I think that Octavia is confused / mistaken about a number of points here, such that her testimony seems likely to be misleading to people without much context.
[I could find citations for many of my claims here, but I’m going to write and post this fast, mostly without the links, for the time being. I am largely going off of my memory of blog post comments that I read months to years ago, and my memory is fallible. I’ll try to accurately represent my epistemic status inline. If anyone knows the links that I’m referring to, feel free to put them in the comments. Same if you think that I’m misremembering something.
To Octavia, if I’ve gotten any of the following wrong, I encourage you to correct it. I apologize for any rudeness. I’m speaking somewhat more bluntly here than I often would, because it seems more important than usual to help people get clear models of the situation, urgently.]
Octavia is not a Zizian in the relevant sense
Most importantly, I think she is mistaken about whether or not she is “a Zizian”.
There are at least types of people that the term “Zizian” might refer to:
Someone who has read Sinceriously.fyi and is generally sympathetic to Ziz’s philosophy.
A member of a relatively tightly-coordinated anarchist conspiracy, that has (allegedly) planned and carried out a series of violent crimes.
Octavia is a Zizian in the first sense, but is not (to my knowledge) a Zizian in the second sense. In fact, she seems unaware or disbelieving that a network of Zizians of the second sense exists. She appears to think that there are only ‘people who have benefited from reading Ziz’s blog’, and no coordinated criminal network to speak of. [1]
Because she claims to be a Zizian, one might reasonably expect that she’s an authority on what Zizians believe or do. Insofar as people are interested in what the members of the criminal conspiracy believe, I currently think that she is not much of an authority. (Though again, I don’t know what kind of contact she’s had with who, and maybe they’re closer than I know.)
I don’t know, but I would guess that Octavia has either not spoken to Ziz at all since Ziz faked her death in 2022, or that the two have minimally conversed. (Octavia obviously has more info about this than I do, and is welcome to correct me.)
Based on comments that I saw on Sinceriously.fyi, when it was up, I guess that Ziz does not endorse Octavia’s take on her philosophy, or regard Octavia as a member of her Vegan Sith crew (though I may be misremembering, and their relationship may have changed since the blog was taken down).
Octavia gets a lot wrong about what Ziz wrote
Furthermore, Octavia says a number of things that are, by my memory, either outright contradicted by the text of sinceriously.fyi, or seem to me to be importantly mistaken misreadings.
For instance,
Does Ziz think that core values can change?
Octavia mostly seems to miss the point of Ziz’s arguments that core values are immutable. She says that Ziz never stated explicitly that core values don’t change (and that JD tries to heavily imply this without justification), or that Ziz is only making a technical point that if you choose good than that means you were good all along. (Although a few minutes later she does agree that core is “the aspect of yourself that doesn’t change, and if you can change it’s not the core”, so I’m not totally sure what she’s saying and maybe I’m just misunderstanding her.)
Ziz does say in the first line of Choices Made Long Ago, “I don’t know how mutable core values are. My best guess is, hardly mutable at all or at least hardly mutable predictably.” and goes on to elucidate why apparent changes in values are actually not that.
Additionally, in her glossary, Ziz defines core: “Core is something in the mind that has infinite energy. Contains terminal values you would sacrifice all else for, and then do it again infinity times with no regret. Seems approximately unchanging across lifespan. Figuratively, the deepest frame in the call stack of the mind, capable of aborting any train of thought, everything the mind does is because it decided for it to happen.”
I don’t think it’s correct to say that Ziz never explicitly said that core values couldn’t change.
(Furthermore, Octavia states in the interview that Ziz sometimes dares the reader to stop being evil. At the end of Choices Made Long Ago, Ziz says “If you have done do lamentable things for bad reasons (not earnestly misguided reasons), and are despairing of being able to change, then either embrace your true values, the ones that mean you’re choosing not to change them, or disbelieve.” This is just about the opposite of daring the reader to stop being evil. It’s more like daring the reader, who’s done bad things and is horrified by that, to stop rationalizing and just admit that they’re actually evil.)
This is an extremely key piece of Ziz’s moral philosophy. According to my understanding, Ziz and co. feel justified in taking violent action against most people, not just because they happen to do bad things (but could be redeemed), but because they have fundamentally evil values. The Zizians sidestep a bunch of conventional ethical dilemmas, because in their view, almost everyone is an irredeemable moral monster, that not just kills and eats animals, but ultimately desires the destruction of the multiverse.
I’ve also seen Octavia post elsewhere that if you’re evil you can just choose to not to be evil anymore (and change your actions). I believe she’s aware that this a deviation from Ziz’s view, but she seems to understate how big a difference it makes to the whole worldview.
Does Zizian “debucketing” involve unihemspheric sleep?
She seems to think that her style of “parts work” practice is the same kind of thing that Ziz and Gwen were doing with “debucketing”, then says that she doesn’t do any weird unihempishpheric sleep stuff when she’s working with people, suggesting that reports of weird cult-like sleep deprivation practices are false or exaggerations. She says “it’s so goofy, it’s kind of woo, and unnecessarily cult ritual vibes”.
I strongly suspect Octavia’s parts work practice is not at all like the debucketing process that Ziz and Gwen used, and that Ziz and Gwen would not endorse the conflation between them. Trying to draw conclusions about the one based on the other is probably an apples to oranges comparison.
Furthermore, Ziz and Gwen were experimenting with “sleep tech”. That’s reported in the blog—even the interviewer points that out!
And in Punching Evil, Ziz writes “Humans are weak creatures; we spend third of our lives incapacitated. (Although, I stumbled into using unihemispheric sleep as a means of keeping restless watch while alone).”
She claims that JD Pressman made up the specific procedure for unihemispheric sleep in zizians.info, which I have no particular reason to doubt, but I don’t think it’s valid to claim that the Zizians didn’t do anything like that.
Is Ziz a Benthemite utilitarian?
She derides Zizians.info as a hit piece, but then says that she doesn’t disagree with any of the specific claims, she just dislikes the framing. Which is all the weirder, because at least some of it is wrong. According to my memory, Ziz explicitly stated in some comment that she’s not a Benthemite, and never said that she was, whereas Octavia thinks that [paraphrased] ’it’s a reductive simplification to call her a Benthemite”. It’s not a reductive simplification. It’s just false.
Overall, it seems to me that Octivia has her own take on Ziz’s philosophy, which is different in several crucial aspects, and that she is either confused about how much her take differ’s from those expressed by Ziz, or is (by my lights) underestimating how important those differences are.
I don’t think that bystanders should regard her as representing the views of Ziz or the others that are alleged to have been involved in various crimes.
Additionally, it’s suggestive to me that she offers that Youngblut and Bauckholt were wearing tactical gear because they’re autistic nerds who thought that it looked cool.
That hypothesis is inconsistent with other details about the situation—that they were carrying guns and that the wrapped their phones in aluminum foil (presumably to prevent government authorities from tracking them via their phones). Those details make it seem likely to me that they were attempting oppose or circumvent government authorities, either because they were planning to commit a crime, or because they were generally paranoid of being persecuted. The “maybe just wanted to look cool” hypothesis, in contrast, to suggests that Octavia is very much out of the loop regarding the activities of the hardcore criminal Zizians.
I think that Octavia is confused / mistaken about a number of points here, such that her testimony seems likely to be misleading to people without much context.
[I could find citations for many of my claims here, but I’m going to write and post this fast, mostly without the links, for the time being. I am largely going off of my memory of blog post comments that I read months to years ago, and my memory is fallible. I’ll try to accurately represent my epistemic status inline. If anyone knows the links that I’m referring to, feel free to put them in the comments. Same if you think that I’m misremembering something.
To Octavia, if I’ve gotten any of the following wrong, I encourage you to correct it. I apologize for any rudeness. I’m speaking somewhat more bluntly here than I often would, because it seems more important than usual to help people get clear models of the situation, urgently.]
Octavia is not a Zizian in the relevant sense
Most importantly, I think she is mistaken about whether or not she is “a Zizian”.
There are at least types of people that the term “Zizian” might refer to:
Someone who has read Sinceriously.fyi and is generally sympathetic to Ziz’s philosophy.
A member of a relatively tightly-coordinated anarchist conspiracy, that has (allegedly) planned and carried out a series of violent crimes.
Octavia is a Zizian in the first sense, but is not (to my knowledge) a Zizian in the second sense. In fact, she seems unaware or disbelieving that a network of Zizians of the second sense exists. She appears to think that there are only ‘people who have benefited from reading Ziz’s blog’, and no coordinated criminal network to speak of. [1]
Because she claims to be a Zizian, one might reasonably expect that she’s an authority on what Zizians believe or do. Insofar as people are interested in what the members of the criminal conspiracy believe, I currently think that she is not much of an authority. (Though again, I don’t know what kind of contact she’s had with who, and maybe they’re closer than I know.)
I don’t know, but I would guess that Octavia has either not spoken to Ziz at all since Ziz faked her death in 2022, or that the two have minimally conversed. (Octavia obviously has more info about this than I do, and is welcome to correct me.)
Based on comments that I saw on Sinceriously.fyi, when it was up, I guess that Ziz does not endorse Octavia’s take on her philosophy, or regard Octavia as a member of her Vegan Sith crew (though I may be misremembering, and their relationship may have changed since the blog was taken down).
Octavia gets a lot wrong about what Ziz wrote
Furthermore, Octavia says a number of things that are, by my memory, either outright contradicted by the text of sinceriously.fyi, or seem to me to be importantly mistaken misreadings.
For instance,
Does Ziz think that core values can change?
Octavia mostly seems to miss the point of Ziz’s arguments that core values are immutable. She says that Ziz never stated explicitly that core values don’t change (and that JD tries to heavily imply this without justification), or that Ziz is only making a technical point that if you choose good than that means you were good all along. (Although a few minutes later she does agree that core is “the aspect of yourself that doesn’t change, and if you can change it’s not the core”, so I’m not totally sure what she’s saying and maybe I’m just misunderstanding her.)
Ziz does say in the first line of Choices Made Long Ago, “I don’t know how mutable core values are. My best guess is, hardly mutable at all or at least hardly mutable predictably.” and goes on to elucidate why apparent changes in values are actually not that.
Additionally, in her glossary, Ziz defines core: “Core is something in the mind that has infinite energy. Contains terminal values you would sacrifice all else for, and then do it again infinity times with no regret. Seems approximately unchanging across lifespan. Figuratively, the deepest frame in the call stack of the mind, capable of aborting any train of thought, everything the mind does is because it decided for it to happen.”
I don’t think it’s correct to say that Ziz never explicitly said that core values couldn’t change.
(Furthermore, Octavia states in the interview that Ziz sometimes dares the reader to stop being evil. At the end of Choices Made Long Ago, Ziz says “If you
have donedo lamentable things for bad reasons (not earnestly misguided reasons), and are despairing of being able to change, then either embrace your true values, the ones that mean you’re choosing not to change them, or disbelieve.” This is just about the opposite of daring the reader to stop being evil. It’s more like daring the reader, who’s done bad things and is horrified by that, to stop rationalizing and just admit that they’re actually evil.)This is an extremely key piece of Ziz’s moral philosophy. According to my understanding, Ziz and co. feel justified in taking violent action against most people, not just because they happen to do bad things (but could be redeemed), but because they have fundamentally evil values. The Zizians sidestep a bunch of conventional ethical dilemmas, because in their view, almost everyone is an irredeemable moral monster, that not just kills and eats animals, but ultimately desires the destruction of the multiverse.
I’ve also seen Octavia post elsewhere that if you’re evil you can just choose to not to be evil anymore (and change your actions). I believe she’s aware that this a deviation from Ziz’s view, but she seems to understate how big a difference it makes to the whole worldview.
Does Zizian “debucketing” involve unihemspheric sleep?
She seems to think that her style of “parts work” practice is the same kind of thing that Ziz and Gwen were doing with “debucketing”, then says that she doesn’t do any weird unihempishpheric sleep stuff when she’s working with people, suggesting that reports of weird cult-like sleep deprivation practices are false or exaggerations. She says “it’s so goofy, it’s kind of woo, and unnecessarily cult ritual vibes”.
I strongly suspect Octavia’s parts work practice is not at all like the debucketing process that Ziz and Gwen used, and that Ziz and Gwen would not endorse the conflation between them. Trying to draw conclusions about the one based on the other is probably an apples to oranges comparison.
Furthermore, Ziz and Gwen were experimenting with “sleep tech”. That’s reported in the blog—even the interviewer points that out!
And in Punching Evil, Ziz writes “Humans are weak creatures; we spend third of our lives incapacitated. (Although, I stumbled into using unihemispheric sleep as a means of keeping restless watch while alone).”
She claims that JD Pressman made up the specific procedure for unihemispheric sleep in zizians.info, which I have no particular reason to doubt, but I don’t think it’s valid to claim that the Zizians didn’t do anything like that.
Is Ziz a Benthemite utilitarian?
She derides Zizians.info as a hit piece, but then says that she doesn’t disagree with any of the specific claims, she just dislikes the framing. Which is all the weirder, because at least some of it is wrong. According to my memory, Ziz explicitly stated in some comment that she’s not a Benthemite, and never said that she was, whereas Octavia thinks that [paraphrased] ’it’s a reductive simplification to call her a Benthemite”. It’s not a reductive simplification. It’s just false.
Overall, it seems to me that Octivia has her own take on Ziz’s philosophy, which is different in several crucial aspects, and that she is either confused about how much her take differ’s from those expressed by Ziz, or is (by my lights) underestimating how important those differences are.
I don’t think that bystanders should regard her as representing the views of Ziz or the others that are alleged to have been involved in various crimes.
Additionally, it’s suggestive to me that she offers that Youngblut and Bauckholt were wearing tactical gear because they’re autistic nerds who thought that it looked cool.
That hypothesis is inconsistent with other details about the situation—that they were carrying guns and that the wrapped their phones in aluminum foil (presumably to prevent government authorities from tracking them via their phones). Those details make it seem likely to me that they were attempting oppose or circumvent government authorities, either because they were planning to commit a crime, or because they were generally paranoid of being persecuted. The “maybe just wanted to look cool” hypothesis, in contrast, to suggests that Octavia is very much out of the loop regarding the activities of the hardcore criminal Zizians.