That may well be the case, but my only other information source is HN comments, and not those made by detractors either. If there are sites or articles dedicated to the deconstruction of LW ideas, I'm not privy to them, nor am I interested in seeking them out. Basically, I only remember LW's existence when it comes up, always accompanied by fawning comments, on HN.
> the reasons why the Basilisk does not work are _not trivial_ - it's not a simple Pascal's Wager
Correct. While my value judgement of both is the same, my reasoning about why the Basilisk is not a thing ultimately consists of more components. That doesn't mean it's worthy of more consideration though.
> because with Pascal's Wager, we don't have the ability to actually create God
I would not say this is centrally important, because the processes leading to the creation of AGI are in all likelihood not going to be influenced by the existence of the Basilisk thought experiment either way.
> and in fact publicly stated that he won "the hard way", without a one-size-fits-all approach.
Again, I have to take my cues from the perspective of an outsider looking in, and there are several people who commented in this thread alone who described it very, very differently. Of course, a movement is not directly responsible for all its fans and members - but among the advocates for the validity of the AI Chat experiment, the idea that out there is a mystical one-size-fits-all rhetorical exploit seems very much alive. It may be cynical, but I can't help noticing how this aura of mystique and secret knowledge seems to work very well when it comes to attracting fans.
Of course, ultimately, these are just memes - and like many memes they propagate best when reduced to an absurd core. It doesn't even require intent.
