I spent ages researching Roko's Basilisk because I was convinced I didn't understand it and it was one of those things that sounds extremely dumb on the surface but gets super deep once you learn more. But no, turns out, it actually is that dumb, and only gets dumber the more you read about it. - ThreadSky

malwaretech.com • 14 days ago

I spent ages researching Roko's Basilisk because I was convinced I didn't understand it and it was one of those things that sounds extremely dumb on the surface but gets super deep once you learn more. But no, turns out, it actually is that dumb, and only gets dumber the more you read about it.

Reposted from emily quinn

well, i finally cracked and looked up wtf roko’s basilisk is and somehow, unbelievably, a lot of very wealthy men are about a thousand times more pathetic than i previously assessed.

Comments

halvarflake.bsky.social•14 days ago

I try to read LW articles like that and usually come to the conclusion that neither readers nor writers in that community place a very high value on their own lifetime.

too-big.bsky.social•14 days ago

The idea that true artificial intelligence would even care about humans, other than recognizing them as a threat, is egotistical fantasy.

natanael.bsky.social•14 days ago

And if it did care about the decisions made by humans decades earlier, why would it not focus almost exclusively on actions making it harder to make use of resources optimally, like climate change?

another-michael.bsky.social•13 days ago

As someone who grew up evangelical, scared shitless that Jesus would return and I wasnt saved hard enough, RB is a silly caricature of that fear. Anyone seriously believing it needs to be professionally treated for the presumably extreme trauma that caused them to give it credence

rseymour.bsky.social•14 days ago

Rocko’s Modern Life is cool tho

pylos.co•14 days ago

malwaretech.com•14 days ago

It's kind of like if someone took Pascal's wager, which is possibly one of the dumbest mainstream philosophical thought experiments ever, and just added like 800% more stupidity.

the-secretbatcave.bsky.social•13 days ago

So it’s basically this:

irc-was-better.bsky.social•14 days ago

I just lost The Game.

ivymike.bsky.social•14 days ago

But what if we called it an "infohazard"? Then it would be cool right?

saquonsleftthumb.bsky.social•14 days ago

Ironically that makes it a clever reduction ad absurdum for dispelling Paschal’s wager

ashteranic.mycronite.net•14 days ago

Yeah it’s one of those thought terminating absurdities. “Well, the world I enable while being a shithead might be mad at me if I don’t enable it, so I may as well be a shithead” basically lets them not bother with any thought on probability, or, you know, that the evil AGI may kill them regardless.

twilightmacaroni.bsky.social•14 days ago

It caused a weird rationalist subculture to develop the term "information hazard" for things that it's dangerous to know about. A dumb scifi thought experiment. THEY'RE RECREATING SCIENTOLOGY.

bourboninexile.bsky.social•14 days ago

I am so important that hypothetical future machines will care about the decisions I made and expend energy/compute resources as a direct result of those decisions.

bobochimpan.bsky.social•13 days ago

"If you don't do what I say, I'll write very detailed and mean fanfiction about you at some point in the far future, once I get really good at writing"

"...and show it to people?"

"No, but it will be SO realistic it may as well be you! OBEY ME OR ELSE!"

"...is this a joke?!"

super.metr0.id•14 days ago

It makes sense that both Elon and Grimes would identify each others' Dunning-Kruger tendencies through something this ridiculous.

recoilman.bsky.social•14 days ago

The only terrifying thing about Roko's Basilisk is that there are powerful people who believe it

raistolo.bsky.social•13 days ago

Same.

tam-lin.bsky.social•14 days ago

Yeah. I’m still baffled by the whole “a future AI might torture a simulacrum of you if you do anything to impede its coming into being,” and while that would be terrible, it’s not you. You’ll be dead.

essaywells.bsky.social•14 days ago

The trick is, these idiots are terrified of being dead and so they have to believe that being simulated by an AI is the same as living for ever. If they admit that a simulacrum of you is not you (if it could even exist), they admit their own mortality, and, being cowards, they can't do that.

natanael.bsky.social•14 days ago

Do they not even understand entropy and information loss? Even if you believe restoring a clone would be equivalent to you, it CAN NOT have enough information to do that

essaywells.bsky.social•14 days ago

Exactly. The boundary conditions of the simulation cannot be defined - the relevant information is long since lost.

eismc2.bsky.social•14 days ago

Atoms trying to understand ourselves, never realizing we'll always be too close to the source

#thelimitdoesnotexist

kylora2112.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's techno-Calvinism for bootlicker nerds.

another-michael.bsky.social•13 days ago

This is perfect! Haha

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