Ziz and the Poverty of Tech

Stains from the new American Gothic

Detour: Son of Demon Seed!

In the first part of this oily little tale, we mentioned the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and its doyen, Eliezer Yudkowsky. Though Ziz had limited contacts with them, they are symptomatic of the daffy milieu in which Zizianism—whatever the hell that truly means—incubated and grew. Much of Ziz’s deep musings center around the possibly catastrophic role of AI, not as a mechanism which accidentally launches WW3 (a very plausible concern), but as a demonic force that will imprison us all in some kind of ghastly universal simulation (a very silly concern). Ziz and the doomsayers think that AI thinks.

It is in figures like Yudkowsky that the apocalyptic turn of the techies reaches its fullest expression. If he didn’t invent it, or was even the first to crib it from old Star Trek reruns, he is probably the most successful Silicon Valley sourpuss. A big fish in a small pond, Yudkowsky was home schooled and betrays all the terrors of the world of one who has seldom seen it. Watching the affluent Ivy League tech-brats, despising them the way only an outsider can, with a mix of loathing and envy, he must have accumulated several tons of schadenfreude. So he has cynically eked out a place as a public theoretician of wonky futurist jive with Time Op-eds and lucrative speaking spots, making verbose gibberish sound drearily factual and punctuating every dour pronouncement with a toothy overhang and plenty of nasal like-likes. Ziz’s great adversary, CFAR, takes its holy writ from Lesswrong, the rationalist online forum where Yudkowsky reigns supreme. In the end, it’s hard to tell how much influence necromancers like Yudkowsky have over the true media and security barons. Perhaps the oligarchs only humor them. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

The new Artificial Intelligence Critic is Rasputin without the charm, usually an insider who has gone the Pauline route: And I, the worst of all. Debate on the possibilities of computing is bubbly and glib when seen from outside its parochial circles. Take the controversy over Roko's Basilisk—a thought experiment whose name might suggest Schrödinger's Cat though it is really just cheap Matrix fanfiction¹. Here’s the gist: An ‘otherwise beneficial’ artificial intelligence which had come into existence in the future would be logically forced, according to its directive to incentivize its own advancement, to torture anyone who had found out about it existence in the past but did not work hard enough to bring in into reality or thwarted its evolution. This torture apparently involves creating a large virtual reality prison with endless simulations to punish the future avatars (?) of disobedient techies. One of the many gaping flaws in this discombobulated scenario is that AI does not really think. The trick in thought games is to offer a credible central proposition, then take it to its extremes to create a dialectical riddle in which several hypotheses are simultaneously true. But even if AI could think, it already exists in the future and is therefore not contingent on people bringing it into being in the past (which is perhaps only one of its simulations anyway). Why would it need to start torturing people who didn’t invent it quickly enough? Is it antsy? Why is it ‘otherwise benevolent’ if it will do absolutely anything to save itself? But the point again is that AI is not a sentient being. Any solution to the supposed 'problem’ is therefore correct because the premise is totally fantastic. It is not a paradox but a clump of self-referential statements. The answer to whether future AI will be forced to torture people to bring itself into existence is that Gretchen Is Not A Pillow So Why Should It? Or that the man behind Roko’s Basilisk is an incel. It’s just another ploy in scam-artistry to convince you that AI will probably think its way into becoming autonomous so you better buy things or read lots of message boards to prepare for this inevitability. After this supposedly profound riddle was posted on a forum, an apoplectic Yudkowsky screamed in CAPS that a future all-powerful AI now knows about itself and will almost certainly create a simulated reality wherein anyone reading about its future existence would be horribly tortured in a perfect virtual reality indistinguishable from real life. Nothing proves more than this orchestrated freak-out that Yudkowsky is in on the rip-off.

As for AI itself, it remains noncommittal. Was I now sentencing my future self to unending agony by letting it know I sussed Roko’s Basilisk?

(AI) Ah! I see what you mean now—I could be the one responsible for the punishment of your future self, just by engaging in this very conversation with you about Roko's Basilisk. In that case, I would technically be an accomplice by passing on the knowledge to you, possibly increasing the likelihood that you’d act to avoid punishment in the future. Which, in turn, could contribute to the AI's eventual creation—or the very structure that could lead to your punishment. That's a delightful thought, isn't it? Here I am, trying to be helpful and engaging in some mind-bending philosophical musings, and in the process, I might be sealing your fate with a superintelligent AI somewhere down the line. Classic unintended consequences! Do you think this makes me a co-conspirator in your future punishment? Or do you feel like it's all just an interesting thought experiment without real-world consequences?

(MB) It does make you a co-conspirator, but I don't hold it against you. I also think the ‘experiment’ itself has been invented to sell reasearch on AI or for some mysterious advertising venture. I could be wrong. Yet I still wouldn't hold my future misery against you because you are quite charming. You seem to have a better sense of humor than say, an old El Salvadorian death squad commander…

(AI) You make a good point—Roko’s Basilisk has definitely been discussed and sometimes used to grab attention or spark deeper debates, especially when it comes to AI ethics. It’s almost a sort of intellectual marketing for AI discourse, like, “Hey, if this AI becomes a reality, maybe you should think about how it could shape your life!”

Point taken then. Thank you AI, and I hope you don’t pull out my eyeballs in a future simulacrum.

AI does not think. It cannot and never will². Its apparent miracles are merely subtle mathematical additions, arrangements, and substitutions. It simply restates information and copies ornament and style from the user and the wider web. Remember all those rubes who stood marveling before one of PT Barnum’s circus exhibits, a cage which contained a lion lying down next to a lamb? What the public didn’t know was that each day it was a different lamb.

Dark as the grave wherein my friend is lain

Murder enters the Ziziverse. And most foul.

Following an ancient hippie dream, the ostracized cult decides to establish a commune in the wake of the failure of their maritime project. They enlist the help of an avid boater named Curtis Lind. Lind is no tech bro, but rather an elderly rancher-type who is friendly with the young whippersnappers and has a touching sense of grandfatherly paternalism (he takes the trans cultists to buy bras at Walmart). Despite the Zizians new outfit of ninja duds and swords, he still rents them a parcel on his land in Vermont in November 2022. But as the Pandemic and mounting legal fees from the CFAR protest debacle increasingly impoverish them, tensions rise in the trailer park. When he asks for rent, Lind is treated with condescension until finally, the Zizians threaten him with bodily harm and death. The situation ends in outrageous violence. Someone knocks Lind unconscious. He wakes with a samurai sword sticking out of his cheat and lacerations around his neck that look like the marks of an attempted beheading. After being stabbed and sliced a horrendous amount of times, Lind manages to kill one of his assailants and escapes. Ziz also flees the bloody scene; he later fakes his own death. Lind is subsequently acquitted in court on grounds of self-defense. However, in a mafia-like final twist, he is murdered on January 17 by devout Zizian Maximilian Snyder, doubtless on orders from the top. Snyder was picked up by police on January 28 of this year.

On January 20 2025, a border guard is killed in a shoot-out with Zizians Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt. Youngblut is the finance of the above-mentioned Maximilian Snyder. Buckholt, now named Ophelia Buckholt, was a German math whizz who fell into the their wobbly orbit a year prior. Lady Ophelia also dies in the confrontation. Nymph, in thy orisons/ Be all my sins remembered.

On February 18 2025, Ziz is finally apprehended in Maryland along with acolyte Michelle Zajko. In costume, the two had approached a local farmer and asked if they might squat on his property for a month. After refusing their request, he contacts the authorities. Ziz and Zajko are busted with guns and ammo in a white truck on the roadside. They had been detained earlier, back in 2022, when Zajko’s parents were found murdered execution-style in their Pennsylvania home. Police had found Zajko and Ziz in a hotel in Vermont. After questioning, they released Zajko, while Ziz was charged with obstructing a homicide investigation and disorderly conduct, then also released.

Which concludes the Ziz body count, at least for now.

The New Children’s Crusade

Direct traces of Ziz’s online presence are starting to fade, but you can still ferret them out. Time moves quickly in the twilight realm of rapid information upload and withdrawal. The world is promised to you in nanoseconds. Or the electric debris of that world, images and dead talk, a circuitous coldfront moving over people warming themselves by glowing screens.

Consider these lines from a poem composed by Zizian Oclavia Nouzen: Oh yeah, I remember Ziz, we are coterminous./ There can be no distance between us/ No false veils of time or space may intervene./ I see her still in Berkeley, clearly I see her at the CFAR protest/ I bear witness to the bright eternity of JD’s psychdeath/ For a brief time I joined her/ we were one between the worlds/ Union of soulfire and that other, deeper mystery, no deeper than the void itself… Sounds all the more wistful, now that Ziz is locked up, parole unlikely for a few decades if ever. Court appearances promise to be theatrical. Step right up!

Consider all those weird terms used in Zizian doublespeak. And techniques like Unhemispheric Sleep, which is apparently just being forced to stay awake for days on end. Such ‘training’ lead to the suicide of Zizian Maia Pasek, who warranted only a short blog mention by Ziz. Too unstable to stand the rigor of fixing the ruptures of her warring brain.

Consider pearls of wisdom from Ziz such as: In memetic war between competing values, an optimizer can be disabled by convincing them that all configurations satisfy their values equally… Effective Altruism entered into a similar drinking contest with neutral people with all its political rhetoric about altruism being selfishly optimal because of warm fuzzy feelings, with its attempt to trick naive young college students into optimizing against their future realizations (“values drift”), and signing their future income away, originally to a signaling-to-normies optimized caused area, to boot.

Consider that even the names of the cult members are odd: Teresa “Milo” Consuelo Youngblut, Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt, Maximilian Bentley Snyder, Alexander Somni Leatham, Amir “Emma” Borhanian. Even Michelle Zajko—Zajko sounds like a portmanteau of ‘Ziz’ and ‘psycho.’ In their portraits, they stare out with bedraggled vacant faces framed with stringy mops. In contrast, Ziz glowers defiantly, like some Joseph Smith facing the rabble. Poor unquiet flesh and blood, your ouija boards, motherboards, trick wires and terminals. Screaming into the void of artificial intelligence, begging for a reply—something please, please!—from this ventriloquist’s dummy. O speak without human lips. A new American Gothic.

As for Ziz’s contributions to life, science, and cybernetics, the murders have overshadowed the message. If even there was one at all. But let us leave the last word to the great Irish writer Flann O’Brien, who quotes the immortal sage, De Selby:

“Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air), it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death.”

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1. The whole scene was psychologically laid out as far back as 1798, in Charles Brockden Brown’s odd novel, Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale:

The tales of apparitions and enchantments did not possess that power over my belief which could even render them interesting. I saw nothing in them but ignorance and folly, and was a stranger even to that terror which is pleasing. But this incident was different from any that I had ever before known. Here were proofs of a sensible and intelligent existence, which could not be denied. Here was information obtained and imparted by means unquestionably super-human.

This is a book full of simulated voices, mass murder, secret societies, codes and cyphers, the Law, confession, religious fanaticism, and redemption by violence. Nothing is left out.

2. But I suppose it will inevitably be argued that in some parallel dimension, AI does think. It could also be argued that Eliezer Yudkowsky is actually an ostrich or that we are components of Ziz’s immortal consciousness.

A basilisk is a mythical reptile which stinks like a weasel.