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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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I thought part of the schtick is that according to the rationalist theory of mind, a simulated version of you suffering is exactly the same as the real you suffering. This relies on their various other philosophical claims about the nature of consciousness, but if you believe this then empathy doesn't have to be a concern.
The key thing is that the basilisk makes a million billion digibidilion copies of you to torture, and because you know statistics you know that there's almost no chance you're the real you and not a torture copy.
Yeah for some reason they never covered that in the stats lectures
I'm the torture copy and so is my wife
Well shit
I basilisk's wager was framed like that, that you can't know if you are already living in the torture sim with the basilisk silently judging you, it would be way more compelling that the actual "you are ontologically identical with any software that simulates you at a high enough level even way after the fact because [preposterous transhumanist motivated reasoning]".
But that isn't a proper copy, as in this simulated reality there is no basilisk (if there is the basilisk also needs to simulate basilisks, and all the way down), so finding out if you are a copy is easy. If it is impossible to build an AGI in our reality, we are in the sim.
Wait...
Yeah you are correct, im mismatching longtermism with transhumanist digital immortality, which is why I called it a conspiracy theory, it being wrong and all that. (Even if I do think empathy for perfect copies of yourself is a thing not everyone might have).