The only thing that makes Roko's Basilisk an interesting thought experiment is how much anxiety it causes in stupid people. The whole idea is that reputation can travel backwards in time. Here's a demonstration why that is dumb. Imagine a child that was prone to misbehavior. The parent would threaten to punish their child in some way they find undesirable if the behavior continues. The parent may or may not follow through with this threat. The likelihood of the child misbehaving after a threat is determined by reputation and how often the parent followed through on past threats. Roko's Basilisk is the idea that if you condense the raising of the child to a single threat interaction, whether or not the parent follows through that one time affects the likelihood of misbehavior. But there was zero reputation before the interaction, and the child cannot see into the future. It's a mystery why anyone takes this seriously.