@futurebird
Social capital is a term originating in sociology and recognized by economics since the late 1990s. Facebook was born in 2004. Since it is a form of capital that resides in, or better yet, **among** individuals, its appropriation by large companies presented certain problems for conventional methods, which social media have come to solve.
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@futurebird I am personally a huge fan of Roko's Basilisk as it is an accurate way to tell if the person you're talking to is an incurious muppet with a fantasy of complying in advance.

@trenchworms I mean 100% yes but otoh every time I'm reminded of Roko's Basilisk I'm filled with utter rage at how stupid you'd have to be to come up with such internally inconsistent, cherry-picked ad absurdum nonsense. Leave alone that "otherwise benevolent" is doing a lot of work here but ffs what if an AI punishes everyone who *did* contribute to its development? What if dolphins take over and punish everyone who ate sushi? Like, come on, Roko, just live your life mate.

@futurebird

@zeborah @trenchworms @futurebird I had to look that one up. Wow it's stupid.

It falls apart at every level. Like the basic premise seems to be that it would reverse punish people who didn't help it in the past because this would incentivize helping it, but that only applies after it exists, so it can't actually incentivize anything in the past before it exists. It's a total non-sequitur. It can't affect the past from the present. It can only affect the future from the present... In fact, the incentive this produces is the opposite of the claim. It makes you want to work to prevent it.

Either people are trying too hard to get meta with this and confusing themselves or they're just plain not that smart to begin with and think it makes them sound smarter than they are.

@nazokiyoubinbou @zeborah @trenchworms

Roko's Basilisk is just Pascal's Wager in a "Spirit Halloween" "Cyber Punk" (Neo from the Matrix) costume.

Basically Pascal's Wager but like this:

TikTok - Make Your Day

(www.tiktok.com)

@futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou @zeborah @trenchworms I would also draw a parallel to the "what will you tell your grandchildren when they ask what you did about X?" line that occasionally pops up. It's a mechanism for manipulating people by tricking them into imagining a hypothetical future being whose opinion they would (for widely varying reasons) care about, and then framing that hypothetical being as taking whatever position the manipulator is trying to manipulate you into taking.

There's a reason I never, ever, ever use that line, even when a lot of people who otherwise agree with me do.

@celesteh

You want a real conspiracy? Here is mine: Why do theories as sophomoric as "dead internet theory" and "NPC theory" or "simulation theory" or "Roko's basilisk" get *any* oxygen at all in media?

These are half-baked shower-thoughts at best.

But they are also concepts that teach helplessness and self-isolation.

If you were the kind of person who feared the internet as a tool for grass roots organizing "dead internet theory" would make all would be activists dead in the water.

@futurebird @celesteh
This all ties in to a topic I've diatribed about before. To try sum up:

People buy into asinine conspiracies because:

1) The crisis of epistemology: It is getting tougher to know what sources to trust, or have internal tools to discern who to trust.

2) When you feel ignorant and powerless, latching onto ideas that seem hidden & deep, makes you feel empowered and in-the-know in ways others aren't. Even if you can't do anything, you now have "knowledge" others lack.

@PTR_K @celesteh

I think there is another much more minor factor ... something like an inability to find healthy outlets for creative expression. Telling stories is something that a lot of people, maybe even most people need to do. But mostly there aren't many chances to make up your own stories to help you process the world you just have to sit and listen to mass media.

Some people are into conspiracies because they didn't realize they could just do a role play game or write a story.

@kechpaja @nazokiyoubinbou @zeborah @trenchworms

But at least having grand-children are an empirically verified phenomenon that that really exist. Whereas an AI that hates you isn't.

So worrying about what grad-children might think is more grounded in reality.