If you don't know what Roko's Basilisk is, it's basically Pascal's Wager for people who fall for online phishing scams
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
(Yes, I could look it ip, but I rather ask from an actual person, doing my best to exude an aura of student in a class who doesn't know much but tries their best)
If god real and you worship, reward!
If god not real and you worship, oh well.
If god real and you don't worship, PUNISHMENT.
Therefore, pascal said, it's more logical to worship god
It's poorly thought out for a whooolle host of reaosns
Pascal’s Wager definitely aint one of those.
Which is kinda funny, because as someone who was raised Catholic, I bounced off the Basilisk HARD.
It's like... I've seen a better implementation of the idea, and I have since rejected it. Why go for this?
(I.E. it only does anything of you're already full of crap.)
We’re more likely to be enslaved by a race of time traveling crustaceans than that proposed hunk of circuit boards and insecurity
The fact that we are able to consciously disagree and write off this entity as purely fictional means that such an entity does not, and will not exist!
Turning the idea into a personal religion is even stupider.
It thought the whole idea was that the suffering just occurs to sufficiently existing people or facsimiles after it's creation, kinda like Pascal's wager is the afterlife.
1) if the facsimile is sufficiently accurate then it will believe itself to be the original you
2) there is only one original you and a potentially large number of facsimiles
3) therefore the ‘you’ currently thinking about this is more likely to be a facsimile than the original …
But that's mostly because the people writing this are self interest oriented, and wouldn't see a copy of
What I got: "Wow, this must hit so hard if you're high and don't know how anything works."
It's self aggrandizing through the lens of anxiety
Techbros with vastly more money than sense, create a techgod with vastly more resources than sense in turn.
https://bsky.app/profile/caseyexplosion.bsky.social/post/3lkbmc4dilc2e
How does it decide who did enough to create it?
Is everyone on equal before being judged or does it take things like disability into account?
Then the age old argument that it's not "logical" to punish someone eternally for a temporary "sin" which in this case is a huge stretch.
Rokos Basilisk -> Pascals Wager
ASI -> god
Tech startup -> cult
but these guys are so convinced in their rightness that the mere thought they might not be right hasn’t even crossed their minds. it’s cargo cult rationalism.
The funny part about Roko's is that by its very premise, the hypothetical future AI would punish those who worked towards other AIs that aren't it.
...
This would be true for any potential version of said AI. With an infinite number of possible futures, that means that the wager is actually a "1 to infinity" bet, meaning that even abiding by the Basilisk's will, you still have an infinitely ample chance of having bet on the wrong basilisk.
Roko's is based on an unknown future hypothetical, so it's -always- an infinite choice.
But in Roko's case, an unknown, infinitely mutable future offers an unavoidably infinite number of choices.
Otherwise you can just point at the possibility that religion is a trap and it's actually believing and worshipping that dooms you.
But IMO it does fall to the same issues as Pascal's
And skippers have made their opinions on Yudkowsky very clear. SCP-8008 is one of the most purposely unpleasant works I’ve ever read. It sure uhh does its job.