this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
42 points (100.0% liked)

Comradeship // Freechat

2816 readers
40 users here now

Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.

A community for comrades to chat and talk about whatever doesn't fit other communities

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Luckily it was mostly a trend from covid, but i got another Kyle Hill short about it (depite the fact ive asked youtube to stop reccomending me him) and I'm so goddamn tired of it.

If you need to know, here is the wiki articles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

Too stupid didn't read [TSDR], basically, in the future there could be a mega ai made that is benevolent, but will punish you if you knew about its possibility but didn't help create it [what that means specifically is up for interpretation]

But this fails on the outset, not in any moral way, just in a physical way.

This thought experiment was made in 2010, Heisenberg published his uncertainty principle in 1927, nearly a century before that.

The reason this is relevant is that the basilisk, presumably, has to model the entirety of humanity for [at least] 100 years (or however old the oldest human is). Tracking the individual knowledge of 7 billion humans is far and away a chaotic system. And given that this was spread through the internet, even if we assumed it was made today, you'd still have to account for 16 years of human history being decided by random algorithms in computers. This would require so much information about such tiny particles that heisenberg's uncertainty would play a role and make it impossible.

There is the question of if it could maybe read your memory. If it could do that, then maybe we could move onto another point.

The next point being...why tf would it do that? People on the original forum asked the same question. If the question is practical, you'd be sending millions to cyber-hell for no reason. If the reason is purely moral, you're putting such a high emphasis on positive duty that it's comical, and the criteria for "help" can't really be proven. Did someone who mined the ore for its chips help? Did someone who told others about it help? Did someone that invested in ai companies help? Who knows! There is of course the possibility that people, understandably, thought this would be impossible. Should they be punished?

The post was rightfully lambasted on the forums, but people picked it up when the admins banned it for being a potential "information hazard."

I don't even necessarily despise the original post, although this is just a modern version of Pascal's wager. It's the hundreds of people on social media who talk about it and won't shut up.

Sorry, I just needed to rant about that. I just don't understand how some people make rationalists seem like the smart ones.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] big_spoon@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 3 days ago

roko's basilisk is pretty dumb really...why skynet would feel anger against humans by not creating it sooner? an AI doesn't worry about human thoughts, i mean, this is a dumb "prophecy" for techbros that want something useful to validate their grift, that see skynet anywyas the same way as AM, but if AM hates itself, why would punish anyone for not creating it?