You could say "a group of people think that being smart gives them magic powers, and that most people are evil zombies, but they think everyone in their own special group is good and can do whatever they want" but you lose a lot of nuance.
> The "Zizaran cult" is just a funny name for the group of people who follow Zizaran and learn from him. They all work together to get better at the game, and they have fun chatting and helping each other out. It’s like a big team where everyone shares tips and tricks!
> But don’t worry—it’s not a spooky cult. It’s just a group of gamers who like playing the same game and having fun together.
This is what it created:
A journalist wrote a long article about a weird, extreme group called the “Zizians.” They’re a mix of radical thinkers from the Rationalist movement—a community of people obsessed with using logic to solve big problems, like AI safety or moral philosophy. The Zizians, led by a person named Ziz, took these ideas to an extreme, combining them with unusual beliefs about morality, consciousness, and even Star Wars-like "Sith" philosophy.
This group has been connected to multiple violent incidents, including murders and standoffs with police. Some of its members have been arrested, gone into hiding, or mysteriously died. The author explains that Rationalist groups, while not inherently violent, often attract highly analytical but socially disconnected people, making them vulnerable to cult-like thinking.
The article also touches on how similar communities—like Effective Altruists and AI researchers—can sometimes create intense, insular environments that lead to extreme behavior. Basically, the Zizians are an example of how even smart, logical people can end up in very bizarre and dangerous places when they take ideas too far.
I expect you are simply trolling, but for those that are not aware ELI5 has been defined in popular culture for well over a decade.
So these guys were being surveilled for being armed and decked out in tactical gear, so the authorities send in a lone traffic cop to pull them over? And predictably, the cop is killed.
This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of thing happening. That agent was basically set up to die, sacrificed like a pawn by his superiors playing a sick game of chess. The same thing happened to Darian Jarott, who was directed by his boss to arrest an armed and dangerous meth smuggler without being briefed of the danger, despite the fact that the danger was clearly understood by his superiors (a tactical team with medics were stationed nearby, but Jarott was sent in alone without knowledge of this.) The meth smuggler stepped out of his truck with an AR-15, taking Jarott completely by surprise, and murdered him. The meth smuggler was then chased down and killed by the other officers and agents.
Do you think that if the meth smuggler had been met by two or more officers he would have acted differently?
They didn't even tell the guy to expect a violent reaction. Of course they didn't, because if they had he would have rightly refused.
Here for example is the AP: "Youngblut got out and opened fire on Maland and other officers without warning, the FBI said. Bauckholt tried to draw a gun but was shot, according to the affidavit. At least one border agent fired on Youngblut and Bauckholt, but authorities haven’t specified whose bullets hit whom."
https://apnews.com/article/vermont-border-patrol-shooting-wh...
Have you seen any later reporting that contradicts this?
e.g. the decision makers could be incompetent, they might not care that much, they had some other contradicting information not publicly revealed, etc…
In the case of David Maland, the chance of it being a completely normal "traffic stop" by a federal border patrol agent (who's job is not to fill the counties chest by writing tickets, as you incorrectly state), completely unrelated to these people being under surveillance at the time for being armed and in tactical gear, is dubious to put it mildly.
Was there any indication the police was "sent" to pull them over, rather than some sort of routine traffic stop? The article mentions the DHS surveillance was only "periodic", which implied they weren't really keeping tabs on them 24/7.
It was more than one agent who pulled them over, and it isn't clear they were pulled over as a result of being put under surveillance.
It's a lot more likely that he just didn't know rather than some conspiracy for unknown purposes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Maland