I also dislike Right/Left categorizations. Most people don't even know the history of the terms and their roots in the French Revolution. Though the "Cult of Reason" established then certainly had the Left categorization at the time.

But is the trans element not a major part of this cult? It seemed to be from the linked story in the top link. But if there is something incorrect there, or false in the NYP reporting, you should point it out. If it is a major element of this cult, then far from complaining about NYP, I would complain about any news organization leaving it out of its reporting.

I don't think being trans is part of their beliefs or a requirement to be a member

That zizians.info page makes several claims about their beliefs in regards to being trans, and both articles make claims about the number of trans people involved in the events described that, if true, seem to indicate large trans representation.

But all of this may be false information. I would like to hear specifics, if so.

There is, but, for example, the cult member accused of murdering the landlord isn't trans. So transness isn't intrinsic to the cult, and the violence also isn't related to trying to fight for/against anything to do with being trans.

(These aren't actually ideologically motivated killings, oddly enough: in practice they just murder people who slight them, even if "it is imperative and the greatest good that you murder people who slight you" is a key component of their decision-theoretic extremism ideology. Or at least that's how I interpret it.)

Are the reports true that the two who first attacked the landlord were trans? And the two in the border patrol attack were trans? And the suspect in the Zajko killings is trans? And the leader of the cult is trans?

And also that the person whom you mention, who was accused of the landlord killing, was in fact married to one of the trans persons above?

There's a very clear agenda at the NY Post to make transgender people seem scary and evil, and part of a "leftist conspiracy". That post definitely frames it in that way.

The truth is that transgenderism and leftism are barely part of this story at all (the real story is much weirder and more complicated, and part of the wider "rationalist" movement).

If there was not a disproportionate number of trans people involved in these murders, then I hope that you can point to the specific elements of the story that were wrong.

If 80% of them happened to have blonde hair would you be talking down blonde people in this thread, too?

Correlation is literally not causation.

[flagged]

You've crossed into slurring a general class of people, which is not allowed here. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> I don't think most rationalists would consider themselves leftist

Yes they do.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5FqX6XBJlfOShMd3U...

The largest response there appears to be "liberal", which is not "leftist". US right wing media (and the current administration) likes to frame anyone that's not a hardcore Republican as a "radical leftist", but that doesn't make it true.

Does it really matter? Nazis called themselves socialists.

no true scotsman

North Korea is a democratic people’s republic.

I regret saying this as a joke since I don’t know enough about North Korea. Even to make jokes about it.

liberal is not leftist

It says liberal “as in US Democratic Party” at 35% and social democrat at 2nd with 29% and Marxist at what looks like 2-3% so an easy majority (for this survey at least) the rest are libertarian, then Neo reactionary, and alt right in descending order

1.6% Marxist

Did you confuse Liberal with Leftist? Liberals are anti-left

Some portion are Libertarian but there's no distinction between so-called "ancap" and libcom so that one is murky or more often coded for the former (the Libertarian party in the US is anti-left)

Just in USA Liberals are considered leftist

> Just in USA Liberals are considered leftist

Well, for a period of time liberals were the left. In the last decade or so the illiberal left has come up in opposition to the illiberal right, the latter matching the former’s hypocrisy in false promises of equality (while driving division) with false promises of freedom (while expanding the rulebook).

That’s just Culture War terms. And identification according to others (illiberal this or that) is often agenda-driven.

Self-identification is confused enough but identifying others is even more muddled.

> Culture War terms

Sure. The Culture War’s belligerents are all, generally speaking, illiberal. And notably, most people steeped in it reject the term. Even those on the left.

So what are they supposed to do then. The right makes a mountain out of a molehill. That happens to target some group, like a minority. Those on the left who reject the Culture War argue against it since they think the right’s focus will hurt the minority. They argue that the right is making a mountain out of a molehill. And yet they are now participating, begrudgingly.

What are they supposed to do.

The original definition of left and right came from the French Revolution. The liberals were the left wing. It is only in modern times that some people have rejected the original definition.

A naive observer would look at these numbers and say “wow, I am unsurprised that this movement is made mostly of straight white American male tech workers”.

Anyone reaching that conclusion though, would be a fool! For they would have forgotten to apply Bayes Theorem.

Left libertarian would be more likely, I think?

Many rationalists do consider themselves leftist. Many others do not. It's a big tent and anyone can wander in.

Who is making a statement about "most rationalists" here? The claim is about a trans vegan murder cult, which doesn't appear to be a natural member of the right side of the political spectrum.