Comment on A few misconceptions surrounding Roko's basilisk

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 10:08:12 GMT

It's that you are the one who is going to be tortured. That's a pretty compelling case against utilitarianism.

It doesn't appear to me to be a case against utilitarianism at all. "Adopting utilitarianism might lead to me getting tortured, and that might actually be optimal in utilitarian terms, therefore utilitarianism is wrong" doesn't even have the right shape to be a valid argument. It's like "If there is no god then many bad people will prosper and not get punished, which would be awful, therefore there is a god." (Or, from the other side, "If there is a god then he may choose to punish me, which would be awful, therefore there is no god" -- which has a thing or two in common with the Roko basilisk, of course.)

he made it their problem too and converted them to his side.

Perhaps he hoped to. I don't see any sign that he actually did.

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