Rationalism and EA on the "Behind the Bastards" Podcast

By Flo 🔸 @ 2025-03-21T09:45 (+36)

Robert Evans has made an in depth four part series on the Zizians, which includes a lot of background on Rationality in the bay area, CFAR, and a lot of the ideas leading up to the murders (first three episodes).

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

In my opinion this gives a pretty good perspective of how outside people perceive the Rationalist and EA communities.

Key points I think are important:

• Robert clearly distinguishes between "cultish" behaviours and creating fertile ground for people to end up in cults, and emphasizes Rationality not being a cult.
• He also treats EA as a separate but largely overlapping community, which is fair in my opinion.
• This is likely as fair a treatment from outside reporting as one could hope for, since Robert actually took the time to read very large parts of the primary sources.

Opinion part

In EA community building I have long argued against offering activities at EA events that map onto "cultish" behaviour in this sense. This includes:

• all types of circling
• many authentic relating games

These can quickly generate a feeling of connectedness between even complete strangers. They also can easily touch on things better handled in a safe setting with a professional therapist. For outsiders looking at the events, they can easily be read as cult behaviour, and are not worth the weirdness points in my opinion.

I also think that the EA community has been to reluctant in the past to do media outreach and PR for the EA brand itself, and this has resulted in an often negative image among people aware of the existence of these communities.