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Amanojack comments on Open Thread: April 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
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Help me, LessWrong. I want to build a case for
These phrasings should mean the exact same thing. Correct me if they don't.
Elaboration: Most people readily agree that most information is good most of the time. I want to see if I can go all the way and build a convincing argument that all information is good all of the time, or as close to it as I can get. That misuse of information is problem about the misuser and not the information ("guns don't kill people"). Specific cases include: endangered species (DNA is best stored in living organisms), viruses (all three kinds), forbidden books, child pornography and other shocking information, free speech, Archive.org, The Rosetta Project, research on race.
Please post arguments and counterarguments in their own comments and separately from general discussion comments.
First of all, I recommend clearing away the moral language (value, good, and must) unless you want certain perennial moral controversies to muddy the waters.
Example phrasings of the case you may be trying to make:
I suppose this is true.
If you've ever done a jigsaw puzzle, you can probably think of a counterexample to this.
You've never done a jigsaw puzzle using optimal Bayesian methods.
(Or he just believes you probably haven't!)
Here's a counterexample. There is an urn filled with lots of balls, each colored either red or blue. You think there's a 40% chance that the next ball you pull out will be red. You pull out a ball, and it's red; you put it back in and shake the urn. Now you think there's a 60% chance that the next ball you pull out will be red, and you announce this fact and bet on it. You pull out one more ball, and it's blue. If you hadn't seen that piece of evidence, your prediction would have been more accurate.