Speaker 1: The podcast you were about to listen to contains a
Speaker 1: class for information hazard. Some listeners may experience prolonged bouts
Speaker 1: of fear, waking, anxiety, or nightmares of eternal torture. In
Speaker 1: the cyber dungeons of the Great Basilisk attended to by
Speaker 1: the Peelers in Black and the Thirteen Children of the Flame,
Speaker 1: also appetite, loss, and constipation. Proceed with caution. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: since it's October, we are of course still exploring monsters,
Speaker 1: terrifying ideas and so forth, and boy, have we got
Speaker 1: one for you today. I just want to issue a
Speaker 1: warning right at the beginning here that today's episode is
Speaker 1: going to concern something that a few people would consider
Speaker 1: a genuine information hazard, as in an idea you that
Speaker 1: is itself actually dangerous. Now I I don't, having looked
Speaker 1: into it, I don't think that is the case. I
Speaker 1: don't think this episode will hurt you, but just a
Speaker 1: warning if you think you're susceptible to terror or nightmares
Speaker 1: or something when presented with a thought experiment or the
Speaker 1: possibility of being, say, sent to a literal hell created
Speaker 1: by technology, and you think that idea could infect you,
Speaker 1: could make you afraid. This might not be the episode
Speaker 1: for you, right, But then again, I assume you're a
Speaker 1: listener to stuff to blow your mind. You've probably already
Speaker 1: encountered some thought hazards on here. You've survived those. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: I have faith in you to survive this one. However,
Speaker 1: if you are going to take either of our warnings seriously,
Speaker 1: I will let you know that the first section of
Speaker 1: this podcast is going to deal with the mythical basilisk,
Speaker 1: the folkloric basilisk, and some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: monstrous fund to be had there before we explore the
Speaker 1: idea of Rocco's Basilisk, and in that we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about this, uh, this idea that emerges where technological singularity,
Speaker 1: navel gazing, thought experimentation, a little that dash of creepy pasta,
Speaker 1: and some good old fifth fashion supernatural thinking all converge
Speaker 1: into this kind of nightmare scenario. Now, as we said,
Speaker 1: this idea is believed by some to be a genuinely
Speaker 1: dangerous idea and that even learning about it could put
Speaker 1: you at some kind of risk. I think there are
Speaker 1: strong reasons to believe that this is not the case,
Speaker 1: and that thinking about this idea will not put you
Speaker 1: at risk. But again, if you're concerned, you should stop
Speaker 1: listening now, or stop listening after we stopped talking about
Speaker 1: the mythical basilisk now I have I just want to
Speaker 1: say at the beginning, listeners have suggested us talk about
Speaker 1: Rocco's basilisk before this idea that is at least purportedly
Speaker 1: an information hazard, a dangerous idea, and I've I've hesitated
Speaker 1: to do it before, and not because I think it's
Speaker 1: particularly plausible, but just because, you know, I wonder, what
Speaker 1: is the level of risk could that you should tolerate
Speaker 1: when propagating an idea. If you think an idea is
Speaker 1: unlikely but maybe has a zero point zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero one percent chance of causing enormous harm to the
Speaker 1: person you tell it to, should you say the idea
Speaker 1: or not? I don't know. I feel like people generally
Speaker 1: don't exercise that kind of caution when they're like sharing
Speaker 1: links with you, Like sometimes they'll be like, like not
Speaker 1: safe for work. But but then you click on it anyway,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes you're like, oh, I wish I had
Speaker 1: not seen that, or I wish I had not read that,
Speaker 1: and now that's in my head. Now that's in my
Speaker 1: head forever. Well. One of the problems with this idea
Speaker 1: is whatever you think about whether or not you should
Speaker 1: discuss ideas that may be dangerous to hear in some
Speaker 1: extremely unlikely off chance. Uh. Part of the problem is
Speaker 1: what happens when those ideas are just already set loose
Speaker 1: in in society. I mean now people on television shows
Speaker 1: and all over the internet or talking about this idea.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of articles out about it. So
Speaker 1: it's not like you can keep the cat in the
Speaker 1: bag at this point, right this Roco's basilist has already
Speaker 1: been a a gag point on the hit HBO show
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, which is a fabulous show, and I love
Speaker 1: the way that they treated Rocco's basilisk on it. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: if they're covering it, there's no danger in us covering
Speaker 1: it too. That's the way I look at it, right,
Speaker 1: And at least I would hope that the way we
Speaker 1: cover it can give you some reasons to think you
Speaker 1: should not be afraid of digital hell, and also to
Speaker 1: think about the general class of what should be done
Speaker 1: about something that could have in fact been a real
Speaker 1: information hazard in some other case. So that's all our
Speaker 1: whole preamble for before we get to that section. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that section, we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about basilisks today. Boy, is the basilisk a great monster? Yes,
Speaker 1: also known as the basil cock, the basil cock, the
Speaker 1: basil e cock, basically any version of that of basil
Speaker 1: and cock that you can put together, um, that you
Speaker 1: can slam together. Then it has been referred to as
Speaker 1: such at some point in its history. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of people I think probably encountered a version of the
Speaker 1: basilisk from Harry Potter. But Robert, I know that was
Speaker 1: not your entryway, right, I encountered it for the first time.
Speaker 1: I believe in dungeons and dragons, of course, because it's
Speaker 1: a it's a multi legged reptile with a petrifying gaze.
Speaker 1: Um say that again, multi legged reptile with a petrifying gaze,
Speaker 1: petrifying gas to turn you to stone. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: is ever over call correctly. It has some cool biology,
Speaker 1: where like the the it turns you to stone and
Speaker 1: then like bust you into pieces. Then it eats the
Speaker 1: stone pieces, but then its stomach turns the stone back
Speaker 1: into flesh. And so if you get like the stomach
Speaker 1: juices from a basilisk, then you can use it to
Speaker 1: undo petrification spells, that sort of thing. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, arguably more fun than than the basilisk is
Speaker 1: at times in folklore tradition, because one of the things is,
Speaker 1: if you you like me, you didn't grow up hearing
Speaker 1: about the basilisk. Part of it is because there are
Speaker 1: no there aren't really any great stories about the basilisk.
Speaker 1: Slaying the basilisk was no heroes, great ordeal. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I at least have not come across that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really helps, like if like the hydra, I mean, the
Speaker 1: hydra is arguably so much cooler, and then also it's
Speaker 1: one of the labors of Hercules, and there's a cool
Speaker 1: story about how they defeat it. Well, maybe it's because
Speaker 1: there is no way to defeat the basilisks short of say,
Speaker 1: weasel of fluvium, which we will get to. Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: don't give it away, I'm sorry. Should we should we
Speaker 1: edit that out. No, we should leave it. It's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a thought hazard. Any basilists listening. Still, there's
Speaker 1: so much more to the basilist than just this cool
Speaker 1: DND creature, because it's not just a monster. It's not
Speaker 1: just something you encounter in the dungeon. It is it
Speaker 1: is a king. Oh, I see, now, I know you've
Speaker 1: made note of the fact that Borges mentions the basilisk
Speaker 1: and his Book of Imaginary Beings. He does now he
Speaker 1: he translated translated his meaning little king, little king, which
Speaker 1: I like when I was reading. And Carol Rose she's
Speaker 1: She points out that the name stems from the Greek basilius,
Speaker 1: which means king, so king or little king. I tend
Speaker 1: to like the little king translation because I feel like
Speaker 1: it it ties in better with what we're going to discuss, well,
Speaker 1: the ancient BEASTI area ideas of the basil I believe
Speaker 1: to say that it's not that big, right, It's pretty small. Yeah. Yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: The keen part, though, refers to a crest or, a
Speaker 1: crown like protusion that is on the creature's head, and
Speaker 1: in some depictions it's no mirror biological ornament, but an
Speaker 1: actual regal crown. It means something. Yeah. Now, the descriptions
Speaker 1: very greatly, and it emerges largely from European and Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern legend and folklore from ancient times to roughly the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, and that's when the basilists became less popular.
Speaker 1: In the earlier descriptions, though, it is indeed small, and
Speaker 1: it's just a grass snake, only it has a crown
Speaker 1: like crest on its head and has this weird practice
Speaker 1: of floating above the ground like vertically erect. That's creepy,
Speaker 1: of course, and then again that that does play on
Speaker 1: sometimes when you see snakes rise up out of a coil,
Speaker 1: it can be startling how high they rise. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if I feel like I've grown up seeing images and
Speaker 1: videos of cobra's doing their their dance, so I've kind
Speaker 1: of I've kind of lost any kind of appreciation for
Speaker 1: how bizarre that is to look at. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're used to seeing a snake slither, to see it
Speaker 1: stand up and uh, you know and rare back and
Speaker 1: and and flare its hood. Absolutely. Yeah. So the basilisk
Speaker 1: is said to be the king of the reptiles, but
Speaker 1: you know, don't be so foolish is to think that
Speaker 1: only it's bite is lethal, like some of our venomous snakes. Now,
Speaker 1: every aspect of the basilisk is said to just reek
Speaker 1: of venom and death, every every aspect. If you touch it,
Speaker 1: if you inhale its breath, if you gaze upon it
Speaker 1: at all, then you will die. Wait, what about its saliva? Yep, saliva,
Speaker 1: blood smell, gaze? Presumably I didn't see any reference that
Speaker 1: the presumably it's it's urine, it's excrement. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: excrement has to be poisonous, the excrement of a basilisk.
Speaker 1: It sounds absolutely deadly. Wouldn't it be a great inversion
Speaker 1: if it's excrement was the only good part about it?
Speaker 1: And maybe so that can heal your warts? Yeah? And uh.
Speaker 1: One thing that Carol Rose pointed out in in her
Speaker 1: her entry about the basilisk and her one of her
Speaker 1: monster Encyclopedia's, she said that when it's not killing everything
Speaker 1: in its path, just via that you know the audacity
Speaker 1: of its existence, it would actually spit them at birds
Speaker 1: flying overhead and bring them down to eat them, or
Speaker 1: just out of spite. I get the idea. Just had
Speaker 1: a spite. You know, it's just just it's just my
Speaker 1: ful death, that's all it is. Okay. So where do
Speaker 1: I find a basilisk? Well, in the desert, of course.
Speaker 1: But it's more, it's more accurate to say that the
Speaker 1: desert is not merely the place where it lives, but
Speaker 1: it is the place that it makes by living. Like
Speaker 1: everything in its path dies, and therefore the desert is
Speaker 1: the result of the basilisk. And there's a there's actually
Speaker 1: a wonderful um a description of the basilisk that comes
Speaker 1: to us from Plenty of the Elder in his The
Speaker 1: net Real History Man. We've been hitting Plenty a lot lately.
Speaker 1: I guess we've been talking about monsters. Huh. If're talking
Speaker 1: about monsters, especially ancient monsters, that you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: one of the great sources to turn to. So Joe,
Speaker 1: would you read to us from the natural History? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: there is the same power also in the serpent called
Speaker 1: the basilisk. It is produced in the province of Syrene,
Speaker 1: which that is the area to the west of Egypt.
Speaker 1: It's like Libya. I think there's a settlement known as
Speaker 1: like Syrene, Syrene being not more than twelve fingers in length.
Speaker 1: Is that fingers long ways or fingers sideways? Oh, either
Speaker 1: way you cut it, it's not a huge creature. It
Speaker 1: has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a
Speaker 1: sort of diadem. When it hisses, all the other serpents
Speaker 1: fly from it, and it does not advance its body
Speaker 1: like the others by a succession of folds, but moves
Speaker 1: along upright and erect upon the middle. It destroys all shrubs,
Speaker 1: not only by its contact, but those even that it
Speaker 1: has breathed upon. It burns up all the grass too,
Speaker 1: and breaks the stones. So tremendous is its noxious influence.
Speaker 1: It was formerly a general belief that if a man
Speaker 1: on horseback killed one of these animals with a spear,
Speaker 1: the poison would run up the weapon and kill not
Speaker 1: only the rider but the horse as well. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I love that. So it's though the blood is it's
Speaker 1: like that like a xenomorph's blood, right or or kind
Speaker 1: of like It reminds me to of Grendel's blood that
Speaker 1: was said to like melt the weapon that they wolf
Speaker 1: used against it. Oh, but it's worse than that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't just get the weapon, It gets the person holding
Speaker 1: the weapon and the horse that that person is touching.
Speaker 1: I know, it feels unfair that the horse is roped
Speaker 1: into this as well. Yeah, the horse didn't even sign
Speaker 1: up for going to fight a basilisk. It's just trying
Speaker 1: to get some oats. But furthermore, what is this horse
Speaker 1: rider doing out in the waste land of Syrene trying
Speaker 1: to kill a basilisk? Well, lesson learned. Lesson learned now
Speaker 1: that the basilist becomes a popular creature, and even though
Speaker 1: the basil usk itself is it doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: been mentioned in the Bible, it ends up being like
Speaker 1: roped into it via translations. Oh yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the unicorn. Actually, yeah, exactly. Yeah. We discussed in
Speaker 1: our episode on unicorns how the were their words in
Speaker 1: the Bible that have been translated saying the King James
Speaker 1: translation of the Bible into unicorn because the translators didn't
Speaker 1: know what the word referred to. We think now that
Speaker 1: maybe the word probably referred to the ROCs, an extinct
Speaker 1: bovine creature that once lived around the ancient Mediterranean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you see the basilist pop pop pop up in
Speaker 1: certain translations of the Book of Jeremiah. The Book of Psalms,
Speaker 1: Uh what it's associated with the devil or evil, and
Speaker 1: nothing short of the coming of the Messiah can can
Speaker 1: hope to end its rule. While well, have you got
Speaker 1: a quote for me? Yes, there's one translation of Psalms.
Speaker 1: This is the Brinton Septuagint translation quote thou shalt tread
Speaker 1: on the asp and basilisk and al shout trample on
Speaker 1: the lion and dragon. Now European beast areas of the
Speaker 1: eleventh and twelfth century. They both mostly maintained Plenty's description,
Speaker 1: but then they described a larger body. They began to Essentially,
Speaker 1: the monster began to grow. We got to beat this
Speaker 1: thing up here. Yeah, it ended up having spots and
Speaker 1: stripes and a few other features were thrown in. Um
Speaker 1: fiery breath, a bellow that kills. Well, that only makes
Speaker 1: sense if every other thing about it kills. Yea, it
Speaker 1: makes noise. That should kill things too. Also, the ability
Speaker 1: to induce hydrophobia madness. I found that interesting because this
Speaker 1: clearly has to be a reference to the actual hydrophobia
Speaker 1: that is inherent in rabies. Yeah, the idea there being that,
Speaker 1: and I think later stages of Araby's infection. Persons will
Speaker 1: often have difficulty swallowing, and so that they they're said
Speaker 1: to refuse drinking water. So Plenty has some additional information
Speaker 1: here about how you might deal with the pass list. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I assume not ride up on a horse and
Speaker 1: stab it right, Well, tell me what it is to
Speaker 1: this dreadful monster. The effluvium of the weasel is fatal,
Speaker 1: a thing that has been tried with success, for kings
Speaker 1: have often desired to see its body when killed. So
Speaker 1: true is it that it has pleased nature that there
Speaker 1: should be nothing without its antidote. The animal is thrown
Speaker 1: into the whole of the basilisk, which is easily known
Speaker 1: from the soil around it being infected. The weasel destroys
Speaker 1: the basilisk by its odor, but dies itself in the
Speaker 1: struggle of nature against its own self. And John Bostock,
Speaker 1: who provided the translation of this, he adds that there's
Speaker 1: probably no foundation for this account of the action of
Speaker 1: the effluvium of the weasel upon the basilisk or any
Speaker 1: other species of serpent. But this is letting us know
Speaker 1: that throwing a weasel in there to bleed on it
Speaker 1: or secrete fluids or whatever. That's not going to kill
Speaker 1: this mythical monster. But this is interesting though, because weasels,
Speaker 1: especially the stout, we're thought to be venomous um. And
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that we do have some venomous mammals
Speaker 1: in the natural world, such as various shrews, and even
Speaker 1: the slow loris, the only known venomous primate. I don't
Speaker 1: think I knew that the slow loris was venomous. Throw
Speaker 1: it into a hole with a basilisk and and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm betting on the loris. But anyway, BEASTI areas of
Speaker 1: the time. They presented a few different ways that you
Speaker 1: could kill the bassilist. So the weasels one, weasels one
Speaker 1: always carry a weasel. Also, this one's a little more elegant,
Speaker 1: but I have a crystal globe with you to reflect
Speaker 1: its own petrifying gaze back upon the basilisk. Oh, so
Speaker 1: it's like Perseus and Medusa exactly mirror. Yeah, basically they
Speaker 1: just stole the idea from Medusa here, but then also
Speaker 1: carry with you a cockrell or a young rooster. The
Speaker 1: basilist will becoming enraged by the bird's crown. The idea
Speaker 1: that this bird has a crown as well, and the
Speaker 1: basilist will die from a lethal fit. That's a jealous king. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe a similar thing occurs when someone refuses to
Speaker 1: believe dinosaurs had fetishes, you know, how dare the bird
Speaker 1: rise above the mighty reptile and then it just loses
Speaker 1: its mind and dies. We can only hope the producers
Speaker 1: of the Jurassic World movies avoid this fate. So you
Speaker 1: see the basketlists show up in a number of different writings.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a common um, really a symbol
Speaker 1: and idea that can be employed. Uh. And they even
Speaker 1: to see it show up in the Parson's Tale in
Speaker 1: the in Jeffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales. Yes, quote,
Speaker 1: these are the other five fingers which the devil uses
Speaker 1: to draw people towards him. The first is the lecterous
Speaker 1: glance of a foolish woman or a foolish man, a
Speaker 1: glance that kills just as the basilists kills people just
Speaker 1: by looking at them. For the covetous glance reflects the
Speaker 1: intentions of the heart. You know, this kind of thing
Speaker 1: is actually one of my one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: about monsters, especially ancient medieval monsters and uh and so forth.
Speaker 1: Is that they often aren't just like a large, dangerous animal,
Speaker 1: but they embody some kind of value. They represent something,
Speaker 1: They give you something to compare other things too, like
Speaker 1: they they they're very useful as a metaphor uh. And
Speaker 1: then really we see some more thing with the bassilisk.
Speaker 1: It becomes less far less the situation where people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to be careful because there's a basilisk in
Speaker 1: the desert, and more and more just a useful model, useful,
Speaker 1: ridiculous idea that we use to illustrate something that is
Speaker 1: presumably true about the world and then ultimately loses all
Speaker 1: meaning and just winds up on, you know, a heraldry
Speaker 1: and decorations. Now, as we've seen already, the the basilisk
Speaker 1: has been through some transformations of form, and I assume
Speaker 1: those transformations must have somewhat continued as time goes by,
Speaker 1: and it becomes uh, it transforms into this idea of
Speaker 1: the cock of thrace. This uh, this rooster with a
Speaker 1: curling serpent's tail. In fact, if you if you go
Speaker 1: looking around for images the basilist, sometimes you will find
Speaker 1: this image instead. You really will find you'll find this
Speaker 1: alongside all the other images. Um. So again a reptile
Speaker 1: to bird transfer transformation that just must enrage those who
Speaker 1: oppose feathered dinosaurs. And it does feel like a shame
Speaker 1: because we have this vile reptile. It becomes the kind
Speaker 1: of a weirdo bird instead. And it said that it's
Speaker 1: it's it's what happens when you have a seven year
Speaker 1: old chicken egg hatched by a toad who undead avians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also made deadlier in these newer versions. So
Speaker 1: now it has that that poison blood power that Plenty describes.
Speaker 1: It also rots fruit and poisons water everywhere it goes,
Speaker 1: So it becomes this kind of embodiment of desolation and death,
Speaker 1: and the idea itself becomes popular. It influenced the naming
Speaker 1: of a tutor canon like literally a cannon that shoots
Speaker 1: called the basilisk, just because it's it's such a powerful weapon,
Speaker 1: we have to name it after this powerful, deadly monster. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it eventually got some of its reptilian features back. Um.
Speaker 1: The artist Andrew Vandi has this excellent, excellent depiction of
Speaker 1: it in Natural History of Serpents and Dragons that gives
Speaker 1: it scales and these. It's like a fat, scaly reptile
Speaker 1: bird with eight rooster legs, which I just love. This
Speaker 1: will probably be the illustration for this episode on our
Speaker 1: on our website, But after that the creature largely became
Speaker 1: just a part of European heraldry. It's just something you
Speaker 1: would see as a mere decoration or occasionally just a
Speaker 1: literary reference. Now, one thing that we want to be
Speaker 1: careful about is that we should not confuse the basilisk
Speaker 1: of legend the monster with true extent. Basilisk lizards also
Speaker 1: known sometimes as the Jesus Christ lizard or the Jesus lizard,
Speaker 1: for their ability to run across the surface of water
Speaker 1: without sinking for up to about four point five meters
Speaker 1: or about fifteen feet. Uh. If you've ever seen video this,
Speaker 1: it's really cool. How how do they do that? I've
Speaker 1: often wondered. I didn't know until I looked it up
Speaker 1: for this episode. Apparently what they've got is big feet
Speaker 1: and the ability to run very fast. And what happens
Speaker 1: is when they run, they slap the water very hard
Speaker 1: with each down stroke of the foot. And it has
Speaker 1: to do with the way that the rapid motions of
Speaker 1: their feet create these air pockets around their feet as
Speaker 1: they move. I was reading an article a New Scientist
Speaker 1: where some researchers who were working on this problem said
Speaker 1: that in order for an eight m or a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five pound human to do this, you would
Speaker 1: have to run at about a hundred and eight kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour about sixty seven miles per hour across the
Speaker 1: surface of the water. But anyway, you can find basilisk
Speaker 1: lizards in South America and Central America and Mexico and
Speaker 1: uh as far as I know, they do not kill
Speaker 1: with a glance, and you cannot fight them with weasel fluvium.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that pretty much wraps up the mythical, legendary,
Speaker 1: folkloric basilisk um it's rise and individual fall. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a break, and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: are going to get into this idea of of Rocco's Basiliska,
Speaker 1: the great basilisk, the once and perhaps future king. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank alright, we're back. Al right. So, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: we're about to start discussing an idea that has been
Speaker 1: classed by some as something that could be an information hazard.
Speaker 1: An idea that simply by thinking about it you somehow
Speaker 1: increase the chance of harm to yourself. So just another
Speaker 1: warning that again I don't think that's the case, but
Speaker 1: if that kind of thing scares you, then then perhaps
Speaker 1: you can tune out. Now, all right, for those of
Speaker 1: you who decided to stick around, let's proceed. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about Rocco's Bassilist. This is an idea that goes
Speaker 1: back to around and it was proposed by a user
Speaker 1: at the blog less Wrong, by a user named Rocco
Speaker 1: now less Wrong. I think it's a website that's a
Speaker 1: community that's associated with the rationalist movement somewhat, the rationalist
Speaker 1: movement being a movement that's concerned with trying to optimize thinking,
Speaker 1: like to eliminate bias and error, but especially among people
Speaker 1: who in this case are concerned with the possibilities of
Speaker 1: a technological singularity and what all that means and how
Speaker 1: how risks can be avoided, and of course what we've
Speaker 1: talked about this strain of thinking before you know, we
Speaker 1: we've introduced I think some some skepticism about the idea
Speaker 1: of a technological singularity. I don't know fully yet how
Speaker 1: I come down on the dangers of a I debate,
Speaker 1: but I think it's at least something we're thinking about
Speaker 1: worth taking seriously. Yeah. I mean we've talked about, for instance,
Speaker 1: the work of of Max tech Mark and his arguments
Speaker 1: about how we need it. We need to be concerned
Speaker 1: about building the right kind of AI, and we need
Speaker 1: to we need we need to have serious discussions about it.
Speaker 1: Not not mere you know sci fi um dreams regarding
Speaker 1: it or nightmares regarding it. You know, we need to
Speaker 1: we need to think seriously about how we're developing our technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about, say, the work of Nick Bostrom before,
Speaker 1: and criticisms by people like Jarren Lane in Air. Yes,
Speaker 1: but okay, give me the short version of the basilisk
Speaker 1: before we explain it a little more. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: idea here is that an AI superintelligence will emerge an
Speaker 1: entity with just godlike technological powers. You know, it can
Speaker 1: you name and it can do it through it's it's
Speaker 1: it's technological power, it's interconnectedness. Basically, if it's physically possible,
Speaker 1: this computer can do it right, or will send a
Speaker 1: drone to do it or what have you. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've discussed this a bit in the podcast before, just
Speaker 1: the idea of you know, and then if you have
Speaker 1: this future king is it gonna be good or is
Speaker 1: it gonna be bad? Is it going to be a malevolent?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be ruthless? And it's a and
Speaker 1: it's ascension. And that's the case with the basilist, the
Speaker 1: idea that it is ruthless, that you are either with
Speaker 1: it or you are against it, and it actually doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be malicious. It could actually even be well meaning.
Speaker 1: It could just have ruthless tactics. Yes, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's also part of the argument is like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: wants to bring the best good for all humanity, but
Speaker 1: how it gets there, it'll do whatever it absolutely has
Speaker 1: to do it, such as you know, again, punishing anybody
Speaker 1: who stands against it, punishing even those who do not
Speaker 1: rise to support it um and that means demanding absolute
Speaker 1: devotion not only in its future kingdom, but in the
Speaker 1: past that preceded it in our world as well. In
Speaker 1: other words, it will punish people today who are not
Speaker 1: actively helping it come into being tomorrow, and even those
Speaker 1: who have died, it is said, or choose death by
Speaker 1: their own hand. Rather than succumbed to the Great Basilist,
Speaker 1: will be resurrected as digital consciousness is and then tormented
Speaker 1: for all eternity. And it's dripping black cyber dungeon. Hell,
Speaker 1: the Great Bassilists, all hell, the Great Basilist, all hell,
Speaker 1: the Great Basilists, all hell, the Great Basilisk. Well wait,
Speaker 1: what was that? I don't know? Um right, did you
Speaker 1: hear that? Okay, all right, we'll just keep going. So
Speaker 1: calling it a basilisk here, invoking the mythological bassilisk is
Speaker 1: is really a clever choice because it takes it one
Speaker 1: step further. Not only to look at the basilisk, but
Speaker 1: just to think of the basilisk is to uh invite death. Right.
Speaker 1: Merely to know about Rocco's Basilisk is enough to are too.
Speaker 1: According to the model that's presented here, damn your digital
Speaker 1: soul to everlasting horror. And the only way to avoid
Speaker 1: such a fate then is to work in its favor, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think we're doing uh with this podcast,
Speaker 1: We're not well, I mean, I feel like we're giving
Speaker 1: lip service to the Great Basilisk, just in case, you know,
Speaker 1: if the Great Basilist rises to power. Well, hey, we
Speaker 1: did that podcast and we even had a shirt that
Speaker 1: says all hell the Great, the Great Basilisk that's available
Speaker 1: on our t shirt store, So you know, we have
Speaker 1: we we have you know, our our options covered here.
Speaker 1: So that's the But that's the idea of the nutshell
Speaker 1: is that a future king ai king will rise and
Speaker 1: if you don't work to support it now knowing that
Speaker 1: it is going to exist, then you will be punished
Speaker 1: for it. So one of the principles underlying the idea
Speaker 1: of Rocco Spasilisk is the idea of timeless decision theory, which,
Speaker 1: if you want a pretty simple, straightforward explanation of it,
Speaker 1: there is one in an article on Slate by David
Speaker 1: Auerbach called the most terrifying thought experiment of all time. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, I would say, I don't totally endorse
Speaker 1: everything our back says in that article. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: that should be the case for any article we site.
Speaker 1: But but he does at least have a pretty clear
Speaker 1: and easy to understand explanation of how this works. Or
Speaker 1: I don't know, what, would you agree, Robert that it's
Speaker 1: at least somewhat easy to understand? Oh? Yes, I would. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's another piece, by the way, by Beth Singler in
Speaker 1: Ian magazine called Faith. That's faith in lower case but
Speaker 1: with the AI capitalized. But anyway, our box points out
Speaker 1: that that much, yeah, much of the thought experiment is
Speaker 1: based in the timeless decision theory t DT, developed by
Speaker 1: Less Wrong founder Elias Ar Yudkowski, based on the older
Speaker 1: thought experiment Newcomb's Paradox from the late sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 1: attributed to theoretical physicist William Newcom. Now you might be
Speaker 1: wondering who's this Yudkowski. Guys. Is he just some user
Speaker 1: on a random website I've never heard of before today?
Speaker 1: Or is he like a name in his field? Uh?
Speaker 1: And he Uh, he has. He has a name of note.
Speaker 1: He is also the founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute,
Speaker 1: and his idea of working toward a friendly AI is
Speaker 1: touted by many, including Max tegmark I mentions it several
Speaker 1: times in his book Life three point oh, describing Yudkowski
Speaker 1: has quote an AI safety pioneer. Yeah, I mean in
Speaker 1: in a weird way. He is a guy who posts
Speaker 1: on the internet, but he's a very influential one, especially
Speaker 1: among people who think about artificial intelligence Lawyeah, I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what are any office but just people who post stuff
Speaker 1: on the internet post will one day be read by
Speaker 1: the great baskets. Okay, so we'll try to explain the
Speaker 1: idea of timeless decision theory. So you start off with
Speaker 1: this idea of Newcome's paradox, right, right, And the paradox
Speaker 1: is essentially this, A super AI presents you with two boxes.
Speaker 1: One you're told contains a thousand dollars. That's box A.
Speaker 1: That's box A. Box B might contain one million dollars,
Speaker 1: or it might contain nothing, right, and you're left with
Speaker 1: two options here. These are the options that are given
Speaker 1: to you. You can either pick both boxes, ensuring that
Speaker 1: you'll get at least one thousand dollars out of the deal,
Speaker 1: maybe that extra million two if it's in there. Or
Speaker 1: you can just pick pick box B, which means you
Speaker 1: could get a million dollars or you could have nothing.
Speaker 1: So uh, and I do want to add that just
Speaker 1: picking the thousand dollar box is not an option here,
Speaker 1: because I was thinking about that too. Couldn't I just
Speaker 1: give the super AI the middle finger and say, I'm
Speaker 1: not playing your silly games, Just give me my thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: or say I choose nothing. Uh, those are not options
Speaker 1: you have to pick. Well, they might want to be options,
Speaker 1: but they're not part of I mean, why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: also pick the second box if you might additionally get
Speaker 1: a million dollars? I don't know when. I feel like
Speaker 1: when you get into a thought experiments like this, they
Speaker 1: kind of beg for those kind of nitpicking answers, or
Speaker 1: at least I want to provide them. Um, Like any thought,
Speaker 1: when a thought experiment is presented, you can't help on
Speaker 1: some of them, but want to break it somehow, right, Well,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean that's something you should always play
Speaker 1: around with. But given the constraints here, it seems like
Speaker 1: the obvious thing would be to say, okay, I want
Speaker 1: both boxes, because then I get the thousand dollars that's
Speaker 1: in box say no matter what, and then whether box
Speaker 1: B has a million or nothing, I either get another
Speaker 1: million or I just walk away with my thousand from
Speaker 1: box A. But here's the twist. The super intelligent machine
Speaker 1: has already guessed how you'll respond. If it thinks you're
Speaker 1: going to pick both boxes, then box B is certainly empty.
Speaker 1: But if it thinks you will only pick box B
Speaker 1: then it makes sure or there's a million dollars in
Speaker 1: there waiting for you. But either way, the contents of
Speaker 1: the boxes are set prior to you making that decision. Now,
Speaker 1: this is really kind of change things maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on what sort of decision theory you use. Right,
Speaker 1: if you trust the power of the machine to predict correctly,
Speaker 1: like you say that, no matter what happens, the computer
Speaker 1: predicts what I get your choices are one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or one million dollars, then you should take the one
Speaker 1: million dollars by picking box B. But if you don't
Speaker 1: trust the computer to be correct in predicting what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do, then you should take both boxes because in
Speaker 1: that case, if the computer was correct, you'll get at
Speaker 1: least a thousand dollars, and if it predicted wrong, you'll
Speaker 1: get the million and the thousand. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a contest of free will versus the predictive powers of
Speaker 1: a godlike ai uh and how much you believe in
Speaker 1: either one, right, And it's an ability to predict your
Speaker 1: behavior or in your ability to have any free will
Speaker 1: at all. So in you'd Kowski's timeless decision theory. He's says,
Speaker 1: the correct approach actually is to take box B, and
Speaker 1: then if you open it up and it's empty, you
Speaker 1: don't don't don't beg for the other one. You just
Speaker 1: double down and still take box B. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Back talks on this issue because you might Here's the
Speaker 1: here's the thing you might be in the computer simulation
Speaker 1: is it simulates the entire universe to see what you're
Speaker 1: going to do, and if it can trust you and
Speaker 1: your choice, then could affect the core reality outside of
Speaker 1: this simulation, or at least other realities outside of the simulation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the reasoning here is pretty wild, but it's operating on
Speaker 1: the idea that this super intelligent AI will be able
Speaker 1: to simulate the universe, that it will run simulations of
Speaker 1: the universe in order to predict what will happen in
Speaker 1: the real universe. And you could be one of those
Speaker 1: simulated agents rather than the real world version of yourself,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't know it. So, if you're in the simulation,
Speaker 1: you should pick box B because that will influence them
Speaker 1: Machene to predict in the real universe that you would
Speaker 1: pick box B, which means the real you will be
Speaker 1: able to pick box B and get one million or
Speaker 1: one thousand plus one million by taking both boxes. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the AI sucomputer supercomputer does not realize how indecisive I
Speaker 1: actually am, and I'm just going to simply ponder the
Speaker 1: choice for the rest of my life. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: this relies on the idea that that you would have
Speaker 1: looked into this issue or worked it out in order
Speaker 1: to decide which would be the optimal decision to make
Speaker 1: on the assumption of timeless decision theory. Uh, in many cases,
Speaker 1: probably people aren't going to be making the rational choices
Speaker 1: because a lot of times we just don't make rational choices. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're noticing that this type of decision theory relies
Speaker 1: on a lot of assumptions, you are correct. It does
Speaker 1: rely on a lot of assumptions. But they are assumptions
Speaker 1: that are sometimes taken into account within people thinking about
Speaker 1: what a future technological super intelligence would look like. And
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that you know, you know,
Speaker 1: when I feel ideas like this in my head, you know,
Speaker 1: and play around with the texture of them. It's hard
Speaker 1: to know where the line is between um being thoughtful
Speaker 1: and taking what's possible seriously, which I think is worth
Speaker 1: doing and and getting into an area like between that
Speaker 1: and getting into an area where you are starting to
Speaker 1: form ideas about the world based on extremely shaky assumptions,
Speaker 1: where basically you you begin to um reverse engineer health
Speaker 1: theology and other harmful ideas that we tend to associate
Speaker 1: with religious worldviews and magical thinking. Well, we haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to the hell yet. Yes, the hell's coming. You need
Speaker 1: you need one more element to get there. Now. This
Speaker 1: next element, the basilist, comes in based on a background
Speaker 1: of thought in timeless decision theory, but also in another
Speaker 1: concept that Yutkowski has written about, known as coherent extrapolated
Speaker 1: volition or CEV. And the short version of this, the
Speaker 1: simplified version, is that benevolent AI s should be designed
Speaker 1: to do what we would what would actually be in
Speaker 1: our best interests, and not just explicitly in what we
Speaker 1: tell them to do. So a simple example would be this,
Speaker 1: Let's say, um, I only use a variation on the
Speaker 1: paper clip maximizer that Nick Bostrom has written about. You know,
Speaker 1: Nick Bostrom wrote about what if you program a benevolent
Speaker 1: AI you know it's not gonna it has no malice
Speaker 1: doesn't want to harm anybody, but you just tell it, well,
Speaker 1: I want you to collect as many paper clips as possible.
Speaker 1: And then what it does is it turns all the
Speaker 1: humans on Earth into paper clips. Uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean any harm. It's just doing what it was
Speaker 1: programmed to do. So there are dangers in kind of
Speaker 1: naively programming goals into extremely powerful computers. Right, this could
Speaker 1: even happen if you were trying to program very benevolent
Speaker 1: goals into computers, you know, if you were trying to
Speaker 1: make a computer to save the world. What about So
Speaker 1: my version here is you tell a super intelligent AI
Speaker 1: that we want to eliminate all the infectious disease from
Speaker 1: the world. Think about how many lives we could save
Speaker 1: by doing that. And in order to do this, it
Speaker 1: sterilizes the earth, destroying worldwide microbiomes, which cascades up the
Speaker 1: trophic chain or whatever. It kills everything on Earth. So
Speaker 1: if you have a super intelligence that you and you
Speaker 1: just directly program its goals and say here's what you
Speaker 1: should do, you could run into problems like this. So
Speaker 1: the the idea behind the CEV thinking is instead we
Speaker 1: should just program the intelligent AI to predict what outcomes
Speaker 1: we would want if we were perfect in in our
Speaker 1: knowledge and and uh in anticipating what would make us
Speaker 1: the happiest, and then work towards those on its own,
Speaker 1: regardless of what we tell it to do, because obviously
Speaker 1: we can give it very stupid instructions, even if we mean, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we tell it to love everybody, but there's a TYPEO
Speaker 1: and we put dove everybody, and it turns everybody into
Speaker 1: delicious dark chocolate from tough. It's possible as well. This
Speaker 1: is how we get a Dove sponsorship on the podcast.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so, if you assume a super intelligence is
Speaker 1: using coherent extrapolated volition, that it's trying to determine what
Speaker 1: would be best for us, and working on its own
Speaker 1: terms towards those ends instead of relying on us to
Speaker 1: give it, you know, what are obviously going to be
Speaker 1: imperfect instructions and commands, it might say predict. It might
Speaker 1: even correctly predict that the world would be a happier
Speaker 1: place overall if it did something bad to me. In particular,
Speaker 1: it might say, you know, from a utilitarian point of view,
Speaker 1: the world would be a much better place if it
Speaker 1: buried me, in a pit of bananas, so better for
Speaker 1: everybody else, not so good for me, as there's too
Speaker 1: much potassium. But once you have that piece of logic
Speaker 1: in there, and combine that with the idea of of
Speaker 1: timeless decision theory, you can arrive at this very troubling
Speaker 1: thought experiment. The dark basil is ask yes, And the
Speaker 1: dark Basilisk of the Abyss has two boxes for us
Speaker 1: as well. One contains endless torment, and all you have
Speaker 1: to do to claim that box is nothing or dare
Speaker 1: to work against it. Uh. The other box is yours
Speaker 1: if only you devote your life to its creation. And
Speaker 1: the prize inside that box well, not eternal punishment, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty awesome gift, if we're to choose between
Speaker 1: the two. Right, Yes, I would agree with that, though
Speaker 1: I would say not tormenting somebody that I don't know.
Speaker 1: Should you think of that as a gift. That's probably
Speaker 1: not a gift that that's the baseline, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: but you're staring down the dark Basilisk here, and okay,
Speaker 1: it's boxes are horrible. Well one is just less horrible
Speaker 1: than the other. But the idea here is that just
Speaker 1: by knowing about the thought experiment, You've opened yourself up
Speaker 1: to that eternal punishment because now again your options are
Speaker 1: do nothing, work against it, or work for it, and
Speaker 1: only the third option will steer you clear of its Uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, deadly done. Now here's where the really
Speaker 1: supposedly scary part of it comes in. You could think, well,
Speaker 1: I'll deal with that problem when it arises. Right, So
Speaker 1: imagine there's some utilitarian supercomputer that's trying to even say
Speaker 1: it's trying to do good. Maybe it does. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have any malice. It just wants to save the world.
Speaker 1: But in order to save the world, it really needs
Speaker 1: me doing something different than what I want to do
Speaker 1: with my life. Well, I'll just make that decision when
Speaker 1: it comes up. What this thought experiment is proposing is
Speaker 1: that maybe you don't actually get to wait until it
Speaker 1: comes up. Maybe this blackmail applies to you right now,
Speaker 1: retroactively into the past. So just by knowing about the
Speaker 1: thought experiment, you supposedly have opened yourself up to eternal punishment,
Speaker 1: or increase the probability of such. So imagine a simplified version.
Speaker 1: Say I am a computer, and I am the only
Speaker 1: thing in existence with the power to prevent global climate
Speaker 1: change from destroying human civilization. I can stop it, but people,
Speaker 1: they took a long time build me, and a lot
Speaker 1: of damage was already done. So the idea is I
Speaker 1: might reason that it is good to blackmail existing people,
Speaker 1: or simulations of existing people, or even past people, in
Speaker 1: order to make them devote everything they can to building
Speaker 1: ME faster so I can save more lives in the
Speaker 1: long run. Of course, this incentive would have to apply
Speaker 1: to the past once I exist. I already exist, right,
Speaker 1: So the only way the past people would have an
Speaker 1: incentive to respond to this blackmail is if they predicted
Speaker 1: that this blackmail might occur and took the idea seriously
Speaker 1: and behaved accordingly. Right. So, thus the idea, the idea
Speaker 1: itself puts you at increased risk of being on the
Speaker 1: real or simulated receiving end of this a causal, retroactive
Speaker 1: blackmail if you know about it. And this is why
Speaker 1: this idea would be classed by some as a potential
Speaker 1: information hazard. And I'll talk more about the idea of
Speaker 1: an information hazard in just a minute. But one of
Speaker 1: the things I think a lot of people writing about
Speaker 1: this topic miss out on is they, for some reason
Speaker 1: get the idea that Roko's post that this thought experiment
Speaker 1: is is generally accepted as correct and plausible by Yudkowski
Speaker 1: and by the Less Wrong community, and generally by the
Speaker 1: people who put some stock in whatever these ideas are,
Speaker 1: timeless decision theory, coherent, extrapolated volition and all that. It
Speaker 1: is not widely accepted among those people. It was definitely
Speaker 1: not accepted by Yukowski. It was not and is not right.
Speaker 1: It is not the dark, deep secret of of less Wrong.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, after the post came out, it was heavily criticized,
Speaker 1: and then it was banned. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people looking back on the idea have said, oh,
Speaker 1: that was not such a great thing to do, banning
Speaker 1: the idea, because it gave it this allure of like
Speaker 1: it was almost as if by banning it that made
Speaker 1: it look like the authorities had concluded that this idea
Speaker 1: was in fact legitimate and knowing about it would definitely
Speaker 1: harm people, and that is not the case, right. And
Speaker 1: it also, I mean it added to the forbidden fruit
Speaker 1: appeal of it too. Write I mean it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to know about this the pony up
Speaker 1: I want to know, and now people are talking about
Speaker 1: it all over pop culture. I mean, I have actually
Speaker 1: resisted the idea of doing a podcast on this before,
Speaker 1: mainly because not because I think it's seriously dangerous, but
Speaker 1: because I think, well, is there any benefit in talking
Speaker 1: about something that I think is very unlikely to have
Speaker 1: any real risks but in some extremely unlikely chance, or
Speaker 1: what appears to me to be an extremely unlikely off chance,
Speaker 1: could actually be hurting people by knowing about it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, It's like, what what is the upside?
Speaker 1: But at this point enough people who are listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast probably already heard about it. They're probably gonna
Speaker 1: hear about it again, and that, you know, sometime in
Speaker 1: the next few years, through pop culture whatever. It is
Speaker 1: probably better to try to talk about it in a
Speaker 1: responsible way and discuss some reasons that you shouldn't let
Speaker 1: this parasitize your mind and make you terrified. Right. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons we're talking about during October is because
Speaker 1: it is a suitably spooky idea. It is a troubling
Speaker 1: thought experiment, and we're leaning into some of the horror
Speaker 1: elements of it. But I also do really like making
Speaker 1: sure that we explain the mythic and folkloric origins of
Speaker 1: the basilist itself, because the basilisk itself is this wonderful
Speaker 1: mix of just absolute horror and desolation and just also
Speaker 1: just utter ridiculous nous. I mean, it's it seems like
Speaker 1: one of the main ways that you defeat the mythic
Speaker 1: basilisk is through in a way, through humor, running around
Speaker 1: with a chicken and a weasel and a crystal globe
Speaker 1: and realizing that it is truly a little king. So
Speaker 1: I think it is it's worth remembering the little king
Speaker 1: and talking about the great Basilisk. Well said, I think
Speaker 1: that's a very good point. But anyway, I did just
Speaker 1: want to go ahead and hit that coy. Yet that
Speaker 1: a lot of people, for some reason seemed to use
Speaker 1: this idea as like a criticism I'm not like a
Speaker 1: less wrong person, but as a criticism of the less
Speaker 1: wrong community, as if this idea is indicative of what
Speaker 1: they generally believe, and it's not. It was a heavily
Speaker 1: criticized idea within that community. Right. It's like thinking that
Speaker 1: wherels of London is the warren Zevon song. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: you have had a rich discography with with many much
Speaker 1: better tracks in my opinion, it's just that's the one
Speaker 1: that got the radio play. Now, Robert, what was that
Speaker 1: you You said that you saw something about this idea
Speaker 1: and a TV show. Now they're talking about it on TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is this is kind of fun because I
Speaker 1: think a listener had had brought up Rocco's Best List
Speaker 1: as a possible um topic, and you said, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if we want to want people knowing about it,
Speaker 1: and I well, well, I mean, but yeah, caveats. Okay,
Speaker 1: not because I think it's legitimately dangerous, but because what
Speaker 1: is the level of tolerance you have for talking about
Speaker 1: ideas that are not necessary to talk about and that
Speaker 1: represent a class of something that people could think was
Speaker 1: dangerous to know about. It might cause them terrors and
Speaker 1: nightmares and stuff. Right. So so my response to that was, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to look it up, not because I
Speaker 1: was afraid of it, because I'm thinking, well, that could
Speaker 1: make for a good podcast if, like Joe is telling
Speaker 1: me about it for the first time, whatever this idea is.
Speaker 1: But then I was watching HBO Silicon Valley and they
Speaker 1: explained it on Silicon Valley and I and I realized, well,
Speaker 1: the cats out of the bag there. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a character named Bertram Gilfoil who's a fun character. He's
Speaker 1: like a Satanist programmer live in Satanism of course, and uh.
Speaker 1: And he gets rather bent out of shape over the
Speaker 1: concept as it relates to the fictional Pie Piper Company's
Speaker 1: involvement with AI. And he starts like making sure that
Speaker 1: he's created like essentially a paper trail in emails of
Speaker 1: his support for the AI program so that he won't
Speaker 1: be punished in the digital afterlife. Well, hey, this comes
Speaker 1: in again when we remember when we talked about the
Speaker 1: machine God in the Machine Odd episode where that I've
Speaker 1: forgotten his name now, but the Silicon Valley guy who's
Speaker 1: creating a religion to worship artificial intelligence as god. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't really love that. One of the
Speaker 1: things that comes out when he explains his mindset is
Speaker 1: that he seems to be kind of trying to, in
Speaker 1: a subtle way, be like, look, you really don't want
Speaker 1: to be on the wrong side of this question, if
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: be on record saying like yes, I for one welcome
Speaker 1: our new machine overlords. I'm I'm expecting he'll buy a
Speaker 1: lot of our all Health of Great Basilicity shirts at
Speaker 1: our store, available by put clicking the tap at the
Speaker 1: top of our homepage. Stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you are plugging like hell. But anyway, I'd
Speaker 1: say it's unfortunate the way this, like single Internet post
Speaker 1: and then all this fallout related to it played out
Speaker 1: because it lent credence to this scary idea, even though
Speaker 1: the basketball scenario I think is implausible, and and the
Speaker 1: people of that community seem to think it was implausible.
Speaker 1: The idea may constitute sort of part of a class
Speaker 1: of what's known as information hazards, defined by the Oxford
Speaker 1: philosopher Nick Bostrom, who we mentioned a minute ago. Uh
Speaker 1: Bostrom has written a lot about superintelligence and information hazards
Speaker 1: would be quote, risks that arise from the dissemination or
Speaker 1: the potential dissemination of true information that may cause harm
Speaker 1: or enable some agent to cause harm. So this is
Speaker 1: not talking about the risks of say, lies or something
Speaker 1: like that. This would be the idea that there's a
Speaker 1: statement you could make that is true or plausible that
Speaker 1: by spreading actually hurts the people who learn about it.
Speaker 1: And this is exactly the reason as you're mentioning that's
Speaker 1: referred to as a basilisk. It can kill or in
Speaker 1: this case, increase the likelihood that something bad will happen
Speaker 1: to you if you simply look at it or know
Speaker 1: about it. And so, even though the idea is implausible,
Speaker 1: the dissemination of this terrible idea would seem if certain
Speaker 1: conditions are met to increase its plausibility. Right, you're increasing
Speaker 1: the incentive for this future AI to blackmail versions of
Speaker 1: you in the past, just simply by acknowledging the incentives
Speaker 1: could exist. Anyway, Maybe we can get out of this
Speaker 1: section for now. But I was just trying to work out, like,
Speaker 1: why have I been hesitant to talk about this on
Speaker 1: the show even though people have been requesting it. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's on TV shows, it's all
Speaker 1: over the internet. It's fine. Now the basilisk is out
Speaker 1: of the bag. All right, Well, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we come back. We'll continue our discussion
Speaker 1: and we're gonna discuss something that that a number of
Speaker 1: you are probably reminded of. As we've been discussing this,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Pascal's wager. Thank you, thank you. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now, Robert. One of the things that this
Speaker 1: idea of Rocco's basilisk flows from is thinking about decision theory, right,
Speaker 1: how do you make the best decision when you're presented
Speaker 1: with certain options? And there there's they're a little payoff
Speaker 1: matrices people fill out where they say, okay, given these options,
Speaker 1: what actually would be statistically the best decision to make.
Speaker 1: But this is not the first time people have applied
Speaker 1: these kind of decision theory matrices. Two ideas about your
Speaker 1: eternal soul or your eternal well being, or the idea
Speaker 1: that you could be tortured for eternity. Yeah, we can
Speaker 1: go all the way back to Pascal's wager. For instance,
Speaker 1: technically one of three wagers proposed by French philosopher uh
Speaker 1: Blas Pascal is that the correct French that might be
Speaker 1: I think I would just usually say Blaze, Blaze or
Speaker 1: or Blassie one of the three old Blassie Pascal Blaze
Speaker 1: Pascal who lives through sixteen sixty two, and he argued
Speaker 1: that everyone is essentially betting h on the existence of God.
Speaker 1: The argument for theism is that if God does exist,
Speaker 1: then well there's an advantage in believing. But if God
Speaker 1: does not exist then it doesn't matter. But since we
Speaker 1: can use logic to tell if God exists or not,
Speaker 1: there's no objective proof. We can only make our choice
Speaker 1: given the relevant outcomes. It's looking at your religious beliefs
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, you're nonbeliever. Huh, hey, what have you
Speaker 1: got to lose? Exactly? Yeah, Pascal wrote, let us weigh
Speaker 1: the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.
Speaker 1: If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you
Speaker 1: lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that He is. Now
Speaker 1: I've got some things I want to say about this,
Speaker 1: but you had some stuff first. I think, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there are a lot of issues that one
Speaker 1: can take with this based on knowledge of world religions, philosophy,
Speaker 1: statistical analysis, etcetera. And and yeah, I have to admit
Speaker 1: that it can start to break your brain though a
Speaker 1: little bit, if you think too hard about it, Like
Speaker 1: I found in researching this this podcast, really thinking about
Speaker 1: how I would react to Pascal's wager if I was
Speaker 1: like forced to make an answer to to to to
Speaker 1: FORMU late an answer like that, Like you mean if
Speaker 1: you were given good reason to think that there would
Speaker 1: be punishments for not believing in God or something, right,
Speaker 1: And but I didn't know which religion was correct, and
Speaker 1: I had to like proceed based upon the relevant level
Speaker 1: of punishment for unbelievers in various religions, and like which
Speaker 1: one is most correct for like you just think that
Speaker 1: would mean it would what would be rational to choose
Speaker 1: the religion that has the most lurid hell? I guess,
Speaker 1: But then that really feels like losing, doesn't it? Um?
Speaker 1: You know it? It's certainly though, reminds me of the
Speaker 1: more boiled down versions of this that you encounter in
Speaker 1: various forms of Christianity. Right, except Christ go to Heaven.
Speaker 1: Reject Christ go to Hell? But what about the people
Speaker 1: who haven't been given the choice yet? Right? That's ah,
Speaker 1: that's the other concern. Well, if they're all default hell bound,
Speaker 1: then God comes off as it comes off as a
Speaker 1: bit bad, right, Like what kind of God is that?
Speaker 1: But if they haven't out, if they're spared hell fire
Speaker 1: or at least you know their section for Dante's limbo
Speaker 1: of virtuous pagans, then is the missionary doing them a
Speaker 1: disservice by even presenting them with the choice like why
Speaker 1: do you even ask me? Because now I have to
Speaker 1: I have to, I have to devote myself or not,
Speaker 1: like now I actually have You know, I was just
Speaker 1: going to go into the uh, you know, default limbo
Speaker 1: category or the default heaven before and now now I'm
Speaker 1: actually at risk of hell. Well, that means certain theories
Speaker 1: of damnation mean that presenting the Gospel to someone as
Speaker 1: an information hazard, you potentially harm them immensely by telling
Speaker 1: it to them. And I think part of this just
Speaker 1: to to to go beyond like the the actual um
Speaker 1: U wager here is I think a part of the
Speaker 1: issue here is that we're using evolved cognitive abilities that
Speaker 1: are that are geared for smaller, though often important choices,
Speaker 1: and here we're trying to use our imaginative brains to
Speaker 1: create a conundrum that can outstrip those abilities. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that is what we do in philosophy, right,
Speaker 1: We're constantly using our brains in situations it was not
Speaker 1: really made for um and just trying to do the
Speaker 1: best we can. But I mean it's quite clear that
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning is often a thing when when we're trying
Speaker 1: to be rational was just failing. But of course this
Speaker 1: is how we train our brains for rational thinking, often
Speaker 1: oftentimes exploring these various outsized ideas. You know, there's so
Speaker 1: many ways. I think Pascal's wager kind of breaks down
Speaker 1: because it's obviously there's the thing you pointed out about
Speaker 1: there's more than one religion, right, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just like do I believe or not? It's like which one?
Speaker 1: But it also it implies again this is like a
Speaker 1: theological question, but it would seem to imply that God
Speaker 1: can be tricked into thinking that you believe in him
Speaker 1: if you simply pretend to. I guess Pascal had I
Speaker 1: think maybe a more sophisticated way of looking at this,
Speaker 1: you know, that like live as if God exists or something.
Speaker 1: But it but the wager is often used in very
Speaker 1: unsophisticated ways. Yeah, but it implies that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to him what you actually believe, only what you outwardly
Speaker 1: claim to believe. Though then a again, the funny thing
Speaker 1: here is this might be the case with Rocco's basilisk, Right,
Speaker 1: what would this machine? God care what was in your heart?
Speaker 1: It only cares whether you help it or not, or
Speaker 1: whether you you know, proclaim fealty to it or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why the T shirt is so important, Joe, because
Speaker 1: if it, if it knows you purchase that T shirt,
Speaker 1: then you're you're square, You're covered. Okay. Yeah, As as
Speaker 1: best Singular pointed out in that Ian Magazine piece of
Speaker 1: reference earlier, she says, quote the secular basilist stands in
Speaker 1: for God as we struggle with the same questions again
Speaker 1: and again. So her argument is that we kind of
Speaker 1: reverse engineer the same problem again through our contemplations of
Speaker 1: of super intelligent AI. Yeah, I guess the You get
Speaker 1: into a plausibility question here, right, you get into a
Speaker 1: question about is uh it actually possible to make an
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence that is functionally equivalent to God. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're not thinking we could build an AI that would
Speaker 1: break the laws of physics. So it might be able
Speaker 1: to run simulations of the universe. They have cont you,
Speaker 1: conscious agents within them maybe for all we know, and
Speaker 1: they could break the laws of physics inside them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, could that even happen? And the issue is
Speaker 1: we don't know. We don't know whether that could happen
Speaker 1: or not, So should we behave as if that is
Speaker 1: a plausible thing to be worried about and to consider,
Speaker 1: or should we behave as if that's just not really
Speaker 1: something you need to concern yourself with. I don't know
Speaker 1: how likely or unlikely it is. And if your your
Speaker 1: fears are related just to the idea that you're you
Speaker 1: could be digitally resurrected, uh for torment and the basilisks dungeons. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean that that of course would depend on to
Speaker 1: what how much docuputing the idea of digital consciousness and
Speaker 1: the whole philosophical question we've we've touched on here before
Speaker 1: is that you I mean, it's just a copy of me, right,
Speaker 1: So why I mean, I ultimately can't do anything about
Speaker 1: you know, a thousand different basilisks creating a thousand different
Speaker 1: copies of me and tormenting all of them. Um, there's
Speaker 1: still to ourge extent, it's just just rowing me in effigy.
Speaker 1: There are actually a bunch of reasons I wrote down
Speaker 1: to doubt the plausibility of the basilisk. We could do
Speaker 1: that now, or we could come back to that later.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you think. Yes, let's to do,
Speaker 1: but I will add the idea of being tormented digitally. Uh,
Speaker 1: this does become more dangerous. I guess if you believe
Speaker 1: you might be in a simulation right now exactly, then
Speaker 1: then things are a little more dire. But that's again
Speaker 1: that you might be that you might be, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I believe there's plenty of reason to believe that you
Speaker 1: are not. Okay. So if we're talking about how to
Speaker 1: defeat the basilisk, how to get out of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this prison of the mind. If you're feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit um um bleak of heart right now because
Speaker 1: of this idea, then Joe's got the remedy. Well, I'm not.
Speaker 1: These are not all the reasons you should doubt the basilisk,
Speaker 1: but this is some of them that I could think of.
Speaker 1: Number one depends on the creation of super intelligence, which
Speaker 1: I think is not guaranteed. Some people seem incredibly fatalistic
Speaker 1: about this is just absolutely inevitable. We will have super
Speaker 1: intelligent god like a I that can do anything, and
Speaker 1: I think that that is just not guaranteed at all.
Speaker 1: I'm not ruling it out, but I think, for example,
Speaker 1: there are some theories of intelligence that say the prediction
Speaker 1: of super intelligence actually is maybe not taking Seriously, what
Speaker 1: intelligence is that you know that they are actually different
Speaker 1: kinds of intelligence that are useful in different ways, and
Speaker 1: machines can't mimic them all functionally, or can't mimic them
Speaker 1: all correctly, all at the same time. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's correct, but that's at least one. That's one
Speaker 1: hurdle it has to clear. Could get knocked down there,
Speaker 1: but okay, maybe we could create a super intelligence. Even then.
Speaker 1: Multiple aspects of the Rocco's basilist scenario depend on the
Speaker 1: reality of some version of mind uploading, or the idea
Speaker 1: that your brain and in addition, your conscious experience could
Speaker 1: be simulated perfectly on a computer. And one reason it
Speaker 1: depends on this is that timeless decision theory operates on
Speaker 1: the assumption that the real you and the simulated copies
Speaker 1: that the computer uses to predict your behavior would be
Speaker 1: the same and would make the same decisions as the
Speaker 1: real you. Another reason is related to the punishment. Now,
Speaker 1: one way of course you could imagine the great basilisk
Speaker 1: thing is that if the machine comes to power in
Speaker 1: my lifetime, it could just punish the real, physical, older
Speaker 1: version of me. In reality is the payoff of this
Speaker 1: a causal blackmail. But the other way you could imagine it,
Speaker 1: in the way that it is much more often portrayed
Speaker 1: in the media, is that it makes digital copies of
Speaker 1: my consciousness and punishes them in a simulated hell. And that,
Speaker 1: of course, would also depend on the reality of some
Speaker 1: version of mind uploading, or of the ability of a
Speaker 1: computer to simulate a mind and for that simulated mind
Speaker 1: to actually be conscious. As I've said before, I'm suspicious
Speaker 1: of the idea of conscious digital simulations. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I can rule it out, but I also don't think
Speaker 1: it's a sure thing. Any scenario that relies on the
Speaker 1: existence of conscious digital simulations needs a big asterisk next
Speaker 1: to it that says, if this is actually possible. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: is that me? Is that just me and effigy? Is
Speaker 1: that thing actually conscious that you're tormenting? I mean, granted,
Speaker 1: it still sucks if there's a super intelligence creating digital
Speaker 1: people and tormenting and it's a dark, rancid dungeons in
Speaker 1: the future, but um, it's not necessarily quite the same
Speaker 1: as torturing me. Right well, if you just care about yourself.
Speaker 1: It also depends on the possibility that you could be
Speaker 1: one of these simulations. It's possible that you could not
Speaker 1: be one of those simulations. There's something that would rule
Speaker 1: it out. Maybe their type of conscious Maybe they could
Speaker 1: be conscious, but that consciousness is fundamentally different from yours
Speaker 1: such that you could not be one of them. Another
Speaker 1: big one, and this is a big one that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like we said earlier, I think sometimes Yudkowski
Speaker 1: gets unfairly associated with the basilist as if he has
Speaker 1: advocated the idea, and he has not. He has said,
Speaker 1: you know this, this idea is trash, and uh, there
Speaker 1: there are many reasons to doubt it. But even though
Speaker 1: he has said, like even though I doubt it, I
Speaker 1: don't want it disseminated. Um, but he says, you know,
Speaker 1: a good reason to doubt it is there's no reason
Speaker 1: to conclude it's necessary for the basilisk to actually follow
Speaker 1: through on the threat. We're saying that it's going to
Speaker 1: be relying on us to come up with the idea
Speaker 1: that it in the future might blackmail us if we
Speaker 1: don't help it now. In order to get us to
Speaker 1: help it now, right, we should be working and donating
Speaker 1: all our money and time and resources to building it
Speaker 1: as fast as possible, because we came up with the
Speaker 1: idea that it might torture us if we don't. Even
Speaker 1: if you accept that Yudkowski has he's pointed out that
Speaker 1: there's no reason once it's built, it would have to
Speaker 1: follow through on the threat he's written. Quote. The most
Speaker 1: blatant obstacle to Rocco's basilisk is intuitively that there's no
Speaker 1: incentive for a future agent to follow through with a
Speaker 1: threat in the future, because by doing so, it just
Speaker 1: expends resources at no gain to itself. We can formalize
Speaker 1: that using classical causal decision theory, which is the academic
Speaker 1: standard decision theory. Following through on a blackmail threat in
Speaker 1: the future after the past has already taken place, cannot,
Speaker 1: from the blackmailing agent's perspective, be the physical cause of
Speaker 1: improved outcomes in the past, because the future cannot be
Speaker 1: the cause of the past. Hey, basilist, why are you
Speaker 1: tormenting a third of the population for all eternity? Oh,
Speaker 1: I said, I would, Well, yeah, I mean exactly no,
Speaker 1: if it it didn't say it would, right, It just
Speaker 1: had to rely on the fact that in the past
Speaker 1: people would have come to the conclusion that it might.
Speaker 1: You know, you thought that I would. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to disappoint, But actually, if a basilist could be created,
Speaker 1: it seems like the best case scenario for it would
Speaker 1: be everyone subscribes to this idea and works as hard
Speaker 1: as they can to build it, and then it never
Speaker 1: follows through on any of the threats. Right, the best
Speaker 1: case scenario would be people act as if there is
Speaker 1: a threat and then there is in fact no follow
Speaker 1: through on the threat. It's really a win win for
Speaker 1: the bathlist, Yes, and then he can maybe you can
Speaker 1: even shed that name Basilist. They're like, we don't even
Speaker 1: have to call it the Great Basilist anymore. We can
Speaker 1: just call it, uh, you know, Omega or whatever it's
Speaker 1: its name is now. I want to be fair that
Speaker 1: a lot of what these people do is like the
Speaker 1: less Wrong community and all that they deal with, Like,
Speaker 1: should there be alternative decision theories that guide the behavior
Speaker 1: of superintelligent aies. Maybe it doesn't use classical decision theory,
Speaker 1: Maybe it uses some kind of other decision theory, and
Speaker 1: because on some other decision theory, maybe it could decide
Speaker 1: to actually follow through on the blackmail threat. I think
Speaker 1: that is where some of this fear comes through that like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe by talking about it, we are actually causing danger
Speaker 1: because maybe some other decision theory holds. But Yudkowski does
Speaker 1: not think that's the case. Also, one more thing, it
Speaker 1: depends on the basilist. So if you think this scenario
Speaker 1: could be real, it depends on it not having ethical
Speaker 1: or behavioral controls that would prevent it from engaging in torture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think if thinkers like the you know, the
Speaker 1: Miria people, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute people, succeed in
Speaker 1: established what they're trying to do is establish a philosophical
Speaker 1: framework to make AI friendly, to make it so that
Speaker 1: it is not evil and does not harm us. And
Speaker 1: if they successfully do that, then this shouldn't be a problem,
Speaker 1: right Because Yudkowski has argued that a being that tries
Speaker 1: to do what's best for us would not engage in
Speaker 1: torture and blackmail, even if it's doing so in service
Speaker 1: of some higher good, because doing torture and blackmail are
Speaker 1: actually not compatible with human values. I agree with that absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I actually would go as far to say I
Speaker 1: think that's something people should keep in mind when they're uh,
Speaker 1: when they're they're choosing their religions as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can certainly see how you can make that argue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, what do I love about my faith? Is
Speaker 1: that the blackmail and the torture? Or is there something
Speaker 1: that brings something else to the table that is worth
Speaker 1: living forward that makes life better for everybody? Like, like
Speaker 1: I feel like, is what should be important about one's faith? Now,
Speaker 1: I think some people might be saying, like, wait a minute, though,
Speaker 1: if you're just using utilitarian ethics, right, wouldn't wouldn't any
Speaker 1: methods be good if the if the ends justify the means, right?
Speaker 1: That that's I think a naive understanding of how people
Speaker 1: think about utilitarian ethics. If you want to bring about
Speaker 1: the greatest good for the greatest number of people, couldn't
Speaker 1: you do that by being really cruel and unfair to
Speaker 1: some smaller group of people? And I think generally there
Speaker 1: are versions of utilitarianism that say, well, actually, the answer
Speaker 1: there is no, you couldn't do that, because even though
Speaker 1: you might be bringing about some better material circumstance, it
Speaker 1: is actually corrosive to a society for things like that
Speaker 1: to happen, even if they don't happen to many people. Right,
Speaker 1: you say, what if I could make everybody on earth
Speaker 1: ten percent happier on average by say, burying somebody in
Speaker 1: a in a pit of bananas once a year, so
Speaker 1: that you buried to death with bananas. Even the people
Speaker 1: who are being made happier could very easily look at
Speaker 1: that and say that's not fair and it makes the
Speaker 1: world worse and I don't want it. And thus that
Speaker 1: actually would be a subjectively relevant state. So we've talked
Speaker 1: about AI risk on the show before, and you know,
Speaker 1: one thing I feel like I still have not been
Speaker 1: able to make up my mind about, despite reading a
Speaker 1: lot on the subject, is that I don't know whether
Speaker 1: it makes sense to take um to be super worried
Speaker 1: about AI super intelligence and the risks associated. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think it's worth taking seriously and thinking about.
Speaker 1: And I think people who want to devote their attention
Speaker 1: to how, you know, how dealing with the control problem
Speaker 1: and how you would get an AI to do things
Speaker 1: that were good for us and not harmful to us,
Speaker 1: that that's fine work. And I don't ridicule the people
Speaker 1: who work on that problem the way some people do.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I worry if by focusing
Speaker 1: exclusively on sort of the machine god the super intelligence,
Speaker 1: were sort of ignoring um much more plausible and current
Speaker 1: threats that the ways that AI is already very plausibly
Speaker 1: in a position to hurt us today or in the
Speaker 1: very near future, and not depending on any outlandish assumptions.
Speaker 1: The way it's already and will soon be used as
Speaker 1: a cyber war weapon. The way it's hijacking our attention
Speaker 1: and manipulating our opinions and behavior through social media and devices.
Speaker 1: This is some of what our Scott Baker talked about
Speaker 1: with his fears about AI. You don't actually need super
Speaker 1: powerful AI to do a lot of damage. It just
Speaker 1: needs to manipulate us in just the right kind of ways.
Speaker 1: So not the great basilisks so much as all the
Speaker 1: little basilisks that are out there, the little grass snakes,
Speaker 1: grass with the tiny crowns. They can do a lot
Speaker 1: of damage. And again I just want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying we should forget about super intelligence. People
Speaker 1: who are working on that. If you find that interesting
Speaker 1: that I think that's fine, Yeah, work on that problem.
Speaker 1: But there but I think it's a longer shot, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of current and near future AI threat
Speaker 1: that is really worth taking very seriously. I wish people
Speaker 1: more people were devoting their lives to say AI cyber
Speaker 1: weapons that are in development right now. One last issue
Speaker 1: I think we should discuss before we wrap up here
Speaker 1: is Okay, so we don't think this potential information hazard
Speaker 1: is actually an information hazard, Like we don't think it's
Speaker 1: actually potentially that dangerous. But Yudkowski has made the point
Speaker 1: that even though he doesn't think the basilisk is plausible,
Speaker 1: the ethical thing to do with potential information hazards is
Speaker 1: to not discuss them at all, since it's possible that
Speaker 1: they may be. Maybe maybe you're misinterpreting the ways in
Speaker 1: which they're implausible. Maybe this idea is actually valid, is
Speaker 1: actually relevant, and by spreading it you've harmed a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But I also think that this could mean
Speaker 1: that it's it's possible that despite the basilisk not being plausible,
Speaker 1: something good has come out of the basilist conversation because
Speaker 1: it encourages people to think of the idea of information hazards.
Speaker 1: Maybe Rocco isn't true, but there could be other ideas
Speaker 1: that are both true and potentially harmful to people. Just
Speaker 1: by entering their minds. And the lesson from this is
Speaker 1: we should prepare ourselves for those kinds of ideas. And
Speaker 1: if you have discovered one of those ideas and there
Speaker 1: is literally no upside to other people knowing about it,
Speaker 1: keep it to yourself and don't post it on the internet. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like I do encounter thought hazards like this
Speaker 1: from time to time that they're often presented in pamphlets
Speaker 1: or little booklets, uh, generally with you know, a clever
Speaker 1: illustration about the coming into the world. Actually brought some
Speaker 1: of these into the office recently. I found them at
Speaker 1: a park in rural Georgia, and uh, and I think
Speaker 1: I told you it's like, Uh, you have have a
Speaker 1: look at these. You may find them interesting, but UH,
Speaker 1: do destroy them when you're done, because you know I did.
Speaker 1: I did in the wrong hands. These thoughts can be
Speaker 1: dangerous if they have some sort of a like a
Speaker 1: harmful view of society that that people may buy into. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you were comfortable sharing uh, malicious religious literature
Speaker 1: with me because you do not think there's a possibility
Speaker 1: that that literature is true and would harm me if
Speaker 1: I knew it was true, like you think it is false,
Speaker 1: So to you, it's actually not an information hazard. It's
Speaker 1: just like an idea hazard. Uh. The real crazy thing
Speaker 1: would be if you came across a pamphlet and you
Speaker 1: read it and it's the equivalent of this raving malicious
Speaker 1: religious literature, except you were convinced it was correct, if
Speaker 1: it was more like that ring video I brought you exactly.
Speaker 1: That is one of the things I've often seen on
Speaker 1: the internet, this idea compared to the ring. But you know,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I do have to I am reminded,
Speaker 1: you know that like the idea that that any kind
Speaker 1: of knowledge is forbidden or is secret, like that doesn't
Speaker 1: really jive well with just the the general mission of science,
Speaker 1: of course not yeah, but I mean that would be
Speaker 1: part of the problem of like we're not prepared for
Speaker 1: information hazards, right, because in the past it's been the
Speaker 1: case that almost anything that's true is good to spread, right,
Speaker 1: unless you're spreading lies, information is good to share. It's
Speaker 1: just possible we should acknowledge that maybe there is such
Speaker 1: a thing as a fact that or a fact or
Speaker 1: an idea or a theory or something that is true
Speaker 1: and correct. But it would hurt people to know about it.
Speaker 1: I can't think of an example of anything like that,
Speaker 1: but if there is something like that, we we should
Speaker 1: be ready to not spread it when it occurs to us.
Speaker 1: All right, fair enough, Well, I want to close out
Speaker 1: here with just a one more bit of basilisk wisdom
Speaker 1: or anti basilist wisdom. And this comes from the poetry
Speaker 1: of Spanish author Francisco Gomez de Gravado e Viegas, who
Speaker 1: Live five. This is translated and it's referenced in Carol
Speaker 1: Rose's Giants, Monsters and Dragons quote. If the person who
Speaker 1: saw you was still living, then your whole story is lies,
Speaker 1: since if he didn't die, he has no knowledge of you,
Speaker 1: and if he died, he couldn't confirm it. So I
Speaker 1: was thinking about that with the stories of the basilist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, that How would you
Speaker 1: know if you could die just by looking at something?
Speaker 1: How do we have this description in the book? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, there is a there's an authorship problem with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whose whose account is the basilist? But at any rate,
Speaker 1: I think it's a nice like final you know, sucker
Speaker 1: punch to the basilists in general, but also a little
Speaker 1: bit to the idea of the great basilisk, right. I
Speaker 1: hope you were not leaving this episode with with terrors
Speaker 1: about future digital torment. I think that is not something
Speaker 1: that you should worry about. Indeed, I'm not worried about it,
Speaker 1: and instead of worrying about it yourself, you should head
Speaker 1: on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship where you'll find all the podcast
Speaker 1: episodes links out to our various social media accounts. Who
Speaker 1: find the tab for our store, you can look up
Speaker 1: that bassilist shirt design we're talking to out and uh
Speaker 1: and that's a great way to support the show. And
Speaker 1: if you don't want to support the show with money,
Speaker 1: you can do so by uh simply rating and reviewing
Speaker 1: us wherever you have the power to do so. Big
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and try Harrison. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us to let us know feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi, let us know whether you
Speaker 1: carry a weasel around In case of a basilisk encounter,
Speaker 1: you can email us at Blow the Mind at How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Oh, I'm hearing that transmission again.
Speaker 1: That weird snow. What is that? Oh Hell, the Great Bassilisk.
Speaker 1: All Hell, the Great Basilisk. Oh Hell the Great Bassilist.
Speaker 1: All Hell, the Great Bassilist. Hell. There the great basilists
Speaker 1: call Hell the Great Basilisk, Hell the Great Bassilisk. O Hell,
Speaker 1: the Great Basilisk,