x.com/alexandrosM/status/2039828857596047666
1 correction found
Yudkowsky does not believe that driving people mad is reason to stop your efforts
This is contradicted by Yudkowsky’s own recorded statements. In the Roko’s Basilisk episode, he explicitly banned discussion in part to avoid giving people “horrible nightmares” and later said exposing people to such infohazards was “a crappy thing to do.”
Full reasoning
The post makes a broad claim about Yudkowsky's beliefs, but his own documented comments point the other way.
A primary-source compilation on LessWrong quotes Yudkowsky's response to the original Roko's Basilisk post. In that response, he wrote that he was "banning this post so that it doesn't (a) give people horrible nightmares". The same LessWrong page also quotes his later 2014 explanation that "you did not spread potential information hazards because it would be a crappy thing to do to someone" and that "shoving it in people's faces seemed like a fundamentally crap thing to do because there was no upside."
Those are direct statements that psychologically harming people is a reason to stop, delete, or avoid spreading an idea. So the categorical claim that he "does not believe that driving people mad is reason to stop your efforts" is inaccurate.
This correction is narrow: it does not resolve broader arguments about Yudkowsky's overall body of work or whether any other campaigns of his have harmed people. It only addresses the specific claim about what he believes in principle, and on that point his own words contradict the post.
1 source
- Roko's Basilisk - LessWrong
The page quotes Yudkowsky saying he was 'banning this post so that it doesn't (a) give people horrible nightmares' and later that 'you did not spread potential information hazards because it would be a crappy thing to do to someone.'