So while reading this article about the logical conundrum known as “Roko’s Basilisk,” I started thinking “you know, this kinda reminds me of the forbidden knowledge that Lovecraft wrote about.” And then the author of the article mentions that while he was working on the article, *he* thought it sounded Lovecraftian. So… huzzah, I guess.

The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time

So, the idea of Roko’s Basilisk is this: assume that the Simulation Hypothesis is correct. We don’t live in the *actual* really real world, but instead in a simulated universe. Everything you see and know is part of a vast computer program. Now, assume that you are presented with two choices… devote your (simulated) life to helping that future advanced computer system needed for the simulation come to pass… of don’t help it, and irritate the hell out of the computer, and it will send you to simulated hell for eternal torment. This option is only put before those people predisposed to believing that they are in the simulation. Additionally, if you are in fact in the simulation, just *thinking* about Roko’s Basilisk will increase the chances of it coming to pass.

The end result apparently was… when the feller Roko posted his thought about it in 2010 on the LessWrong forum, he was communicating it directly to *exactly* the sort of people predisposed to believing that it could be real. Just the *thought* of the Basilisk was enough to have apparently driven some of them buggo with the realization that they were facing perpetual punishment in computer Hell. The moderator of the forum deleted the post and the subsequent discussion because giving the hypothetical evil AI god that’s running the universe ideas like this is just Not A Good Idea.

To me this kinda reads like an computer-era updating of the Necronomicon. Just reading the damned thing could make Unimaginable Horrors From Beyond take an interest in you, which would generally be considered something of a Terribly Bad Idea.

So, you know… huzzah, I guess.