A Letter from Our Mailbag

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The lord has risen, but we have not 🙏 We reach you on this Easter morning from our cozy bed, where we are eating madeleines off our white rattan breakfast tray, & dropping crumbs on our salmon pink & coral palampore.

To our right, we have our mailbag. To our left, we have our gf, walking thru the door from 7/11, Red Bulls sweating in her hands. The soft strings of the door curtain drift around her. Small bubbles tink against the insides of our can as we open it. We take a sip, turn back to our right, & plunge into the mailbag.

***

Dear Drosselmeyer,

You, in your recent Q & A, made much of disputing Ezra Miller’s claim that Ziz & friends (ZAF) believed a “regime of meat-eaters… was damning humanity to AI hell”, but what of ZAF’s legitimate concerns— about, for example, the hell of factory farming, & other torments brought on by human supremacy? Those you can’t deny 😉

— Disputing a Dispute

***

Dear Disputing a Dispute (DAD),

Your letter made us slap our forehead— we were so eager to dispute Ezra on his goofy & hostile report that we forgot sthng big. We forgot to ask ourself: “What does Ziz’s blog really say abt”— if we may try to translate for Ezra:

The systemic issue of “human supremacy” in this world— of which factory farms are one good example.

***

We have a 2nd possible translation which springs to mind, but which may take a little explaining. According to this 2nd translation, Ziz may not be referring to “meat eaters” generally per se, but to the specific meat eaters who are in leadership at MIRI & CFAR.

This possibility comes up just bc we’ve read Jamie’s letter so recently. Their letter, ofc, ends on the note: “I encourage you to investigate the crimes of individuals at organizations like MIRI & CFAR”.

Almost every time we read Ziz’s blog, we find quietly scalding implications for MIRI & CFAR— for the Rationalist establishment (TRE) as a whole. This often isn’t said directly; & when it is, btw, we’ve never found it said in a violent manner.

In that sense, the press loops around to being right when it says, “Ziz’s blog is filled w/ things that are against TRE.” It’s just wrong to say, “This is done in a violent &/or unhinged way.”

***

There’s one more thing which makes us imagine this 2nd translation, & which makes us want to look more specifically at what Mz. Ziz actually said (WMZAS)*.

*Re: WMZAS, we are 😮‍💨 v. grateful that DAD gave us a p.s. w/ some keywords to search, so that we could find a relevant post.

Reading this journalist’s response to the q.: “Why would the AP not link to Jamie’s letter?”, we had a thought that seems v. obvious in hindsight.

These orgs & these ppl in leadership have a lot of $. No journalistic outlet wants to get sued. At least in the case of the AP, this dissuaded them from posting serious & legitimate claims (SALC) abt TRE. So far, no news outlet has posted SALC abt TRE. We may assume they have been dissuaded for reasons that align w/ the AP’s.

Based on this, we jump to a strange question— what Wired may call a “paranoid” question.

We were recently joshing w/ Matt Osborne abt the media using “veganism” as a gloss for “transness”— as if they were under the Hays Code. What if they were “under the Hays Code”, but for talking abt TRE— not abt queer identity? What coded terms would they use?

“Meat eaters”, in this context, is a good coded term for “TRE”. Ziz archly points out that at least the majority of TRE are meat eaters*.

*Ftr: in our reading, this doesn’t adequately capture why they trouble her. They trouble her bc they are scandalous & belligerent meat eaters! Their scandals & belligerences (SAB) are ultimately more central to her critiques than their meat-eating.

At any rate, if you aren’t allowed, on whatever level(s), to directly talk abt their SAB, a natural elision would be: “a regime of meat eaters that is damning humanity to AI hell”. This broadly describes Ziz’s opinion on TRE— omitting only their SAB.

Now, are we proposing this description was a coded cri de coeur from Ezra Miller that he sees all & simply can’t say? No! We think these things are done unconsciously. That is, at least, what we have heard. On that note, let’s search these keywords & see if we find:

a) Good vegan takes

b) An indictment of TRE

c) Or, who knows: maybe we’ll agree w/ Ezra’s phrasing & have to talk ourselves down from such paranoid readings in the future.

***

Ahhh yes, these keywords lead to a looong post called “Net Negative”. It’s incidentally from this post that Ezra has taken his anecdote abt Ziz being asked to imagine killing an unspecified person— which he has whipped into, “Ziz had violent fantasies abt killing Anna Salamon.”

In this post, Ziz is at a CFAR workshop on AI safety strategy. This is abt 2 years before Anna bans her from an AI-related summer program, &, as an explanation, says that she “comes up w/ dangerous plans”— you can read our response to Anna’s explanation here.

At this time, Ziz is still, on one level, in awe of leadership at CFAR & MIRI: of ppl like Anna & of Eliezer Yudkowsky. She is still calling them “double-good”.

On another level, Ziz fears that nobody around her shares her values. And she is seeking answers on how best to contribute to the Rationalist cause— for ex., should she invent a kind of “Uber for finding actors, film crews, film equipment for making pornography”? This might make her $$$, which she could donate to their “world-saving” efforts. We think this idea is 🔥— unfortunately, she will abandon it bc she doesn’t want $ from a porn-facilitating business to disgrace the good name of Rationalism.

It is w/ these heavy q.s on her mind that she signs up for the CFAR workshop. There she gets into a strange discussion to which our keywords are apparently pointing us.

***

She discloses to an unnamed person (UP) that she is “secretly a woman”. “No way!”, says the UP, “You?” They tell her they don’t believe it. Ziz then explains how she got introduced to LessWrong— the Rationalists’ central forum— thru a writer named Brian Tomasik. Brian’s work, so far as we can tell, is broadly concerned w/ “suffering”, & more specifically concerned w/ animal welfare & other ethical q.s. Ziz says that Brian doesn’t go far enough— he talks abt suffering, yes, but does he care abt valuing the positive? Does he care abt making life worth living for all, or just abt avoiding the negative?

Brian is only one example of whom she doesn’t trust to determine the world’s fate— & yet, it is w/ ppl like him whom she has chosen to side. She has thought abt it, & has decided that, even if she can’t “align” the future to benefit “all sentient life”, she at least wants to be in the epicenter of these alignment efforts— rather than abandon the cause & leave it entirely in the hands of— yes, as she says— “flesh-eating monsters” (FEM). Even if she distrusts & despairs at these FEM, she feels the alternative— disengagement— would lead to the destruction of the world, & this she wants to avoid.

***

Either UP or another jumps in at this point to say, “Aha, but what if your values are wrong? It takes fewer ppl to destroy the world than to save it. A person acting on wrong values might ruin everything.”

Ziz has little time for this q. She says that, if her “values preferred the world destroyed before humans build hell across the stars”, then she would not see the world’s destruction as “ruination”: she would see it as a great thing. However, she says, these are not her values. Her values prefer that all sentient life be allowed to thrive— not just avoid suffering. It is because she holds these values that she is standing before them today, in the hallowed halls of CFAR.

***

Based on this, we are a little abashed. Even tho this post comes from late 2019– right before or right after the girls’ fateful MIRI/CFAR protest— Ziz is not really denouncing MIRI/CFAR here. She is saying she has q.s abt their values; but she is, as she says this, still at their workshop, still admiring their leaders, & still hoping to work w/in them so that she can push their “world-saving” efforts in a direction that benefits life more broadly.

On one level, we were right: when Ziz says “flesh eating monsters” here, she is specifically referring to TRE.

On another level, we way overshot the hole. Ziz is not, in 2016, super-aware of TRE’s scandals. We think that— at this v. workshop— she will hear rumors of Eliezer’s sexual misconduct, & MIRI’s coverup, & will dismiss them. She will not begin to take them seriously for another 2 years. At any rate, we have not, so far, seen a fiery takedown of TRE for Ezra’s phrase (EP) to obscure.

We have seen good vegan ethics— but we’d expand this & just say, “good ethics”! We like ethics that take animals seriously. This makes us happy, & btw, is neither radical nor esp. fringe.

***

If we could rewrite EP, we might say:

An elite of meat-eating Rationalists… were damning non-human sentient life to a future of hell— a future facilitated by their supposedly “safe” AI.

This brings that shadowy “regime” out into the broad light of day— which we think is important. Ezra knows that a majority of his readers will be meat-eaters, & that some will feel affronted by such an apparently broad accusation. While we think Ziz *does* want more ppl to feel under scrutiny for their meat-eating, that is not what she is talking abt here— & btw, nowhere have we seen her talk abt punishing all meat-eaters that she can get her hands on. We make this outlandish aside bc it is an accusation from The Unnamed Site, & the press enjoys riffing on it.

***

“Hell”, in this scenario, is not necessarily “AI hell”— that is, we don’t think Ziz is imagining a kind of VR or simulation hell in which we immerse broiler chickens. We think that, instead, she’s imagining: what if tech makes it even easier for us to exploit animals? What if tech grants us many new capabilities— & what if our ethics didn’t catch up? What will become of our “prey” then?

This is perhaps not a “normal” concern— but maybe it should be! Maybe we are overdue for a serious think abt how strange & unfortunate it is that an opportunistic meat-eating species has been able to extend its reach so much thru technology. If we had evolved from, say, an obligate herbivore species— like panda bears— we wouldn’t be in this mess. We may be in some alternate mess: tearing down the rainforest to plant infinite stands of bamboo, for ex. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Who can say. Anyway, we don’t see what harm can come from Ziz’s proposal.

***

Finally, there's a small but big whoops in Ezra’s characterization: it is indeed “all sentient life” which Ziz is worried abt— not just “humanity”.

W/ that, we’ll cap & stow our red pen.

***

Our last thought, DAD, is that Ezra seems to be pulling a trick which we have seen before.

He seems to be framing Ziz’s thoughts in a way which makes them seem impossibly niche & kooky to most readers (TMR). TMR, “regime of meat eaters (ROME)” may sound like an oddly pointed conspiracy theory, & “AI hell” may sound a) like it makes no sense; b) like it has no clear connection to the ROME. He is not framing either in terms which readers might nod at & agree with. We have seen the press do this many times w/ left-wing views (LWV) generally— LWV which are neither kooky nor niche, but which, in their hands, are collapsed into sthng both cartoonish & menacing.

Why is the press so determined to mischaracterize & then lampoon these ideas for public spectacle?

This could be a $-making thing: they could be doing this for clicks 🤑 “Wacky radicals” are much more exciting than “thought-provoking ethical q.s”.

This could be a liberal thing: their spidey-senses could be telling them, “😮 These thoughts challenge capitalist production!” They challenge other consensus norms too, like human exceptionalism & the miraculous nature of tech. Ziz tends to make systemic critiques, which the media likes to transfigure into sthng “unserious”, “extreme”, & “out-of-touch”. They do this generally, ofc, not just w/ the Zizster. By making the ppl who make systemic critiques seem ridiculous, the press can neutralize them. Readers are freed from having to hear abt serious ethical q.s— they are shown only a weird spectacle.

Finally: the press, as we have moaned abt countless times, is currently on v. good terms w/ the Rationalists. They get granted interviews by the high-&-mighty Anna Salamon. Their two-bit exposés get praised by the likes of Michael Vassar. When they come knocking, they are showered w/ “insider” info & “exclusive”-if-phony documentation. We can imagine they don’t want to burn those bridges. Caricaturing Ziz protects the institutions they rub elbows w/, & ensures them continued access to their sources.

***

We have finished all our madeleines, so we will leave it here. Ty DAD for inspiring a deeper dive into 😱 “Zizian ideology”, & ty readers for taking this deep dive w/ us. We hope you saw many interesting fish, appreciated them as sentient comrades, & are remembering to come to the surface slowly! We do not need a reputation for giving readers the bends 😮‍💨 If any of you have comments or q.s for our mailbag, you can reach us on X or on Bluesky.

XX— Drosselmeyer

*****

Next: The Postman Always Rings Twice

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