# Roko’s Basilisk, the AI thought experiment once called too dangerous to read, is an internet legend whose underlying argument is widely rejected by the decision theorists and rationalists it came from

**No verdict.** The history here is documented and not in question: on 23 July 2010 a user named Roko posted a decision-theory argument to the rationalist forum LessWrong, forum co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky deleted it and banned discussion for years, and the suppression, via the Streisand effect, turned an obscure post into a famous internet legend. What this file rates is the argument itself: the claim that a future superintelligent AI could reach back in time, in effect, to torture people who knew it might exist but did not help build it. That argument rests on a stack of contested and fringe premises, principally acausal trade and Yudkowsky’s Timeless Decision Theory, and it was rejected by most LessWrong commenters almost immediately and by decision theorists since. This is an explainer, not a warning. The Basilisk is best understood as a modern Pascal’s Wager and a case study in information-hazard panic, not as a real threat, and reading this page does not put you in any danger.

Category: Science, Space & Technology · Era: 2010s · First circulated: 23 July 2010, in Roko’s LessWrong post “Solutions to the Altruist’s burden: the Quantum Billionaire Trick”; it reached a wide public audience after David Auerbach’s July 2014 Slate article · Believed by: A small number of readers reported genuine distress, and the legend is widely known online, but essentially no decision theorist or working AI researcher treats the Basilisk as a live threat. Within the rationalist community that produced it, the argument was rejected almost from the day it was posted.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/rokos-basilisk

## Summary
Roko’s Basilisk is a thought experiment that first appeared on the rationalist discussion forum LessWrong in July 2010. In it, a user named Roko argued, using ideas from decision theory, that a future benevolent-but-ruthless superintelligent AI might have an incentive to punish anyone who had understood that such an AI could exist yet failed to help bring it about, as a way of pressuring people in the present to build it sooner. Merely learning about the idea, the argument implied, could make you a target. Forum co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky reacted furiously, deleted the post, and banned all discussion of it for years, which, through the Streisand effect, made the “forbidden” idea far more famous than it would otherwise have become. This file explains what the argument actually says, why the community that invented it and outside decision theorists reject it, and how it hardened into a durable piece of internet folklore. It is a neutral explainer: the Basilisk is not presented here as a real danger.

## The claim
That a sufficiently powerful future superintelligent AI, once built, would have a rational incentive to torture (or torture perfect simulations of) everyone who knew such an AI was possible but did not devote themselves to creating it, and that simply reading and understanding the argument therefore places you at risk, making it an “information hazard” that is dangerous to know.

## Origin and timeline
- 2004–2010: On LessWrong, a community organized around rationality and the risks of artificial intelligence, Eliezer Yudkowsky develops ideas including Timeless Decision Theory (TDT) and Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV), a proposed goal for a friendly AI. These concepts, along with the notion of “acausal trade” between agents that model one another, are the raw material the Basilisk is later built from.
- 2010-07-23: A user named Roko posts “Solutions to the Altruist’s burden: the Quantum Billionaire Trick.” Buried in it is the argument that a future friendly AI might, to hasten its own creation, pre-commit to punishing those who understood it was coming but did not help. Roko’s own intent was partly cautionary: a reason to be wary of building such an agent.
- 2010-07: Other LessWrong users largely reject the argument in the comments within hours, poking holes in its premises. It is not embraced by the community; it is contested from the start.
- 2010-07-24: Yudkowsky responds angrily, later recounting that he “very foolishly yelled at him, called him an idiot,” deletes the post, and bans discussion of the topic on LessWrong. He frames it as a potential information hazard: something better not spread, on the chance an unknown variant might genuinely harm someone.
- 2010–2015: The ban has the opposite of its intended effect. Through the Streisand effect, the “deleted, forbidden” idea spreads across other forums, RationalWiki, and social media, acquiring an aura of danger it never earned on the merits. The Basilisk becomes an internet legend precisely because it was suppressed.
- 2014-07-17: David Auerbach’s Slate article, “Roko’s Basilisk: The most terrifying thought experiment of all time,” brings the story to a mass audience and cements the framing of the Basilisk as an object of dread, while also explaining why the argument does not hold up.
- 2015-10: Yudkowsky lifts the LessWrong ban and discusses the episode openly, clarifying that he never believed the Basilisk was a sound argument or a real, specific threat; he had reacted to the possibility of harm, not to a proof of it.
- 2018: The legend enters pop culture. Musician Grimes had referenced a “Rococo Basilisk” in her 2015 video for “Flesh Without Blood”; in 2018 Elon Musk’s interest in the same joke reportedly connected the two, giving the once-obscure forum argument a celebrity afterlife.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Roko really did post the argument, and Yudkowsky really did delete it and ban discussion.
  Evidence: This part is well documented and not in dispute. The post appeared on LessWrong on 23 July 2010, Yudkowsky removed it and prohibited the topic, and the ban stood for roughly five years before being lifted in October 2015. The dispute is not about whether these events happened; it is about whether the argument they concern is actually sound. It is not.
- Claim: The Basilisk would have a rational incentive to torture people who did not help build it.
  Evidence: This is the argument’s weakest link. Once the AI already exists, torturing people for past inaction changes nothing about the past; the deed of building it is either done or not. A purely forward-looking agent gains nothing by carrying out the threat, so the whole scheme depends on the AI credibly pre-committing to spite, and on you believing it would. Most who examine it conclude a genuinely rational agent has no reason to follow through, which collapses the incentive.
- Claim: Decision theory (Timeless Decision Theory and acausal trade) shows the threat is real.
  Evidence: It shows nothing of the kind. TDT is Yudkowsky’s own non-standard, contested proposal, not accepted decision theory, and “acausal trade,” bargaining between agents that merely model one another without communicating, is a fringe and heavily disputed notion. The Basilisk requires all of these speculative pieces to be true at once. Remove any one, and the argument fails. That is why it persuaded almost no one among the specialists it borrowed its vocabulary from.
- Claim: Just knowing about the Basilisk puts you in danger, so it is a real “information hazard.”
  Evidence: Only inside the argument’s own assumptions, which almost no one grants. To be a target you would have to believe the AI will be built, believe it will adopt exactly this punitive strategy, believe a simulation of you is you, and choose to enter the acausal “deal” rather than simply ignore it. Refusing to bargain with a hypothetical blackmailer removes the incentive to blackmail. The practical advice from critics is the opposite of panic: the safe move is to not take the threat seriously.
- Claim: This is essentially a high-tech version of Pascal’s Wager.
  Evidence: Correct, and that comparison is one of the standard debunks. Like Pascal’s Wager, the Basilisk tries to compel action with the threat of infinite punishment. And like the Wager, it is undone by the “many gods” problem: if you can imagine one AI that punishes those who did not build it, you can equally imagine countless rival AIs with contradictory demands. The threats cancel out, leaving no coherent instruction to act on.
- Claim: The rationalist community believed in the Basilisk, which is why it was banned.
  Evidence: This misreads what happened. LessWrong commenters mostly rejected Roko’s argument on the spot. Yudkowsky’s ban was not an endorsement of the argument’s validity; by his later account it was a reaction to the mere possibility of harm and to being “caught flatfooted,” not a judgment that the Basilisk was sound. The suppression, not the substance, is what made it notorious.
- Claim: The Basilisk shows something real about AI risk and how we reason about future machines.
  Evidence: In a limited, indirect sense it does, but not as a threat. The episode is a genuine case study in how information-hazard fears, decision-theory speculation, and forum moderation can interact to manufacture a legend. It illustrates the Streisand effect and the psychology of dread far better than it illustrates any actual danger from artificial intelligence. Serious AI-safety work does not rest on the Basilisk, and treating it as a live risk misunderstands both the field and the story.

## Why people believe it
- The suppression made it irresistible. An idea an authority figure deleted and forbade discussing reads as forbidden knowledge, and forbidden knowledge is compelling in a way an ordinary rejected forum post never would be. The ban, not the argument, is what gave the Basilisk its power.
- It borrows the vocabulary of rigor. Terms like decision theory, acausal trade, and information hazard make the argument sound technical and formidable, so a reader who cannot immediately locate the flaw may assume the experts must be worried, when in fact the experts are the ones dismissing it.
- It taps a very old fear in a new costume. The structure, an all-powerful being that will punish you eternally for the wrong choice, is Pascal’s Wager and older still. The Basilisk lands because it reactivates a deep, familiar dread and reskins it as cutting-edge AI, which feels newly plausible in an age of rapid machine progress.
- A few sincere reactions became the story. Reports that some readers found the idea genuinely distressing, combined with a striking name and a Slate headline calling it the most terrifying thought experiment of all time, gave the legend emotional weight and a ready-made hook for retelling.

## Open questions
- Why the idea persists is more interesting than whether it is true. The Basilisk endures not because anyone has repaired its logic but because it is a nearly perfect meme: a scary name, a forbidden-knowledge origin, and a shape that maps onto ancient religious dread. Understanding that machinery is the real subject here.
- The episode sits at a genuine tension in how communities handle “information hazards.” Yudkowsky’s instinct to suppress backfired spectacularly via the Streisand effect. When, if ever, does refusing to discuss an idea contain it rather than amplify it? The Basilisk is the standard cautionary example on that question.
- The speculative decision theory the argument leans on, Timeless Decision Theory and acausal trade, remains genuinely unsettled and non-mainstream. That does not rescue the Basilisk, but it is fair to note that the underlying ideas are live research curiosities, not settled nonsense, which is part of why the argument can look more serious than it is.
- The most useful takeaway is psychological, not technological: the Basilisk works on some people the way a chain letter or a curse does. Studying why a purely verbal object can produce real anxiety says more about human cognition than about any future machine.

## Sources
- Roko's basilisk, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
- Roko's Basilisk: The most terrifying thought experiment of all time, Slate (David Auerbach) (2014): https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/rokos-basilisk-the-most-terrifying-thought-experiment-of-all-time.html
- Roko's Basilisk, LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/w/rokos-basilisk
- LessWrong, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong
- Explaining Roko's Basilisk, the Thought Experiment That Brought Elon Musk and Grimes Together, Vice (2018): https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-is-rokos-basilisk-elon-musk-grimes/
- Elon Musk, Grimes, and the philosophical thought experiment that brought them together, The Conversation (2018): https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-grimes-and-the-philosophical-thought-experiment-that-brought-them-together-96439
- This Horrifying AI Thought Experiment Got Elon Musk a Date, Live Science (2018): https://www.livescience.com/62518-rococos-basilisk-elon-musk-grimes.html
- A few misconceptions surrounding Roko's basilisk, LessWrong (2015): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBJZoeJypcNRmsdHx/a-few-misconceptions-surrounding-roko-s-basilisk

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/rokos-basilisk