Previous: A Turn Towards the Dark Side
2 years into life chez the Rationalists, Ziz & Gwen have built up a small “cabal” of friends, all of whom (needless to say) are Rationalists, & most of whom are also trans. Included in this number are Somni Leatham & Emma Borhanian. The four have defined their political stance as “vegan anarchotranshumanism”. Anarchism, like Marxist philosophy, is anathema to the Rationalists. They claim this is due to their commitment to forego “radical” politics— altho, as noted in pt. 3, they have no problem flirting w/ the radical politics of the far right.
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We must add here that we doubt the girls’ adoption of “anarcho”-transhumanism came as a result of long & in-depth reading on either anarchist theory or praxis. Like “sociopathy” & “psychopathy”, we suspect the term “anarchism” was rather chosen to piss off the Rationalists, & to gesture towards the girls’ felt sense of ~dangerous transgression~ as they set about freeing themselves from “mental lock-in”. We mention this bc once the press catches wind of our cabal, in the winter of 2025, much will be made of their alleged “radical politics”. Certain future deeds (allegedly) committed by this cabal will, likewise, raise questions as to whether they are engaging in “radical left-wing praxis”. We mention our doubts here in an effort to get ahead of such murmurings, & to reiterate: these girls are v. bright, but they, as STEM students, have never been encouraged to read the kinds of philosophy or theory which could have supported their escape from the Rationalists’ clutches.
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In the summer of 2018, Ziz attends a schmancy conference at a Rationalist org named CFAR.
Wow, its logo's a brain *and* a maze! That's how you know they're smart cookies.
It took us a long time to wrap our unenlightened & non-STEM-whiz heads around what CFAR actually *does*…
…Initial googling led to more dumb logos, & to pics of ppl drawing generic-looking diagrams in dingy offices for crowds of conference-goers.
We, who had imagined an illustrious institution such as CFAR looking possibly like this:
…were confused. Alas & alack…
We had been basing our assumptions off of the awèd tones of Ziz, who, when she was a bright young workshop attendee— 5 years prior— had become convinced that CFAR was "saving the word".
As mentioned in pt. 4, she has since come to believe that all of its leadership are members of that elusive club the "double-goods"- y'know, like Ziz herself!
At last we found an article which seemed to pin down CFAR as a center where self-improvement techniques are studied and applied to everyday life.
Indeed, if Fast Company is to be believed, CFAR has (or had, as of 2014) "Silicon Valley buzzing with positive thinking".
For just $4,000 (as of 2014), you can spend three (3) days learning "how your brain works & how you can train yourself to better achieve your goals"! (Please don't.)
O...k, but when do we start Saving the World? & where do those demonic, torturous, supersmart AIs come in?
To answer that question, we unfortunately have to bring in our other Rationalist acronym:
We LOVE this logo! Is it a bird? Is it a morning glory? Who knows!
Both CFAR & MIRI believe they are saving the world from future supersmart demonic AIs; the former, via its $$$ workshops, acts rather as a "talent recruiter" for the latter. The latter then puts this talent to use, y'know, in service of their shared bonkers AI cosmology.
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At the head of CFAR— indeed, one of its founders— is Anna Salamon. Ziz is attending this conference primarily to pitch to Anna the girls’ innovative mental tech.
Full of fear & trembling, Ziz approaches Anna & says:
I have things I want to tell you I think are very important and will take a while to communicate but I don't want to be annoying and bug you all the time, when/how much do you want me to approach you about this?
…to which Anna replies:
If you want me to talk to you frequently, you should show that you care about my personhood and agency.
…at which Ziz is "flabbergasted", but she says "k", and... awkwardly walks away...
Throughout this days'-long event, Anna will continue to call Ziz "entitled", & claim that Ziz is trying to "take away her autonomy".
...But in Ziz's rather Zizesque words:
My agency was pointed on not bugging her while still giving her the choice to listen to my thing, rather than, just never asking?
And in fact she said she wanted to hear my thing...
During this event, Anna also tells Ziz: "I don't think trans has anything to do with gender."
Ziz is as surprised to hear this as she would be at Anna espousing "creationism"!
Ziz begins to worry that Anna is implying she believes in Ray Blanchard's disgraced autogynephilia hypothesis: which, as mentioned in pt. 3, other Rationalists have spent years bedeviling Ziz with!
She reflects on how Anna seems to be "playing up" "a public perception of trans women as super pervert men, from which 'real women' [need] to be protected."
…But, at the end of the day, Anna is "extremely well-liked in the rationality community"- & Ziz figures, her actions thus far "[don't] mean she [isn't] double-good for sure".
At last, tho, Ziz breaks down, & tells Anna in a rush: "the gender dynamics you're inflicting on me are especially painful because I'm trans. I'm not a man, and I don't even know how to play this game, can you please stop?"
Anna responds w/ a bunch of "seeming sympathy", & shepherds Ziz into a conference room. Gwen comes along to mediate.
Anna then says:
You don't seem to care about my autonomy.
To which Ziz says:
I actually terminally value autonomy.
Ziz explains to Anna the social power she is wielding by continually- publicly- stoking the notion that Ziz is a "male threat". In the course of this, she brings up Anna's notorious "gender test", which Anna ruthlessly applies to trans women: in which she'll "believe any trans woman" who agrees w/ Anna that they... are men.
Anna reacts to this as if Ziz is "personally attacking her":
But I need my gender test! Gender is really interesting and important and the first thing to understanding anything to humans.
She also calls her test a vital resource for evaluating "if someone was going to be able to do epistemics. if they could overcome their personal biases."
…Being unenlightened non-Rationalists, we had to turn to ChatGPT for this one.
Chat informed us that, chez the Rationalists, "doing good epistemics" is seen as the ground upon which we form more accurate models of the world & make wise decisions.
"Good epistemics" involves:
• Evaluating evidence w/ an open mind
• Recognizing & correcting for biases
• Updating one's beliefs
• Being able to say "I don't know"
• Thinking, hm, rationally, rather than relying on gut feelings or social pressure
…DELICIOUSLY, & yet horrendously, it is Anna herself who belies her bad epistemics thru this ridiculous test.
As Ziz points out: Anna's test is not of gender, but of one's *willingness to submit* to her buffoonery. When Anna says "rationality" ,we may rather assume that she means whether one agrees w/ her, & agrees not to challenge her unyielding, evidence-free opinions.
Far from being "epistemic", this test strongly resembles a religious or ideological test- which Chat informs us is called, chez the Rationalists, a "belief-as-attire problem": a situation where one "believes" a certain thing be belief in that thing is a "tribal signal"- not be it's a conviction that one has come to thru long & arduous independent thought.
Why oh why, then, does Anna "need" this test? What does it give her?
Well, it gives Anna immunity from criticism. If someone protests, they are automatically labeled as "unable to do epistemics". And ofc, it also gives her the means to humiliate trans women before dismissing them.
This is, as Ziz muses, no small thing: "How many hiring decisions has Anna had a say in?"
This question has been on the girls’ minds of late, ever since they learned CFAR has never, *ever* hired a trans woman. Somni- a math whiz- has crunched the numbers, and has determined- using another Rationalist org as a control- that there is a 1.06% probability of this happening by chance.
For her part, Gwen reports that— "perhaps coincidentally"— she had, prior to beginning her transition, been on what she'd been told was the CFAR hiring pipeline. *After* beginning her transition, she was prevented from even volunteering w/ CFAR.
Gwen describes talking to Anna— *after* beginning her transition— as feeling like "being in a room full of potential hostility". She describes Anna's body language & facial expressions as "[seeming] to be always on the verge of something like'get away from me'.”
Alas & alack: in that conference room, faced w/ the formidable Anna, Ziz stays quiet. Ziz fears that if she were to insist "on the point that trans women were women, that I like, existed", she would be seen by Anna as
[An] aggressive clever motivated homing agent of gaslighting able to strike into the most vital space.
…this is ironic, as Ziz later notes, bc it is in fact Anna who is a "homing agent of gaslighting", determined to strike "into the... vital space" of Ziz's very personhood.
Ziz’s jailbreaking efforts have been heroic, but they are still a work in progress. In this critical moment, all she can think is:
Society had somehow convinced me Anna was exercising free thought and I'd be a dangerous social justice warrior if I complained about what she was doing. Power has a way of making the marginal interests of the powerful come first in everyone's mind.
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Next: Anna Gets a Bad Feeling
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