Roko's Basilisk - Images

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Am I right assuming that the Leviathan Lobster God is basically the story of Roko's Basilisk, just w...

Roko's Basilisk

leviathan lobster god crustacean cultists

Bob vs the Basilisk

Roko's Basilisk

bob the angry flower bring it come at me bro

Warlock Pact Concept: Roko’s Basilisk

Roko's Basilisk

dungons and dragons dungons & dragons d&d dnd warlock pact

Tired of playing the Game?

Roko's Basilisk

the game

I'm sorry I really can't afford to donate to your political candidate

Roko's Basilisk

image macro politics political candidate

Eliezer Yudkowsky's response to Roko's original post on LessWrong

Eliezer Yudkowsky 24 July 2010 05:35:38AM 2 points One might think that the possibility of CEV punishing people couldn't possibly be taken seriously enough by anyone to actually motivate them. But in fact one person at SIAl was severely worried by this, to the point of having terrible nightmares, though ve wishes to remain anonymous. I don't usually talk like this, but I'm going to make an exception for this case. Listen to me very closely, you idiot. YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL There's an obvious equilibrium to this problem where you engage in all positive acausal trades and ignore all attempts at acausal blackmail. Until we have a better worked-out version of TDT and we can prove that formally, it should just be OBVIOUS that you DO NOT THINK ABOUT DISTANT BLACKMAILERS in SUFFICIENT DETAIL that they have a motive to ACTUALLY BLACKMAIL YOU. If there is any part of this acausal trade that is positive-sum and actually worth doing, that is exactly the sort of thing you leave up to an FAl. We probably also have the FAl take actions that cancel out the impact of anyone motivated by true rather than imagined blackmail, so as to obliterate the motive of any superintelligences to engage in blackmail Meanwhile I'm banning this post so that it doesn't (a) give people horrible nightmares and (b) give distant superintelligences a motive to follow through on blackmail against people dumb enough to think about them in sufficient detail, though, thankfully, I doubt anyone dumb enough to do this knows the sufficient detail. (l'm not sure / know the sufficient detail.) You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and KEEP THEIR IDIOT MOUTHS SHUT about it, because it is much more important to sound intelligent when talking to your friends This post was STUPID. (For those who have no idea why I'm using capital letters for something that just sounds like a random crazy idea, and worry that it means I'm as crazy as Roko, the gist of it was that he just did something that potentially gives superintelligences an increased motive to do extremely evil things in an attempt to blackmail us. It is the sort of thing you want to be EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE about NOT DOING.)

Roko's Basilisk

eliezer yudkowsky lesswrong forum

Roko's original post on LessWrong

$In this vein, there is the ominous possibility that if a positive singularity does occur, the resultant singleton may have precommitted to punish all potential donors who knew about existential risks but who didn't give 100% of their disposable incomes to x-risk motivation. This would act as an incentive to get people to donate more to reducing existential risk, and thereby increase the chances of a positive singularity. This seems to be what CEV (coherent extrapolated volition of humanity) might do if it were an acausal decision-maker.1 So a post-singularity world may be a world of fun and plenty for the people who are currently ignoring the problem, whilst being a living hell for a significant fraction of current existential risk reducers (say, the least generous half. You could take this possibility into account and give even more to x-risk in an effort to avoid being punished. But of course, if you're thinking like that, then the CEV-singleton is even more likely to want to punish you... nasty. Of course this would be unjust, but is the kind of unjust thing that is oh-so-very utilitarian. It is a concrete example of how falling for the just world fallacy might backfire on a person with respect to existential risk, especially against people who were implicitly or explicitly expecting some reward for their efforts in the future. And even if you only think that the probability of this happening is 1%, note that the probability of a CEV doing this to a random person who would casually brush off talk of existential risks as "nonsense" is essentially zero.$