For a group that applies rationalism, they appear to have ended up committing very horrible and irrational acts.<p>The article could have done more to condemn this group and line of thinking.<p>Also the part of the story on Curtis Lind is both sad and impressive, that old man was built of true grit:<p>"As he bent to look, something hit him on the head and he blacked out. When he woke up, at least three of the Zizians were allegedly standing around him with knives.<p>“[T]he right side of my skull was shattered,” Lind later said. “And I was bleeding from numerous puncture wounds … The back of my neck had some severe cuts. Like somebody was trying to cut my head off.” His torso was impaled with a samurai sword.<p>Lind drew his gun, which was concealed in a pocket, and started shooting. He wounded Leatham and killed Borhanian. He stumbled away with the sword still in him. He survived, but lost an eye."
The cult elements of isolation (boat/van life), alienation from self (trans, split brain), false moral superiority (vegan), demands for purity in action (vegan), sense of false higher purpose (AI basilisk), false possession of method for empowerment (rationalism) are there. The hatred of landlords et al (anarchism) and use of drugs (psychedelic, others?) seems to be my guess for the violence part.<p>Lots of highly exploitative groups don't get to violent assaults. That's got me wondering why.
> They found some crew members [for a rationalist boat], including one, Dan Powell, who had nautical experience from a stint in the US navy. On 20 July, they set out from Alaska. It went mostly without incident, though one crew member who found Ziz’s assertiveness off-putting debarked early.<p>What is it with cults and boats? L Ron Hubbard did this, too (albeit for different stated reasons).<p>> The Coast Guard declared the ship a “threat to the public health” and demanded an improvement plan.<p>Ah, see, they should have adopted the Hubbard approach of just completely ignoring authorities' complaints about his various dubious boats (this, somehow, tended to more or less work out for him).
I thought this was going to be about the Freescale Semiconductor employees who were on Malaysia Airlines flight 370.<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/world/twenty-employees-of-us-chipmaker-among-passengers-on-malaysian-flight-idUSBREA2801L/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/world/twenty-employees-of-us...</a>
Y'know, I'm totally happy for people to (very, very clearly) use my series "[Extropia's Children](<a href="https://aiascendant.com/p/extropias-children" rel="nofollow">https://aiascendant.com/p/extropias-children</a>)" as a basis for their own work - which has been happening a lot lately - but some kind of citation would have been nice. Sheesh.
Interesting article. I definitely did not have "band of trans militant vegans starts a cult and commits multiple murders" on my bingo card for this century.
Behavior like this is why I'm fairly convinced OpenAI took out a hit on Suchir. The singularity/AI doom pseudo-religion really messes some people up.
The article is drama piece that makes you go on a scavenger hunt for the Five Ws. I stopped reading as soon as I noticed the pattern. I would ask AI to summarize, but my enthusiasm for learning anything from this kind of article has waned dramatically over the years.