In 2010 on LessWrong forum, a user named Roko posited a thought experiment. He proposed that in a hypothetical future an all-powerful super-intelligent AI could retrospectively punish anyone who in the present time did not do everything in …This post was STUPID (ibid.).[^1]
The post was subsequently removed, and all talk of the Basilisk was
banned from the website for over five years. But the Basilisk had already
wreaked havoc among the forum’s readers many of whom had starte…The term hyperstition was coined by Warwick University’s Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit (CCRU) and continues to be one of the major concepts of the Accelerationist movement. A portmanteau of ‘hyper’ and ‘superstition’, drawing on the Bau…
Roko
other · 3 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Roko is known only as the anonymous LessWrong forum user who introduced the "Roko's Basilisk" thought experiment in 2010, a speculative scenario wherein a superintelligent AI might punish those who failed to assist its creation. The readings use this largely to document how speculative AI anxiety circulates through online communities and generates psychological effects (hyperstition), rather than to endorse the argument itself—indeed, one excerpt explicitly dismisses the post as stupid. Roko's thought experiment thus functions as a case study in how AI-centric narratives can become self-fulfilling through belief and behavior, a concept central to understanding accelerationism and the cultural feedback loops between technology discourse and collective action.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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