Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Weird conspiracy theory musing: So we know Rokos Basilisk only works on a very specific type of person who needs to belief in all the LW stuff about what the AGI future will be like, but who also feel morally responsible, and have high empathy. (Else the thing falls apart, you need to care about, feel responsible for, and believe the copies/simulated things are conscious). We know caring about others/empathy is one of those traits which seem to be rarer on the right than the left, and there is a feeling that a lot of the right is doing a war on empathy (see the things Musk has said, the whole chan culture shit, but also themotte which somebody once called an āempathy removal training centerā which stuck so I also call it that. If you are inside once of these pipelines you can also notice it, or if you get out, you can see it looking back, I certainly did when I read more LW/SSC stuff). We also know Roko is a bit of a chud, who wants some sort of ātranshumanistā āutopiaā where nobody is non-white or has blue hair (I assume this is known, but if you care to know more about Roko (why?) search sneerclub (Ok, one source as a treat)).
So here is my conspiracy theory. Roko knew what he was doing, it was intentional on Rokos part, he wanted to drive the empathic part of LW mad, discredit them. (That he was apparently banned from several events for sexual harassment also is interesting. Does remind me of another ālower empathyā thing the whole manosphere/pua thing which was a part of early LW, which often trains people to think less of women).
Note that I donāt believe in this, as there is no proof for it, I donāt think Roko planned for this (nor considered it in any way) and I think his post was just a honest thought experiment (as was Yuds reaction). It was just an annoying thought which I had to type up else I keep thinking about it. Sorry to make it everybodies problem.
iirc he has a lawyer on retainer in case of another sexual harassment claim.
Not wanting the Basilisk eternal torture dungeon to happen isnāt an empathy thing, they just think that a sufficiently high fidelity simulation of you would be literally you, because otherwise brain uploads arenāt life extension. Itās basically transhumanist cope.
Yud expands on it in some place or other, along the lines that the gap in consciousness between the biological and digital instance isnāt that different from the gap created by anesthesia or a nightās sleep, itās just on the space axis instead of the time axis, or something like that.
And since he also likes the many world interpretations it turns out you also share a soul with yourselves in parallel dimensions; this is why the zizians are so eager to throw down, since getting killed in one dimension just lets supradimensional entities know you mean business.
Early 21st century anthropology is going to be such a ridiculous field of study.
Clearly you do not have low self-esteem. But yes that is the weak point of this whole thing, and why it is a dumb conspiracy theory. (Im mismatching the longtermist āfuture simulated people are importantā utilitarian extremism with the āsimulated yous are yousā extreme weirdness).
The problems with yuds argument is that all these simulations will quickly diverge and no longer are the real āyouā see twins for a strawman example. The copies should then be ran in exactly the same situations and then wtf is the point. When I slam my toe into a piece of furniture I dont morn all the many world mes who also did just break a toe again. It just weird, but due to the immortality cope it makes sense for insiders.
Iād say if thereās a weak part in your admittedly tongue-in-cheek theory itās requiring Roko to have had a broader scope plan instead of a really catchy brainfart, not the part about making the basilisk thing out to be smarter/nobler than it is.
Reframing the infohazard aspect as an empathy filter definitely has legs in terms of building a narrative.
I thought part of the schtick is that according to the rationalist theory of mind, a simulated version of you suffering is exactly the same as the real you suffering. This relies on their various other philosophical claims about the nature of consciousness, but if you believe this then empathy doesnāt have to be a concern.
The key thing is that the basilisk makes a million billion digibidilion copies of you to torture, and because you know statistics you know that thereās almost no chance youāre the real you and not a torture copy.
Yeah for some reason they never covered that in the stats lectures
Iām the torture copy and so is my wife
Well shit
I basiliskās wager was framed like that, that you canāt know if you are already living in the torture sim with the basilisk silently judging you, it would be way more compelling that the actual āyou are ontologically identical with any software that simulates you at a high enough level even way after the fact because [preposterous transhumanist motivated reasoning]ā.
Yeah you are correct, im mismatching longtermism with transhumanist digital immortality, which is why I called it a conspiracy theory, it being wrong and all that. (Even if I do think empathy for perfect copies of yourself is a thing not everyone might have).
ā¦Honestly, I canāt help but feel youāre on to something. Iād have loved to believe this was an honest thought experiment, but after seeing the right openly wage a war on empathy as a concept, I wouldnāt be shocked if Rokoās Basilisk (and its subsequent effects) werenāt planned from the start.