I don’t think it’s that far-fetched to view what humanity does to animals as something equivalent to the Holocaust. And if you accept this, almost everyone is either a nazi or nazi collaborator.
When you take this idea seriously and commit to stopping this with all your heart, you get Ziz.
When you take this idea seriously and commit to stopping this with all your heart, you get Ziz.
No, you don’t, because Ziz-style violence is completely ineffective at improving animal welfare. It’s dramatic and self-destructive and might express soundly their factional leanings, but that doesn’t make it accomplish the thing in question.
Further, none of the murders & attempted murders the gang has committed so far seem to be against factory farm workers, so I don’t understand this idea that Ziz is motivated by ambitions of political terrorism at all. Reading their posts it sounds more like Ziz misunderstood decision theory as saying “retaliate aggressively all the time” and started a cult around that.
In both cases, the violence they used (Which I’m not condoning) seemed meant for resource acquisition (a precondition for anything else you must do). It’s not just randomly hurting people. I agree that it seems they are being quite ineffective and immoral. But I don’t think that contradicts the fact that she’s doing what she’s doing because she believes humanity is evil because everyone seems to be ok with factory farming. (“flesh-eating monsters”)
“Reading their posts it sounds more like Ziz misunderstood decision theory as saying “retaliate aggressively all the time” and started a cult around that.
While “retaliate aggressively all the time” does seem like a strawman, it is worth noting that Ziz rejects causal decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively if it seems like it would cause things to go better, and avoid retaliating if it seems like it would cause things to go worse”) in favor of some sort of timeless/updateless decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively even if it would cause things to go worse, as long as this means your retaliation is predictable enough to avoid ever running into the situation where you have to retaliate”).
Meanwhile other rationalist orgs might pretend to run on timeless/updateless decision theory but seem in practice to actually run on causal decision theory.
For an example, see the “rationalist fleet” post. Among other conflicts, it describes getting into a drawn-out conflict with a roommate/subletter (who by Ziz’s account was pretty abusive), ending with the below; it seems pretty illustrative of Ziz’s thought-process (and has nothing to do with veganism):
We all had reports to make to CPS. We called the landlord. The nanny reported him for driving drunk to Uber. I went to the police again, showed them my bruise, they still said I couldn’t prove anything. I thought I had a deontological obligation not to let him profit by aggression meant to drive me out of my home for resources. I wondered if this was enough. I felt like maybe I was deontologically obligated to stay there, but, fuck. The door didn’t really close anymore. There was a hole in it. I heard his child was taken away, and was satisfied with that. Then I heard he got him back. I considered whether to show up at fuck o’clock in the morning and put something in his car’s gas tank to destroy it. Murphyjitsu: bring a charged cordless drill to create a hole if it was one of those gas tank caps that locked, and actually look up what things will destroy an engine. (Not done with Murphyjitsu here). But I decided to leave this as a story that I could tell.
Up until writing this, I never gave him any further indication it was me who caused this.
If you combine the logic of “I must retaliate hard enough that the person, had they known this would happen, wouldn’t have acted badly in the first place” (regardless of whether the person even knows about the revenge), with a propensity to escalate (I suspect destroying the car engine would inflict economic costs significantly greater than whatever rent-payments were involved), an obvious disregard for breaking laws and destroying property, and a further disregard for “morality” (described elsewhere, like in the “journey to the dark side” post) such that even committing murder is on the table… then it’s not especially surprising that they’d conclude that, say, killing Jamie’s apparently-abusive parents a decade after the abuse was “deontologically obligatory”.
Meanwhile other rationalist orgs might pretend to run on timeless/updateless decision theory but seem in practice to actually run on causal decision theory.
What semi-inteligent humans natively do without thinking all that hard is closer to “updateless” decision theory than causal decision theory, and people who think that fancy decision theories imply radically different optimal behavior on the part of regular people are usually gravely misunderstanding what they actually say. The Zizians are an example of this.
In both cases, the violence they used (Which I’m not condoning) seemed meant for resource acquisition (a precondition for anything else you must do).
This is such an unrealistically charitable interpretation of the actions of the Ziz gang that I find it hard to understand what you really mean. If you find this at all a plausible underlying motivation for these murders I feel like you should become more acquainted with the history of violent political movements and cults, the majority of which said at some point “we’re just acquiring resources that we can use for the grand revolution” and maybe even meant it.
But I don’t think that contradicts the fact that she’s doing what she’s doing because she believes humanity is evil because everyone seems to be ok with factory farming. (“flesh-eating monsters”)
Hating humans and therefore doing mean things to them is compatible with a lot of behavior, but very few of those behaviors are “taking the plight of animals seriously and fighting for them with all of your heart.” Taking the plight of animals seriously and not doing obviously counterproductive or insane things in the name of “helping” them are one and the same, for me, and I don’t know what else it could be.
You seem to claim that a person that works ineffectively towards a cause doesn’t really believe in his cause—this is wrong. Many businesses fail in ridiculously stupid ways, doesn’t mean their owners didn’t really want to make a profit.
If a businessowner makes silly product decisions because of bounded rationality, then yes, it’s possible they were earnestly optimizing for success the whole time and just didn’t realize what the consequences of their actions would be.
If a(n otherwise intelligent) businessowner decides to shoot the clerk at the competitor taco stand across the street, then at the very least they must have valued something wayyyyy over building the business.
If an otherwise intelligent businessowner decides to shoot the clerk at the competitor taco stand across the street, then at the very least they must have valued something over than building the business.
Or the businessowner’s thinking process is damaged (despite being intelligent—these coexist a lot more often than we would like), and they sometimes do useful things and sometimes act counterproductively. You could view this as “they sometimes act in a way that soothes a damaged part of their mind, which they value more highly than building the business”. Which way of viewing it is more helpful?
I think the “damaged thinking” view would more likely predict that, when they’re soothing the damaged part of their mind, they don’t think through the consequences very thoroughly, while the other perspective—”they’re 100% rational, and their values include doing some of this weird stuff”—predicts they always understand the consequences. Now, you could add in another assumption: “They place high value on not thinking through the consequences of certain actions.” (I guess you can ultimately explain any behavior pattern by making enough assumptions about what they value.) I don’t have a strong position here on the best way of modeling it.
Not necessarily because you might also commit to stopping it in a non-escalatory way. For instance you could work to make economically viable lab-grown meat to replace animal products.
Hence the other key ingredient in Zizianism is commitment to escalating all the way, which allows things to blow up dramatically like this. (And escalating all the way has the potential to go wrong in most conflicts, not just veganism (though veganism seems like the big one here), e.g. I doubt the landlord conflict was about veganism.)
As an analogy, if you were dealing with the Holocaust, you could try to directly destroy all Nazis, or you could try to mitigate against the Holocaust in less escalatory ways (e.g. trying to have Jews emigrate from Nazi territories, which I imagine could be done either with the cooperation of Jews as in the Danish case, or with the cooperation of Nazis as in the Madagascar plan).
I agree with your comment. To continue the analogy, she chose the path of Simon Wiesenthal and not of Oskar Schindler, which seems more natural to me in a way when there are no other countries to escape to—when almost everyone is Nazi. (Not my views)
I personally am not aligned with her values and disagree with her methods. But also begrudgingly hold some respect for her intelligence and the courage to follow her values wherever they take her.
I eat meat and wear leather and wool. I do think that animals, the larger ones at least, can suffer. But I don’t much care. I don’t care about animal farming, nor the (non-human) animal suffering resulting from carnivores and parasites. I’d rather people not torture their pets, and I’d rather preserve the beauty and variety of nature, but that is the limit of my caring. If I found myself on the surface of a planet on which the evolution of life was just beginning, I would let it go ahead even though it mean all the suffering that the last billion years of this planet have seen.
Bring on the death threats.
Btw, I think that Zizzism was — I should say “is” now that she has been reported as still alive — about a lot more than animal welfare, although that was a part of it. But I will have to peer once again into the cesspit to confirm that.
I downvoted for disagreement but upvoted for Karma—not sure why it’s being so heavily downvoted. This comment states in an honest way the preferences that most humans hold.
Well I downvoted, first because I find those preferences pretty abhorrent, and second because Richard is being absurdly confrontational (“bring on the death threats”) in a way that doesn’t contribute to discussion. The comment is mostly uncalled-for gloating & flag planting, as if he’s trying to start a bravery debate.
Any of those things seem to me sufficient enough reasons to downvote, and altogether they made me strong downvote.
This is just human decision theory modules doing human decision theory things. It’s a way of saying “defend me or reject me; at any rate, declare your view.” You say something that’s at the extreme end of what you consider defensible in order to act as a Schelling point for defense: “even this is accepted for a member.” In the face of comments that seem like they validate Ziz’s view, if not her methods, this comment calls for an explicit rejection of not Ziz’s views, but Ziz’s mode of approach, by explicitly saying “I am what you hate, I am here, come at me.”
A community that can accept “nazis” (in the vegan sense) cannot also accept “resistance fighters” (in the vegan sense). Either the “nazi” deserves to exist or he doesn’t. But to test this dichotomy, somebody has to out themselves as a “nazi.”
Yes, and also it’s a matter of maintaining the Overton window. Allowing perfectly ordinary and morally unproblematic (at worst!) things like “eating meat” and “wearing leather and wool” and “not caring about wild animal ‘suffering’” to be regarded as something one can’t admit for fear of ostracism is nothing more nor less than allowing one edge of the Overton window to move—toward Ziz.
Hence: strong upvote and full agreement for Richard’s comment.
How functional can our community be without pushing back against people like Ziz? Richard’s comment seems to be a way of doing so, and thus potentially useful. It’s fine if you disagree with him, but while I agree the comment was flag-planting, some degree of flag-planting is likely necessary for a healthy discussion. Consider the way well kept gardens die by pacifism (can’t link on my phone, but if you’re not familiar with it there’s an excellent Yudkowsky post of that name that seems relevant). Zizianism is something worth planting a few flags to stop.
How functional can our community be without pushing back against people like Ziz? Richard’s comment seems to be a way of doing so, and thus potentially useful.
In general, the politician’s syllogism fails because not only must we do something, but we must do something that works and doesn’t cause side effects that are worse than its benefits and doesn’t have too high opportunity costs etc. In this case, it’s valuable for people to “push back against people like Ziz”, but it’s disvaluable for people to have awful values (like not caring about animal suffering despite believing it to be real), and to be hyperbolic and confrontational (as in “bring on the death threats” or describing a poorly thought-out blog as a “cesspit”).
Good analogy, but I think it breaks down. The politician’s syllogism, and the resulting policies, are bad because they tend to make the world worse. I would say that Richard’s comment is an improvement, even if you think it might be a suboptimal one, and that pushing back against improvements tends to result in fewer improvements. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good is a saying for very good reason.
The syllogism here is more like:
Something beneficial ought to be done
This is beneficial.
Therefore I probably ought not to oppose this, though if I see a better option I’ll do that instead of doubling down on this.
It could be that Richard’s comment is actually good. I still think that the argument I quoted fails to establish that, for the same reason the politician’s syllogism doesn’t work.
Given Ziz’s explicit calling for people to die, I don’t think there is anything hyperbolic about my “bring on the death threats”. Ziz’s blog is not “poorly thought-out”, it is a condensed nugget of evil. I am not the only one here to have observed this.
I understand from what was posted here that she is currently, or at least recently, in police custody under suspicion of murder. [ETA: Correction: in custody for obstructing police investigation; separately, under suspicion of murder.] Anyway, I’m addressing the LW audience, not Ziz. You know, the people who are disagreeing with what I said but (according to the karma) not on average disagreeing with my having said it.
first because I find those preferences pretty abhorrent, and second because Richard is being absurdly confrontational, as if he’s trying to start a bravery debate.
Things have already started. There is already a confrontation. Flags are already planted. Death threats have already been made (i.e. by Ziz, not against me).
I see your point, but I think that buying Ziz’s rhetoric tools is a mistake. This seems like a case of “do not argue with a crazy person, because from outside it will seem like two crazy people arguing”.
*
Yes, Ziz keeps making death threats left and right. And seems responsible for a few actual deaths.
But also, Ziz seems to successfully drive people crazy (and murderous, or suicidal) with their crazy beliefs and arguments. That seems to me like a reason to reject the frame, rather than join it.
When Ziz screams things like “according to my superior decision theory, using my doubleplus good split personality brain, I have decided to kill you all, because in my crazy imagination you have attacked me first” (not an exact quote), responses like “no, I will kill you” or “I am ready to die” mean buying her frame… that this is somehow about survival, decision theory, and killing. Instead of, merely a crazy person generating a word salad peppered by rationalist keywords and threats of violence.
If a random homeless guy started yelling at you that he wants to kill you, how would you react? I would probably just ignore him, tell everyone “careful, there is some crazy homeless guy, possibly violent”, and maybe call the cops. I wouldn’t try to steelman his words, or adopt his frame.
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.
I haven’t voted at all, but perhaps the downvotes are because it seems like a non sequitur? That is, I don’t understand why Richard_Kennaway is declaring his preferences about this.
Because there is a great want of people saying this. Someone must plant this flag, given the forest of flags already waving on the side of the enormous suffering of everything from cows to cockroaches to bacteria to Bing. But it doesn’t feel like waving a flag when everyone around you is waving the same one. It feels like the flags are just reality itself.
I notice that while there are a lot who disagree with my post (manifested by the agreement-downvotes), its karma has bobbed up and down since I posted it and currently stands positive.
I don’t think it’s that far-fetched to view what humanity does to animals as something equivalent to the Holocaust. And if you accept this, almost everyone is either a nazi or nazi collaborator.
When you take this idea seriously and commit to stopping this with all your heart, you get Ziz.
No, you don’t, because Ziz-style violence is completely ineffective at improving animal welfare. It’s dramatic and self-destructive and might express soundly their factional leanings, but that doesn’t make it accomplish the thing in question.
Further, none of the murders & attempted murders the gang has committed so far seem to be against factory farm workers, so I don’t understand this idea that Ziz is motivated by ambitions of political terrorism at all. Reading their posts it sounds more like Ziz misunderstood decision theory as saying “retaliate aggressively all the time” and started a cult around that.
In both cases, the violence they used (Which I’m not condoning) seemed meant for resource acquisition (a precondition for anything else you must do). It’s not just randomly hurting people. I agree that it seems they are being quite ineffective and immoral. But I don’t think that contradicts the fact that she’s doing what she’s doing because she believes humanity is evil because everyone seems to be ok with factory farming. (“flesh-eating monsters”)
This is a strawman.
While “retaliate aggressively all the time” does seem like a strawman, it is worth noting that Ziz rejects causal decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively if it seems like it would cause things to go better, and avoid retaliating if it seems like it would cause things to go worse”) in favor of some sort of timeless/updateless decision theory (a la “retaliate aggressively even if it would cause things to go worse, as long as this means your retaliation is predictable enough to avoid ever running into the situation where you have to retaliate”).
Meanwhile other rationalist orgs might pretend to run on timeless/updateless decision theory but seem in practice to actually run on causal decision theory.
For an example, see the “rationalist fleet” post. Among other conflicts, it describes getting into a drawn-out conflict with a roommate/subletter (who by Ziz’s account was pretty abusive), ending with the below; it seems pretty illustrative of Ziz’s thought-process (and has nothing to do with veganism):
If you combine the logic of “I must retaliate hard enough that the person, had they known this would happen, wouldn’t have acted badly in the first place” (regardless of whether the person even knows about the revenge), with a propensity to escalate (I suspect destroying the car engine would inflict economic costs significantly greater than whatever rent-payments were involved), an obvious disregard for breaking laws and destroying property, and a further disregard for “morality” (described elsewhere, like in the “journey to the dark side” post) such that even committing murder is on the table… then it’s not especially surprising that they’d conclude that, say, killing Jamie’s apparently-abusive parents a decade after the abuse was “deontologically obligatory”.
What semi-inteligent humans natively do without thinking all that hard is closer to “updateless” decision theory than causal decision theory, and people who think that fancy decision theories imply radically different optimal behavior on the part of regular people are usually gravely misunderstanding what they actually say. The Zizians are an example of this.
This is such an unrealistically charitable interpretation of the actions of the Ziz gang that I find it hard to understand what you really mean. If you find this at all a plausible underlying motivation for these murders I feel like you should become more acquainted with the history of violent political movements and cults, the majority of which said at some point “we’re just acquiring resources that we can use for the grand revolution” and maybe even meant it.
Hating humans and therefore doing mean things to them is compatible with a lot of behavior, but very few of those behaviors are “taking the plight of animals seriously and fighting for them with all of your heart.” Taking the plight of animals seriously and not doing obviously counterproductive or insane things in the name of “helping” them are one and the same, for me, and I don’t know what else it could be.
Is it tho
You seem to claim that a person that works ineffectively towards a cause doesn’t really believe in his cause—this is wrong. Many businesses fail in ridiculously stupid ways, doesn’t mean their owners didn’t really want to make a profit.
If a businessowner makes silly product decisions because of bounded rationality, then yes, it’s possible they were earnestly optimizing for success the whole time and just didn’t realize what the consequences of their actions would be.
If a(n otherwise intelligent) businessowner decides to shoot the clerk at the competitor taco stand across the street, then at the very least they must have valued something wayyyyy over building the business.
Or the businessowner’s thinking process is damaged (despite being intelligent—these coexist a lot more often than we would like), and they sometimes do useful things and sometimes act counterproductively. You could view this as “they sometimes act in a way that soothes a damaged part of their mind, which they value more highly than building the business”. Which way of viewing it is more helpful?
I think the “damaged thinking” view would more likely predict that, when they’re soothing the damaged part of their mind, they don’t think through the consequences very thoroughly, while the other perspective—”they’re 100% rational, and their values include doing some of this weird stuff”—predicts they always understand the consequences. Now, you could add in another assumption: “They place high value on not thinking through the consequences of certain actions.” (I guess you can ultimately explain any behavior pattern by making enough assumptions about what they value.) I don’t have a strong position here on the best way of modeling it.
Not necessarily because you might also commit to stopping it in a non-escalatory way. For instance you could work to make economically viable lab-grown meat to replace animal products.
Hence the other key ingredient in Zizianism is commitment to escalating all the way, which allows things to blow up dramatically like this. (And escalating all the way has the potential to go wrong in most conflicts, not just veganism (though veganism seems like the big one here), e.g. I doubt the landlord conflict was about veganism.)
As an analogy, if you were dealing with the Holocaust, you could try to directly destroy all Nazis, or you could try to mitigate against the Holocaust in less escalatory ways (e.g. trying to have Jews emigrate from Nazi territories, which I imagine could be done either with the cooperation of Jews as in the Danish case, or with the cooperation of Nazis as in the Madagascar plan).
I agree with your comment. To continue the analogy, she chose the path of Simon Wiesenthal and not of Oskar Schindler, which seems more natural to me in a way when there are no other countries to escape to—when almost everyone is Nazi. (Not my views)
I personally am not aligned with her values and disagree with her methods. But also begrudgingly hold some respect for her intelligence and the courage to follow her values wherever they take her.
(Nitpick: historians seem to generally think that the Madagascar plan wasn’t even really on the table for most of the Nazi leadership.)
Fair, I didn’t know much about the Madagascar plan, it’s just something I had heard someone bring up once.
I eat meat and wear leather and wool. I do think that animals, the larger ones at least, can suffer. But I don’t much care. I don’t care about animal farming, nor the (non-human) animal suffering resulting from carnivores and parasites. I’d rather people not torture their pets, and I’d rather preserve the beauty and variety of nature, but that is the limit of my caring. If I found myself on the surface of a planet on which the evolution of life was just beginning, I would let it go ahead even though it mean all the suffering that the last billion years of this planet have seen.
Bring on the death threats.
Btw, I think that Zizzism was — I should say “is” now that she has been reported as still alive — about a lot more than animal welfare, although that was a part of it. But I will have to peer once again into the cesspit to confirm that.
I downvoted for disagreement but upvoted for Karma—not sure why it’s being so heavily downvoted. This comment states in an honest way the preferences that most humans hold.
Well I downvoted, first because I find those preferences pretty abhorrent, and second because Richard is being absurdly confrontational (“bring on the death threats”) in a way that doesn’t contribute to discussion. The comment is mostly uncalled-for gloating & flag planting, as if he’s trying to start a bravery debate.
Any of those things seem to me sufficient enough reasons to downvote, and altogether they made me strong downvote.
This is just human decision theory modules doing human decision theory things. It’s a way of saying “defend me or reject me; at any rate, declare your view.” You say something that’s at the extreme end of what you consider defensible in order to act as a Schelling point for defense: “even this is accepted for a member.” In the face of comments that seem like they validate Ziz’s view, if not her methods, this comment calls for an explicit rejection of not Ziz’s views, but Ziz’s mode of approach, by explicitly saying “I am what you hate, I am here, come at me.”
A community that can accept “nazis” (in the vegan sense) cannot also accept “resistance fighters” (in the vegan sense). Either the “nazi” deserves to exist or he doesn’t. But to test this dichotomy, somebody has to out themselves as a “nazi.”
Yes, and also it’s a matter of maintaining the Overton window. Allowing perfectly ordinary and morally unproblematic (at worst!) things like “eating meat” and “wearing leather and wool” and “not caring about wild animal ‘suffering’” to be regarded as something one can’t admit for fear of ostracism is nothing more nor less than allowing one edge of the Overton window to move—toward Ziz.
Hence: strong upvote and full agreement for Richard’s comment.
How functional can our community be without pushing back against people like Ziz? Richard’s comment seems to be a way of doing so, and thus potentially useful. It’s fine if you disagree with him, but while I agree the comment was flag-planting, some degree of flag-planting is likely necessary for a healthy discussion. Consider the way well kept gardens die by pacifism (can’t link on my phone, but if you’re not familiar with it there’s an excellent Yudkowsky post of that name that seems relevant). Zizianism is something worth planting a few flags to stop.
This is basically the politician’s syllogism:
We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore, we must do this.
In general, the politician’s syllogism fails because not only must we do something, but we must do something that works and doesn’t cause side effects that are worse than its benefits and doesn’t have too high opportunity costs etc. In this case, it’s valuable for people to “push back against people like Ziz”, but it’s disvaluable for people to have awful values (like not caring about animal suffering despite believing it to be real), and to be hyperbolic and confrontational (as in “bring on the death threats” or describing a poorly thought-out blog as a “cesspit”).
Good analogy, but I think it breaks down. The politician’s syllogism, and the resulting policies, are bad because they tend to make the world worse. I would say that Richard’s comment is an improvement, even if you think it might be a suboptimal one, and that pushing back against improvements tends to result in fewer improvements. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good is a saying for very good reason.
The syllogism here is more like:
Something beneficial ought to be done
This is beneficial.
Therefore I probably ought not to oppose this, though if I see a better option I’ll do that instead of doubling down on this.
It could be that Richard’s comment is actually good. I still think that the argument I quoted fails to establish that, for the same reason the politician’s syllogism doesn’t work.
Given Ziz’s explicit calling for people to die, I don’t think there is anything hyperbolic about my “bring on the death threats”. Ziz’s blog is not “poorly thought-out”, it is a condensed nugget of evil. I am not the only one here to have observed this.
So here we are.
LessWrong is not her blog.
Of course it isn’t. Her blog is sinceriously.fyi and that is what I was referring to.
So go tell her, is my point.
I understand from what was posted here that she is currently, or at least recently, in police custody under suspicion of murder. [ETA: Correction: in custody for obstructing police investigation; separately, under suspicion of murder.] Anyway, I’m addressing the LW audience, not Ziz. You know, the people who are disagreeing with what I said but (according to the karma) not on average disagreeing with my having said it.
Things have already started. There is already a confrontation. Flags are already planted. Death threats have already been made (i.e. by Ziz, not against me).
I see your point, but I think that buying Ziz’s rhetoric tools is a mistake. This seems like a case of “do not argue with a crazy person, because from outside it will seem like two crazy people arguing”.
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Yes, Ziz keeps making death threats left and right. And seems responsible for a few actual deaths.
But also, Ziz seems to successfully drive people crazy (and murderous, or suicidal) with their crazy beliefs and arguments. That seems to me like a reason to reject the frame, rather than join it.
When Ziz screams things like “according to my superior decision theory, using my doubleplus good split personality brain, I have decided to kill you all, because in my crazy imagination you have attacked me first” (not an exact quote), responses like “no, I will kill you” or “I am ready to die” mean buying her frame… that this is somehow about survival, decision theory, and killing. Instead of, merely a crazy person generating a word salad peppered by rationalist keywords and threats of violence.
If a random homeless guy started yelling at you that he wants to kill you, how would you react? I would probably just ignore him, tell everyone “careful, there is some crazy homeless guy, possibly violent”, and maybe call the cops. I wouldn’t try to steelman his words, or adopt his frame.
How is Ziz meaningfully different from that?
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.
Strongly upvoted. This is a very good point.
I haven’t voted at all, but perhaps the downvotes are because it seems like a non sequitur? That is, I don’t understand why Richard_Kennaway is declaring his preferences about this.
Because there is a great want of people saying this. Someone must plant this flag, given the forest of flags already waving on the side of the enormous suffering of everything from cows to cockroaches to bacteria to Bing. But it doesn’t feel like waving a flag when everyone around you is waving the same one. It feels like the flags are just reality itself.
I notice that while there are a lot who disagree with my post (manifested by the agreement-downvotes), its karma has bobbed up and down since I posted it and currently stands positive.