I think Roko posting the thing was ok. It was in the same class of things being discussed at the time, like Rolf Nelson’s AI deterrence and so on. Eliezer overreacted and caused a Streisand effect, without it only a few of us would even remember it today.
Well, my opinion is the opposite.
Trying to invent an infohazard and then publishing it… is stupid if you believe it, and an asshole move even if you don’t. And perhaps this was destined to happen sooner or later, but as the article says, just because a slippery slope to hell exists, you don’t need to jump on it enthusiastically.
“You should never delete a controversial comment on your own blog” seems like a norm that did not exist before the basilisk, and was invented afterwards as a rationalization. “Streisand effect” refers to an attempt to remove content from other spaces—it would be an appropriate term if e.g. Roko published his thought experiments on Twitter, and then Eliezer tried to get his Twitter account banned.
Moderating your own blog was—and still is—a perfectly normal thing to do. For example, Scott Alexander deleted dozens of comments on his blog, and nothing remotely similar happened. What Eliezer overdid was nuking the whole thread… which made a nice screenshot for Rational Wiki.
Another important step in the causal chain was that David Gerard happened to be an administrator of both Rational Wiki and Wikipedia, and abused his power. Because without a decade of David’s effort, Roko’s basilisk would probably still remain an obscure thing that fewer than dozen people care about. Please let’s never leave his name unconnected to this topic—he dedicated to it way more time than Roko and Eliezer combined, so his efforts should be publicly acknowledged.
“You should never delete a controversial comment on your own blog” seems like a norm that did not exist before the basilisk, and was invented afterwards as a rationalization. “Streisand effect” refers to an attempt to remove content from other spaces—it would be an appropriate term if e.g. Roko published his thought experiments on Twitter, and then Eliezer tried to get his Twitter account banned.
To correct the record, LW wasn’t Eliezer’s personal blog at that point. It was a community blogging site / forum, and Roko’s post was a top-level post, not a comment. The Wikipedia page on Streisand Effect cites “Twitter CEO Elon Musk banned the Twitter account @elonjet” as an example, which seems pretty comparable to Eliezer’s action.
(I deleted the first version of this comment, in order to confirm my memory that it was a top level post, not a comment on one of Eliezer’s posts, but yeah, it’s documented in the LW wiki.)
Well, my opinion is the opposite.
Trying to invent an infohazard and then publishing it… is stupid if you believe it, and an asshole move even if you don’t. And perhaps this was destined to happen sooner or later, but as the article says, just because a slippery slope to hell exists, you don’t need to jump on it enthusiastically.
“You should never delete a controversial comment on your own blog” seems like a norm that did not exist before the basilisk, and was invented afterwards as a rationalization. “Streisand effect” refers to an attempt to remove content from other spaces—it would be an appropriate term if e.g. Roko published his thought experiments on Twitter, and then Eliezer tried to get his Twitter account banned.
Moderating your own blog was—and still is—a perfectly normal thing to do. For example, Scott Alexander deleted dozens of comments on his blog, and nothing remotely similar happened. What Eliezer overdid was nuking the whole thread… which made a nice screenshot for Rational Wiki.
Another important step in the causal chain was that David Gerard happened to be an administrator of both Rational Wiki and Wikipedia, and abused his power. Because without a decade of David’s effort, Roko’s basilisk would probably still remain an obscure thing that fewer than dozen people care about. Please let’s never leave his name unconnected to this topic—he dedicated to it way more time than Roko and Eliezer combined, so his efforts should be publicly acknowledged.
To correct the record, LW wasn’t Eliezer’s personal blog at that point. It was a community blogging site / forum, and Roko’s post was a top-level post, not a comment. The Wikipedia page on Streisand Effect cites “Twitter CEO Elon Musk banned the Twitter account @elonjet” as an example, which seems pretty comparable to Eliezer’s action.
(I deleted the first version of this comment, in order to confirm my memory that it was a top level post, not a comment on one of Eliezer’s posts, but yeah, it’s documented in the LW wiki.)