MarsColony_in10years comments on A few misconceptions surrounding Roko's basilisk - Less Wrong

39 Post author: RobbBB 05 October 2015 09:23PM

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Comment author: rayalez 06 October 2015 06:45:18PM *  2 points [-]

I'm new to the subject, so I'm sorry if the following is obvious or completely wrong, but the comment left by Eliezer doesn't seem like something that would be written by a smart person who is trying to suppress information. I seriously doubt that EY didn't know about Streisand effect.

However the comment does seem like something that would be written by a smart person who is trying to create a meme or promote his blog.

In HPMOR characters give each other advice "to understand a plot, assume that what happened was the intended result, and look at who benefits." The idea of Roko's basilisk went viral and lesswrong.com got a lot of traffic from popular news sites(I'm assuming).

I also don't think that there's anything wrong with it, I'm just sayin'.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 06 October 2015 10:55:16PM 0 points [-]

Perhaps this did generate some traffic, but LessWrong doesn't have adds. And any publicity this generated was bad publicity, since Roko's argument was far too weird to be taken seriously by almost anyone.

It doesn't look like anyone benefited. Eliezer made an ass of himself. I would guess that he was rather rushed at the time.

Comment author: pico 07 October 2015 05:07:25AM 3 points [-]

At worst, it's a demonstration of how much influence LessWrong has relative to the size of its community. Many people who don't know this site exists know about Roko's basilisk now.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 07 October 2015 03:38:39AM 0 points [-]

Well, there is the philosophy that "there's no such thing as bad publicity".