Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DaiPlusPlus 1891 days ago
Before I read the SCP-like article, I thought it might be a reference to Roko’s Basilisk: an unrelated, but equally unsettling, proposition.
1 comments

Roko’s Basilisk is just the same as Pascal’s Wager.
The twist of Rokos Basilisk is that it is an info hazard: it only is dangerous if one knows about it. Like a dark cult of Cthulhu who only conjures the elder god so they have the mercy to be eaten first.

I think it is silly, but there are people anxious about it, which is not true about Pascals Wager.

>> The twist of Rokos Basilisk is that it is an info hazard: it only is dangerous if one knows about it.

Actually, it's only dangerous if one believes in it. Which is why it can't really work: a superintelligent AI would assume nobody is gullible enough to actually believe it, like, for real.

> I think it is silly, but there are people anxious about it, which is not true about Pascals Wager.

There's reason to be anxious about Pascal's Wager: assuming one holds a charitable view of the historicity of religious texts then Pascal's Wager is very rational - but one might feel social pressure to not be religious - or more likely: social pressure to hold a particular religion) - and just procrastination to get-around-to-researching-this-whole-religion-thing, so the uncertainty and lack of confidence in ones' own actions can lead to anxiety like that.