Max Read

This works of course. I asked chat GPT to "ELI5 this:" and pasted the text from https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death

This is what it created:

A journalist wrote a long article about a weird, extreme group called the “Zizians.” They’re a mix of radical thinkers from the Rationalist movement—a community of people obsessed with using logic to solve big problems, like AI safety or moral philosophy. The Zizians, led by a person named Ziz, took these ideas to an extreme, combining them with unusual beliefs about morality, consciousness, and even Star Wars-like "Sith" philosophy.

This group has been connected to multiple violent incidents, including murders and standoffs with police. Some of its members have been arrested, gone into hiding, or mysteriously died. The author explains that Rationalist groups, while not inherently violent, often attract highly analytical but socially disconnected people, making them vulnerable to cult-like thinking.

The article also touches on how similar communities—like Effective Altruists and AI researchers—can sometimes create intense, insular environments that lead to extreme behavior. Basically, the Zizians are an example of how even smart, logical people can end up in very bizarre and dangerous places when they take ideas too far.

The article's funny, and kind of surreal read considering a dimension fading away while all the characters become cartoons and the landscape becomes vague. Have similar thoughts occasionally.

However, also creepy. Not sure if its the way humans have always written, that ChatAI got too good too fast, or that they all secretly had them all for years (Multiple massive AI releases in a year???, "had em all in a box in the back")

The 2nd image (with pair of images) on the Sharing Photos subsection [1] literally looks like StableDiffusion++. Somebody wrote two prompts, that had something like "Male with frizzy hair next to girl in pink shirt with glasses with brick building behind" and then it didn't care whether it was the same male in both, or what skin color.

Most text also seems weirdly similar to: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra [2]

[1] https://maxread.substack.com/i/137044198/sharing-photographs-as-dimension-apple-cultural-practice

[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03442.pdf

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupational-infohazards

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe#Strange_psycho_social_metaphysical_hypotheses_in_a_group_setting

https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-research-17e96a8e540b#c778

https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death

The last link and especially the second half expands from examining the latest example into the broader landscape of Rationalist cultism.

According to a recent post on HN, some of the scammers might actually be held captive and forced to scam people:

>Captives are subjected to violence and torture, which is sometimes filmed and sent to relatives to spur them to send ransoms. Some have been killed and their deaths reported as suicide, according to workers who have escaped.

https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those-weird

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731