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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Posted by Dante on Wednesday, September 17 2014 at 08:23:49AM
In reply to Roko's Basilisk posted by Markaba on Tuesday, September 16 2014 at 11:26:11PM

Rationalwiki does a damn fine job explaining just why it is nightmare inducing in some, and why you need to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast to get there.

The good news. You're an Atheist. Therefore Pascal's Wager doesn't cause you to lose sleep. This is the SF Utopian's version of Pascal's Wager. What didn't work to make you God-fearing won't work to make you AI-fearing.

( It can kinda be summed up as "Doesn't God reserve a special place in Hell to torment Atheists who think of this special place in Hell and STILL refuse to worship Him?" )

From Rationalwiki ( who are having too much fun; )

"You know what they say the modern version of Pascal's Wager is? Sucking up to as many Transhumanists as possible, just in case one of them turns into God."
—Greg Egan, Crystal Nights


Also, Rationalwiki offered advice for those who were distressed about their "real" simulated self being tortured to backwards incentivize the construction of the AI ( by sending all their money to Less Wrong's AI "builders;" )

"What you do is to act as if you are already being simulated right now, and ignore the possibility of a negative incentive. If you do so then the simulator will conclude that no deal can be made with you, that any deal involving negative incentives will have negative expected utility for it; because following through on punishment predictably does not control the probability that you will act according to its goals. Furthermore, trying to discourage you from adopting such a strategy in the first place is discouraged by the strategy, because the strategy is to ignore acausal blackmail.

For those of us who are both Sci-Fi fen AND Pedophiles there are a couple of trivial elements to note. That the guy who hosted Less Wrong where the meme was born eventually took to calling Roko's Basilisk "The Babyfucker." Scary? No? ;p

And that the term "Basilisk" here takes its SFnal name from the great David Langford story BLIT which is about a terrorist-seeded stencil whose pattern induces an unresolvable logical loop which shuts down the brain because it enters visually and bypasses the language centers which refuse to wrestle with such things past X number of iterations. There are actually a few stories by Langford set in this world where an image can fry the mind of any who perceive it. And reading ANY of them is a better use of time than getting too caught up in the AI version of Pascal's Wager.

Dante

Dante





• ( http link ) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk
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