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   Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 08:55:35 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

   I get it's extremely problematic, but it's hard for me to look at the particular form that AI hype is taking and *not* make an analogy to drinking the Kool-Aid. There's a genuine cult-like form that this is taking, that's quite distinct from cryptoscams and the metaverse hype.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 08:55:31 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade i think of it as less like a god in the traditional sense and more like a paperclip maximizer, except instead of turning the world into paperclips it turns your brain into paperclips

     you could call it moloch, perhaps, but that's not my aesthetic

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 08:55:33 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     Anyway, it genuinely scares me that a cult-like movement has captured and enclosed large swaths of human communication, already hurting a hell of a lot of people in the process. Whatever happens from here, I can't escape the feeling that it's going to get far weirder still.

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 08:55:34 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     I don't think most web3 cranks looked at Bitcoin and thought "ah, yes, I've found the technogod," but that's exactly what's encoded in Roko's Basilisk and other kinds of AI apologetics.

     It kind of gets to the core of what's human to understand that the mystery box that convincingly mimics human speech *isn't* actually human or even intelligent. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that there's some very weird shit to be found in those philosophical backwaters.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 08:56:13 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade naturally, the only brain-matter-to-paperclips maximizer that would _actually work_ in practice is the one where the people involved actively want to undergo the procedure and convince others

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 08:57:49 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade we, collectively (society) will survive this, while we (you and me) might not. but i think this strain has to be self-limiting; if only because the final phenotype isn't very adapted to anything besides podcasts

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:02:22 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade i don't even think roko's basilisk is anything but a symptom. like, for this idea to take hold in your mind it already has to be very pliable and detached from material things

     i'm, regretfully, familiar with that state. it doesn't _start_ with a fairy tale

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:02:23 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     @whitequark Yeah, it's tricky to exactly characterize. Roko's Basilisk is pretty much Pascal's Wager, so I don't think the comparison to a god is wrong, exactly, but it's also by necessity somewhat imprecise.

     There's definitely a belief system there, and an absolutely bizarre one at that, but it's a bit outside the normal taxonomies of belief that tend to get used in casual conversation.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:02:50 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade i do think it would be incredibly funny if the whole "genai will solve climate change" comes to be true through the means of "the aftereffects of something akin to mass psychosis cripples civilization for a few years or decades"

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:02:51 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     @whitequark Agreed there. I don't think there's any sense in which this strain can meaningfully create *stuff* or sustain its own needs, so it will have to self-limit even just from a basic "who's going to grow the food" kind of analysis.

     Similarly, totally agreed that that doesn't mean any particular individual or even community will survive that self-limiting asymptote.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:05:46 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade oh, i didn't mean to dispute the similarity with pascal's wager so much as concur and examine what would make one end up with such a belief system rooted so deeply

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:05:47 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     @whitequark Agreed, though I think that's a commonality with Pascal's Wager, rather than a distinction from. That thought experiment also makes zero sense if you're not already somewhat primed in classical Christian apologetics.

     It's a point well-taken, though, that the Basilisk is a symptom and not the originating belief system.

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:06:57 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     • ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     @whitequark Capitalism more or less collapsing because the owners of capital get stuck on some incredibly counterproductive ideas and use their disproportionate media reach to evangelize those ideas... yeah, that is a bloody amusing way of preserving humanity-as-a-species, if grim and bleak in equal measure.

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     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ (whitequark@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 07-Jul-2025 09:06:57 JST ✧✦Catherine✦✧

     in reply to

     @xgranade "grim and bleak in equal measure" is how every girl i've liked to date wsa. i think i'll get along with this future