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Bugmaster comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong
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What... really ? You mean, there's a bitmap I can show to someone, or a song I can whistle, or a passage I can read, which will immediately make my victim drop dead (or become catatonic, or actually non-metaphorically insane) ? This sounds to me like an extraordinary claim, and I'd like to see some evidence. Er, please don't show me the actual basilisk on the off chance you do have it in your possession :-)
How tightly are we defining memetic basilisk? It's obviously possible to talk some people into getting themselves killed.
It isn't too hard to talk them into wars either - especially if you first talk someone into getting themselves killed in an appropriately provocative way. Or even just the right person.
Destroying humanity with mere words seems like a comparatively trivial task from the perspective of "is it even physically possible to do with intelligence?".
I wish I could upvote this a second time solely for the understatement.
I don't know whether this is true or not; there seems to be supporting evidence either way. It's true that you can point to many historical events when a seemingly well-placed murder, or just a well-placed word, sparked a major war. However, in many (if not most) of these cases, the local culture was on the brink of war anyway, and thus the well-placed murder wasn't as well-placed as it appeared -- because the critical mass could be achieved by killing virtually anyone, or even simply by doing nothing but waiting a few years for war to erupt.
Yes, and some people will kill themselves spontaneously even if you don't talk to them (or even especially if you don't talk to them). However, AFAIK there's no generally applicable mechanism that you can use to talk any arbitrary person into killing himself, with a high degree of reliability.
I think it's worthwhile to separate out intentions, plans, actions, and consequences for this definition. If you see memes as intentions or plans, it's odd to see a meme touted as being a consequence ("if you see this bitmap, you will die") rather than an intention or plan that leads to a consequence ("if you slit your wrists, you will die"). The latter obviously exist, the former seem like a definition error.