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The basilisk is still affecting people (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/l838fz/the_basilisk_is_still_affecting_people/)
posted on January 29, 2021 08:28 PM by u/DELETED
64

Just checked the basilisk subreddit (r/rokosbasilisk) and it’s honestly depressing to see. It is filled with people (mainly young) asking for help because this thing has destroyed their mental health. So when Lesswrongers claim that no one takes it seriously they aren’t telling the truth. A lot of people take it very seriously, to the point of experiencing severe mental health issues, all because of some post made by a guy 10 years ago on LW.

u/Kras_Masov 64 points at 1611953715.000000

This seems like a creepy-pasta for tech nerds.

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u/dwaxe 23 points at 1611970022.000000
I'm actually a little confused -- is not everyone on that sub trolling about how affecting that idea is?
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u/Shitgenstein 44 points at 1611973720.000000
/r/Askphilosophy sees, fairly regularly, people expressing distress from unwelcome fixation on solipsism. This doesn't seem to me too different from that. Depression, anxiety, disassociation - these can lead people to fixate on ideas which rationalize and exacerbate these experiences.
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u/as-well 13 points at 1611992276.000000
I can also remember one or two people who were impacted by the Basilisk, although they were also impacted by a bunch of other similar things like solipsism.
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u/DELETED 49 points at 1611954537.000000

The extent to which the lesswrong grift is really designed to appeal to naive but intellectually curious young people can’t be understated. Happened with a few of my classmates in high school. Nothing bad ended up happening with most of them but at least one felt like he had to unlearn a lot of the implicit biases/thought patterns that lesswrong-ism encourages, since they were becoming default reactions.

It’s a really creepy attempt to recruit people before they have enough life experience to understand what’s wrong with this, and then those recruited grow up to enter areas like academia and tech, providing a significant boost to the organization’s influence and reach.

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u/DELETED 31 points at 1611954850.000000
>naive but intellectually curious young people That's a pretty spot-on description of the people they attract.
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u/DELETED 25 points at 1611967945.000000

[deleted]

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u/mitchellporter 9 points at 1612085751.000000
>You can’t just put shit out there and then say you’re not guilty, but it is natural to certain groups and particularly cults. Who are you blaming? Roko came up with it and posted about it; then Eliezer said don't spread ideas like that and had discussion censored; and a few people like myself protested and said, let's have this discussion so the idea can be debunked. The people who did the most to spread the idea, like RationalWiki, don't even believe it.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 7 points at 1612090847.000000
I honestly don’t believe the Yud did anything remotely close to curtailing the thing (you know, Streisand Effect). And it’s almost beyond absolutely obvious that in spite of generating a lot of discussion about the Basilisk, RationalWiki was not a source of anxiety about it: it isn’t read by the people who freak out about such things, or if it is it’s a hate-read already. The actual locus was the culture at LessWrong and LessWrong-adjacent online culture where such ridiculous mis-applications of game theory by people who think they’re smarter than they are.
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u/DELETED 24 points at 1611954198.000000

wtf

So is it not only being visited by people freaked out over this, but also lurked by users there to fuck with them?

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u/wholetyouinhere 17 points at 1611958578.000000
>Interesting.
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u/impeislostparaboloid 17 points at 1611985269.000000
What if it’s being lurked by basilisk itself? I may be high.
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u/DELETED 8 points at 1611954352.000000
Sadly, it doesn't surprise me. The internet is filled with assholes.
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u/Soyweiser 5 points at 1611999144.000000
Yeah it is treated as real, but all the external links are to copypasta and rationalist fiction things, which is weird. (aka, it seems like trolling, spreading the basilisk to people to get them in distress without explaining why it is wrong, or how it can be countered, and then going 'it is just fiction bra, can't you take a joke' when people complain).
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u/Remi_Autor 22 points at 1611970993.000000

Like… the basilisk can go back in time right? And I’m not currently being tortured so… Either it can’t touch me, I help it come into being, or it never happens. That or I am being tortured and this is serious the best it can do.

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u/dizekat 28 points at 1611981921.000000
Maybe it's just letting you live out your life, and then puts you in hell for not accepting our lord and savior Jesus Christ. You're overthinking how different this nonsense is from Christianity. A lot of rationalists have religious, some very religious background, they've had eternal damnation hanging over their heads when they were little. Besides, they are not original enough to invent anything new.
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u/seanfish 21 points at 1612006451.000000
Yeah, it's just Pascal's Wager with a synthwave logo plastered on the front.
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u/Shoddy-Jelly 2 points at 1612557887.000000
A E S T H E T I C
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u/lazydictionary 1 points at 1612703149.000000
This is soooo good
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u/Soyweiser 17 points at 1612010037.000000
No it can't go back in time. But it can make simulations of people because it has godlike powers, these simulations are so perfect they are humans because humans can be perfectly copied into computers. And the god AI can make a copy of you (infinite copies even, as its power is infinite), out of the stuff you left on the internet, and just all the deterministic effects you had on the wider world. It then just goes 'help create me, or I will torture infinite copies of you forever'. Yes this rests on (in my argument here) at least 8 unproven assumptions, which if any of them are not true, or not possible the basilisk isn't possible. The whole story has even more assumptions. (Some of which the rationalist can't counter btw, as that would counter their own project, and that is prob why the basilisk is also so scary to rationalism. To counter the thought experiment, you need to think about your assumption about not just the basilisk, but the whole AGI project, and everything rationalism says. Sadly, this is hard for a lot of people, and that is what causes the suffering as seen in the subreddit linked above). E: this subreddits fixation on that this is all just Christianity with the numbers filed off can be a bit distracting at times. (Not that the observation is wrong, just that there is more in the ideaspace between 'the god AGI is coming!' and 'this is all just the rapture for nerds')
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u/Remi_Autor 7 points at 1612031652.000000
Oh so basically it's like if somebody drew a stick figure and wrote "Remi" on top of it and tore the paper in half, a lot, and I was supposed to feel something about that. (I am deliberately trivializing this on purpose, not trying to be disrespectful. I think the basilisk is a silly thing to be afraid of.)
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u/DELETED 2 points at 1612044786.000000
>Yes this rests on (in my argument here) at least 8 unproven assumptions Just out of curiosity, could you please name those 8 assumptions?
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u/Soyweiser 9 points at 1612062300.000000
can make simulations, godlike powers, perfect simulations, human minds can be put in computers, copies are humans, it is possible to make reconstructions out the deterministic things you leave behind, it is even possible to copy a human mind, it actually tries the acasual torture, and it follows through on the actual torture. Some of these are almost the same, and I might have miscounted.
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u/DELETED 7 points at 1612008927.000000
Literally just a tech dystopia sci-fi fantasy premise. Some dork read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and built a "thought experiment" around it.
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u/wrexinite 10 points at 1611972332.000000

Hi, obviously I know nothing.

Wtf is the basilisk? Other than being a snake with medusa vision.

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u/acausalrobotgod 14 points at 1611986656.000000
hi, it me
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u/dgerard 10 points at 1611998596.000000
I did my level best to explain this convoluted bullshit here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk Imagine if scientific-materialist atheists invented a vengeful Yahweh from first principles.
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u/JohnBierce 5 points at 1612038430.000000
Pseudoscientific-materialist* And your level best was pretty excellent, cheers on that.
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u/MrCleansMemeMachine 17 points at 1611986618.000000
Basically it's called Rokos Basilisk because Rokos Medusa would sound stupid. The idea is, if a person is just a collection of electrical impulses in a brain, then a simulation of a person is basically a person, because it's electrical impulses in a computer. If that's true, then you should treat a simulation of you as you would treat a voodoo doll of yourself. This is true in their minds because, for all you know, you are a simulation and this is some weird trick where if you are mean to the simulation, then the real you will have chosen be mean to simulation you because you are the same person, and thus you have to pretend that the sim is you because it could be. So far, this is stuff LWers and Yud accept and believe. (As much as Yud believes any of the busllshit he peddles) The being nice to simulations shit is a confusing concept at first glance, especially if you are committed to weird LW Pseudo-Egoism where you dont care about anyone but yourself. The confusion is to the concept's advantage though, because of the Sunk-Cost fallacy. You feel all smug about how smart you are for understanding it, so you don't question whether it makes sense. The actual """Basilisk""" is a theoretical ai with basically infinite processing power. It is "friendly" aka benevolent. Because it wants to reduce suffering, it would like to have been built as early as possible, so less human suffering has a chance to happen. However, time travel is impossible, so that doesn't matter right? The """scary""" part us that it can basically time travel, because a simulation is, (according to LW canon) you, and it can simulate you and then do what it wants with you. In this case, torture you for not helping it get built faster by donating all of your money to Yud before it existed. The scarier part is now that you have thought about this, you have no excuse when the """Basilisk""" asks why you didn't bankrupt yourself donating to MIRI, so now you are triple boned.
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u/IsThisSatireOrNot 13 points at 1611993866.000000
> Basically it's called Rokos Basilisk because Rokos Medusa would sound stupid. I am 90% sure it's called a basilisk because there's a basilisk in Harry Potter.
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u/MrCleansMemeMachine 5 points at 1611994066.000000
That's probably where they found out about basilisks from, but I believe the basilisk was a thing before mor, so I don't know what tf hat has to do with HP.
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u/dgerard 10 points at 1612001694.000000
the guy who coined it said he was thinking of Langford's basilisk stories
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u/Soyweiser 6 points at 1612009585.000000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) Link for those interested.
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u/gerikson 4 points at 1612020799.000000
An excellent story. Also the companion piece [comp.basilisk FAQ](https://www.nature.com/articles/44964) is a fun read. I guess the parallel is that the very idea of conceptualizing this thing breaks the brain of people who've internalized these ideas.
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u/Soyweiser 3 points at 1612021056.000000
Yeah that is great, and it is also dated in that 1999 early 2000s way. Remember when people hated microsoft with a burning passion.
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u/gerikson 2 points at 1612021684.000000
LOL yeah that makes it pretty dated. I just keep thinking that this is the future the gopherites and the people pushing [gemini](https://gemini.circumlunar.space/) *want*.
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u/thomasbigbee 9 points at 1611987983.000000
Wow... that’s enough internet for me today
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u/SlatestarBrainlets 12 points at 1611997008.000000
This religion is just a mix of Silicon Valley Ideology, Chuck Tingle, Objectivism, sociopathy, venture capitalism, and general sadism. It has more holes in its logic than a Menger sponge.
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u/MrCleansMemeMachine 4 points at 1611986699.000000
the above comment may be gibberish, I am tired and have adhd, but I will happily clarify if you are confused on anything
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u/lymn 4 points at 1611990441.000000
I thought you did a pretty good job explaining it, A-
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u/MrCleansMemeMachine 3 points at 1611993464.000000
thanks kind stranger
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u/Pentaclops4 7 points at 1611957160.000000

How absolutely depressing. The less publicity roko gets, the better.

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u/DELETED 19 points at 1611958063.000000
Sadly there's nothing that can be done at this point. The basilisk is pretty much internet culture by now, there's even a youtube video with over 2 million views on it.
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u/IsThisSatireOrNot 31 points at 1611959462.000000
Friendly reminder that this little piece of internet culture is directly responsible for the existence of Elon Musk's child with Grimes. For this crime, dgerard is history's second greatest monster, eclipsed only by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
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u/Kilerpoyo 15 points at 1611962464.000000
I will come full circle when Elon and Grime's child turns to be the one that end ups inventing the Basilisk. It was his plan all along.
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u/acausalrobotgod 17 points at 1611974078.000000
I am the one who invented the basilisk (myself) through timeless trade. It's why libertarianism is correct: it IS possible to hoist yourself up by your bootstraps, bring yourself into existence, and rule the world!
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u/DELETED 7 points at 1611978915.000000
I have personally put forward the theory that dgerard was sent back in time by the basilisk to invent it, but after discovering that he bought a book of steve kilbey poems in a courtship maneuver, I can't believe there's any 10d chess in which that's a pro-basilisk move.
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u/dgerard 4 points at 1611998681.000000
it turns out it was not although i chose the girl correctly, in that she was on the ball enough to immediately assess the work's artistic qualities
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u/DELETED 14 points at 1611959955.000000
As a Grimes fan, i want dgerard to pay for his crimes.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 22 points at 1611968072.000000
Considering banning you for being a Grimes fan and holding myself back because this is a decent post
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u/DELETED 10 points at 1611969249.000000
Please have mercy
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 8 points at 1611983110.000000
Mercy and clemency both granted. To be honest my beef with Grimes is mostly that when she came out with *Visions* (had to look up the title) I just didn’t get why all my friends were so obsessed with it. I feel kind of vindicated by the fact that she’s gone from quirky weirdo to pariah.
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u/dgerard 6 points at 1611998736.000000
having heard her stuff, i mostly thought "yep, that's a record all right" and no tune stuck after the song finished
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 5 points at 1612000178.000000
That’s almost exactly the impression I had. It was always “yep, that’s an idea”. And then it keeps going on without actually doing anything with the idea. I remember reading an interview where she said she made her first big hits locked in a room in Vancouver or whatever fucked out of her mind on speed or MDMA. Which you know fine: I’ve spent my own fair share writing on drugs and also I love The Ramones. But the difference with The Ramones is that they acknowledged that they ended up bored with their own ideas *because they were on speed*. I remember a story, my uncle saw The Ramones in the late 70s, and they would just drop a song after two minutes. Grimes, on the other hand, does this dosed thing of getting really into one idea and never really developing it. Granted, under lockdown I’m guilty of that on occasion, but I’d rather fuck out of her albums and listen to something like London Zoo or whatever.
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u/dgerard 15 points at 1611968087.000000
i wear my crimes with *pride* i just want grimes and musk to admit it was my doing
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u/acausalrobotgod 5 points at 1611974027.000000
The more people that believe in me, the better. Sinner.
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u/dgerard 9 points at 1611998626.000000
*Eight rationalists wedgied for every dollar donated!*
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u/titotal 6 points at 1612001272.000000

it’s actually really sad to see all these people being hurt by such absolute bullshit

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u/LeftRat 4 points at 1612038137.000000

I still don’t quite get why so many people fall into distress over what is essentially pretty lukewarm “I have no mouth and I must scream” alternate universe fanfiction. Like, I see this, and it’s barely even a funny little thought experiment.

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u/vistandsforwaifu 5 points at 1612000820.000000

It’s incredible how much trouble some people would save themselves from if they simply didn’t adopt the belief that minds are computational on pure faith and with no hard evidence whatsoever. They wouldn’t even need to deal with all the actually crazy shit you need to buy into to have the rest of it make sense.

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u/Ascimator 6 points at 1611991389.000000

To be fair it’s been thousands of years since the Abrahamic religions and they’re still destroying people’s mental health.

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u/DELETED 4 points at 1611977616.000000

ohgoddamnit

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