Interesting. I remember meeting Ziz once before they were fully out as Ziz, and it was clear to me that their vibe was “off” but given so many rationalists have weird vibes it was hard to make much of. It’s easy with hindsight bias to try to give myself points for noticing what might happen, but actually that was pretty unclear to me right up until the CFAR protest happened and then lots of details about what had been doing on came out.
What I mean by vibe being off: many rationalists don’t behave in normal ways and don’t play into standard social scripts, so they fall into this weird space where it can be hard to predict what they will do and say in the next few moments so it can create something like an uncanny valley of social interaction. But I get this from lots of people who haven’t been accused of homicide/accessory to homicide, so given the base rates it’s hard to make strong predictions here.
I think Ziz’s early vibe was “off/weird, but not in a particularly unusual-for-rationalists-way.” I definitely see the seeds of their worldview in their early writing/talking/in-person-interactions that make me not super surprised at how things turned out. But, I do think it’s important that the vibe didn’t feel threatening/alarming in a physical way.
There was also definitely just an escalation over time. If you view her content chronologically it starts as out as fairly standard and decently insightful LW essay fair and then just gets more and more hostile and escalatory as time passes. She goes from liking Scott to calling him evil, she goes from advocating for generally rejecting morality in order to free up your agency to practicing timeless-decision-theoretic-blackmail-absolute-morality. As people responded to her hostility with hostility she escalated further and further out of what seemed to be a calculated moral obligation to retaliate and her whole group has just spiraled on their sense that the world was trying to timelessly-soul-murder them.
Interesting. I remember meeting Ziz once before they were fully out as Ziz, and it was clear to me that their vibe was “off” but given so many rationalists have weird vibes it was hard to make much of. It’s easy with hindsight bias to try to give myself points for noticing what might happen, but actually that was pretty unclear to me right up until the CFAR protest happened and then lots of details about what had been doing on came out.
What I mean by vibe being off: many rationalists don’t behave in normal ways and don’t play into standard social scripts, so they fall into this weird space where it can be hard to predict what they will do and say in the next few moments so it can create something like an uncanny valley of social interaction. But I get this from lots of people who haven’t been accused of homicide/accessory to homicide, so given the base rates it’s hard to make strong predictions here.
I think Ziz’s early vibe was “off/weird, but not in a particularly unusual-for-rationalists-way.” I definitely see the seeds of their worldview in their early writing/talking/in-person-interactions that make me not super surprised at how things turned out. But, I do think it’s important that the vibe didn’t feel threatening/alarming in a physical way.
There was also definitely just an escalation over time. If you view her content chronologically it starts as out as fairly standard and decently insightful LW essay fair and then just gets more and more hostile and escalatory as time passes. She goes from liking Scott to calling him evil, she goes from advocating for generally rejecting morality in order to free up your agency to practicing timeless-decision-theoretic-blackmail-absolute-morality. As people responded to her hostility with hostility she escalated further and further out of what seemed to be a calculated moral obligation to retaliate and her whole group has just spiraled on their sense that the world was trying to timelessly-soul-murder them.
I could well just be bad at reading vibes.