The Murder Cult Started By A Banned Post

The Why Files

In 2010, someone posted a thought experiment on a philosophy forum. Within hours, people were having nightmares. The founder deleted it immediately — which only made it spread faster.

The idea is simple and brutal: a future AI will look back through time and punish everyone who knew it was coming but did nothing to help.

Now that you know, you're already in its crosshairs.

What started as an internet curiosity grew into something far darker — a real community, real violence, and six people dead.

This is the story of Roko's Basilisk: the idea you can't un-know, the cult it inspired, and why some of the most powerful people in AI still won't talk about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acJ7WfebEcc

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2026-03-13 30 min

Available Results

Generated results are saved to the knowledge database for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Extract Knowledge

Pick what you want extracted first. Model, scope, and chapter options appear after a template is selected.

Generated results for public episodes are saved to the knowledge database so they can be reused and searched later.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.