RichardKennaway comments on Contrived infinite-torture scenarios: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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If you ask me, the prevalence of torture scenarios on this site has very little to do with clarity and a great deal to do with a certain kind of autism-y obsession with things that might happen but probably won't.
It's the same mental machinery that makes people avoid sidewalk cracks or worry their parents have poisoned their food.
A lot of times it seems the "rationality" around here simply consists of an environment that enables certain neuroses and personality problems while suppressing more typical ones.
Pondering blue tentacle scenarios can be a displacement activity, to avoid dealing with things that really might happen, or be made to happen, here and now.