The dumbest part of Roko's Basilisk and everyone freaking out about it is that ... it's just describing consequences we deal with with basically everything, and framing it as some novel existential threat.

Say what you will about Pascal's Wager but at least it has the excuse that he died before he could complete it so of course there are problems. What the fuck is Rocko's excuse?

My favorite response is "Oh, you don't have to worry about Roko's Basilisk. Why? /u/Groudon466's Basilisk, of course! *My* basilisk eternally simulates and punishes everyone who selfishly attempted to contributed to the creation of *Roko's* Basilisk. Have fun with that one."

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Actually, Yud found it to be such a good argument that he printed it out, framed it and put it on his wall next to his degrees and awards. It's so impressive that people come over to take pictures with it and leave. Sometimes he gets up at night just to give it a high five. One time Yud called his mom and asked her if she loved him or Roko's Basilisk more, and his mom said the latter. She loved the good argument more than her own son. He cried tears of joy because she passed the test that meant that she is Smart™/saved. Thank God.

You might note here that "someone at the top" does not, in fact, name Yud specifically in any way. If I had meant him, I would have said him. Jessica Taylor reports that she suffered a psychotic break which was significantly shaped by the idea that she had failed to prevent an outcome in which humanity was tortured by a powerful AI, which was a topic of concern at MIRI. Being embarrassed by one of the original expressions of that idea, disagreeing with and disavowing it, does not make invalid the result in which an organization which was shaped by his ideas from its foundation, and that he had a continual guiding role in, promoted that idea until it became the focus of someone's breakdown. He does not need to have personally explained the dangers of the Basilisk to her to bear some culpability in what happened. He is not solely responsible by any means, was probably unaware of the specific conditions in which this idea was repackaged and distributed in MIRI, and was, as a genuinely compassionate person, probably horrified by the results. But there is still a direct line of action between his Sequences and that breakdown, at which I was expressing horror. Which seems reasonable, after asking "oh man what happened to Yud" and receiving an account of an emotional collapse partially incited by a pervasively stupid idea that took root in ground he helped till. Inferences are easy and natural to make, because no conversation ever has perfect clarity, and generally there is no harm from these miscommunications. But perhaps, in the future, consider making sure someone said what you are saying they said before getting in a really good sneer, huh?

>Siskind Scott Alexander, HBD, and neoreaction come up in chapter 6 of *Extropia's Children* which is now published. I was never all that impressed by Yudkowski as anything but a fanfic writer but since *Extropia's Children* goes on to describe very bad things, I can see why it begins by presenting the most sympathetic possible view of Yudkowski (and like, if he were just a guy on the Internet with more confidence than achievements, is that so bad? Its the things his disciples do in meatspace that are the problem)

I dont really know any of these people, but that .info site already had a few red flags, and just spreading it as true while there is acounter argument to it being true because you dislike ziz or think she is nuts. Esp as there is a pattern in Rationalism to demonize (trans) women who speak out against it. (Im wary of turning radical epistemoligist when suddenly it comes out we might have been duped and then going 'well cannot know wither which of this stories is true', after first spreading the sneerworthy information as true).

Thiel was making fun of Eliezer for his despair and neo-Luddism, so that money source probably won’t give him any more. See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/11vgtpr/peter_thiel_isnt_happy_about_miris_new_death_with/

You dont understand xpath is the future!

Well, 15 years ago I was 15, and reconstructing the path I took to arrive at some actually decent literature is not gonna apply now, or to an adult. So, what would you *like* to read, in terms of what kind of information are you attempting to intake from the reading? 'cuz I seriously doubt that I can make any better recommendations on the general philosophy of the topic than people who are here more regularly, but I *can* recommend some of the texts that have shaped my concepts of the details of its execution. Which are necessarily a niche subcomponent of a much vaster field, as is the way with all ivory-tower wonks like me.

Yud's only real prior is that he's the main character who is going to save the world. That kind of tends to point him away from scenarios where that might not be the case. Another person might have grown out of it by his 40s, but he's built different.

Oh, yeah, I kind of miscommunicated there; I mean that it appears at *first glance* to be a complete reversal, but under a thin layer of paint it is the exact same course. Also I would strongly caution against calling him stupid; whatever else he is, he's not that, at all. He is an example of a very common problem that has beset all of human history, which is the assumption that being intelligent in a particular way is broadly applicable to *every* way, or that intelligence is a linear scale between *stupid* and *smart*. The sort of thing that ends up with the people at the Manhattan project designing nuclear weapons, on the understanding that they were smart enough to oversee their subsequent deployment. Or, more benignly, how Niels Bohr could get lost in a flat empty field because he was *really* dumb about directional extrapolation sometimes.

For thousands of years, over and over again, people have been confronted with the spectre of death, and come to the conclusion that they have figured out how to deal with the pain it inflicts on those left behind. He was born in a time in which he was able to turn to practical-seeming physical solutions, instead of philosophy. But it's the same thing. It hurts, and we want it to stop hurting, and we will tie ourself into knots to make it do so.

This post provides some useful context about why certain posters act strange https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1661218895435534336