L. Rudolph L

No one can quite refute the argument.

And this is Dostoevsky's point.

The argument cannot be refuted on its own terms because its premises, once accepted, do indeed lead to its conclusions.

The error is in the premises, but the premises are hidden behind such a mass of reasoning that they are difficult to locate.

End quote.

If Stavrogin is the intellectually entranced ex-risk spectator and speculator, and Kiyolov is the self-destructive wacko, Shigalov is the political theorist who has re-derived absolute despotism and platonic totalitarianism for the AGI era.

The AI safety community has developed its own versions of Chagallivism, the concept of a pivotal act is perhaps the clearest example.

The canonical example is using an aligned AI to prevent all other AI development, establishing a kind of permanent monopoly on artificial intelligence.

This is Shigalievism in digital form.

It begins with the desire to protect humanity and ends with a proposal for a single point of failure controlling all future technological development.

The reasoning is internally consistent.

If unaligned AI would destroy humanity, and if many independent AI projects increase the probability of unaligned AI, then preventing independent AI development reduces existential risk.

QED.

But the conclusion is monstrous.

End quote.

Hollowed institutions.

Quote.

Dostoevsky's point is not that the revolutionaries are powerful but that the institutions they attack are weak.

The provincial society of demons has no genuine principles, no deep roots, no capacity for self-defense.

It exists through inertia and convention.