Vladimir_Nesov comments on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think - Less Wrong

15 Post author: WrongBot 13 July 2010 04:44AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 13 July 2010 08:16:36AM *  7 points [-]

I agree with the overall point: certain thoughts can make you worse off.

Whether it's difficult to judge which information is dangerous, and whether given heuristics for judging that will turn into an anti-epistemic disaster, is about solving the problem, not about existence of the problem. In fact, a convincing argument for using a flawed knowledge-avoiding heuristics would itself be the kind of knowledge one should avoid being exposed to.

If we have an apparently unsolvable problem, with most hypothetical attempts at solution leading to disaster, we shouldn't therefore declare it illusory, and mentioning it irresponsible.

Edit: See also WrongBot's analysis of why the post gets a negative reaction for the wrong reasons.