Here are a few tips that maybe should not be taken to literally, but are useful to think about and sometimes may be a good idea more directly as well:
Don’t have anything to hide, make sure that anything worth stealing involves some physical object not hooked up to your computer. Act as if a random stranger with a concealed face were physically looking over your shoulder at all times.
Keep an eye on your CPU, ram, bandwidth, etc. usage. Even if you were overtaken by a botnet that didn’t use a noticeable amount of these than that’d also mean it’s not that big a bother anyway.
In general cultivate an intuition for computer science and what exactly your computer needs to be doing at any time so you can notice suspicious behaviour.
Keep your guard up for psychological attacks, hostile memes, and Langford basilisks. If you don’t already know learn what those are and how you can protect yourself.
Also, might as well point out that in real life, most basilisks are verbal, and won’t kill you but instead drive you insane Lovecraft-style.
Edit: further note; here on LW actually has the most dangerous basilisks of anywhere I’ve encountered on the net by some margin, and some people have even been [REDACTED].
Sometimes I think about how much I take for granted my
basic human mental safety mechanisms. One of my philosophy
professors told a story about a student in her class who,
upon studying radical Cartesian skepticism, went crazy
doubting everything and had to be taken away to a hospital
for a while for his own protection. I’m sure I’ve
encountered philosophy stranger than that, and some of it
I don’t have an answer for, but I don’t go insane for the
simple reason that when I encounter a philosophical
problem I can’t solve I just shrug and say “Mmmm, that’s
interesting” and go back to my normal human life. And it’s
only been recently that I’ve realized some people can’t do
this—that I see people studying philosophy that’s no
longer even interesting to me, like determinism or
reductionism[,] and having existential crises over it.
Yes, very relevant. Just know that there’s MUCH more potent stuff out there, even maliciously designed. Not really a lot of it thou, and the vast majority of stuff damaging enough to avoid it is in already known dangers like cults. Still, there is some really nasty stuff out there that can get around even extremely good defences.
This is shock level stuff? It’s just making a petting zoo out of entities man were never meant to know possessing no physical form, selected for driving some humans mad in interesting but relatively harmless ways!
Edit: checked the numbers again… seriously you’re suggesting this is higher check level than the singularity? This stuff is age old, and fairly mainstream, Lovecraft wrote about it quite specifically. The SCP foundation is full of it.
Here are a few tips that maybe should not be taken to literally, but are useful to think about and sometimes may be a good idea more directly as well:
Don’t have anything to hide, make sure that anything worth stealing involves some physical object not hooked up to your computer. Act as if a random stranger with a concealed face were physically looking over your shoulder at all times.
Keep an eye on your CPU, ram, bandwidth, etc. usage. Even if you were overtaken by a botnet that didn’t use a noticeable amount of these than that’d also mean it’s not that big a bother anyway.
In general cultivate an intuition for computer science and what exactly your computer needs to be doing at any time so you can notice suspicious behaviour.
Keep your guard up for psychological attacks, hostile memes, and Langford basilisks. If you don’t already know learn what those are and how you can protect yourself.
[insert random quote from “the art of war” here]
I know what a basilisk is, but Google cannot tell me what a Stanford basilisk is. (Did you mean to say “Langford basilisk”?)
/me fixes embarrassing typo
Also, might as well point out that in real life, most basilisks are verbal, and won’t kill you but instead drive you insane Lovecraft-style.
Edit: further note; here on LW actually has the most dangerous basilisks of anywhere I’ve encountered on the net by some margin, and some people have even been [REDACTED].
This reminds me of something Yvain said:
Yes, very relevant. Just know that there’s MUCH more potent stuff out there, even maliciously designed. Not really a lot of it thou, and the vast majority of stuff damaging enough to avoid it is in already known dangers like cults. Still, there is some really nasty stuff out there that can get around even extremely good defences.
To paraphrase wedrifid: in real life, most basilisks are harmless and adorable; you can keep them as pets.
But I suppose it’s a terrible idea to bring up that whole fiasco again.
That gives me a great idea! We should totally make a “basilisk petting zoo” thread! :D
Or maybe not. I’ll wait for responses to this comment before deciding if I should go with it.
SL5? SL6?
I don’t recognize these, and google is of no help. Are they names of some specific basilisks?
This extended.
This is shock level stuff? It’s just making a petting zoo out of entities man were never meant to know possessing no physical form, selected for driving some humans mad in interesting but relatively harmless ways!
Edit: checked the numbers again… seriously you’re suggesting this is higher check level than the singularity? This stuff is age old, and fairly mainstream, Lovecraft wrote about it quite specifically. The SCP foundation is full of it.