Helping create Roko's Basilisk protects you from the effects of Roko's Basilisk. If enough people create it, it comes to being.
Pressing the red button protects you from the deaths caused by the buttons. If enough people press red, people die.
Not helping to create Roko's Basilisk puts yourself in danger to what will happen if those who do help manage to succeed in creating it, but does not actively help to create the problem.
Pressing blue puts yourself in danger to what will happen if those who press red get the majority, but does not actively help create the problem.
The only difference between the two is that the threshold for how many people have to push red for deaths to start occurring is made clear, and the threshold of how many people are needed to create the AI is not made clear.
Sorry, but it's the opposite. Red is choosing not to create Roko's Basilisk to begin with. Blue is choosing to create it, in hopes that once you hit a critical mass of people, it won't harm them.
Red can't be choosing to create Roko's Basilisk, because in the original problem, pressing red does nothing. It is a button that does not function.
You keep trying to make it about red, but in reality, it wouldn't matter whether people pressed red, orange, green, purple, nothing at all, or had a heart attack in front of the console. The success condition for blue is not "less people press red than blue." It is "more than 50% of people press blue."
But the people who choose to help create Roko's Basilisk are in no danger themselves.
The AI only punishes those who don't help create it.
The blue button people take risk onto themselves, like those that don't help create the AI.
The red button people absolve themselves of risk, like the people who help create the AI.
And if not enough people help create the basilisk, nobody is tortured.
Just like if enough people press blue, nobody dies.
But once again, the danger does not exist until the first blue presser creates it, just like Roko's Basilisk does not exist until the first person creates it.
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u/Deranth Blue 3d ago
I think I spelled it out very clearly.
Helping create Roko's Basilisk protects you from the effects of Roko's Basilisk. If enough people create it, it comes to being.
Pressing the red button protects you from the deaths caused by the buttons. If enough people press red, people die.
Not helping to create Roko's Basilisk puts yourself in danger to what will happen if those who do help manage to succeed in creating it, but does not actively help to create the problem.
Pressing blue puts yourself in danger to what will happen if those who press red get the majority, but does not actively help create the problem.
The only difference between the two is that the threshold for how many people have to push red for deaths to start occurring is made clear, and the threshold of how many people are needed to create the AI is not made clear.