A Silicon Valley intellectual society kicked them out. Now they’re tied to a killing spree.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BERKELEY, Calif.—In the Bay Area, a place teeming with brainy computer scientists, an intellectual movement called “the rationalists" debates existential issues, such as preventing artificial intelligence from destroying humanity. Yet even in a community that prides itself on welcoming anyone, a new arrival from Alaska stood out, a programmer named Jack LaSota.
Intense, robed in black, adopting the name “Ziz" after a comic-series villain and espousing violence against meat eaters, LaSota so unsettled the rationalists that one organization expelled her from official events. The rationalists’ suspicions proved prescient. The Zizians, a splinter group of militant vegans led by LaSota, has been linked to six deaths, including the slayings of an elderly Pennsylvania couple, a California landlord and a U.S.
Border Patrol agent in Vermont. Rationalists fear for their safety. The prominent Berkeley-based Center for Applied Rationality, where LaSota once attended meetups, has increased security and standards of behavior at events.
“Ziz clearly had a lot of unique and extreme ideas before encountering the rationalist community," said Zvi Mowshowitz, a center board member. “A lot of these ideas clearly didn’t come from us." Discussions of the Zizians course through rationalist forums, as adherents wonder whether their nerdy do-gooder subculture inadvertently seeded a violent faction. The soul-searching echoes the reactions to Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud conviction—the cryptocurrency billionaire followed effective altruism, which uses reason to maximize human welfare.
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