3 ms·

If you believed in the Basilisk, wouldn't talking about it be akin to torture and murder from your perspective?

• dragonwriter 4y ago
  If you believed in the Basilisk, which you absolutely should not, trying to convince people of its potential existence and the need, therefore, to work to realize it would be protecting yourself from torture. It might be subjecting other people to torture, but presumably if they were aware of the potential existence of the Basilisk, they, too, would work to bring it about, thus avoiding the torture. But, while the Basilisk is nonsense, what could be created by those trying to create it is, if not the Basilisk itself, effectively just as bad (for instance, they could create an entity which, lacking the Basilisks actual incentives -- which are nonsense -- nevertheless was convinced by its creators that it had those incentives, and which would then act, to the extent it had the capacity to, as if it were the Basilisk. And it might also be paranoid, and thus punish those who had brought it into existence. Or they might create something with the capacity for torture, but with completely unrelated motives.)