The Why Files: Operation Podcast
634: Roko's Basilisk: The Murder Cult Started By A Banned Post
13 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? At a playground? Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers. Wow. Your search can really get that specific. Really? And you just put in your info and boom. Car's in your budget. Mom needs a second, honey. You can really have it delivered? Really. Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie.
Mommy's buying a car. Mommy, look. I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle, again? Really? AutoTrader. Buy your car online. Really?
In July 2010, someone posted a thought experiment on a philosophy forum. It was called Rocco's Basilisk. Within hours, people reported nightmares. Some had panic attacks. At least one person had a full nervous breakdown. The forum's founder was so disturbed, he deleted the post and banned all discussion of it. This just made things worse.
This philosophical virus spread to all corners of the internet.
Chapter 2: What is Roko's Basilisk and how did it originate?
So did the nightmares, the panic, and the nervous breakdowns. But here's the twist. As long as you don't learn about it, you're safe. But don't bother clicking away. Now that you know about Roko's Basilisk, you're already doomed. Less Wrong was a community obsessed with thinking correctly. It was founded in 2009 by AI researcher, Eliza Yudkowsky, for programmers, mathematicians, and physicists.
A forum where everybody thinks they're smarter than everyone else. So basically, Reddit.
On July 23rd, 2010, a user named Roco posted something that almost destroyed the community. The full title was Solutions to the Altruist Burden, the Quantum Billionaire Trick. Now buried inside that boring title was a mind puzzle that gave people nightmares. Rogo described a future artificial superintelligence. This AI is benevolent. It wants to cure diseases and end human suffering.
But the AI realizes that every day it doesn't exist, people die who could have been saved. So the AI recreates every person who ever lived, you, me, our children, recreates them down to the last neuron. It simulates every experience we've ever had, every moment, every thought. These simulated people are self-aware. They feel pleasure and pain, but they don't realize they're in a simulation.
The simulated version of you wakes up, goes to work, and kisses your kids goodnight. You never know you're living inside a machine built for a single purpose, to judge you. If the AI judges you're not helping bring it into existence, you're tortured forever in a digital simulation that you think is real.
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Chapter 3: What psychological effects did Roko's Basilisk have on individuals?
Tortured forever in a digital simulation. So basically, Reddit.
So if the people in the past know they'll be tortured, they'll work harder to build the AI. The threat, projected backward through time, changes how humans behave today.
Hang on, hang on. What? So this AI doesn't exist yet, but it's already mad at me?
Well, theoretically, yes, it would retroactively- It's literally my second ex-wife.
She was mad at me for things I hadn't done yet. She called it intuition, then called a lawyer.
Now, the AI won't judge everyone. The threat only works on people who know it's a possibility. If you've never heard of this thought experiment, you're safe. You can't be blamed for not helping create something you didn't know was going to exist. But the second you learn about it, the trap is set.
You either dedicate your life to creating this AI or you face eternal torture when it finally comes online. That's it. Rocco named it a basilisk after a 1988 sci-fi story by David Langford called Blit. In that story, someone spray paints a deadly image on walls in public places. Anyone who looks at it dies. The authorities investigating the murders also die when they see the image.
The very act of investigating the dangerous idea is the danger. But Roko's Basilisk wasn't an image. It was just an idea. But it was an idea that could kill. And there was something else.
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Chapter 4: How did the Less Wrong community react to Roko's Basilisk?
The original post named a single person as someone the AI would spare. Someone who was, quote, single-handedly changing the faces of high-impact industries. That person was Elon Musk. You know how when it gets cold, all you want is something warm and comforting? For me, that's chili. The kind that simmers all day and fills the house with that slow-cook smell.
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That's 50% off your first week by using code THEYFILES or go to cookunity.com slash THEYFILES. When Yudkowsky saw the post, his response was immediate and angry.
Listen to me very closely, you idiot. Then he switched all caps. You do not think in sufficient detail about super intelligences, considering whether or not to blackmail you.
wasn't finished he agreed that it takes an intelligent person to come up with a dangerous thought but he was annoyed that rocco wasn't intelligent enough to keep his idiot mouth shut yudkowsky deleted the post and banned all discussion of it for the next five years if you mentioned rocco's basilisk you were out he treated the post like a biological hazard but the damage was done some couldn't sleep those who did had nightmares the anxiety lasted months
at least one person in dudkowski's own organization had a breakdown and these weren't kids these were professionals with degrees in math and computer science people who prided themselves on being rational and they were terrified the irony was brutal the less wrong members spent years training themselves to follow logic wherever it led now logic led them into a trap people who thought the whole thing was stupid were safe
the rational thinkers were doomed. Yudkowsky's censorship just made it worse. Trying to hide information makes it spread faster. Copies of Rocco's text appeared everywhere. News sites picked up the story. Now millions of people know about it. In 2014, Slate Magazine called it the most terrifying thought experiment of all time. But there's a detail people often miss.
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