There’s this guy Michael Vassar who strikes me—from afar—as a failed cult leader, and Ziz as a disciple of his who took some followers in a different direction. Even before this new information, I thought her faith sounded like a breakaway sect of the Church of Asmodeus.
Michael Vassar was one of the inspirations for Eliezer’s Professor Quirrell, but otherwise seems to have little influence.
At the risk of this looking too much like me fighting a strawman...
Cults may have a tendency to interact and pick up adaptations from each other, but it seems wrong to operate on the assumption that they’re all derivatives of one ancestral “proto-cult” or whatever. Cult leaders are not literal vampires, where you only become a cult leader by getting bit by a previous cult leader or whatever.
It’s a cultural attractor, and a cult is a social technology simple enough that it can be spontaneously re-derived. But cults can sometimes pick up or swap beliefs & virulence factors with each other, when they interact. And I do think Ziz picked up a few beliefs from the Vassarite cluster.
I can dig up cases in Ziz’s writing where Ziz has interacted with Vassar before, or may have indirectly learned things from him through Alice.
Doesn’t make Vassar directly responsible for Ziz’s actions. I think Vassar is not directly responsible for Ziz.
I do want to spell this out, because I’m reading a subtle implication here, that I want to push back against.
For example, many abusive partners reinvent half of the cult techniques on their own. If you are the right kind of personality, it is probably enough to carefully observe your victim, and gradually remove everything that empowers them. (Their parents disapprove of you? No more contact with the parents. An article about abusive relations that actually explains a lot? No more reading that specific website or a book. Ideas encountered in free time that you don’t like? Invent lots of busywork, no more free time. Thinking too much? Create emotional drama, so that the victim thinks about made up problems instead.)
Cults are simply groups that stumbled upon the right combination of techniques, efficient enough to either keep their members trapped reliably, or to recruit new members faster than the old ones leave. It helps if you can copy some techniques from your previous cult, but it is not necessary. You can also copy from abusive parents, or if you are an abusive person yourself (and Ziz seems to be) simply learn from your previous experience.
Thinking too much? Create emotional drama, so that the victim thinks about made up problems instead.
Especially this. A refinement: create an atmosphere of “honesty” (which caches out as perverse openness for thee, but not for me). Use your perverse openness to track when you are going down paths that might end in you breaking away. Selectively create drama and ultimatums and loyalty tests in those cases, which is more precisely targeted than just thinking too much. (This may sound crazy but it actually happens. See e.g. NXIVM; if you don’t tell all your thoughts to Keith Raniere, you’re resisting / in ethical breach / etc.)
I heard that LaSota (‘ziz’) and Michael interacted but I am sort of under the impression she was always kind of violent and bizarre before that, so I’m not putting much of this bizarreness down to Michael. Certainly interest in evidence about this (here or in DM).
It sure sounds like you think outsiders would typically have the “common sense” to avoid Ziz. What do you think such an outsider would make of this comment?
I recognize that there are privacy considerations that (probably) prevent it, but I would like to see more of a public accounting of the evidence that caused Scott Alexander to withdraw those critiques, along with what critiques remain, and what he thinks caused his & the community’s initial view.
My impression was that Scott previously thought the hypothesis ‘interacting with Michael Vassar can cause psychosis’ was worth taking seriously (in this comment), but then later decided this was mostly correlation not causation and apologized to both Michael and Jessica (in this comment).
Insofar as this is a case of the community reflexively scapegoating, it seems like we ought to examine it more carefully; insofar as there are still possible cult-like/bizarre negative effects, it seems like we should investigate those too.
Though I’ve never met her, from her writing and things others have told me, I expect LaSota seems much more visibly out-of-it and threatening than e.g. Michael does, who I have met and didn’t seem socially alarming or unpredictable in the way where you might be scared of a sudden physical altercation.
I think Vassar is alarming and unpredictable in a way that causes people to be afraid of a sudden physical altercation. For example, I have felt scared of physical altercations with him. If I recall correctly, he raised his voice while telling a friend of mine that he thought they were worse than the Nazis during a conversation in a hotel lobby, which freaked out other people who were in the lobby (I don’t remember how my friend felt).
I was attempting to distinguish between someone getting angry with you and shouting at you and then punching you, and someone who is quiet and doesn’t look at you and isn’t talking much to you who then walks over and punches you.
Both are alarming. To me the latter feels more unpredictable and more alarming because I’m getting no info about when it will happen, but if someone is getting visibly angry and escalates and you don’t know where their lines are for conflict, then I can see that being more intensely alarming.
For what it’s worth, when I’ve talked to Ziz, she didn’t seem out of it, threatening, alarming, or unpredictable to me, and I wasn’t scared of a sudden physical altercation.
Interesting. I remember meeting Ziz once before they were fully out as Ziz, and it was clear to me that their vibe was “off” but given so many rationalists have weird vibes it was hard to make much of. It’s easy with hindsight bias to try to give myself points for noticing what might happen, but actually that was pretty unclear to me right up until the CFAR protest happened and then lots of details about what had been doing on came out.
What I mean by vibe being off: many rationalists don’t behave in normal ways and don’t play into standard social scripts, so they fall into this weird space where it can be hard to predict what they will do and say in the next few moments so it can create something like an uncanny valley of social interaction. But I get this from lots of people who haven’t been accused of homicide/accessory to homicide, so given the base rates it’s hard to make strong predictions here.
I think Ziz’s early vibe was “off/weird, but not in a particularly unusual-for-rationalists-way.” I definitely see the seeds of their worldview in their early writing/talking/in-person-interactions that make me not super surprised at how things turned out. But, I do think it’s important that the vibe didn’t feel threatening/alarming in a physical way.
There was also definitely just an escalation over time. If you view her content chronologically it starts as out as fairly standard and decently insightful LW essay fair and then just gets more and more hostile and escalatory as time passes. She goes from liking Scott to calling him evil, she goes from advocating for generally rejecting morality in order to free up your agency to practicing timeless-decision-theoretic-blackmail-absolute-morality. As people responded to her hostility with hostility she escalated further and further out of what seemed to be a calculated moral obligation to retaliate and her whole group has just spiraled on their sense that the world was trying to timelessly-soul-murder them.
There’s this guy Michael Vassar who strikes me—from afar—as a failed cult leader, and Ziz as a disciple of his who took some followers in a different direction. Even before this new information, I thought her faith sounded like a breakaway sect of the Church of Asmodeus.
Michael Vassar was one of the inspirations for Eliezer’s Professor Quirrell, but otherwise seems to have little influence.
At the risk of this looking too much like me fighting a strawman...
Cults may have a tendency to interact and pick up adaptations from each other, but it seems wrong to operate on the assumption that they’re all derivatives of one ancestral “proto-cult” or whatever. Cult leaders are not literal vampires, where you only become a cult leader by getting bit by a previous cult leader or whatever.
It’s a cultural attractor, and a cult is a social technology simple enough that it can be spontaneously re-derived. But cults can sometimes pick up or swap beliefs & virulence factors with each other, when they interact. And I do think Ziz picked up a few beliefs from the Vassarite cluster.
I can dig up cases in Ziz’s writing where Ziz has interacted with Vassar before, or may have indirectly learned things from him through Alice.
Doesn’t make Vassar directly responsible for Ziz’s actions. I think Vassar is not directly responsible for Ziz.
I do want to spell this out, because I’m reading a subtle implication here, that I want to push back against.
For example, many abusive partners reinvent half of the cult techniques on their own. If you are the right kind of personality, it is probably enough to carefully observe your victim, and gradually remove everything that empowers them. (Their parents disapprove of you? No more contact with the parents. An article about abusive relations that actually explains a lot? No more reading that specific website or a book. Ideas encountered in free time that you don’t like? Invent lots of busywork, no more free time. Thinking too much? Create emotional drama, so that the victim thinks about made up problems instead.)
Cults are simply groups that stumbled upon the right combination of techniques, efficient enough to either keep their members trapped reliably, or to recruit new members faster than the old ones leave. It helps if you can copy some techniques from your previous cult, but it is not necessary. You can also copy from abusive parents, or if you are an abusive person yourself (and Ziz seems to be) simply learn from your previous experience.
Great comment.
Especially this. A refinement: create an atmosphere of “honesty” (which caches out as perverse openness for thee, but not for me). Use your perverse openness to track when you are going down paths that might end in you breaking away. Selectively create drama and ultimatums and loyalty tests in those cases, which is more precisely targeted than just thinking too much. (This may sound crazy but it actually happens. See e.g. NXIVM; if you don’t tell all your thoughts to Keith Raniere, you’re resisting / in ethical breach / etc.)
I heard that LaSota (‘ziz’) and Michael interacted but I am sort of under the impression she was always kind of violent and bizarre before that, so I’m not putting much of this bizarreness down to Michael. Certainly interest in evidence about this (here or in DM).
It sure sounds like you think outsiders would typically have the “common sense” to avoid Ziz. What do you think such an outsider would make of this comment?
Scott Alexander seems to have withdrawn some of his critiques of Michael Vassar.
I recognize that there are privacy considerations that (probably) prevent it, but I would like to see more of a public accounting of the evidence that caused Scott Alexander to withdraw those critiques, along with what critiques remain, and what he thinks caused his & the community’s initial view.
My impression was that Scott previously thought the hypothesis ‘interacting with Michael Vassar can cause psychosis’ was worth taking seriously (in this comment), but then later decided this was mostly correlation not causation and apologized to both Michael and Jessica (in this comment).
Insofar as this is a case of the community reflexively scapegoating, it seems like we ought to examine it more carefully; insofar as there are still possible cult-like/bizarre negative effects, it seems like we should investigate those too.
I think mostly somewhat confused?
Though I’ve never met her, from her writing and things others have told me, I expect LaSota seems much more visibly out-of-it and threatening than e.g. Michael does, who I have met and didn’t seem socially alarming or unpredictable in the way where you might be scared of a sudden physical altercation.
I think Vassar is alarming and unpredictable in a way that causes people to be afraid of a sudden physical altercation. For example, I have felt scared of physical altercations with him. If I recall correctly, he raised his voice while telling a friend of mine that he thought they were worse than the Nazis during a conversation in a hotel lobby, which freaked out other people who were in the lobby (I don’t remember how my friend felt).
Oops, I was unclear in my last line.
I was attempting to distinguish between someone getting angry with you and shouting at you and then punching you, and someone who is quiet and doesn’t look at you and isn’t talking much to you who then walks over and punches you.
Both are alarming. To me the latter feels more unpredictable and more alarming because I’m getting no info about when it will happen, but if someone is getting visibly angry and escalates and you don’t know where their lines are for conflict, then I can see that being more intensely alarming.
For what it’s worth, when I’ve talked to Ziz, she didn’t seem out of it, threatening, alarming, or unpredictable to me, and I wasn’t scared of a sudden physical altercation.
Interesting. I remember meeting Ziz once before they were fully out as Ziz, and it was clear to me that their vibe was “off” but given so many rationalists have weird vibes it was hard to make much of. It’s easy with hindsight bias to try to give myself points for noticing what might happen, but actually that was pretty unclear to me right up until the CFAR protest happened and then lots of details about what had been doing on came out.
What I mean by vibe being off: many rationalists don’t behave in normal ways and don’t play into standard social scripts, so they fall into this weird space where it can be hard to predict what they will do and say in the next few moments so it can create something like an uncanny valley of social interaction. But I get this from lots of people who haven’t been accused of homicide/accessory to homicide, so given the base rates it’s hard to make strong predictions here.
I think Ziz’s early vibe was “off/weird, but not in a particularly unusual-for-rationalists-way.” I definitely see the seeds of their worldview in their early writing/talking/in-person-interactions that make me not super surprised at how things turned out. But, I do think it’s important that the vibe didn’t feel threatening/alarming in a physical way.
There was also definitely just an escalation over time. If you view her content chronologically it starts as out as fairly standard and decently insightful LW essay fair and then just gets more and more hostile and escalatory as time passes. She goes from liking Scott to calling him evil, she goes from advocating for generally rejecting morality in order to free up your agency to practicing timeless-decision-theoretic-blackmail-absolute-morality. As people responded to her hostility with hostility she escalated further and further out of what seemed to be a calculated moral obligation to retaliate and her whole group has just spiraled on their sense that the world was trying to timelessly-soul-murder them.
I could well just be bad at reading vibes.