# The Ziz cult **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 9, 2025, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103 "2025-02-09T22:42:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/81 "2025-03-13T18:01:36Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > I haven’t read the Sequences or very much of LessWrong, I mostly know about it from reading Scott Alexander’s blog SlateStarCodex (now AstralCodexTen); he’s part of the rationalist community and a much more approachable author. I’d 100% recommend reading his most famous essays. I’ve read SlateStarCodex in the past. The author has some interesting essays that have made me think, but ultimately he struck me as the kind of person who thinks you can divorce emotion from reason and achieve some state of rational perfection, and his ‘‘rational’’ defense of the oppression of women left a bad taste in my mouth. I wonder if _Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg_ came from this movement? I love that podcast, but it would explain a lot. They have interviewed Effective Altruists before. Re: Harlan Ellison, I wasn’t trying to claim the Rationalist movement was borne of that story, and I apologize for my imprecise language. I meant that this fanatical group of people behave as if the story were some kind of prophecy, which is silly. It’s hard to imagine it not having an influence on the philosophical idea of Singularity, though. People get their ideas from science fiction all the time, and I’m hard-pressed to believe people deeply interested in AI had never read the story. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/82 "2025-03-13T18:12:14Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > And yet it ends up in thought experiments like Roko’s Basilisk and the sham of the “Effective Altruism” movement, which could well go by Galbraith’s tenet that it is “one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a truly superior moral justification for selfishness.” Not sure what you’re talking about. AFAIK the problem with effective altruism is that it went down a utilitarian rabbithole of assigning more value to millions of potential lives in the far future than to saving lives today. It’s not like it’s the movement’s fault that Sam Bankman-Fried turned out to be a fraudster. > [@74westy](#): > > Prior to the tech bro rationalists, modern rationalism was and is explicitly empiricist and is well described by Yudkovsky’s first point quoted in Demontree’s post above > > > [@DemonTree](#): > > > > **Epistemic rationality** : systematically improving the accuracy of your beliefs. > > This involves things like understanding your biases so you can mitigate them and generally thinking with your brain instead of your gut. Science is smarter than my feelings and that sort of thing. Yeah, this is what rationalism is supposed to be and it’s not related to Cartesian rationalism. Ziz took ideas from rationalism but combined it with messed up pop-psychology, anarchism and who knows what else. And she and her friends/followers/cult members took her ideas seriously. Most people don’t really act on their beliefs, and that’s a good thing: I think it’s been mentioned before that most pro-lifers do not act like hundreds of thousands of babies are being murdered each year. The vast majority of vegans don’t attack factory farms or try to force other people to give up meat, despite thinking animals are undergoing terrible suffering. Christians don’t spend all their time proselytising, despite thinking non-Christians are going to suffer for eternity in hell. This group did act on their beliefs, and a lot of people died. I recently saw this account of what happened, it’s okay to post as far as I can determine: > **[The Zizians](https://www.fromthenew.world/p/the-zizians)** > > About That Bay Area Vegan AI Murder Cult ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/83 "2025-03-13T18:32:25Z")
> [@EddyTeddyFreddy](#): > > Just read the story for the first time, and holy hell. Tying that to any self-described rationalist ethos is just, well… nuts. I just read it and I think I have never read anything more disturbing in my life. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/84 "2025-03-13T18:36:38Z")
IIRC Ellison’s shorty story collection Death Bird Stories has a warning in the front. The warning makes it clear that it is not there for humor or publicity. It goes on to say that you should take frequent breaks while reading the book to avoid permanent damage to your psyche. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/85 "2025-03-13T18:43:09Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Not sure what you’re talking about. AFAIK the problem with effective altruism is that it went down a utilitarian rabbithole of assigning more value to millions of potential lives in the far future than to saving lives today. It’s not like it’s the movement’s fault that Sam Bankman-Fried turned out to be a fraudster. The idea that money is best spent for the most utilitarian good, is, in my view, fine – though it’s not really what drives most donors. (Also it must be inherently subjective, as any metric you use to determine the maximum possible good will have some other, competing metric that might be just as good. This is the kind of thing that would cause me analysis paralysis.) Where it gets shaky is that Effective Altruism’s major proponents are rich people who have convinced themselves that hoarding wealth is fine because _eventually_ it’s all going to a good place. I believe SBF did this to the extreme - he rationalized himself right into prison. That’s not all there is to it, but there’s a lot of that. > [@DocCathode](#): > > IIRC Ellison’s shorty story collection Death Bird Stories has a warning in the front. The warning makes it clear that it is not there for humor or publicity. It goes on to say that you should take frequent breaks while reading the book to avoid permanent damage to your psyche. Yeah, I think that damage has been done. If I could undo reading that, I would. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/86 "2025-03-13T19:13:27Z")
I recalled your challenges with analysis and empathy paralysis [in a fun hijack in the Pit](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/929) (again, Pit warning). Making good choices requires a degree of self and world analysis that a lot of the tech-bro subset of Effective Altruists don’t bother with IMHO. Instead, just as you pointed out, they _mostly_ seem to be arguing from an end state where they’re filthy rich, and work backwards to assemble a “moral” justification for that end state. NOT that they’re alone in this by any means. Humans are very good at being ruthless / criminal / evil to get what they want, and then later on, attempt to buy their way into respectability / heaven / etc. via their blood money. It’s endemic to the species I suspect. And of course (full circle back to cults) the same morality of allowing any cult to dictate what is the greatest good is risky. If a single person (or small group) can dictate to the rest what is good, and what is evil, then you run the risk of abandoning your own ability to judge, because the definition of “good” is that of the cult or religion to which you have granted authority. For all my known distrust and dislike of organized religion, the most wide reaching ones _generally_ (yes, HUGE simplification and generalization) act to dilute the power of specific individuals to reduce the risk. But even there it isn’t gone, and modern mass communications arguably makes it easier for a single populist leader to reach out (religious or otherwise) and bypass all the traditional methods of dilution. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/87 "2025-03-13T19:31:12Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > > [@DemonTree](#): > > > > It’s not like it’s the movement’s fault that Sam Bankman-Fried turned out to be a fraudster. > > The idea that money is best spent for the most utilitarian good, is, in my view, fine – though it’s not really what drives most donors. (Also it must be inherently subjective, as any metric you use to determine the maximum possible good will have some other, competing metric that might be just as good. This is the kind of thing that would cause me analysis paralysis.) Where it gets shaky is that Effective Altruism’s major proponents are rich people who have convinced themselves that hoarding wealth is fine because _eventually_ it’s all going to a good place. I believe SBF did this to the extreme - he rationalized himself right into prison. That’s not all there is to it, but there’s a lot of that. This. I mean, if you _really_ believe in EA, then fraud, as long as it makes people who believe in EA richer, is justified because it is better for all those millions who benefit from EA as opposed to all those ineffective altruists having that money. Hence, as Galbraith said, “a truly superior moral justification for selfishness.” (Of course, he was talking about conservatives when he made that quote, as EA was still in the future. It doesn’t apply any less.) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/88 "2025-03-13T21:44:04Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > To bring things back to topic- A quick Google on phylactery also brings up that one of the Harry Potter books contains The Amulet Of Tyranus, which is also referred to as “The Phylactery”. I never got around to reading the books before Rowling revealed herself as a raging transphobic bigot. I certainly will not read them now. Textual attribution nitpick: While I agree that avoiding any or all Rowling-related content is a perfectly reasonable response to her raging transphobic bigotry, AFAICT the concept of the so-called “Amulet of Tyranus” or “Phylactery” in the Harry Potter universe is a fanfic invention, [described in the Harry Potter Fanon Wiki.](https://harrypotterfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Amulet_of_Tyranus_(SB)) Rowling herself, AFAIK, never wrote about any such amulet or anything she called a “phylactery”. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/89 "2025-03-13T21:52:25Z")
I sit corrected. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/90 "2025-03-13T22:45:22Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’ve read SlateStarCodex in the past. The author has some interesting essays that have made me think, but ultimately he struck me as the kind of person who thinks you can divorce emotion from reason and achieve some state of rational perfection He explained a lot of phenomena I’d been seeing but had trouble putting into words, and that’s… kind of a relief in some ways. Like “no, you’re not imagining it - and now you can explain it to other people too”. But I don’t really know what you mean by divorcing emotion from reason. Something like that is, I guess, part of rationalism, but that may or may not be what you’re referring to. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > his ‘‘rational’’ defense of the oppression of women left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t think I’ve seen this and I’m not sure I want to. ☹ > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Re: Harlan Ellison, I wasn’t trying to claim the Rationalist movement was borne of that story, and I apologize for my imprecise language. I meant that this fanatical group of people behave as if the story were some kind of prophecy, which is silly. It’s hard to imagine it not having an influence on the philosophical idea of Singularity, though. People get their ideas from science fiction all the time, and I’m hard-pressed to believe people deeply interested in AI had never read the story. Oh good. That was the impression I got from what you wrote, and it’s a very misleading one. I kind of doubt the story had much influence, since it’s about an evil AI, whereas what Yudkovsky and most of the other AI researchers are worried about is an AI that is uncontrollable (because it’s many times smarter than us) but not ‘aligned’ ie it has been programmed with goals that don’t correctly reflect human values and morality, and pursues these despite causing great harm to humanity. Possibly Roko might have been influenced by it what he came up with his basilisk? > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > The idea that money is best spent for the most utilitarian good, is, in my view, fine – though it’s not really what drives most donors. (Also it must be inherently subjective, as any metric you use to determine the maximum possible good will have some other, competing metric that might be just as good. Utilitarianism never appealed to me; it’s too prone to giving counterintuitive results. My philosophy is that if your theory of morality tells you to do something obviously wrong (like for example murdering someone in order to prevent animal suffering via some galaxy-brain method, or committing fraud in order to give the money to charity), you should abandon that theory, not do the wrong thing. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Where it gets shaky is that Effective Altruism’s major proponents are rich people who have convinced themselves that hoarding wealth is fine because _eventually_ it’s all going to a good place. I believe SBF did this to the extreme - he rationalized himself right into prison. That’s not all there is to it, but there’s a lot of that. I haven’t really looked into it, but given how (in)accurate this thread has been on rationalism generally, I’m not going to take this on trust. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Yeah, I think that damage has been done. If I could undo reading that, I would. Welp, I’ll cross that off my reading list. 😬 > [@Kimstu](#): > > Rowling herself, AFAIK, never wrote about any such amulet or anything she called a “phylactery”. The horcruxes have a lot in common with the DnD version of phylacteries. I’d guess both were inspired by folklore, though. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/91 "2025-03-13T23:12:42Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Utilitarianism never appealed to me; it’s too prone to giving counterintuitive results. I could take it or leave it. I’m probably more Kantian, but certainly I’ve made utilitarian arguments before. I’m just a pragmatist. I absolutely have a moral compass but it doesn’t neatly fit into any sort of philosophical framework, though Buddhism is close enough. Now that I’ve (mostly) recovered from that story, I want to emphasize that many people within that internet subculture, which birthed this cult, actually believed a future AI could create an eternal, tormenting hell for people, and were deeply disturbed by it. This is a real belief that people who identified as Rationalists actually have. Whether that represents most Rationalists… sounds like probably not. Now that I have some psychological distance from the story, it kind of illustrates how silly this idea is. Elements of the story don’t make sense. The AI can somehow keep humans alive, kill them, and then “rejuvenate” them, which implies a corporeal existence where it has the power of life and death yet controls their reality. But the story also establishes that the characters can kill themselves if they are quick about it – but not be brought back to life? Also, this AI hates humanity because… somehow it’s limited, or can’t be creative, but it seems to devise countless ways to torture humans. It just doesn’t wash. Is there any scientific basis or rationale whatsoever for believing this would ever be possible? It sounds like pure fantasy to me. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/92 "2025-03-13T23:35:54Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Is there any scientific basis or rationale whatsoever for believing this would ever be possible? It sounds like pure fantasy to me. I’ve encountered plenty of AI doomers on Twitter, and not one of them is worried about Roko’s Basilisk or this kind of ‘malevolent AI’ scenario. (Not even Roko! He’s an annoying alt-right type who posts about issues that would be irrelevant if eternal-torture-by-superintelligence was imminent.) They expect AIs to harm people in the same ways multinational corporations harm people: they are focused on profit or some other goal at the expense of things we think are more important, like not polluting the environment or not selling addictive products that damage people’s health. Only we can regulate the corporations, but AI doomers believe we won’t be able to control the AI and it will be vastly more powerful than any multinational. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/93 "2025-03-13T23:52:12Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > The horcruxes have a lot in common with the DnD version of phylacteries. I’d guess both were inspired by folklore, though. Most notably, the story of Koschei the Deathless, a Russian sorcerer who found a way to hide his death in inanimate objects. And the Prydain books contain a wizard named Morda, who channeled all of his lifeforce into one of his fingers, then cut the finger off and hid it, which might be inspired by Welsh myth (most of that series was). Roku’s Basilisk, meanwhile, is just “Pascal’s Wager, but assume that God is evil”. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/94 "2025-03-14T02:38:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Roku’s Basilisk What’s that? My Roku is going to start torturing me if I don’t spend enough time watching the Roku Channel? ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/95 "2025-03-14T16:55:30Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I would consider Robert Jordan, if not an expert, at least expert-adjacent on the subject of cults, as he has covered so many cults extensively. I look forward to the deep dive into this one. You mean Robert Evans. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/96 "2025-03-14T20:01:32Z")
Lol yes. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2025, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/97 "2025-04-21T08:23:32Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > I wonder if it will ever be revealed what “Ziz” stands for. From what I’ve been reading on various sites it’s a reference to the Simurgh from the webfiction Worm, who is often nicknamed “Ziz” in the Worm fandom. Considering that the Simurgh is a malignant mind-controlling alien being also called “the Hopekiller” in-universe, it’s creepily appropriate for a cult leader. From [here](https://www.theguardian.com/global/ng-interactive/2025/mar/05/zizians-artificial-intelligence): > Some rationalists were surprised, and a bit put off, when Ziz announced that she would now be known as Ziz. The name comes from Worm, a [roughly](https://litreactor.com/columns/stepping-into-the-digital-wilds-expanding-our-approach-to-novels) 7,000-page serial fantasy story that many rationalists have read. Ziz is an [alias](https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simurgh) used by a monster called the Simurgh, part of a group of villains called the Endbringers. > > The Simurgh has an unsettling power, a reader of Worm told me. She’s an infohazard: anyone “who has encountered the Simurgh for too long, listened to the Simurgh for too long, becomes a liability. Because at some point in the future they will go crazy and cause a bunch of destruction.” ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2025, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/98 "2025-04-21T14:36:22Z")
Sounds like the mythological bird Ziz of Hebrew lore got conflated with the mythological bird Simurgh of Persian lore. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/99 "2025-04-21T14:39:49Z")
I was thinking more of the old joke about the Foo bird who shits. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2025, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103/100 "2025-04-22T00:41:13Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Sounds like the mythological bird Ziz of Hebrew lore got conflated with the mythological bird Simurgh of Persian lore. Makes sense. The other two most prominent Endbringers are Leviathan and Behemoth, which fits with “Ziz”; and the Simurgh was thought benevolent at first and looks angelic, which IIRC was why she got her name. Before she drove everyone in the capital of Switzerland murderously insane, at least. Still, if _I_ was a cult leader I wouldn’t pick a name that almost literally advertises what I am. It’s like somebody offering you a deal calling themself Beel Z. Bub. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ziz-cult/1014103.md?page=6)