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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.

This seems like a creepy-pasta for tech nerds.

I'm actually a little confused -- is not everyone on that sub trolling about how affecting that idea is?
/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.
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.

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.

>naive but intellectually curious young people That's a pretty spot-on description of the people they attract.

[deleted]

>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.
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.

wtf

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

>Interesting.
What if it’s being lurked by basilisk itself? I may be high.
Sadly, it doesn't surprise me. The internet is filled with assholes.
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).

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.

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.
Yeah, it's just Pascal's Wager with a synthwave logo plastered on the front.
A E S T H E T I C
This is soooo good
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')
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.)
>Yes this rests on (in my argument here) at least 8 unproven assumptions Just out of curiosity, could you please name those 8 assumptions?
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.
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.

Hi, obviously I know nothing.

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

hi, it me
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.
Pseudoscientific-materialist* And your level best was pretty excellent, cheers on that.
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.
> 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.
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.
the guy who coined it said he was thinking of Langford's basilisk stories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) Link for those interested.
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.
Yeah that is great, and it is also dated in that 1999 early 2000s way. Remember when people hated microsoft with a burning passion.
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*.
Wow... that’s enough internet for me today
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.
the above comment may be gibberish, I am tired and have adhd, but I will happily clarify if you are confused on anything
I thought you did a pretty good job explaining it, A-
thanks kind stranger

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

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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
As a Grimes fan, i want dgerard to pay for his crimes.
Considering banning you for being a Grimes fan and holding myself back because this is a decent post
Please have mercy
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.
having heard her stuff, i mostly thought "yep, that's a record all right" and no tune stuck after the song finished
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.
i wear my crimes with *pride* i just want grimes and musk to admit it was my doing
The more people that believe in me, the better. Sinner.
*Eight rationalists wedgied for every dollar donated!*

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

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.

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.

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

ohgoddamnit