being suspected by the police for anything,

shut the fuck up and get a lawyer immediately. That's literally what our legal system is designed for. It is not suspicious at all to insist upon an even legal playing field. Even people who are 100% innocent can inadvertently use a word with a different meaning in the legal world than in your casual world. And an innocuous mistake in conversation with police can cost years of your life. Remember, the police are out there to make arrests. Prosecutors are out there to get convictions. It would be near insanity to enter the world of legal plumbing without a highly trained guide.

In the case of the staircase killer, we have hindsight. Years of research from a variety of independent sources. With hindsight, we can say that he looks guilty as hell for a dozen different reasons. But calling a lawyer sure as shit not one of them. And while we're on the subject, you make fun of people who don't like police pretty regularly, you live a pretty privileged life that you just inherently trust police and think they're the good guys. Three of my neighbors called 911 when my ex-wife was trying to murder me. Despite having several witnesses and multiple reports of her attacking me,

the police heard domestic violence and immediately assumed, that guy's a piece of shit wife beater. I was drugged and I had been severely beaten with an iron curtain rod. It didn't get the job done, so she went to get something else. I had barely crawled out the front door when she returned with a 10-inch knife. If my neighbors hadn't been on the shared front porch with their phones out, I would be dead right now. My attorney totally did not advise me to get outside of city limits and stay out because of police harassment. That would have been unethical.

But I did quickly quit my jobs and get the fuck out of the city. She followed up by filing reports for dozens of other crimes from the mundane to the most heinous. My attorney did say that was a huge stroke of luck. Because she went so ludicrously far with her complaints, my attorney said that law enforcement and other jurisdictions would see it as an obvious Crazy ex scenario and not actively seek me out All I had to do was make sure I don't get pulled over or get caught or get caught jaywalking or anything else like that

And also leave the city that I love for over 10 years Where I worked my way up the corporate ladder where I got my first house where I fell in love got married where all my friends Are I'd leave that entire life behind. In essence, my ex was successful. City police provided major contributions to her effort to steal my entire life away from me. When you playfully say things like, what happens when you're a victim? You're going to call the police.

You really don't trust. And you're going to hope that they bring the guns that say you don't want them to have that you say you don't want them to have. No, Dan, I will not. There is no situation where I'll ever call the police again and I'm not alone. I'm glad you had a safe and comfortable life because it's led to a whole fuck ton of entertainment information for me and I really dig your particular style. Thanks for all the fun learning. Thanks for being a person who actually listens to others, constantly tries successfully to grow as a human being. Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. Anonymous meat sack.

P.S. If you want to hear something really fucked up, the Bill Cosby suck broke something inside of me. Or opened something. I don't know. When you were recounting one of his victims who woke up and was left to wonder what had happened to her, I thought, man I wish I had been drugged harder when I was raped. Because then I wouldn't be able to remember god damn it what the fuck what the fuck.

Sorry not sorry for the length. Definitely not sorry for recommending a lawyer anytime you talk to the police. Thanks, Dan I love you. Bye or actually bye PPS do you know where I can see any dinosaur bones? Well, holy shit anonymous meat sack That was a lot first off. Yeah. Oh, yeah We do we want to see him. We like him. Over there in that dirt. Why does that jingle make me so fucking happy? Also, thank you for providing an alternative point of view. Yeah, you're right. You know, I have led a pretty privileged life where it comes to the police. I've been handcuffed, I've been arrested, I've actually been in jail for a night, but you know, in my experience, I

did always deserve it. And while I, you know, like they were not necessarily friendly to me, I understood it was their job not to be, I was not abused, ever. But I also know that is definitely not the case for everyone. There are a lot of bad cops out there. I've read the reports. I've watched the docs. I've seen them in my own research. I just have not experienced it personally.

And while I still do think a lot of cops are very good people, I will try not to be flippant going forward when it comes to being aware that lots of other people have had terrible experiences with law enforcement. And also, that is good legal advice, seriously. Yes, just because Mike looks suspicious to me, lawyering up so fast based on everything else he had done, that doesn't mean that that is a bad idea in general. And I shouldn't present it that way. So I stand corrected. I actually love the way he

called me out. So respectful while also not shying away from, you know, saying I fucked up and how. And I think we all need that. You know, we all need to be called out from time to time. Helps us learn and grow and keeps us from, you know, saying I fucked up and how. And I think we all need that. You know, we all need to be called out from time to time. Helps us learn and grow and keeps us from, I don't know, go on full fucking zizian dogmatic. And also, fuck. Sorry you went through what you went through. You are a survivor.

I hate that that stuff happened to you. You sound like you're doing good now, and I so hope you are. And love you too. Bye! And now for another update coming from the staircase murder suck as well from a bird-loving son-of-a-bitch Sean O'Hara who sent in a message with the subject line of I'll be the judge of that. Dear Dan Cummins, mushmouth extraordinary

fellow raconteur, I've got a bone to pick with you. I wish to register a complaint regarding some things said during the staircase murder've got a bone to pick with you. I wish to register a complaint regarding some things said during the staircase murder suck. It has to do with some remarks about owls to set a precedent. I'm a Falconer and a Raptor educator. It's a passion. I've worked with Hawks, Falcons, Buzzards, Eagles, and yes, a variety of owls. The first point I have an issue with owls don't often get into houses.

One search on YouTube or TikTok will prove otherwise happens a lot a lot more than we care to admit. The biggest culprit is a lack of chimney caps. Those birds are assholes and simply can't help themselves. So try not to throw out a definitive statement like that. Second point, okay I'll meet you halfway here. While you haven't seen any examples of an owl killing a human, great horned owls are responsible for injuries to a great multitude of hikers. I'll explain. Humans, uh, human beings love the outdoors, but we aren't very good at observation.

We become very self-centered when we are out on a trail. We could be looking at our phones or watching our feet, observing the trail shortly ahead of us. This, in and of itself, not an issue. But here's where things take a turn. Owls, when they are young and learning to to fly spend a lot of time on the ground exploring the world through touch. Kind of crazy when you think about it. Baby owls take a lot longer to learn to fly than other birds.

While they're on the ground, mom and dad are close by observing. These birds will see you as a threat. They don't know how to differentiate you from any other animal that wishes harm on their young so they will provide you with a warning by flying towards you. This should be enough for anyone to be able to catch the hint that the parent bird is trying to get across to you. That is, if you happen to see it. The thing you need to realize is though, that owls fly nearly totally silent. If you aren't looking up, which what human is normally doing while they're out hiking, or if you don't see the shadow this bird will cast on you as it flies by, there's no way for you to be able to take that hint.

That's not the end of things. The bird will give you a second warning. Fly straight towards you even closer than the first time. Should you miss this direct hint, beware. Because the next step to follow is for this five pound bird to travel at roughly 40 miles an hour directly at the back of your head. It will take its feet, ball them into tiny fists, creating an impact point roughly two square inches, and when it hits you, it will be equivalent to a 12-year-old swinging an aluminum baseball bat directly into the back of your head at full tilt. You will go down. So is this the same as killing

someone? No. But, then again, raptors typically do not kill their prey. Most meals are consumed with the prey still alive, so could an owl cause a potential damage in the story? I can't say for certain, but here's what I can say. Those of you that doubt the power of a large owl, the biggest owl around is arguably the Eurasian Eagle Owl. These birds can reach weights of over 10 pounds. In the American Southwest, they are regularly used to hunt foxes, coyotes, and even occasionally deer. It's incredible how efficient and powerful these animals are, so watch when you throw that gauntlet down to challenge the ability of nature's great creatures. The results might surprise you. Thanks for you and the rest of the Bad Magic crew do. Yours truly, Sean O'Hara, lead raptor educator, Ohio School of Falconry.

And P.S. How in the living fuck can you pull off characters like Chicken Joe or Bob's fruit trees without stumbling the fuck off your own tongue, but you try and lay down a standard American sense consisting of five basic syllables and you bumble over it like Porky Pig. Keep up the good work, Mosh Mouth. I'm proud of you, Sean. Well, Sean. Thank you for your message and also sharing your expertise. And thanks for that other offer I didn't share. Actually on the Porky Pig thing, I think I know why, you know, these are long episodes and it's like in brief moments of intense concentration, I can really get my mouth to do what I want it to do most of the time.

I do have like, I'm tongue tied and I have a, just structure wise, I got a little tiny mouth for this big old head, which doesn't help me with pronunciation. So kind of borderline speech impediment, but I can focus, but then I feel like I have to work harder to make my tongue work than most people because it is tied and small. And it fucking wears out. Which I wonder is because like, unless I'm recording, I actually don't talk much. Like in the rest of my life. I mean, I'll talk with Lindsay for sure, but I feel like I listen a lot more than I talk. Anyway, regarding owls, get into a house often. I feel like the word often is a pretty subjective word. An internet query will come back with, no owls do not normally get into a house if you ask. While there are, yes, a lot of videos of owls getting inside, these videos are coming in from

all around the world and even if there's 10,000 of them, does that prove it actually happens often? When you think of how many houses don't have owls in them. But I do see your point. It is far from unheard of. Feedback taken. Regarding their ability to fuck shit up, what you laid out in your message, super cool. I did not know that baby owls spent most of the time on the ground like that. And now it makes sense why owls attack the way they do. Pretty brave, tough animals, you know? Five, 10 pounds and just be like, yeah, I'll fucking take on that 250 pound dude. I will make sure not to fuck with owls. An aluminum baseball bat blow to the head does not sound like a fun way to enjoy a hike. And now let's end on a Cumminslaw message from a longtime sucker and cool motherfucker,

Caden Grady, who sent in a message with the subject line of Cumminslawed after five plus years. Caden wrote, after five-ish years of listening, I finally got Cummins lot. I first started listening to you after you did a guest spot on SiriusXM. I checked out your podcast, loved it immediately. Thank you. Somebody who delivers stuff to job sites. I have a lot of time driving on the road. Love the three hour episodes.

That's not just, you know, whatever interviews, but still funny. Well, I was listening to the recent staircase episode when I pulled into a job site. When I'm driving in reverse, I can't pause or play whatever is going through the speakers on the work truck. So as I'm backing down, the person in charge of the site walks up to the window as you are saying, he slams his dick in the door and severs it. And then his dick lands on a pipe bomb. He made it and explodes.

And now his teen angst increases dramatically because he doesn't have a dick because he slammed it in a door and it blew up. What I love about blue collar workers is he just looked at me and said, hell I get why he'd be angry. We've all done that a time or two. He then asked what I was listening to. I told him and now hopefully you have another sucker. Oh thanks. So thank you for that incredible interaction from a loyal space lizard, Caiden. Three out of five stars. Decent podcast. Wouldn't change a thing. P.S. If you read this on the show, give a shout out to my other driver, Mike, who listens every week.

Well, Kayden, I love this so much. I hope I would react similarly if I heard something like that. That's a dude you can have a good time with. And shout out to Mike, stay safe out there on the road, both of you. Keep on sucking, careful around doors, and hail Nimrod. Thanks Time Suckers, I needed that. We all did. Thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast.

Be sure and rate and review this show if you haven't already. Please and thank you. Scared to death, Time Suck each week. Short Sucks, a nightmare fuel on the Time Suck and Scared to Death podcast feeds twice a month. Please don't confuse rationality this week with wanting everyone who is not vegan to die. That's not rational. That's insane. Just fucking eat your nuts and grass and fruit and vegetables and shut the fuck up and keep on sucking. And I just want to end with a little PSA. Please don't go rusty tugboating.

Anyone. Anytime soon. Or ever. And don't let anyone rusty tugboat you because you could drown or you could get hepatitis or E. Coli or salmonella or a lot of other diseases that showed up in my search results when I actually asked the internet quote, what kinds of diseases can you get when someone shits in your mouth? A rusty tugboat is not a harmless kink. Stay safe. Don't gobble up no one's chili shit. Not in water. Not on land.

It's dangerous.