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by kenbellows 4107 days ago
In attempting to debunk this sort of statement, he has literally written the following: "In the hands of RationalWiki generally, and RationalWiki leader David Gerard particularly ..., [the fictional version of the Roko's Basilisk event] somehow metamorphosed into a Singularity cult that tried to get people to believe a Pascal's Wager argument to donate to their AI god on pain of torture. This cult that has literally never existed anywhere except in the imagination of David Gerard."[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/2myg86/xkcd_1450_aibo...
1 comments
unbudgingprawn 4107 days ago
"This sentence is a lie." He doesn't seem to actually debunk the idea, just yells about David Gerard for a bit. Can you explain how it's different from Pascal's Wager?
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Neslit 4106 days ago
At least the part where it's implied that "Someone from organization X used the basilisk to convince innocent bystanders to donate to X" is false, for any value of X that I know of. Pascal's Wager is/was (I imagine?) used to get people to subscribe to various churches and give them money.
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