It might be useful to feature a page containing what we, you know, actually think about the basilisk idea. Although the rationalwiki page seems to be pretty solidly on top of google search, we might catch a couple people looking for the source.
If any XKCD readers are here: Welcome! I assume you've already googled what "Roko's Basilisk" is. For a better idea of what's going on with this idea, see Eliezer's comment on the xkcd thread (linked in Emile's comment), or his earlier response here.
I'm actually grateful for having heard about that Basilisk story, because it helped me see Eliezer Yudkowsky is actually human. This may seem stupid, but for quite a while, I idealized him to an unhealthy degree. Now he's still my favorite writer in the history of ever and I trust his judgement way over my own, but I'm able (with some System 2 effort) to disagree with him on specific points.
I can't think I'm entirely alone in this, either. With the plethora of saints and gurus who are about, it does seem evident that human (especially male) psychology has a "mindless follower switch" that just suspends all doubt about the judgement of agents who are beyond some threshold of perceived competence.
Of course such a switch makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective, but it is still a fallible heuristic, and I'm glad to have become aware of it - and the Basilisk helped me get there. So thanks Roko!
Small update: Eliezer's response on reddit's r/xkcd plus child comments were deleted by mods.
Thread removed.
Rule 3 - Be nice. Do not post for the purpose of being intentionally inflammatory or antagonistic.
The XKCD made no mention of RW, and there is no reason to bring your personal vendetta against it into this subreddit.
I have also nuked most of the child comments for varying degrees of Rule 3 violations.
You can either look at Eliezer's reddit account or this pastebin to see what was deleted. Someone else probably has a better organised archive.
We have some good resources on AI boxing, and the more serious thinking that the comic touches on. Can we promote some of the more accessible articles on the subject?
It definitely wouldn't hurt to emphasize our connection to MIRI.
(Yes, yes, the basilisk. But check out these awesome math problems.)
In the real world, humans eat "basilisks" for breakfast. That's why the SCP Foundation is an entertainment site, not a real thing.
But it's not nice to make people read horror stories when they don't want to.
Edited to add:
Quite a lot of cosmic-horror fiction poses the idea that awareness of some awful truth is harmful to the knower. This is distinct from the motif of harmful sensation; it isn't seeing something, but drawing a particular conclusion that is the harmful factor.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
As much as I'm a regular xkcd reader, I'm mildly annoyed with this strip, because I imagine lots of people will be exposed to the idea of the AI-box experiment for the first time through it, and they'll get this exposure together with an unimportant, extremely speculative idea that they're helpfully informed you're meant to make fun of. Like, why even bring the basilisk up? What % of xkcd readers will even know what it is?
If the strip was also clever or funny, I'd see the point, but as it's not, I don't.
The explainxkcd.com explanation of the comic is quite balanced and readable.
It is, although I found this
"People who aren't familiar with Derren Brown or other expert human-persuaders sometimes think this must have been very difficult for Yudkowsky to do or that there must have been some sort of special trick involved,"
amusing, as Derren Brown is a magician. When Derren Brown accomplishes a feat of amazing human psychology, he is usually just cleverly disguising a magic trick.
(ok, I deleted my duplicate post then)
Also worth mentioning: the Forum thread, in which Eliezer chimes in.
So I'm going to say this here rather than anywhere else, but I think Eliezer's approach to this has been completely wrong headed. His response has always come tinged with a hint of outrage and upset. He may even be right to be that upset and angry about the internet's reaction to this, but I don't think it looks good! From a PR perspective, I would personally stick with an amused tone. Something like:
"Hi, Eliezer here. Yeah, that whole thing was kind of a mess! I over-reacted, everyone else over-reacted to my over-reaction... just urgh. To clear things up, no, I didn't take the whole basilisk thing seriously, but some members did and got upset about it, I got upset, it all got a bit messy. It wasn't my or anyone else's best day, but we all have bad moments on the internet. Sadly the thing about being moderately internet famous is your silly over reactions get captured in carbonite forever! I have done/ written lots of more sensible things since then, which you can check out over at less wrong :)"
Obviously not exactly that, but I think that kind of tone would come across a lot more persuasively than the angry hectoring tone currently adopted whenever this subject comes up.