Roko's Basilisk only is scary if you subscribe to their version of utilitarianism, which is purist, but also is a weird zero-sum version. Like, one of them wrote an essay that, if you could torture someone for 50 years, and that would make nobody ever have dust in their eyes again, you should torture the guy, because if you quantify the suffering of the guy, it's still less than the amount of suffering every subsequent person will feel from having dust in their eyes.

But also, even if you do subscribe to that, it doesn't make sense, because in this hypothetical, the Basilisk has already been created, so torturing everyone would serve no utilitarian purpose whatsoever.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Like, one of them wrote an essay that, if you could torture someone for 50 years, and that would make nobody ever have dust in their eyes again, you should torture the guy, because if you quantify the suffering of the guy, it's still less than the amount of suffering every subsequent person will feel from having dust in their eyes.

my-hero "It's fine for billionaires like me to grind workers into dust today because my actions will one day lead mankind to a glorious future where we upload our brains into robots or something and you can have unlimited hair plugs"

[–] CthulhusIntern@hexbear.net 7 points 3 weeks ago

Basically, yeah. There's a reason that dictator types and wannabe dictator types love utilitarianism so much. They can use it to justify literally anything.

[–] GnastyGnuts@hexbear.net 6 points 3 weeks ago

It's the world's shittiest people bending themselves into pretzels to justify shit everybody else intuitively understands is fucked up.