[davidgerard]

RationalWiki editors (including me ... and Dmytry, which is part of why he can be an asshole on LW) have had email from people traumatised by the basilisk. It turns out you can't think your way out of things you did think your way into, too. This is why the RationalWiki article http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk was created, because personal email doesn't scale.

[IgorPartola]

So people cannot just dismiss this thing as bullshit? What is the actual thinking of these individuals? I am having a really hard time relating to them.

[davidgerard]

From the small sample of victims I know of, they tend to be aspergic, have OCD, have not so strong a sense of self, and buy into all the LW versions of the transhumanist memes. They realise intellectually that it's a silly idea - but something about the story pushes all their buttons, perfectly wrongly.

When I stsrted getting email from them (cos I edit RW, RW was pretty much the only place on the Internet that mentioned the basilisk at the time, and LW refused to talk about it so they couldn't voice their concerns there), and found others at RW had been getting email too, I decided I had to do something to help because email wouldn't scale but it would be inhuman not to try to help. Hence the RW article on the basilisk. No email since then, so it seems to do the job.

See the first talk page archive for initial discussion as we try to work out how to talk about this completely fractally stupid thing in a manner that's helpful: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Roko%27s_basilisk/Archive1

[IgorPartola]

Thanks for explaining. So it sounds like it's not exactly a rational fear. To me, the concept of Roko's Basilisk seems too binary. I guess I am also too skeptical about the idea of a malevolent AI or benevolent AI.

What really got me was Eliezer's reaction:

> 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. 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.

Roko's Basilisk is a fun paradox, but this type of reaction treats it like a real thing, which it is not.

[Tenoke]

>When I stsrted getting email from them (cos I edit RW, RW was pretty much the only place on the Internet that mentioned the basilisk at the time, and LW refused to talk about it so they couldn't voice their concerns there), and found others at RW had been getting email too, I decided I had to do something to help because email wouldn't scale but it would be inhuman not to try to help. Hence the RW article on the basilisk. No email since then, so it seems to do the job.

Alright, first of all, don't pretend that RW as a whole was trying to help LW by writing about it. A bunch of the RW writers clearly held contempt for LW, when they started writing about it, which is shown in inside discussions[1], as well as in the article about LW[2]. Additionally, even though the wording has been cleared a little (LW posters are no longer described as 'butthurt' for example) over the years, the Wiki(s) still contain inaccurate information (although I'll have to make a whole post to point it all out). I am mentioning this, because this is where the initial RW writings about the basilisk were.

Second of all, you published the Basilisk article in 2013 - 3 whole years after the incident, when many people had forgotten about it, and new users hadn't even heard about it. Were you really trying to help, and not just make fun of LW (which seems to me to be the motivation of most people on that Talk page you linked)? You do realize, that it was after the RW article (with the help of the rest of XiXiDu's posts on the topic from the same time) which brought the topic back, and massively increased the publicity of the basilisk? Indeed, I suspect (but have no proof) that [a lot] more than half the people who have heard of the basilisk, would've never done so if it wasn't for your article (and slate wouldn't write about it).

At any rate, let's accept that at least your motivation was only to help.How big is this 'small sample of victims I know of', that you were trying to help? How many emails did you and Dymtry receive from people who were actually distressed? And, less importantly - how many did you receive in 2013?

You sure are making it sound like a significant part of LW believes in the basilisk, both in various revisions of the articles on RW, and in comments on the topic. At any rate, is the number larger than the number of crackpots who comment on HN, or the crackpots who read RW, or is it something like 4 people who got over it quickly?

1. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:LessWrong/Archive1

2. http://web.archive.org/web/20110719151907/http://rationalwik...

[davidgerard]

You know, I spent last night writing an article about Stalin apologetics. You're hitting most of the notes: deflect blame, minimise numbers, grabbing any ambiguity, implying the victims deserved it and simultaneously that it didn't happen.

It happened, LW did it entirely to itself, LW didn't give a shit about its distressed children and fully earnt every drop of the fallout. Denialism is unlikely to change this.

[Tenoke]

Okay, if you are going to ignore addressing my points, can you at least please give me the number of people who contacted you or Dymytry, because they were distressed about the basilisk. I am genuinely interested in those.

[davidgerard]

I had two contact me, no idea about Dmytry.

If you're sceptical in general that there was distress out there from LW's treatment of the issue ... evidently you haven't followed LW on the topic in the past four years.