Magnus: ROBOT CRAP’s basilisk singularity thing for your…uh, enjoyment?
Then Magnus punches a whole bunch and other people shoot guns and beams and jive-talking sidekick turns into an actual black guy and in conclusion here’s a flashback of Leeja’s childhood:
It was really important for story reasons we see a naked ten year old.
Roko’s Basilisk would be a much cooler concept if there weren’t people who believe that the creation of a malicious singularity is one of our most pressing problems as a species.
Well, they’re also people who can’t work out the prisoner’s dilemma and generally fail basic morality as shown by the idea being threatened means you must help evil, so it makes sense they’d believe AIs would be primarily evil.
So basically the author read about this and then at the eleventh hour hijacked the whole story to revolve around some bogus internet theory.
A++ writing, 10/10, gold medal
Well, so he claims. The sudden plot hijack looks exactly like every other canceled book’s crappy attempts at forcing an ending early, though.
Yeah, it’s much more stupid than even the original idea. The whole point of Roko’s Basilisk is that it doesn’t exist yet, but it will be, and you must accept it as your Lord and Savior now or burn eternally in Unsingularity. Also, you’re probably in a simulation created by it.
Basically, it’s the Broken-Winged Crane, just add stupid.
This one is just a random robot out of nowhere.
The time paradox inevitability of it is almost cool enough to miss the part where it doesn’t make sense.
The LessWrongers are actually a little less wrong here, in that they admit Roko’s Basilisk doesn’t quite work, but they fear refining it would create something that did work and would force them to make an evil AI because they’re so rational.
After reading that Harry Potter thing from Less Wrong, I’ve already have enough time paradoxes for this the basilisk to be tiresome. There seems to be an attitude in the story that time is just as valid going both ways and humans just cannot comprehend the other direction. This is confirmed by Harry thinking about it for a second(as good as experimentation). AKA “Time is an illusion,” for rational people.
With or without timeless physics, it seems that the direction the AI has to worry about existing in will be the forward direction.
There’s nothing sadder than a nitwit who thinks he’s making a profound statement about the nature of things.
Well, imagine if the series had kept going…
The Basilisk would be perfect for some weird cyberpunk cult whose members are afraid they will be punished at the Coming Of The Basilisk if they don’t do whatever Supreme Leader Roko says.
This is just standard evil A.I. stuff.