So, to be clear, everyone you can think of has been mentioned in previous articles or alerts about Zizians so far? Because I have only been on the periphery of rationalist events for the last several years, but in 2023 I can remember sending this[1] post about rationalist crazies into the San Antonio LW groupchat. A trans woman named Chase Carter, who doesn’t generally attend our meetups, began to argue with me that Ziz (who gets mentioned in the article as an example) was subject to a “disinformation campaign” by rationalists, her goals were actually extremely admirable, and her worst failure was a strategic one in not realizing how few people were like her in the world. At the next meetup we agreed to talk about it further, and she attended (I think for the first time) to explain a very sympathetic background of Ziz’s history and ideas. This was after the alert post but years before any of the recent events.
I have no idea if Chase actually self-identifies as a “Zizian” or is at all dangerous and haven’t spoken to her in a year and a half. I just mention her as an example; I haven’t heard her name brought up anywhere and I really wouldn’t expect to know any of these people to begin with on priors.
- ^
Misremembered that I sent the alert post into the chat, but actually it was the Habryka post about rationalist crazies.
You laugh, but I really think a group norm of “think for yourself, question the outside world, don’t be afraid to be weird” is part of the reason why all of these groups exist. If you tell people that over and over some of those people will turn out to be crazy and conclude crime and violence is acceptable. I don’t know if there’s anything to do about that, but it is a thing.