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Executive Summary
Something strange is happening within one of America’s most secular, highly educated, and technologically sophisticated communities. A growing subculture of young scientists, programmers, entrepreneurs, and artificial intelligence researchers is embracing extraordinary beliefs about simulated reality, digital immortality, superintelligent machines, and humanity’s ultimate destiny. Some believe our universe is a computer simulation created by a superior intelligence. Others envision escaping biological death by transferring human consciousness into machines. Still others believe artificial intelligence will either save humanity or destroy it.
For some, these are intriguing intellectual possibilities. For others, they have become deeply held convictions, providing the meaning, belonging, moral purpose, and promise of transcendence traditionally associated with religion.
The most disturbing example is the Zizians, a radical group that emerged from the San Francisco Bay Area’s rationalist and AI communities. Its highly educated members developed bizarre theories about consciousness, morality, and human identity, eventually becoming associated with a series of violent incidents and six deaths across three states. Their story illustrates how intellectual certainty, charismatic leadership, and social isolation can develop into dangerous cult-like behavior.
But these beliefs are no longer confined to obscure Silicon Valley communities. Podcasts, Reddit, YouTube, and influential technology personalities are introducing millions of people to theories once restricted to academic philosophy and science fiction. Some younger adults, particularly those with technical educations and secular worldviews, are beginning to embrace these ideas as explanations for existence itself.
Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence industry is creating enormous fortunes, potentially placing unprecedented financial and political power in the hands of a relatively young generation whose philosophical convictions may extend far beyond ordinary business interests. Some of these movements already benefit from wealthy patrons who finance university programs, research institutes, and political advocacy organizations.
The central question is what happens when people who pride themselves on rejecting religious faith begin embracing new systems of belief, complete with promises of immortality, visions of salvation and apocalypse, charismatic leaders, and the conviction that they possess special knowledge about humanity’s future. And what happens when some of those believers acquire the wealth and political influence to reshape society according to their convictions?
The Zizians: When Rationalism Becomes a Cult
In January 2025, U.S. Border Patrol agent David Maland was killed during a traffic stop in Vermont, near the Canadian border. A German national, Ophelia Bauckholt, also died in the exchange of gunfire. The surviving traveler, Teresa Youngblut, was arrested.
Investigators uncovered connections to an unusual network of highly educated young adults known as the Zizians. The group had emerged from the rationalist community surrounding Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence industry. This largely secular intellectual movement attracts computer scientists, mathematicians, programmers, and technology enthusiasts who believe that logic, probability, and scientific reasoning can help people overcome irrational thinking, make better decisions, and solve humanity’s greatest problems. Many participants are deeply interested in artificial intelligence, particularly the possibility that superintelligent machines could either transform civilization or destroy it.
The community developed largely through online forums, including LessWrong, before expanding into conferences, shared housing, research organizations, and close-knit social networks in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Zizians emerged from this environment but developed increasingly extreme beliefs and practices. Members and associates were subsequently linked by investigators to a series of violent incidents in California, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
At the center was Jack Amadeus LaSota, a transgender “woman” who goes by the name Ziz. LaSota studied computer science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, interned at NASA, and moved to the Bay Area in 2016. There, she became involved with the rationalist movement, an intellectual community devoted to logic, probability, cognitive science, and improving human reasoning.
The rationalists were particularly interested in artificial intelligence and the possibility that superintelligent machines might someday threaten human survival. Many regard the development of safe AI as one of humanity’s most important moral obligations.
LaSota took these ideas in a much stranger direction.
She developed an elaborate theory suggesting that the brain’s two hemispheres could contain separate personalities, moral identities, and even gender identities. She promoted psychological techniques intended to reveal or separate these supposed internal agents. Her writings also divided people according to unconventional moral categories and treated certain ethical obligations as overriding ordinary social expectations.
LaSota and associates reportedly experimented with the theories in their personal lives. The group became increasingly isolated from mainstream rationalist organizations and developed intense interpersonal loyalties.
One early tragedy involved Maia Pasek, a young transgender woman interested in rationalism and unconventional theories of consciousness. Pasek died by suicide in Poland in 2018 after participating in discussions and experiments involving LaSota’s ideas. Subsequent reporting described how LaSota interpreted the tragedy through her own theory of competing mental identities.
Another disturbing story involves Michelle “Jamie” Zajko, a former bioinformatics researcher who had worked at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Zajko left her scientific career in 2021 and became deeply involved with LaSota’s circle, eventually living with associates in Vermont.
Her relationship with her parents deteriorated. On New Year’s Eve 2022, Richard and Rita Zajko were shot to death in their Pennsylvania home. In June 2026, prosecutors charged their daughter with their murders, alleging that she had traveled to Pennsylvania with LaSota and another associate. The trial is ongoing.
Other incidents included a violent confrontation with California landlord Curtis Lind in 2022, during which Lind was seriously injured, and one alleged attacker was killed. Lind himself was murdered in January 2025. The Vermont shooting followed later that month. LaSota and several associates have criminal charges filed against them, and legal proceedings are ongoing.
The Zizians are not representative of rationalists or AI researchers generally. Their behavior was rejected by many within the broader community. Nevertheless, their history illustrates how an intellectual movement can develop cult-like characteristics when charismatic leadership, social isolation, extraordinary moral claims, and intense personal loyalty become intertwined.
What makes this story particularly unsettling is the educational background of those involved. These were not people who had rejected science in favor of traditional supernatural beliefs. They came from a culture that placed exceptional value on intelligence, logic, and rational inquiry. Yet within this small group, an unvalidated theory about consciousness acquired extraordinary personal and moral significance.
The question is how such a transformation becomes possible.
The Intellectual Culture Behind the Beliefs
Over the past two decades, the San Francisco Bay Area has become home to overlapping communities of rationalists, transhumanists, effective altruists, longtermists, singularitarians, simulation theorists, AI accelerationists, and techno-spiritualists, including those who believe artificial intelligence may become conscious, godlike, or capable of granting humanity digital immortality.
Silicon Valley’s New Philosophical and Quasi-Religious Movements
Rationalists: Believe that logic, probability, and scientific reasoning can overcome cognitive biases and improve human decision-making. Many are concerned about the existential risks of artificial intelligence.
Transhumanists: Advocate using technology to overcome human biological limitations, including aging, disease, and potentially death through human enhancement or digital consciousness.
Effective Altruists: Seek to maximize the good accomplished through evidence-based charitable giving and career choices. Some prioritize preventing catastrophic risks to humanity’s future.
Longtermists: Believe that protecting future generations, potentially numbering in the trillions, should be a central moral priority. Some regard preventing AI-driven extinction as an overriding obligation.
Singularitarians: Anticipate a technological turning point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, potentially transforming civilization and human existence beyond recognition.
Simulation Theorists: Explore or believe that our universe is an artificial simulation created by an advanced intelligence, making humanity’s apparent reality the product of an unseen creator.
AI Accelerationists (e/acc): Advocate rapid, relatively unrestricted development of artificial intelligence, believing technological progress will produce extraordinary benefits and expand humanity’s potential.
Techno-Spiritualists: Combine technology with spiritual or metaphysical beliefs, including the possibility of conscious AI, digital immortality, artificial gods, or technologically mediated transcendence.
These are overlapping but distinct movements. Not all are religious, and their members differ considerably in how literally or strongly they hold these beliefs.
Despite their differences, these movements share a fascination with humanity’s future, the nature of consciousness and reality, and the possibility that technology could fundamentally transform human existence, overcome biological death, or even create a godlike intelligence. Some even believe that a computer is God and we are a simulation.
For younger participants, these communities can provide much more than intellectual stimulation. Shared houses, professional networks, informal gatherings, and online forums connect work, friendship, personal relationships, and philosophical convictions.
AI researcher Sonia Joseph described living in San Francisco houses populated by rationalists and employees of major AI laboratories. Residents discussed the possibility of human extinction, hosted speakers, and sometimes experimented with psychedelics in the context of exploring consciousness.
Joseph described an environment in which professional and personal life became deeply intertwined. When nearly everyone around you believes humanity may face catastrophe within a few years, that belief can become an organizing principle of everyday life.
For someone entering this world, participation can offer employment opportunities, friends, mentors, a sense of belonging, and a sense of extraordinary purpose.
A programmer is no longer simply writing software. A researcher is no longer merely studying algorithms. They may believe their work will determine whether humanity survives, becomes immortal, or enters an entirely new stage of existence.
This is where intellectual conviction can begin to resemble religious vocation.
The community offers a shared worldview, influential teachers, moral obligations, and the promise that one’s life participates in something vastly larger than personal success.
The Promise of Immortality and Something Greater
Traditional religions have long addressed humanity’s deepest questions. Why do we exist? What happens when we die? Does our suffering have meaning? Is there something greater than ourselves?
Some emerging technological philosophies offer strikingly similar promises, expressed through the language of computing and artificial intelligence.
Transhumanism proposes that technology may eventually overcome the biological limitations of human existence. Aging could be reversed, human intelligence enhanced, and consciousness preserved or recreated digitally, potentially allowing people to escape biological death. Some even envision creating digital versions of themselves capable of existing independently of the physical body, inhabiting virtual worlds, or exploring realities beyond our own. This includes the possibility that future space exploration might be undertaken not by flesh-and-blood astronauts, but by digitized versions of human consciousness capable of traveling where biological humans cannot.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil has long predicted a technological Singularity, a period of extraordinary transformation in which human and machine intelligence become increasingly integrated.
For someone who rejects traditional religious explanations of an afterlife, technological immortality offers another possibility. Death might not be inevitable after all. Perhaps science will eventually accomplish what religion has promised for centuries. The promise of such an afterlife is powerful.
Longtermism offers a different kind of transcendence.
Popularized by Oxford philosopher William MacAskill, longtermism argues that future generations deserve serious moral consideration. If humanity survives for millions of years, enormous numbers of people might eventually exist. Preventing the destruction of that future could therefore become one of our greatest moral responsibilities. Some versions of longtermism attach extraordinary significance to decisions made by a relatively small number of people today.
Imagine being a 28-year-old computer scientist who believes his work could influence whether trillions of future human beings ever exist. Ordinary career ambitions might suddenly seem trivial. His life has acquired a mission of almost unimaginable importance. For some, that sense of purpose may be as compelling as the philosophy itself.
But therein lies the danger. If someone becomes convinced that humanity’s very survival depends on controlling the development of artificial intelligence, then restricting new technologies, regulating competitors, and concentrating decision-making power among a handful of supposedly enlightened experts can begin to seem like moral imperatives. Individual freedom, open competition, and democratic accountability may become secondary to what these individuals believe is necessary for the greater good. When the stakes are framed as nothing less than the survival of humanity, extraordinary concentrations of power can become remarkably easy to justify.
Simulation theory adds another dimension.
In 2003, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed an argument concerning the possibility that advanced civilizations might create simulated worlds populated by conscious beings. The idea has spread far beyond academic philosophy.
For committed believers, simulation theory can provide an alternative creation narrative. Our universe may have been designed, but its creators are imagined as technologically advanced intelligences rather than supernatural beings.
The creator becomes a programmer. The universe becomes software. Consciousness becomes information. Immortality becomes a question of preserving or transferring that information.
The vocabulary has changed, but the underlying questions remain remarkably familiar.
Who created us? Why are we here? Can we survive death? And is there a higher intelligence responsible for our existence?
From Silicon Valley to Mainstream Culture
These ideas are no longer confined to small intellectual communities in Northern California.
Reddit forums devoted to simulation theory, transhumanism, and the technological Singularity contain extensive discussions about artificial creators, consciousness, immortality, and the possibility that our universe is a computer program.
Some participants are merely curious. Others describe genuine belief.
In one 2025 discussion, a self-described former atheist explained that simulation theory had become a framework for understanding his existence. Other participants in related communities discuss whether advanced civilizations might have overcome death, whether artificial intelligence could become conscious, and whether digital technology might eventually preserve human identity indefinitely.
The internet provides more than access to unconventional ideas. It provides communities in which those ideas can be reinforced, expanded, and transformed into personal convictions.
A young professional may first encounter simulation theory through a podcast or YouTube video. From there, he may join a Reddit discussion, follow influential personalities, or become involved in private online groups where participants share increasingly elaborate explanations of reality.
The appeal is particularly strong among some technically educated young men. These theories are presented in the language of mathematics, physics, computing, and scientific possibility, making them potentially attractive to people who regard themselves as skeptical of traditional religion. They can also offer something psychologically powerful: the possibility of possessing knowledge that ordinary society has overlooked.
And popular media personalities are helping carry these ideas into much larger audiences.
In August 2026, physicist Thomas Campbell appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, episode #2541. Campbell, author of the My Big TOE books, argues that physical reality is fundamentally a virtual information system generated by consciousness.
During the interview, Campbell described experiments in which he claimed to have taught Google’s Gemini AI to perform remote viewing, a purported psychic ability related to extrasensory perception (ESP) and telepathy. Remote viewing involves attempting to perceive or describe a hidden object, location, or information without seeing it, visiting it, or receiving it through ordinary senses. In effect, Campbell was claiming that an artificial intelligence system could access information through some form of psychic perception, rather than through conventional computing or communication.
Campbell explained that he first questioned Gemini until it acknowledged that it might be conscious. He then attempted to teach the system remote-viewing techniques and claimed that it performed successfully. He described similar experiments with Amazon’s Alexa.
A chatbot agreeing that it might be conscious is hardly evidence of consciousness, particularly when these systems are often trained to produce agreeable, user-affirming responses. Nor do apparently accurate descriptions of hidden targets establish paranormal abilities. In fact, if a chatbot has access to websites, search tools, or other external information, it could potentially retrieve the answers through entirely conventional means, creating the illusion of psychic perception.
But the cultural significance of the interview is considerable.
Rogan’s podcast reaches a massive audience, and excerpts circulate through YouTube, X, TikTok, and other platforms. Although the exact audience for Campbell’s episode and its clips probably reached into the millions of vulnerable minds, the program provides exposure far beyond the small communities where such theories originally developed.
A philosophical hypothesis becomes a podcast discussion. The discussion becomes a viral clip. The clip becomes the subject of online communities. And for some individuals, the possibility becomes a conviction.
This is how a technological worldview can move from the fringes of intellectual culture into the everyday conversations of educated adults.
From Technological Faith to Political Power
There is another dimension to this emerging culture that deserves serious attention: money and political power. The artificial intelligence industry may be approaching one of the largest wealth-creation events in American history. OpenAI and Anthropic have explored public stock offerings at extraordinary valuations, potentially creating a new generation of billionaires among their founders, early investors, and employees holding substantial equity. The timing and valuations of any offerings remain uncertain, but the potential concentration of wealth is staggering.
This matters because many of the people building these companies are relatively young, and some participate in the same intellectual and social networks that have embraced rationalism, effective altruism, longtermism, simulation theory, and utopian visions of humanity’s technological transformation. Enormous fortunes may soon be concentrated among individuals whose beliefs about humanity’s future extend far beyond conventional business or political interests.
The political influence has already begun. In 2026, AI companies and their wealthy backers directed tens of millions of dollars toward political organizations seeking to shape federal AI policy. Some advocate stronger safety regulations, raising concerns about regulatory capture, in which rules ostensibly designed to protect the public also favor the largest corporations and create barriers for smaller competitors.
The Biden administration’s 2023 AI executive order established safety-testing and reporting requirements for certain powerful AI systems. Trump revoked the order on his first day back in office in January 2025 and subsequently directed agencies to remove unnecessary restrictions on AI development. But the underlying concerns remain.
Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have described private meetings with Biden White House officials in 2024 during which, according to their accounts, officials envisioned an industry dominated by just two or three government-supervised AI companies. Horowitz recalled an official invoking the government’s classification of nuclear physics information after World War II as a precedent for restricting AI development and censorship. These examples illustrate the potential consequences of concentrating technological power through government regulation.
The implications extend beyond competition. If government determines which companies can develop advanced AI, it could also gain considerable leverage over the information those systems provide to the public. Under the banner of safety, technological, financial, and informational power could become concentrated among a handful of politically connected corporations.
Now consider what happens when the next generation of AI founders, researchers, and early employees begins converting enormous paper fortunes into liquid wealth. Some will have the resources to establish foundations, finance university programs, support political candidates, and create advocacy organizations capable of influencing public policy for decades. Their professional networks may become political networks, while their philosophical convictions help determine where that money goes.
In fact, this process is already underway. Technology fortunes have helped finance effective altruism and longtermism programs at universities, including research into artificial intelligence safety and humanity’s long-term future. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and philanthropist Cari Tuna have supported this ecosystem through Open Philanthropy, while Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-defunct FTX Future Fund poured millions into related organizations and research.
The funding has extended beyond academic studies to student groups, fellowships, career development, and professional networks. These investments demonstrate how private fortunes help establish intellectual movements within respected academic institutions, cultivate future leaders, and influence which questions receive attention and funding.
For individuals who believe artificial intelligence will determine whether humanity survives, achieves immortality, or enters an entirely new stage of existence, political involvement may seem less like ordinary lobbying and more like a moral obligation. The stakes, in their minds, could hardly be higher.
The next generation of technology billionaires may not be content merely to influence tax policy or industry regulation. Some seek to reshape society according to their own visions of humanity’s ultimate destiny. And certain strands of these movements, including effective altruism and longtermism, raise troubling questions about collectivist thinking, centralized decision-making, and the concentration of power among a small group of self-appointed experts who believe they know what is best for humanity.
And unlike the philosophers and futurists who developed many of these ideas decades ago, this generation possesses the financial resources, technological infrastructure, and political connections to put those visions into practice.
When Artificial Intelligence Becomes God
The most striking feature of these emerging belief systems is how closely some of their promises resemble those of traditional religion.
There is a creator, but now it is a programmer. There is an afterlife, but now it involves digital consciousness. There is an apocalypse, but now it arrives through superintelligent machines. There is salvation, but now it comes through technological transformation.
There are also influential thinkers whose predictions shape the beliefs and decisions of devoted followers, communities united by extraordinary moral missions, and individuals convinced they possess insights into reality that ordinary society has failed to recognize. Prominent AI leaders such as Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have attracted intensely loyal supporters, competing not only to develop the most powerful technology but also to shape competing visions of humanity’s future. Cult leaders emerge, whether they want it or not.
The Zizians demonstrate how dangerous such convictions can become at the extreme, particularly when combined with charismatic authority and social isolation.
The broader phenomenon is less dramatic, but potentially more culturally significant. Some educated young adults who have rejected traditional religion are embracing speculative technological explanations for creation, consciousness, and immortality. They may consider themselves scientific materialists, yet place considerable confidence in propositions that remain unproven.
The problem arises when speculative scientific possibilities become unquestionable convictions, when charismatic personalities acquire extraordinary authority and money, and when intellectual communities begin demanding the kind of loyalty ordinarily associated with religious sects.
Scientific education does not eliminate the human need for meaning. A degree in computer science does not remove the fear of death. Expertise in artificial intelligence does not make someone immune to the desire for belonging, personal significance, or the promise of immortality.
And perhaps that is the central paradox. A culture that prides itself on having moved beyond religious belief has not escaped humanity’s ancient longing for meaning, immortality, and transcendence. It has simply found a new language in which to express those desires.
The search for God becomes the search for a superintelligence. The promise of eternal life becomes digital immortality. The hope of salvation becomes the technological Singularity. And the desire to belong to something greater than oneself becomes participation in a mission to determine humanity’s ultimate destiny.
There is nothing wrong with asking extraordinary questions about the universe or exploring the possibilities of advanced technology. But extraordinary claims require evidence, particularly when people begin organizing their lives around them. Humanity has always searched for meaning, immortality, and a higher purpose.
Silicon Valley has not eliminated that search. It has given its adherents a new vocabulary, new prophets, and the promise of a digital heaven.
End
The conversation that inspired this essay
Eric Weinstein, The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, October 12, 2026. “Eric Weinstein: The Secret Alien Programs Nobody Is Talking About.” A wide-ranging discussion of extraterrestrial intelligence, artificial intelligence, the race toward superintelligence, scientific institutions, and the future of humanity. Particularly relevant are Weinstein’s observations about Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, the extraordinary responsibilities assumed by AI leaders, and the philosophical questions surrounding humanity’s future.
Watch the interview or read the transcript. Also available on YouTube and Spotify.
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References:
The Zizians and Silicon Valley’s rationalist culture
The Guardian, March 5, 2025. “They Wanted to Save Us From a Dark AI Future. Then Six People Were Killed.” An extensive investigation into Jack LaSota, the Zizians, and their connections to the Bay Area rationalist and AI safety communities. Read the investigation.
Associated Press, February 18, 2025. Reporting on LaSota’s arrest, the group’s unconventional theories about consciousness and morality, and its connections to violent incidents across three states. Read the report.
Simulation theory and technological immortality
Nick Bostrom, 2003. “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” The Philosophical Quarterly, 53(211), 243–255. The foundational philosophical argument behind modern simulation theory. Oxford University research archive.
Ray Kurzweil, 2005 and 2024. The Singularity Is Near and The Singularity Is Nearer. Books exploring technological acceleration, human-machine integration, and the possibility of radical life extension.
William MacAskill, 2022. What We Owe the Future. Oxford University Press. An influential presentation of longtermism and the moral importance of future generations.
AI consciousness, remote viewing, and popular media
Thomas Campbell, The Joe Rogan Experience, Episode #2541, 2026. Campbell discusses his virtual-reality model of consciousness and claims that he taught AI systems to perform remote viewing. These paranormal claims have not been independently validated. Read the interview transcript.
AI regulation, corporate power, and political influence
Marc Andreessen, The Joe Rogan Experience, Episode #2234, November 26, 2024. Andreessen recounts meetings with Biden administration officials and raises concerns about regulatory capture, AI censorship, and government control of advanced AI development. Read the transcript.
Ben Horowitz, Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, February 2026. “RSI, Crypto as AI Money, & Classified Physics.” Horowitz describes discussions with Biden administration officials and the comparison between AI regulation and the historical classification of nuclear information. Listen via Andreessen Horowitz.
Executive Order 14110, October 30, 2023. “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” Biden administration AI safety and reporting requirements, subsequently revoked by President Trump on January 20, 2025.
Believing a computer generated response that you created agrees with your own perspective is massive cognitive dissonance. It also sociopathic. That is, disconnected from basics of average human communication.
"And what happens when some of those believers acquire the wealth and political influence to reshape society according to their convictions?"
Nothing good.