This is a linkpost for https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/business/ziz-lasota-zizians-rationalists.html
Interesting.
Ziz had been a minor celebrity within a slice of the Bay Area tech scene known as the Rationalists [...]
Over the years, the Rationalist movement has counted Peter Thiel and Sam Bankman-Fried among its community, and has influenced numerous figures, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Steven Pinker and Nate Silver. [...] Rationalism is something like a fraternity, and a shared language.
Ziz [...] started as a typical Rationalist [...]
[...] In this sense, she was a typical budding Rationalist of the era, following debates about ethics and A.I. on a popular online forum, LessWrong, and devouring Yudkowsky’s fan-fiction work “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.”
I am on the other side of the planet and my participation in the rationality community is almost exclusively online. Those of you who live in the center of the "fraternity", how much would you agree with describing Ziz as a typical member of your "fraternity" back then?
Rationalists like to talk about a thought experiment known as Roko’s Basilisk.
Yeah, definitely. It's on the Less Wrong homepage, and every meetup starts with the prayer to the Basilisk. /s
In one Discord exchange, members of the group insisted on using Discord handles composed of symbols rather than alphanumeric characters. When moderators objected, the group accused them of transphobia.
LOL.
The killings seemed motivated less by ideology than by a mix of revenge and mental health problems.
Didn't expect this. (I mean, I fully agree with the statement, but I didn't expect NYT to say that.)
how much would you agree with describing Ziz as a typical member of your "fraternity" back then?
They were obviously quite outlier-ish weird, but for most of the period I knew them not in a way I would have raised to that much attention.
The Bay Area has a lot of weird people and someone walking around in dark sith robes at a party is not that much weirder than the people who come in a weird indian iridescent uniform, or people walking with cat ears, or the other weird and often kind of cool outfits people have. I also remember them being generally very quiet, so I don't remember them saying much I objected to, and when they said things, they weren't that crazy.
I am on the other side of the planet and my participation in the rationality community is almost exclusively online. Those of you who live in the center of the "fraternity", how much would you agree with describing Ziz as a typical member of your "fraternity" back then?
I don't live in the Bay rn, but at least enough that Ziz went on "long walks" [plural] with Anna Salamon according to the article, and had several high-profile friends (at least Raemon and Kaj).