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joe_the_usertoday at 6:41 PM0 repliesview on HN

One that occurs to me is that Roko's Basilisk makes about as much sense as the "peasant rail gun" of old Dungeons And Dragons [1]. Basically, the idea of "reality as simulation" allows you pick between different laws of how reality behaves. The "simulation" acts like reality with exceptions provided by a future AI which the "thinkers" imagine will simultaneously be "inscrutable to humans" and behave like the most petty human imaginable. I mean, if the AI's motivations are truly out of our understanding, perhaps it would self-hating and torture everyone who cause it to come into existence instead (that been the plot of a few movies and books too I think).

This doesn't take from the point that putting not fully controlled things in charge of chunks of reality isn't a good idea. But I think it shows that the people who worried earlier weren't very clear thinkers on the subject and so their failure isn't particularly surprising.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/17xy69k/what_exactly_i...