From the Depths of Wikipedia

name_here wrote:
Maxus wrote:http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
I love that a real and apparently serious discussion was deleted for being an infohazard

From what I read, that cultcommunity has such a bizarre series of beliefs, that they ended being vulnerable to something like that.

In the end, I think the silliest belief there is their version of Utilitarianism. (even sillier than the idea of a future super-AI being able to create a simulation of you that's so precise as to make you care about what happens to it).

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Wed Jan 08, 2014 5:04 pm

nockermensch wrote:In the end, I think the silliest belief there is their version of Utilitarianism.

I raise you cryonics.

I went to a RL meetup once, when I lost my job on Mayan Apocalypse Day and had nothing to do. People rolled eyes on seeing a GURL. The group consisted of three Harry Potter fans, two of whom were bad at math but didn't know that, a random depressed guy who wanted to set his priorities in life and got The Secret as adapted by Lord Marshall Obvious, and an old cryonics nut who fell asleep when the Harry Potter fans were discussing Harry Potter, then tried to hit on me by complementing my "femininity".

Later, he forwarded me a badly-spelled invitation to a cryonut New Year party. The invitation urged cryonuts to bring their, I quote, "wives and girlfriends" and in this and other aspects looked like it was addressed to a group of ex-Mormons recently converted to Hollywood Satanism. (The email also stated that people had to chip in for food, and that was the reason I didn't go. I was too sick to go to the market at 0 F, and my fridge was empty. Unemployment sucks.)

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Jan 08, 2014 5:51 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_ ... ape_of_men

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Jan 08, 2014 6:51 pm

nockermensch wrote:
name_here wrote:
Maxus wrote:http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
I love that a real and apparently serious discussion was deleted for being an infohazard
From what I read, that cultcommunity has such a bizarre series of beliefs, that they ended being vulnerable to something like that.

Actually, "infohazard" means something that places you in some form of external danger from knowing it because either that means something knows about you or it makes something stronger and more dangerous, as opposed to the SCP wiki term "cognitohazard", which is something that messes with your brain. So I guess the argument is actually a cognitohazard by virtue of potentially being an infohazard if true.

If you actually accept the argument as valid, simply reading it ups the odds of your simulation getting horribly tortured. To make it even more hilariously appropriate, the entire thread got [DATA EXPUNGED]. Which is actually the proper response if true, in order to protect potential future readers. And then there's the aftermath where they discuss it in tortuously vague terms because direct discussion is forbidden for being dangerous. Seriously, someone needs to write this up as an SCP; it just fits so perfectly.

In the end, I think the silliest belief there is their version of Utilitarianism.

I'm going to have to go with causality, at least as expressed in that argument. I mean, the acasual trade thing kinda makes sense once you take a position on Continuity Of Consciousness that endorses brain uploading, because then future simulation you can be considered the same entity as yourself and as such a trans-temporal deal with a superintelligence (which I am willing to grant can exist, although I am extremely dubious it will exist soon) is basically an agreement where you provide a service and it pays you when it gets the money. Although given that it requires high-precision prediction of the actions of the other party, it seems like the temporal positions of human and superintelligence should need to be reversed. But the acasual blackmail thing just doesn't work because by the time the AI is in a position to actually carry out the threat doing so is simply pointless. The same could be said of the trade, but they're hoping to make an AI that would pay up even if it's not optimal behavior.

But apparently the underpinning of the whole thing is that they think future events can cause earlier ones. Which is esoteric, but it gets really fucked up because they further believe current events can cause future events that caused said events in the first place.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Jan 08, 2014 7:26 pm

In a sense, their case for future events causing past events is true, except not really because the future hasn't happened yet. A prediction of a future event is not the future event itself.

Think about all the people claiming Armageddon and the Antichrist is just around the corner. Every so often, some whackjobs makes a prediction and then...nothing happens.

Even so often someone's got a better method of predicting (Nate Silver), or gets lucky (Lot of sports fans), and they're right about what will happen. But that's not the same as the future, either.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:27 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_money

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... _in_Sweden

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 10:10 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_%E2%80 ... ent_Breach