My comment is something I judged needed to be said at some point, and not just in response to Ziz, who is not the only one equating the eating of meat to the murder of humans. According to that comment by FeepingCreature, vegans regard those indifferent to animal suffering as “Nazis” and see themselves as the resistance to Nazis. I do not know which side FeepingCreature takes.
If you see yourself as resisting “Nazis”, what does that suggest you will do to a “Nazi”? We know what Ziz wanted to do to anyone she saw as evil: throw them out the airlock. As Insanity Wolf would scream at you, “KNOW SOMEONE EVIL? WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?”
If those vegans started making death threats against specific people around me, I would want them treated like crazy, too. (With a possible exception for making threats against people working directly in the pain factories. There I would probably say “none of my business”.)
The proper reaction to Ziz, in my opinion, would be to print a collection of their death threats, and ask a judge for a restraining order. If you succeed, then whenever Ziz comes close to a rationalist meeting or something like that, just call the cops and say “here is a person violating their restraining order”. I would assume that the situation would be clearly legible for the cops. No need to explain who you are, who is Ziz, and why do you consider them a danger.
Oh, one more thing that rubbed me the wrong way when reading this thread: It seems like a few people are buying the frame that Ziz is some kind of consistent slightly-superhuman intelligence, operating by actual algorithms, following precommitments, and playing a 4D chess against the rest of the world… like some kind of Roko’s basilisk incarnated.
From my perspective, it seems like a crazy person making up bullshit theories, making random threats, but actually not following on most of them. All the theories and precommitments are just rationalizations for acting impulsively. Someone pisses them off, they invent a reason why the person deserves to die (according to timeless acausal mumbo jumbo), and publish it on a blog. Later, they may invent another reason why in this specific case they decided it is actually better ignored (according to timeless acausal mumbo jumbo), or just pretend it didn’t happen.
The Insanity Wolf is there for their followers, driving them to madness and suicide. I do not have much data, but I would expect Ziz to actually act strongly hypocritically in real life. Like, in the extremely unlikely situation where one of their followers would find the courage to yell at Ziz “AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?”, I would expect the answer to be that Ziz is a special case (“double good”), and the rules for mere mortals do not apply to them (according to timeless etc.). Either that, or immediate physical violence against the follower, with a later explanation why they deserved that (“because they were attacking the only double-good person in the world, which makes them clearly evil, and Ziz has a strong precommitment to punish evil”).
One starts to wonder how many completely qualitatively different worlds and ideologies are out there right now in the minds of schizophrenics, cultists, politicians and homeless people, each totalizing and completely enrapturing in their own way, all ultimately batshit insane.
There is the general concept of “bubbles”, which people usually use to refer to internet communities, but the thing existed long before internet. Social class is a giant bubble. Different political tribes. Birds of a feather flock together. It probably started when people started living in groups larger than 150; maybe sooner.
I find it fascinating how “normal” people live in different realities. For example, someone is attracted to abusive partners, and they believe that literally all individuals of the opposite sex are abusive. You can’t convince them otherwise, because they know that abusive people can pretend to be nice (which makes the theory unfalsifiable), and it is their personal experience that each partner they had sooner or later turned out to be abusive. What’s more, their best friend has exactly the same experience! -- But when you look at this from outside, it’s like no, you are constructing the reality you live in. Among many possible partners, you instinctively choose the one with most red flags. (Sometimes you rationalize it: the person without obvious red flags is certainly hiding them, which makes such person more dangerous.) And of course your best friend has a similar experience; that’s why you chose each other to be best friends! Someone else can live on the same street, but in a completely different universe.
Yes, the universes of crazy people are even more diverse. There are practically no limits; the Earth can be flat, people are actually lizards with masks, the entire political situation is all about persecuting you, evildoers use microwave radiation to drive everyone mad, etc.
Then there are cults, which is basically systematized craziness / bubbles.
But if you talk to random”normal” people, their worlds are sometimes also quite interesting.
It depends on which “that”, a crazy but harmless ranter in the street, or a crazy and dangerous ranter in the street. According to accounts here, Ziz is the latter sort. Heed the words of Hunter S. Thompson: “You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug—especially when it’s waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.”
My comment is something I judged needed to be said at some point, and not just in response to Ziz, who is not the only one equating the eating of meat to the murder of humans. According to that comment by FeepingCreature, vegans regard those indifferent to animal suffering as “Nazis” and see themselves as the resistance to Nazis. I do not know which side FeepingCreature takes.
If you see yourself as resisting “Nazis”, what does that suggest you will do to a “Nazi”? We know what Ziz wanted to do to anyone she saw as evil: throw them out the airlock. As Insanity Wolf would scream at you, “KNOW SOMEONE EVIL? WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?”
If those vegans started making death threats against specific people around me, I would want them treated like crazy, too. (With a possible exception for making threats against people working directly in the pain factories. There I would probably say “none of my business”.)
The proper reaction to Ziz, in my opinion, would be to print a collection of their death threats, and ask a judge for a restraining order. If you succeed, then whenever Ziz comes close to a rationalist meeting or something like that, just call the cops and say “here is a person violating their restraining order”. I would assume that the situation would be clearly legible for the cops. No need to explain who you are, who is Ziz, and why do you consider them a danger.
Oh, one more thing that rubbed me the wrong way when reading this thread: It seems like a few people are buying the frame that Ziz is some kind of consistent slightly-superhuman intelligence, operating by actual algorithms, following precommitments, and playing a 4D chess against the rest of the world… like some kind of Roko’s basilisk incarnated.
From my perspective, it seems like a crazy person making up bullshit theories, making random threats, but actually not following on most of them. All the theories and precommitments are just rationalizations for acting impulsively. Someone pisses them off, they invent a reason why the person deserves to die (according to timeless acausal mumbo jumbo), and publish it on a blog. Later, they may invent another reason why in this specific case they decided it is actually better ignored (according to timeless acausal mumbo jumbo), or just pretend it didn’t happen.
The Insanity Wolf is there for their followers, driving them to madness and suicide. I do not have much data, but I would expect Ziz to actually act strongly hypocritically in real life. Like, in the extremely unlikely situation where one of their followers would find the courage to yell at Ziz “AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?”, I would expect the answer to be that Ziz is a special case (“double good”), and the rules for mere mortals do not apply to them (according to timeless etc.). Either that, or immediate physical violence against the follower, with a later explanation why they deserved that (“because they were attacking the only double-good person in the world, which makes them clearly evil, and Ziz has a strong precommitment to punish evil”).
One starts to wonder how many completely qualitatively different worlds and ideologies are out there right now in the minds of schizophrenics, cultists, politicians and homeless people, each totalizing and completely enrapturing in their own way, all ultimately batshit insane.
There is the general concept of “bubbles”, which people usually use to refer to internet communities, but the thing existed long before internet. Social class is a giant bubble. Different political tribes. Birds of a feather flock together. It probably started when people started living in groups larger than 150; maybe sooner.
I find it fascinating how “normal” people live in different realities. For example, someone is attracted to abusive partners, and they believe that literally all individuals of the opposite sex are abusive. You can’t convince them otherwise, because they know that abusive people can pretend to be nice (which makes the theory unfalsifiable), and it is their personal experience that each partner they had sooner or later turned out to be abusive. What’s more, their best friend has exactly the same experience! -- But when you look at this from outside, it’s like no, you are constructing the reality you live in. Among many possible partners, you instinctively choose the one with most red flags. (Sometimes you rationalize it: the person without obvious red flags is certainly hiding them, which makes such person more dangerous.) And of course your best friend has a similar experience; that’s why you chose each other to be best friends! Someone else can live on the same street, but in a completely different universe.
Yes, the universes of crazy people are even more diverse. There are practically no limits; the Earth can be flat, people are actually lizards with masks, the entire political situation is all about persecuting you, evildoers use microwave radiation to drive everyone mad, etc.
Then there are cults, which is basically systematized craziness / bubbles.
But if you talk to random”normal” people, their worlds are sometimes also quite interesting.