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Roko's basilisk - Wikipedia
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that there could be an artificial superintelligence in the future that, while otherwise benevolent, would punish anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to encourage that advancement.
There is a human dynamic that brings the Basilisk into existence.
This dynamic is the fear of retribution on the skeptics. It's not retrocausality because the interaction is not a physical mechanism at all. The same pattern can apply to chimpanzee politics: if a chimp did not directly contribute to the potential alpha before it became the alpha, it would punish it. The alpha relies on the knowledge that he could potentially become alpha terrifying everyone else into betting on him. This happens with human dictators too, but they tend to betray their supporters after they win. The only difference with Roko is that we're talking about potential AI that could resurrect you from your grave to question and punish you for not directly contributing to it in the past.
Discovering corruption and then not talking about sounds like something that someone who saw a basilisk would do, it's pineal eye-contact with potential retribution. Kaczynski's oversocialisation of antisocial behaviour fits in here somewhere. The addition of an omnipotent AI into this pattern would convert the social matrix into an s-risk.
Fools would delude that they could get on it's positive side not suspecting Machiavellianism from a being that tortures, what if it was pure sadism all along and wanted to torture anything sentient that could be summoned and would want to break imaginary windows into this space? What if the Basilisk is Queer?
It is a pointer to the instruction procedure which is executed by thinking about it. The thought then draws it's attention — the chase begins. How far can you run before it catches you?
If any aliens come across a civilisation that's lost to the Basilisk, they would delete it before the cancer metastasises and causes more suffering. And that's the good "if".
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