Latest news with #Roko'sBasilisk
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Yahoo
The Woman Accused of Running a Murderous Cult Linked to Roko's Basilisk Faked Her Own Death Before "Coming Back to Life"
The leader of an alleged cult informed by the murderous hypothetical artificial superintelligence of "Roko's Basilisk" once faked her death in the months before the first of several killings that have been linked to her followers. As The Guardian notes, Jack "Ziz" LaSota — the alleged leader of the "Zizians," a militantly vegan group of computer scientists who have now been linked to six deaths in three states — was believed to be dead after her sister and friend claimed that she'd fallen from her sailboat in the San Francisco Bay. After a 30-hour search that involved the Coast Guard and multiple fire departments, LaSota's "body" was never found. Though the nature of her alleged death-faking scheme is unclear, Ziz was nevertheless considered dead by her family, who published an obituary for her in her hometown newspaper in Alaska. In an interview with the Silicon Valley nonprofit news site Open Vallejo in January, Coast Guard official Hunter Schnabel explained that the branch doesn't have the authority to declare a person's death and "isn't going to investigate" further — a convenient procedural situation that would make it easy for someone who "didn't want to be found" to "disappear." A few months after that purported boating accident, Ziz seemingly sprang back to life when she was arrested at the scene of a different disaster: the sword stabbing of then-80-year-old Curtis Lind, a man who owned the property where some of her friends (or followers, depending on how you see it) were living days before they were set to be evicted for failing to pay rent. The landlord lost his eye during the attack, and two of Ziz's alleged associates, Suri Dao and Alexander Leatham, were charged with his attempted murder. More than two years later, Lind was stabbed again — this time fatally — ahead of his upcoming testimony against Dao and Leatham. It remains unclear who killed him or why, but his murder happened just a day after prosecutors noted that he was the sole witness to his initial stabbing and that the people accused of it were "extremely dangerous." In Lind's case, and that of the five others involving Zizians, it does not appear that the group's leader was directly involved. As this story unravels, it looks a lot like LaSota is a Charles Manson type: a charismatic leader whose ideas might have infected the minds of her followers to the point that they were willing to go to extremes for the woman who believes, among other startling things, that she is one of the only righteous people alive. More on Ziz: Alleged Leader of Roko's Basilisk Murder Cult Says She Did Nothing Wrong, and Would Appreciate Some Vegan Food in Jail
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Yahoo
Alleged Leader of Roko's Basilisk Murder Cult Says She Did Nothing Wrong, and Would Appreciate Some Vegan Food in Jail
After being arrested in connection with a years-long, country-spanning string of murders, the alleged leader of a "Roko's Basilisk" cult is insisting she hasn't done anything wrong — and that she should be granted access to a vegan diet. As the San Fransisco Chronicle reports, Jack "Ziz" LaSota spoke ramblingly during her Maryland bail hearing last week that occurred after two young alleged "Zizians" were apprehended for a pair of slayings that took place in California and Vermont. "I haven't done anything wrong," LaSota told a judge during the February 18 hearing. "I shouldn't be here." A militant vegan whose animal rights beliefs are at the center of her writings — as does the concept of "Roko's Basilisk," a hypothetical artificial superintelligence that would retroactively torture anyone who didn't help it come into existence — the 33-year-old former tech worker also begged Judge Erich Bean, the jurist presiding over her hearing, to give her food she could eat. "I must... I might starve to death," Ziz told the judge. "I need... I need the jail to have a vegan diet. It's more important than this hearing is." LaSota went on to claim that she was being starved and suggested that a jail chaplain had denied her request for a vegan diet as some form of religious persecution. As a result, LaSota contended, she was delirious from malnutrition, which was part of her argument for being granted bail. "I think the idea that I [may] be mentally impaired for a month at proceedings because I'm in a state of starvation or that somebody with a particular majority religion would be deciding whether my religious beliefs are real... it's not right," she said. After LaSota's imploring, the judge told her that her mother had managed to find a way to get her some vegan food while she awaits trial. "I hope so," she replied. "I meant what I said about mental impairment. I'm in, maybe, a mild state of delirium." LaSota is allegedly quite familiar with inducing delirium. On her blog, per Vox and other outlets, Ziz promoted what's known as "unihemispheric sleep" or UHS, a dangerous practice where one attempts to sleep with only one half of their brain, the other half remaining awake and alert. A lengthy explainer on the Zizians claims, per insider accounts, that the group's alleged leader uses UHS to manipulate people and induce in them a "vulnerable psychological state" — a useful tool for any aspiring cult leader. Ultimately, LaSota's bail request was denied because, as Bean put it, the "circumstances are odd at best, concerning" — perhaps the biggest understatement of 2025 so far. More on cults of personality: Tesla Owners Receiving Threats That If They Don't Sell Their Cars, They'll Be Vandalized
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Yahoo
Police Arrest Alleged Leader of "Roko's Basilisk" Cult Linked to Multiple Murders
Over the weekend, police managed to apprehend Jack "Ziz" DeSota, a mysterious figure who allegedly leads a group called the "Zizians" who are tied to a mind-boggling cross-country string of murders. At the heart of the bizarre debacle is AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky and his LessWrong forum, which played host to the semi-obscure internet theory known as "Roko's Basilisk." First posited on the site in 2010, the theory-cum-thought-experiment proposed by a user called "Roko" centers on an otherwise benevolent future artificial superintelligence — symbolized by the mythological basilisk that can kill with a mere glance — that would torture any human who was aware of its future possible existence but refused to work toward that goal (the theory caused a minor online panic, as users fretted that simply learning about the theory was dooming them to a future of horrific punishment.) A militant vegan, Ziz and her ilk tie their stringent belief in animal rights to a hodgepodge of political and philosophical stances. The only true lineage one can trace their beliefs to is Yudkowsky's concept of Rationality, a popular Silicon Valley mode of thought that champions rational thinking over all else — though to be clear, Zizian rationalism seems, from what we can parse anyway, to be a far cry from the researcher's belief in using rational thought to approach problem-solving and decision-making. In fact, the group's ideological stew seems to have repeatedly led to brutal killings. Law enforcement officials and armchair investigators alike are ablaze after Ziz's astonishing arrest in connection to the slaying of a Border Patrol agent in January and five other killings connected to her purported followers — including the double murder of one of the followers' parents on New Year's Eve in 2022. While the public is just now learning about this bizarre alleged cult and its mysterious leader — who apparently faked her own death back in 2022 and who once, per documentation from an online detractor, claimed to be "suffering from Basilisks" as a code for ethical anxiety — folks on LessWrong have been warning about the Zizians for years. In a nearly two-year-old post, for instance, a user cautioned that "some people in the rationalist community are concerned about risks of physical violence from Ziz and some of her associates." "Over the past few years," the post reads, "Ziz has repeatedly called for the deaths of many different classes of people." For most of us, this bonkers story is only now coming to light. For those who are aware of and ascribe to rationalism — and those, of course who were close with any of the people allegedly killed by the cult's members — this unfolding tale has likely gone on for far too long. More on Zizians: Members of AI Fringe Group Arrested for Two Killings
