And then I read this blog post and now I'm just sad.

(also fuck Zizianism)

(also fuck Zizianism)

Wow I skeet a lot when I'm tired.

Finally, to end this very tired ramble. Ziz hurt real people. I didn't know any of them on any real level, but others did. Fuck Ziz. As interesting & darkly funny as "damn huh the rationalists finally had a cult offshoot that referenced SU gems in their lingo?" can be, people lost their lives.

Finally, to end this very tired ramble. Ziz hurt real people. I didn't know any of them on any real level, but others did. Fuck Ziz. As interesting & darkly funny as "damn huh the rationalists finally had a cult offshoot that referenced SU gems in their lingo?" can be, people lost their lives.

Idk I guess this is a long and very tiresome way to say that if someone is exhibiting some Light Yagami ass thinking and is like "hey, don't you feel good around me? Don't you feel like you're, you're really, we're in this, peering into this keyhole together, but of course I am the main Seer" -> RUN

Like, it's hard to put into words, but like:
"Everyone is a phony"

"And I am too"
"But at least I'm honest"
"Except for me"

You can have those views, I have negative opinions on those views, but not unsafe

🚨🚨🚨DANGER🚨🚨🚨
"Because I Am Uniquely Real, Which Means I Decide Who Matters"
🚨🚨🚨DANGER🚨🚨🚨

There's something bitter, acrid, and utterly poisonous to the human soul about being convinced that the world revolves around you.

I have friends who I think, think that basically everyone is a phony but them. I don't worry about those friends. I disagree with them, perhaps think they'd be happier if they didn't think that, but I don't worry about them. Key difference, they acknowledge reality. Ziz fundamentally rejected it.

And just to be clear, I'm not talking about misanthropy here. I'm not talking about "everyone is a phony". I'm talking about people who believe "everyone is a phony but me, and that's because I'm The Main Character of The Universe."

Like I don't like to make statements like that but uh, that's Extreme Holden Caufield thinking but in an adult. That's like, the amount of people who think that way and are either extremely annoying or Do Crimes. I've never met anyone who thinks that way and ends up with a good ending. Ever.

Ziz's conclusion from this seemed to be that everyone else is a monster, which made more and more sense to her because she also decided at some point that she was a uniquely Good person. Not just Good but Double Good.

Choosing to think that way about yourself & the world is inherently bad for you.

And you realize "oh my goodness. I can win a debate with someone on a logical front and they STILL won't change their beliefs." And most people move on from that. They find some way to deal with that. It's a fundamental part of growing as a person. Your parents admit you're right, but still say No.

Like I feel like there's a point where every person, and maybe this hits autistic people harder than others, have the realization of "oh my gosh, other people's ethical principles don't always align with the actions they choose, their behavior is sometimes inconsistent with their beliefs!"

This. When I read through the Zizian stuff because it's online extremism related, I came to the conclusion of 1.) fuck Ziz & 2.) yeah, of COURSE if you're isolated, convinced that reality is solvable through Thinking Good, & that most other ppl are flesh eating monsters, you're gonna have a bad time

My overall sentiment on the Zizians and their fellow travelers is:

It's deeply bad for you to think your own beliefs matter that much.

Then you probably are inclined to think that any day now, You Will Have Crossed the Danger Tech Barrier and Need To Warn The World Of The Foretold Unprecedented Computer!

Idk I make no presumptions about Anthropic's corporate culture, I don't know anyone from there and I've never worked with them; but given the Rationalist ties, not a stretch to think, at least to someone as distant as me, that maybe, hype aside, if what you have is certainty that this is Danger Tech

Which makes me wonder, the marketing hype component aside, how much of this is a mismatch between different ways of seeing the world. If you're predisposed to think "I have to Protect against The Singularity", advances that are scary for normal reasons might legitimately be "Red Alert!" to you.

I cannot stress enough that AI tooling is being used offensively in the real world, everyone knows that, & if Anthropic (who I have to assume has some internal safeguards around API usage) just straight up was like "go nuts no limits have fun y'all" that would have been Not Great: not the apocalypse

People visit national parks and public lands, and in the same breath treat the rural workers who make it safe and accessible as if they are an obstacle to public goods, bad voters, blemishes on a “pristine” landscape.
Something to consider this Earth Day, the work of whose hands “the wilderness” is.

A line of approximately ten young people in the Skamania Forest Youth Success program hikes single-file along a narrow dirt trail. They are surrounded by a lush green meadow filled with white wildflowers, with a densely forested mountain rising under a cloudy sky in the background. Each person wears a bright yellow hard hat and a high-visibility orange safety vest over their hiking clothes, carrying tools and supplies for their fieldwork. The perspective is from behind the group, looking down the trail as they head toward the woods

This Earth Day I am grappling with the common self-assured refrain that the ideal state of nature is “untouched,” making invisible the incredible amount of labor ex: the Skamania Forest Youth Success program and their adult mentors put in every year in critical forestry work on public lands.

As for why well. An ultimately ineffective tech deployed at scale still produces gains. A government could still build harmful infrastructure with that, that can still do things that weren't possible before. Even if the reason is, say, more that they built out the infrastructure than the tech.

Like, there are a lot of very scary outcomes for AI tech no matter what. Even if you believe this technology is worth zilch, basically gambling, & completely infeasible economically, you should STILL be concerned about it being used in mass surveillance.
But HAL 9000 the spicy autocomplete is not.

Anthropic Mythos shaping up as nothingburger : Hackpocalypse deferred

Although I think the URL is more accurate than the byline (it's the hype that's a nothing, not Mythos itself), I do think the conclusion of "hackpocalypse deferred" is, to no surprise, accurate. Yes, AI tooling is being used offensively, but this isn't cyberpunk.

www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/a...

What a great day for a run!!!!

Stanford's AI Index for 2026 Shows the State of the Industry AI investment is skyrocketing while AI’s impact on jobs and public perception remains mixed

Jesus the amount of carbon from training Grok alone...
spectrum.ieee.org/state-of-ai-...

150%

This is a great argument for why the best use you will get out of LLMs is by not outsourcing your decision making to an illusion and instead utilizing a new tool to enhance your capabilities.