= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
jimrandomh comments on Possible Cockatrice in written form - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (53)
There are lots of warnings about information that's supposedly wrong, or confusing, but these are relatively easy information hazards to defend against. If the only danger of a text is that it's wrong, then being told why it's wrong is sufficient protection to read it. Highly confused/confusing text is a little more dangerous - reading lots of postmodernism would be bad for you - but the danger there is only in trying to make sense of it where there is no sense to be made, so, again, a warning should be sufficient defense.
I think warnings about information being actively harmful have been pretty rare, though. I can think of a few major categories, and some one-offs.
There's information that would destroy faith in a religion, and information that would alter political allegiance. These seem like obvious false alarms (since speakers have a motivation for warning falsely). In fact, the presence of a warning like that is usually evidence that you should read it.
I wouldn't call any of these classes basilisks. Information hazards, maybe, but weak ones. But then there're rare one-offs, the ones that people have called basilisks, and with confirmed deaths or psychological injuries to their credit. These are clearly not in the same league. They genuinely do require careful handling. And because they're rare one-offs, handling them carefully won't consume inordinate resources; and as long as you're making an explicit risk-benefit calculation, you can factor in the expected value of whatever it is you're blinding yourself to, so they won't blind you to very much.
Compartmentalization is bad in general, but expected utility trumps all. Every heuristic has its exceptions, and information-is-good is only a heuristic.
It seems to me that starting with analysis at a distance is a necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) precaution in that handling.
There are very few, if any, societies without censorship.
I need examples, more than the present post ("hey, here's a rambling crackpot 2000-page suicide note") or, in the case of the LessWrong forbidden post, individuals with known mental disabilities (OCD) getting extremely upset. (I don't deny that they were upset, or that this is something to consider; I do deny it's enough reason for complete suppression.)
Would your criteria ban the song "Gloomy Sunday"?
It's catalogue of citable examples time, then.
Claims of real-life examples of the motif of harmful sensation are not rare at all. Substantiated ones are rather less common.
No. Mainly because enforcing a ban on any song requires arranging society in a bad way. Also because I don't consider the mood shift from a depressing song to be much of a harm, and the title is sufficient warning for anyone who wouldn't want to listen to something gloomy. However, my criteria would imply that you should think twice before adding it to your playlist, though, thrice if people subscribe to that playlist who don't want to or ought not to want to listen to it.
Sorry, I should have given a link. I speak of the claims of it inducing suicide.
What I'm saying is that you need actual evidence before invoking claims of harmful sensation.
jimrandomh had other very apposite comments in private message which I've responded to. I don't think we deeply disagree on anything much to do with the issue of the necessity of learning to stare back at basilisks.