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Episode 452: Zizians Reloaded (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-17 13:21:49
Imported:
2026-06
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We bring back the dutiful scribe of modern maladies, Ezra Marcus, to talk about his new long piece on the Zizians, what happened since our last episode on the group, and how this group of killers fit in with everything else.

How Did Two Elite Students Fall for the Zizians Cult? by Ezra Marcus

Discover more episodes at podcast.trueanon.com.

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Comments

Noah

Rizzians Reloaded

Olivia

Omg thank fuck

Mungo Franczak

THANK GOD I AM HAVING SUCH A SHITTY DAY ALREADY I REARENDED SOMEONE ON MY WAY TO MY FIRST JOB. REMEMBER TO BUY SOLAÑAAAAAAAAA

Quinn Redman

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

Michael

Philosophical foreplay

Rahsaan

Harry Potter was raised by his aunt and uncle not step parents. Unsubscribed

Brent

YC takin’ a dump in the intro?

Alexandria

11 years old and super hot checking in 🙏

Gus Frank

With all this ICE shit going on do you know where to sign up to join the Zizians?

Max

It is unfortunate people have forgotten the about geeks vs nerds, geeks are the Marvel Funko Pop people, nerds program on a Linux system or know every train and how railways operate.

SPENCER PIBBLES

Had to pause after braces Harry potter song. Had me rolling

original gay pussy eatah

FUCK I swore I would be first to comment and say something unhinged!!! I was busy!!! I was deflating basketballs with my ass for OF!!! With Braces face on them! People keep requesting it!!! I’m sorry!!!

Victoria

roko’s brace-n-liz

Brian Ward

Trueanon has somehow become the premiere podcast covering the doings of autistics today. Makes me think the diagnosis came through for brace

Mark Owen

Less goo? I want more goo!

MATT TRIANO

'The Matrix does not hold up' Liz take a nap

Chas Padunski

It’s a dumb little thing. But “audere” (Max’s handle) just means “to dare.” It has no intrinsic relationship to battle or fighting at all. That feels very indicative to me of what happens when people like this get outside of their narrow CS world. They bungle it; they have no idea how much they don’t understand.

Mark Owen

Lakeside has been the elite school in Seattle for decades, Gates and Allen did go there. But my neighbor's kids went there (some kind of scholarship) and they're fine.

tapwaterskeptic

RFK jr needs to come to Seattle to test the water and get to the bottom of our overwhelming rates of autism and transsexuality

Peanut Horse

34:30 those other kids were 100% calling him rolly backpack kid, we had a few of those kids at my school growing up and I still remember them solely for their rolly backpack

Living the Borgesian Kafkaesque Ligotti Horror Dream

Cathartic episode. I always made fun of "Bayesian prior" people for thinking they could download some software to their brain. Just say "guess" or "presumption" or whatever. You're not doing all that math all the time in your head for every given thing, the sun rising is assumed

Sarah Bee

Black and white, binary thinking is actually criteria for autism diagnoses.

Locomdenom

You can't read Socrates, he didn't write anything!

Schwartz666

Moregoo Martindale ova 'ere

buttface

these people are weird and kind of boring

Evan

This episode ruined my day 10/10

LET ME DELETE MY ACCOUNT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES

You know how they keep the dumb masses docile, bread and circuses, treats all that? Well, theres a lot of highly/overly educated "nerds" who need to be kept busy as well.

Doug Cartel

if these zizians were the same age as me then around the time that guy's friend dies, they would have probably run into that game Deus Ex Invisible War (which had all these themes and was intended to be more accessible to a wider audience than the first game) and maybe also Robert Marlow's "Nano", which were published about 3 months apart in the winter of '03-'04. Those two things snagged my imagination for a while but fortunately I was too stupid to keep being interested in it Anyways, Ray Kurzweil needs to be shoved in a locker for his role in this

Doug Cartel

WAIT FUCK I MISSED A CHANCE TO DO A BETTER THAN EZRA JOKE

Isaac

Dumb L’adore

Swimaroo

Chester Morse is gay.

Luke F

The Alexander story about US and China's AIs joining forces to form one world govt is literally just the plot of Colossus: The Forbin Project

DarylBarenziah

As a vegan ML I think we shouldn’t discard that humans are healthier plant based and that factory farming is ecocide and the markets associated are fundamentally evil. Research shows that both Stalin has had a heap of rubbish piled on his grave and likewise the fallacy that warrior cultures ate a ton of meat. The gladiators were bean and root eaters

phoebe L

Listened HARD? pause.

Throw Away

There’s Lizislation she can do

burkina fatso

people will do anything to understand the human psyche except read something from the field of psychology lol

Alexander

We need more Persona games

bob

Get rid of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google and it will all go away 🙃

bob

Yet another episode proving that Marxism is the true science and the collapse of the Soviet Union was the end of all social progress

burkina fatso

me, with a graduate degree and extensive philosophical and intellectual education on human beings, with years of clinical insight and exposure to all varieties of people in a much more visceral and vulnerable sense, listening to adolescent computer geeks with no social skills try to figure out how people work when they’re barely people themselves: fuck it we ball

Luke F

Relax

bob

people rediscovering basic Freud while insisting Freud was wrong about everything because he diagnosed a lot of women with hysteria

boop

if a polycule expands across state lines it's a federal matter

Jacob

"The Matrix does not hold up" is a HOT take holy cow.

William Lim

Ezra is my favorite recurring guest!

chloe

dougie jones mention

DarylBarenziah

Roscos basalisk is fucking mammon these are disciples of mammon what is wrong why worship computer this is so fucking stupid. They should all face the brick

lolwuthappend

Did you guys forget to preface that Milo and Teresa Youngblut are the same person? Slow downnnn

DarylBarenziah

Political leaders should have to stan their ideas either via video essay AMLO style or fucking editorial or opinion pieces in news. Put the political science back in media Jesus fucking Christ. This ascent of ai, Capital and ilth is just too much.

DarylBarenziah

This is such a good name Tovarisch, and you’re right. It’s like the arrogant “im right about this” don’t consult the experts in the field opposite of Mao no investigation leads to mass stupidity.

mckinley faas

Does anyone else think about how well jordan Peterson would fit into all this ...I can't escape this type of beat that's like dumb smart person / extremely stupid persons idea of what a smart person does/ acts

mckinley faas

As kind as Liz is being to the kids in this story I can't help but think it would be funny to give these dorks a motel room and a hot rail and the og ghost in the shell anime and watch them freak the fuck out

mckinley faas

Like it's always some YA or kids who nothing wild or obscure again dumb persons idea of what a smart person is into ...ur not nerds ( these ppl are but like still) these are shut ins with broken brains no real threat to anyone but I guess that landlord and each other I'd assume most know not to engage with folks like this if they can help it

Louis Wilkins

You want to kill me, don’t you Spartacus ?

lzrdkng

No info hazard for 26:12?!?!

GG Allin Dulles

Geek culture used to be about biting the head off a live chicken, sad how things change

mckinley faas

How the fuck did we go this whole episode without someone saying dunning Kruger effect or whatever...

ploob

Man Act

fioe06 t

Brace needs to bring back the southern baby accent

ploob

This better be real!

ploob

Lesbian Goo???

O

The epidemic of discord users who named themselves after fictional characters is worse than Covid, and I demand financial compensation

Drew LaBarre

“Thinking about thinking” people don’t need any of that, people need to breathe and realize they are real and that death is a beautiful part of life.

Egg B

Thank you, Liz, I also hate hypotheticals. The number one move of people who are only smart in their fantasy world!!!!

Egg B

I was on a USCIS webinar in late summer 2024 where they talked about how great AI will be for adjudication. A bunch of lawyers got big mad and were like how can you guarantee this won’t be used against people when we know AI has been trained to be racist. USCIS was like, call the civil rights bureau and abruptly ended the entire webinar after 20 minutes. Thanks, Biden!!!!!

Alexander Kuhn

When the animorphs were mentioned I soyfaced and clapped like a seal

Jawn Feddermang

Made my face go all doo doo like Zizzelle Washington

Sadie

My bf worked with Ophelia (felix) in Chicago at a high level trading firm. Everyone really liked her but she ended up getting fired for doing some freaky sleep deprivation to try to merge the two halves of her brain (?)

Timothy Buttons

I think hypotheticals are fine it's just that every rationalist hypothetical is really dumb

.

Yeah surprising. The 1st one still 100% holds up. The rest are just popcorn fluff with the 4th one being pretty fucking awful. One of the sisters didn’t sign on and it was obviously a cash grab.

Adam Kozman

When you do the zizial dance.

goblinshoes

i for one also remember ted cruz coming out as sapiosexual

Timothy Buttons

The Matrix remains good. New one sucked though

Chapo Bath House

SPEAKING OF memory and sapiosexuals and smart people who are arguably very stupid, I just read In The Freud Archive by Janet Malcolm and I want to thank Liz for the recommendation.

snapplepeachtea

what did i learn from this episode? vegans are ontologically evil.

Pigeon

Adam Tooze on a recent one of his podcasts talked up the prospect of most lawyers getting replaced with AIs, stipulating that they just need to use the AIs that *don’t* hallucinate, which was just shockingly naive coming from him

Matty C

Tooze proving he ain’t shit. These people all need to spend like a day in the development pit of their favorite “app” or whatever and see how prone to error and bias this shit is. There’s 8 different 23 year olds pulling their hair out trying to remember basic calculus at any given time at Amazon just to make the “pay now” button worn

Pigeon

It’s true, a lack of cholesterol has turned both my hemispheres evil

Chapo Bath House

Tofu nuggies are good tbh. Dredge it in flour and nutritional yeast and your pee will have so many B vitamins

Shaggy

Hail Ziz

Shaggy

No it was the restoration of capitalism in China

Shaggy

How to downvote

burkina fatso

the real heads know freud was ight but jung was the real goat

burkina fatso

you drive to the nearest stream and you sit by it peacefully and then you don’t because you realize i’m right

Gordon Schmidt

Harry Potter is just Naruto if it was bad

Alexandria

Hit the tip line because we need more

Jim Veil

Mr. Jackpots!

Jim Veil

My hot take is they're all good to great. Even the fourth one.

J

Gonna start my own cult called the Zyzzians but we’re gonna worship a dead bodybuilder instead

Sydney

Thanks guys I needed this

big man

Ziz originally comes from a giant bird in the Torah

cagey eye

fucked up that all this babybrained shit has gone so far and my trans murder cult based on the alanna series by tamora pierce has hardly any adherents

Robert Armstrong

Gonna need that remix STAT, Parsel-Yung Chomsky.

Salex

Yeah the weird fetishism of autism and intelligence of tech culture drives me nuts. I got autism, I’m dumb as hell but I also don’t use it as an excuse to be a real asshole about things. It discounts all the regular people out there trying to keep jobs and have meaningful relationships when we have literal communication and learning disabilities. And autistic people who can’t speak for themselves. It’s gross

mark muoio

Ive always identified as a cool dork

christian

all this coulda been prevented if someone started mocking these kids by calling them "jizzians"

Ellen Grace

As a vegan, I’ve met some evil vegans

Justine Riekena

Could these people be any more irrational?

J98

Ezra seems to think these people are intelligent, but i remain doubtful

The wazzzzaaapp bud light dude

I thank god (non-human bitch made one) that I was never considered smart or a young prodigy type. It seems to make you stupid in a way that can only be inflicted on a person. I’d rather be a sane idiot than an “enlightened” tech freak.”

Shiv

I’m only 17m in but WHY WOULD RATIONALIST HP go to MAGIC SCHOOL. couldn’t he go to a regular Oxbridge you DORKS

Shiv

I have a couple discord observations as a X/ennial w Zoomer friends: the hanging/falling asleep bit is 1:1 what we did on the analog phone in my high school days and I find it cute 2. and maybe more critically, if you’re concerned as an older sibling, parent or just citizen: I have hung out IRL with young ppl who met their friend group and partners on a game discord, and the way they segued to irl social interaction from the daily joking/chatting online was honestly impressive to me. I have a lot of friends I’ve made online and met off, but I think I have a vestigial tendency to consider these worlds separate and for a lot of younger ppl not only are they not, it would be weird to consider them as such.

Shiv

it IS gross. shout out to my normie ASD homies

Sean Kelly

I was an evil vegan but the chik’n dino nuggies flipped both my brain hemispheres to lawful good

Chapo Bath House

People have long used singular they to refer to people when they don't know their gender. Maybe a very pendantic middle school English teacher will say "he or she" in this case, but usually not Example: "My friend is visiting next week" "Where are they from?"

sloven

who even gives a fuck man

Chapo Bath House

Yeah man, I just need to have my emotional support ear plugs and written instructions. I do sympathize with these people in "there but for the grace of God go I sort of way". But the thing is, I was on the same forums as a lot of these people. I was taking cog sci courses in the 2010s. I briefly drank the TedTalk data optimist Kool aid. And yet for all of my alienation, from other people, from myself, from my body, and the way I coped by doubling down and intellectualizing my feelings, I still didn't do any of this shit?

bob

can’t a guy (or gal) just be normal??

prickled.pear

Has Austin had any great tech cults yet? Tech freaks abound here, but none of them are getting loose like they do in the bay.

Tone Bug

Brace go off abt nerds 22:32 🙏🙏

devils cherry

As a proud zoomer autist myself... lol 😸 I wish there was an easy way to communicate these internal things... It's difficult to feel like there is such a distance separating different generations / mental complexities etc. I love the pod so much!! and it's only ever on these eps where I feel like there's a blind spot.. and not on purpose. it's just hard.. I don't think the childlike media inclination has to do with a childlike or simple understanding of morality.. I think it's more like when you have a pet. the love you feel towards each other is so uncomplicated and pure. compare that to messy human relationships. the former is all I've ever felt any real comfort in. you grow up constantly feeling shamed and misunderstood by people who haven't tried to understand you. and you don't know why they feel that way towards you. children don't see those things. they are so accepting. on a level that is different because it is before our societally imposed shame reaction towards what is "different" is solidified. In the context of Ziz I think what really connects all of these things for me is their pattern recog moral framework (hemispheres etc). It's not commonly understood how much autistic people do internally to try to figure out social interactions. trying so hard to understand why people respond so negatively to certain things that seem normal to you. it becomes a whole unique internal guide .. like your own version of "how to make friends and influence people" lolol. so I could totally see this playing out in the basilisk hell realm way if you are coming to the wrong conclusions. then it just snowballs. I'm only halfway through the ep but I didn't want to forget these things for now. I appreciate you all taking a kinder approach. I really wish we could all see the world the way each other do for a day and understand.. words are limiting 🥲

Jack

Ya know, it's funny cuz to the extent that there are any particular messages in Harry Potter, "cheating death is evil and bad" is clearly on the list

Jack

A movie about machines literally sucking our energy, made by people living in a world where machines are literally sucking our energy, but the movie is actually about anything except machines literally sucking our energy. Also it's basically Gnosticism 101. Fun movies. I like them all honestly

Salex

Ditto! I was even recruited into a high control group at about their age, and the leader totally played on our need to belong / being weirdos who don’t fit in / wanting to feel special blah blah. Typical cult stuff. So I want to sympathise but I literally can’t vibe with their persecution nonsense.

Andrew

I was driving on the FDR this afternoon and a car came to a dead stop right in front of me. I drove around him and went to give him the “what the hell, man” as I passed and—hand to God dude—he just gave me the hardest Schumer I’ve ever seen. Glasses down, eyes raised, fingers becoming tented. So powerful.

Roger Peet

Did anybody say Rocco's Basilisk yet

Roger Peet

Not enough acid in Texas I think, which is too bad because I think it used to be a major exporter

Matt Jolo

Rocko's Modern Basilisk

Matt Jolo

If you like humans does that make you a sapio sexual

Sebastian Moller

Went to an event that Brace performed at and afterwards he walked back to the train with a harem of three porcelain rockabilly chicks.

dan

veganism implies a bourgeois moralism that goes way beyond the abolition of factory farming (you know, the sort of moralism that invokes “fundamental evil.”) im not sure it’s useful to derive universal norms from the particular material contingencies of late capitalist economies and their ruthlessly exploitative animal agriculture the violence behind frozen Tyson’s chicken nuggies is not demonstrative of all animal food cultures

DarylBarenziah

I think while veganism can be weaponized for bourgeois moralism; in the context of late capitalist economies which I am a part of, it makes no sense to buy in to the malicious, subsidized, flesh of beasts that has no connection with any animal food culture that is conducive to a equitable relationship with nature. If I was elsewhere, sure, but again if you investigate the relationship with most working class peoples and animal meat you will find it is less common for them, then the middle and upper classes.

dan

100% marx is always talking about how you gotta remain incomprehensible and unapproachable that’s why his most popular and widely distributed work is a pamphlet that does not mention whatsoever the scholarly debate concerning the terms in which the post-Kantian system of German Idealism should be completed

dan

Agreed on all that—I am myself a working class person and I practice what could only be called ‘bad vegetarianism’ for health & cost reasons. But I also live by many farmers in worse economic straits than me who could probably not get by without the game they hunt to eat. I just object to moralizing the individual decisions of undereducated and disempowered people in increasingly miserable material conditions.

dan

Derrida has a 550 page book that he wrote after he got incomprehensibly triggered by seeing a postcard that showed Socrates writing down what Plato was saying

dan

in my day there were trench coat archetype freak nerds and Linux archetype quiet nerds but now they have produced monstrous hybrid kin

AP

😍😍😍

DarylBarenziah

Yeah I feel that. I get the game thing I too live rurally. All good points

Rory Henham

The name Ziz may also be a reference to the biblical monster from Book of Psalms. It’s supposed to be the third of part of the Leviathan-Behemoth-Ziz triad wherein Leviathan is the beast of the sea, Behemoth the land, and Ziz the air.

Ellis Roper

As a young child I liked Ron Paul bc I had unmonitored access to image boards

Nathan Bebo

they were for a brief few months, boat owners. until they put the tugboat on the rocks.

somenobodyengineer

I will join at least one other person in saying that I enjoy the baby voice bit and would like to see it run into the ground by repeat appearances 😂

Quinn

Need a train episode if true

Ligma

We need a mass program to get autists off of rationalism and onto Marxism. Lets crowd source a rev comm anime

Ligma

Btw does anyone know what episode the Christchurch shooting is?

BeanCurd

My dear comrade, the complicated, messy, often disappointing aspects of being a human trying to relate to other humans -- that's the good shit in life. I sympathize with you, that it is difficult when you feel misunderstood by the world. Part of socialist politics (for me, at least) is to embrace the idea that it is "better to live together than apart," even when it feels uncomfortable. We need to resist the individualist reactionary impulse that tells us people are disgusting and all I need is the nonjudgmental love of my cat (and don't get me wrong, I fucking love my cat).

devils cherry

Thanks for the kind message BeanCurd 🫶 I totally agree with you & I understand that completely. It's really the most important thing right now.. to meet others where they're at and try to create class consciousness we must. Even when it's very difficult. I felt the need to comment to explain the inclination towards media — that it does not equate to mortality in my opinion — because morally I am with you. & I know a lot of people who like these things who feel the same. it is difficult to hear that because you like these things, people view you as having a childlike understanding of morality.

Katie H

I spent the 2010s exposed to the left-libertarian variants of the rationalists (best friend’s boyfriend was a hacker…) and they always seemed to be speed running through pretty basic insights of western philosophy while believing they were the first people to come upon them because they did it on a computer. Also major sov cit vibes - like they found the magic words to bend society to their will. Visited a lot of smelly boats and box cars and suffered though a lot of Adventure Time during that time. Made me the hater I am today.

CJ

I could never be a Zizian but I would like to be a Lizian

Quinn

I always explain to people that Elon Musk and Donald Trump fit well together because Elon Musk is exactly what a dumb person’s idea of a smart person is, (Elon: “Smart” - Trump: Dumb). But in reality they are both psychotic morons who have gained incalculable power through lying, cheating, stealing, etc. Generally the people I explain this to then call me “jealous” or a “liberal” in which I am neither. I like your point about Peterson, he’s another great example of a person who dumb people seem to think is smart. Oh, I should make my bed? I should shower? Thanks Professor Genius!

Katie H

I had some irl experience with these types and they’re not. A lot of stem people who are so ignorant of philosophy and literature that they think they invented it.

Kevin Stickel

Im the same age as brace and Liz and hearing them speak about the mode of socialization that’s been the healthiest by far for me as if its some symptom of the dystopian nightmare we live in was crushing

Victoria

I feel like autism/whatever is necessary but not sufficient for this type of crazy, and what actually tips it over the edge is the sense of superiority to others - which, while it could be a defense mechanism in response to a sense of otheredness stemming from autism, is clearly not a given considering how many autistic people don’t conceive of themselves like that. Similarly, while the messiah-chosen one-special genius attitudes are childlike, I just don’t know if I’d say that these people simply failed to proceed past a certain stage of development… it feels like their belief in their intrinsic superiority to the majority of people on earth is its own thing, lowkey The Thing driving all this. Rageful entitlement with an eccentric twist. This is all probably very obvious but it’s been on my possibly diagnosable mind.

Brian Ward

I think the point was the level of obsession rather than the form of socialising. Also if anything the emphasis was on not seeing these people as disparate strangers, it might appear that way from the outside but they clearly felt a deep connection

Brian Ward

Where they all bald/shaved heads?

mckinley faas

No yeah definitely there should be a slur for this type of person lol and yes I've also been told I'm jelly for pointing out that the hyper loop was stupid and not going to work and well...

mckinley faas

I think the superiority complex comes from being entirely to online and not being shit on by people in actual real life flesh space ...bullying these types is actually a net positive and I'll die on that hill...like I'm sorry nothing against furry or weird online times but if u want ur homie to stop making cat sounds into the mic on discord ur going to have to bully that out of them same with being racist or classist

Victoria

They needed to experience more hard consequences for their actions for sure (aren’t a lot of them rich?), but this reply feels like it’s weaving a whole lot of stuff together that I don’t know if I can unpack 😭 Weirdness isn’t the problem, is my point, truly just the superiority!! Not everyone, and not all or even most autistic people, go around considering themselves superior life forms until it’s bullied out of them. Where is that attitude coming from in the first place

TangiePower

Extremely funny to me that these people are literally terrified of the Shrike from the Hyperion Cantos novels.

Michael Xin

I think this type of cult is uniquely American because it starts out with the axiom that every believer is the centre of the universe and the protag of reality.

Sean

Have you ever tried playing baseball or paying taxes?

DaMar

When i hear more and more about the zizians, rationalists, and some tech/stem people is that they just think of the humanities studies as inherently lesser so they're getting their morality systems from movies which are heavily marketed at kids(hell even adult movies are marketed at kids which is why we got so much nostalgia for Ghostbusters and predator) and so yeah their ideas and thoughts tend to be stupid or dumb because their interaction with social sciences ends in high school where they don't get to pick their own classes.

S

Is this the first goofy “buh-bye”

regular bird

this episode ezra marcus pilled me

Luke F

That Worm web novel or whatever is indeed referencing the biblical beasts

devils cherry

I guarantee I pay more taxes than you 😉 & I guarantee I have more fun than you! Do you hear yourself Sean. Don't let me turn you into a Republican yelling at a cloud

Trevor

The Scott Alexander story the guest mentions near the end that involves an AI running the government was the plot of Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001)

dan

brother i am a Marx scholar and I can barely make sense of wtf you’re on about

Amelia

Gonna need the deep sea aliens to snip some cables

Will

Baby Brace is far too close to Alex Jones' impression of Bernie Sanders

Dom Gina

Keep waiting for Baudrillard to come up …

Ty

If we are at the mercy of the market (economic) and Internet (social) and most capital is traded on algos AND the internet is bots there is a case to be made our society is half shaped by AI.

NYC YDSA

I re-read the entire Animorphs series (60+ very short books) when my brain was goo in 2020 and honestly, they hold the fuck up. Definitely For Kids but they actually cut against the “chosen one” logic of the harry potters of the world in an interesting way (the kids get the morphing powers by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it basically ruins their lives) and have a much more complex and interesting moral worldview than most other similar children’s/YA books. I don’t really recommend them to adults unless your brain is goo like mine was in 2020/ur feeling hella nostalgia/u have a kid in ur life that u want to mildly traumatize but they rock if any of the above applies

Aaaaaaaaaaaron1

the whole rationalist thing makes me feel weird because I came so close to being one of them. I was in a lot of online spaces that were similar back in the early 2000s when I was in high school. If I'd come across Lesswrong instead of the other weird forums I was on I 100% would have become one of these freaks. I think I was just a few years too early, thank god.

AP

Appreciate your comment. Couldn’t agree more.

Katana King

Someone should ask JK Rowling if the goblins are the loss tribe of Dan

G

Existenz is so good

Troy

Baby Brace just sounds like Homestar Runner.

Ipota

I enjoyed the episode but I didn’t fully agree with the end, obviously we’ve not seen the full extent of AI technology, but technically speaking I don’t really see how we’re going to get to a point where the world is going to be controlled by AI or whatever. There’s this paper by two princeton AI professors called “AI as a normal technology” where they argue that AI is going to largely stay within human control even as it advances, at least for the foreseeable future. Idk i think the scarier part is people assuming it’s super powerful and using it in places where it shouldn’t be used. I just don’t see how we get any further than a better chatgpt

Devon

JK Rowling has so much to answer for

saaffie

Brace,Liz is there any exploration on potential discord infiltration of these groups? A la Chaos, Tom O'Neil with the Manson sect?

marcus conde

Two words that summarize this episode “ani-morphs”

Julian Kirkby

Sometime I feel like I am being held hostage by Grace's bits, I keep on coming back and not skipping them though

Henry

Liz gets me mixed up with Jude Law because we have the same hairline

Thom Main

I think you’re probably mostly right, I guess the issue is that many ‘normal technologies’ have still wound themselves around society and power in a way that they aren’t really controllable. But that’s maybe more an inevitability of capitalism rather than technology. I do find the whole AI alignment freak out thing very funny, like bro the people MAKING the technology have no alignment to humanity, AI will be wielded (and is being) in existentially misanthropic ways long before any sort of misaligned AI god scenario

I am become reply guy

I was radicalized at a distance by podcasts. I won’t say which ones😉

I am become reply guy

As I understand it, ‘AI’ is just a very sophisticated and resource intensive way of producing slop, and that the current theoretical framework represents a dead end. Can someone explain why all these very educated people who understand the technology think the world is going to end?

Khemith

LIz and Brace hit the nail on the head: infantile modes. Freud (I'm not a Freud expert or anything) pointed this out before the rise of fascism. Though, I believe Freud resisted tying this to any era or material condition, it seems like liberalism and the abundance of capitalism is a fertile soil for this. Honestly I think we all do this. It's tied to our mass communication sense of irony and constant references (Example Brace alluding to "Good Will Hunting). What is there for the modern person to do but be nostalgic for fictional worlds? The "homizoid" is someone who willingly fuses with technology and the master technology (capitalism). It's an inhuman mode of being.

Khemith

This is what drove the socialist/communists mad. Radio could help bring about class consciousness or just turn everyone into a fascist.

Khemith

Alot of these big name fantasy writers have the same path as the Zizzians but never had the internet to accelerate their madness. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, HP Lovecraft, Anne Rice, etc They created worlds to live in them, but had a mode of existence that kept them grounded somewhat. Ironically the internet is rotting the brain of J.K Rowling. She should be drinking wine and buying old houses, not posting everyday.

Khemith

What is "human control" ? Already my rent is determined by a capitalist algorithm of pure extraction. The commodity exchange is determined by an algorithm. Trump had back down on his most extreme tariff ideas because an algorithm rejected them. I don't trust "AI professors" to tell me what "human control" is. We need stop thinking so much in terms of "Terminator" and more subtley in terms of slowing become less human. Less sweat, less craft, less communion.

Khemith

We live in her throat.

Khemith

I heard of the movie but never watched it cus of the title. Imma check it out.

Khemith

I thank the Goddess that I picked up occult books at the library instead of going into the rationalist rabbit hole. I just didn't have easy access to the internet at the time. I mostly have rejected the occult claims but it atleast didn't get me to tell me sorrows to a smartphone.

Khemith

Which is why Zionism tends to be strong. You basically only learn about the holocaust in American high school and learn about the other atrocities in college.

Khemith

Matt Christman hinted at the internet being the perfect continuation of MK Ultra. It's making everyone insane.

Khemith

Vaccinated.

Khemith

I think with a guest, they were simply allowing him to talk about his article on this particular thing. But I appreciate you mentioning this.

Khemith

It took me 20 years to figure that. Now I get energy from being with people. Brain change is possible. It's kinda funny how we fell back into phrenology.

Khemith

Communion is a cornerstone of being human. Being a body in space with another. Feeling that anxiety of being near.

Rory

Basically the fear that they will build a slop producing machine so good at producing slop it'll turn the universe into slop

devils cherry

I get you. I mean, I’m buddhist. I understand choosing which seeds to water in your mind. I don’t think phrenology has any relevance to what i said... Autism is just a thing that exists and causes people just have various differences and struggles. & I interact with all kinds of people all the time. It’s just hard

Victoria

It doesn’t give everyone delusions of grandeur and a view of the majority of their fellow humans as dirty-murderer-blood-drinkers (for not being vegan, there was some kind of intense language like that quoted in the second episode if I remember correctly). I’m just saying it’s a very specific throughline of extreme superiority & entitlement through the whole thing, however much autism and the detachment of the internet are also integral to this story.

Wendi Byther

At about 15 mins until the end, as y’all were processing, it occurred to me that a lot of this reminds me of that rhesus monkey experiment with the wire vs cloth “mothers” All of the atomization and financial degradation of current society mixed with all this AI shit.. bad mix for everyone, but especially bad for young folks

Indoors

Ezra’s deep sighs of contemplation hit just right

jrab

Ziz’s flesh will be eaten by the righteous at the feast of the messiah, as recompense for not eating non-kosher birds. That’s aggadah though… “Ziz” in Psalms only appears as one of many biblical words for unidentified animals

jrab

I think for rationalists, utilitarian calculation is why they’re into it, same reason they’re obsessed with mosquito nets

jrab

Ziz is an animal mentioned in Psalms, the apocalyptic giant bird stuff is aggadah

jrab

Unihemispheric sleep, one of the most controversial Zizian practices as to whether it was really tried, how much and what happened…

MATT TRIANO

If your mother brings you a snack by that stream you might be Thoreau

MATT TRIANO

An aboriginal elder and native shaman taking detailed notes in background

Irene

Halfway through listening and just feeling like the whole getting stuck at a lower stage of moral development or whatever goes back to the failure to emphasize the humanities in education. I remember very vividly wrestling with the idea of good and evil and recalibrating how I thought about it based on high school English discussions? Agh we need good education

big man

fuck I got out Jew’d

Ronin Fredricson

Fuckin giving me nearly 5 hours of homework... Also PSA: Either search "Zizians" full or "Evil" just searching "Zi" or "Ziz" doesn't work because patreon search function bad

Chapo Bath House

100% holds up as an action movie with a tight sound tradk. It's little "I'm 12 years old and this is deep", but that might be more a reflection of what an insufferable nerd I was when I first saw it around that age

K H

There is an inverse relationship between willingness to violence and understanding where it should be applied. I think a lot of this could be avoided if these guys knew what getting punched in the head felt like.

Jessica S

Lakeside School is one of a handful of techie prep schools around here. There’s another one nearby Seattle called Eastside Prep. It was started by Microsoft execs that wanted a place for their quirky kids to learn…I think they mean they don’t want their kids to mix with the normals. Which is funny because the school districts that surround it are the best in the state, I literally think some of these people can’t fathom their children in public schools. I talked to a gal who’s got a daughter at our elementary school and one at Eastside Prep. She was saying how the guy who owns the patent to Microsoft Word sends his kids there and “one of them is best friends with my daughter, you’d never know they were rich.” 🙄

K H

Didn't realize it had one.

K H

I think this particular behavior is relegated almost exclusively to kids that are allowed to be too weird. They needed to have their phone broken and squeel and disassociate for a day until they actually went outside and ate grass or whatever the fuck weird dumb kids do. I think parents of affluent kids also lean way to hard into their kid being special and weird. Love your kids or whatever, but every fucked up thing they do shouldn't be entertained or revered.

K H

I am so sad you reminded me of that...

K H

It's funny that the people that will cause the world to end don't think they're going to or at least do not care. Meanwhile Steven Universe adults think the Miyazaki animation bot is going to impale all of humanity. I'm pretty sure it stems from """smart""" type people idolizing Oppenheimer and saying I am becomr death. Because he seemed really important, and they want to pretend their apps are important and they are important.

K H

Media only lets you name, categorize, and quantify the abstract feelings you already have and frame your experiences to let you align them. It doesn't make you anything without the nucleus of experience.

K H

If I was her I would never post again. She is rich enough to be one of those people that doesn't carry a phone. You just have a phone butler.

K H

I understand. AI friendship programs are necessary to maximize entanglement with fake jihadi waifus provoking people to commit false flag attacks.

BruiseBlu

Nintendo just announced Baby Brace as DLC for Mario Kart World

Carson Vines

I think it would be nice to include the the images yall discuss throughout the episode in the description/show notes. We wanna crack up with yall!

Jonah Stocks ladd

isnt harmony korines new movie about ai that makes you into a baby?

AR

Not for nothing but the idea that these people are even "intellectually" or "academically" smart is giving them too much credit (which was the old brace and Liz thesis that they're not so much tech prodigies as people who spend an unbelievable amount of time on discord/pseudosocial media). Like with everything else, they're LARPers more obsessed with feeling and seeming smart and "how to think" rather than actually having real knowledge. They don't even understand the technology they're obsessed with that drives them insane. And beyond that their worldview has so many layers of insane nonsense pseudoscience that crumbles under even the smallest amount of knowledge. What's darker is that this is the relatively harmless side of the same cult that has the reins of global power, and are equally detached from reality.

Corndog

1) You understand it in exactly the correct and normal way 2) These people are mentally unwell

Kommi Koo

As a person totally captured by the Internet culture in a way I don't fully understand myself, it's interesting watching different types of people I recognize coalescing into the zizian thing, but also just tech culture and running the country it seems like.

bob

It is really wild how much we have lost in terms of psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc., by the hegemony of rationalism and other computation/tech-brained ideology.

Sean

if you’re 15 on the internet you need to be watching Strong Bad Emails not posting on Less Wrong

Ben Newman

Someone has gotta show these fuckers The Terminator series

jrab

I don’t understand why no one (including this show) talks about the fact that these people have mentioned many times that they are anarchists. I don’t really believe in letting the “good”(?=“left”?)anarchists write off the “bad” anarchists the way they like to. Marxism at least has foundational texts. Anarchism is just a mishmash that it’s inherently just impossible to say what it’s supposed to be for or against.

Dorrian Weber

While I'm sure the creators of this show would agree with the position that anarchism is a vague and intellectually unserious ideology, why talk about that when there are actually interesting things to discuss? If you want to listen to people talk your ear off with banal criticisms of anarchists just join your local DSA chapter

Jon with no H

I'm sorry but if you use chatgpt as a friend or therapist you are a fucking loser of the most pathetic caliber. Like, I'm a loser and even I have 6 friends i can call and rely on if I need to. Just go outside you fucking dweebs. Holy shit.

bruce

what really is striking about this entire ideology to me is its solipsism. The self interest. I don’t think it’s any mistake that the thing that scares them, the basilisk, is a concept they have invented, which will actually cause them personal harm. They have no society facing or social welfare interest whatsoever. Complete absorption of the self, not so surprising to become insane when you think this way.

Sardonic

Holy shit, there was a suitcase kid in my school in Austin way back in the early 2000s. He was a hardcore libertarian weirdo I believe. Wonder whatever happened to him. Sounds like exactly the kind of guy who would wind up in this kind of cult.

Tenshi's half-eaten corndog

I think the inability to go with one's birth name and the inability to "just make decisions" or "just be a person" are really two sides of the same coin. These are people for whom a capacity for human automaticity, no matter the subculture, has either been destroyed or never existed in the first place. Yudkowsky himself was likely a simple neurotic, and there are many of them among the Rat's, but the Zizians are a different profile. It's like there's nothing there, and they fill it up with whatever is available. I'm glad I never had the opportunity to pick up on this when I was younger.