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Tenoke comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Can you tell us what you're trying to achieve with this?
Interested in the responses since I actually think I can learn some useful things if anyone actually shares something good. Also, I assign significantly less than 1% chance that anyone will actually tell me anything 'dangerous' - for example I think roko's is as dangerous as pie. I don't plan to release memetic hazards on unsuspecting citizens if that's your fear.
It's more that soliciting information hazards seems like really odd behaviour. Even if no-one sends you an Interactive Suicide Rock, you might still receive some horrible or annoying stuff you don't want to be carrying around in your head.
I'm really interested to find out what, if anything, people send you, but I'm not sure I want to know exactly what they are.
Other people expressed a similar view and since I don't mind, I can at least help with satisfying people's curiosity in a way that would cause minimal harm. However, I have found nothing worth talking about after some fairly extensive google searches so I am currently trying to think if there is anyone knowledgeable that I can e-mail (already have a few people on the list) or if there are any good search terms that I haven't tried yet.
It's probably worth clarifying what you consider a basilisk, as that might reduce any unpleasant-yet-irrelevant submissions.
The Motif of Harmful Sensation is a common fictional trope, but of real-life examples there are pretty much 0. (Excepting e.g. a subject with given mental susceptibilities such as depression or OCD.)
I think that most of the general examples have been mentioned: Religion among others, which has the rather mildly harmful "fear of hell" and it's own propagation.
I think that any majorly harmful hazard which the general population was susceptible to would cause them to all shortly win darwin awards and remove themselves from the genepool.
As such we only have minority groups which are vulnerable to specific stimuli.
The Typical Mind Fallacy is strong with this one.
It's a good thing that isn't a mortal sin! Oh no wait.
In what way are you attempting to counter my argument?
By 'harmful' I mean detrimental to procreation probability. I assume that highly fanatic religious people are likely to be in an environment with members of the opposite sex who are relatively equal in level of "indoctrination" and therefore are able to reproduce. though some religious practices are arguably detrimental to reproduction ability.
By 'remove themselves from the genepool' I mean, of course failure to produce offspring.
But please do let me know if you meant something else entirely.
Yes, we are completely talking past each other. In my framing "harmful" relates to number and intensity of suffering-moments, not reproductive success. I'm still kind of boggling that you think that's relevant.
You are correct to look to religion for archetypal information hazards; certain conceptions of sin, for example. Unlike Omega, sin cares about your decision theory; it applies to you if and only if you know it does, and the news is always bad. It's a cognitive event horizon. The Motif of Harmful Sensation is completely damn irrelevant. Information hazards don't make you go bleeble-bleeble-bleeble, they make you lie awake at night.
To be honest, I wasn't making sufficient effort to engage with you; I was venting irritation with this whole subthread, which largely consists of the emotionally privileged giving each other high-fives for getting lucky with their absurdity heuristic. You briefly became the embodiment of my irritation by describing the fear of hell as "mildly harmful", which it sort of isn't when you measure harm in actual caused fear. Some thoughts are black, and go nowhere, and can teach nothing, and any energy used to think them pours out of the universe and is gone. But I'm tapping out before I make a fool of myself further.
I'll agree that there was a mutual misunderstanding, my point has failed to be made. Ok. ;)
And even more obviously, epilepsy. Yet, I don't understand why you would except them.
'You see, X does not exist, since I choose to ignore all the cases in which X does exist; I hope you'll agree that this argument is watertight once you grant my premises.'
I think David has a point here.
The cases you two have mentioned of sensory hazards all affect people who have identifiable susceptibilities that those people usually know about in advance and that affect relatively small minorities.
Somebody might have a high confidence that they are non-depressed, non-OCD, non-epileptic, etc. Are there examples of sensory hazards that apply to people who do not have a recognized medical problem?
But this is a different question. You have quietly redefined the question "are there harmful sensations to people?" - to which the answer is overwhelmingly, resoundingly, yes, there absolutely are - to 'are there harmful sensations to a newly redefined subset of people which we will immediately update if anyone produces further examples, so actually what I meant all along was "are there harmful sensations which we don't yet know about?"'
Or to put it more simply: 'Can you provide an example of a harmful sensation we don't yet know about?' Well... If I could produce a harmful sensation, you and David would simply say something like 'ah, well, I guess we now have a recognized medical problem, because look, we [commit suicide / collapse in convulsions / cease functioning / become obsessed with useless actions] if you expose us to X! That's a pretty serious psychiatric problem! But, are there examples of sensory hazards that apply to people who do not have a recognized medical problem?'
To which I can only shake my head no.
I hear you and I'm not trying to play the definition game or wriggle out of this. The way I conceptualized the question -- which I think the original poster had in mind and what I think is relevant to hazard risk assessment -- is more like one of these:
A) "What fraction of the public is seriously vulnerable to sensory hazards",
B) "Given that one knows one's medical history and demographics, what is the probability that there are sensory hazards one is vulnerable to but not already well aware of."
My hunch is that the answers are "less than 20%" and "close to zero." The example of epilepsy didn't shift my beliefs about either; epilepsy is rare and is rarely adult-onset for the non-elderly.
So you're asking, what new medical sensory hazards may be developed in the future.
Well, the example of photosensitive epilepsy, where no trigger is mentioned which could have existed before the 19th century or so, suggests you should be very wary of thinking the risk of new sensory hazards is close to zero. Flash grenades are another visual example of a historically novel sensation which badly damages ordinary people. Infrasound is another plausible candidate for future deliberate or accidental weaponization. And so on...
There, see, you're doing it again! Why would you exclude the elderly? Keep in mind that you yourself should aspire to become elderly one day (after all, consider the most likely alternative...).
The photosensitive epilepsy and infrasound examples convinced me, thank you. I see that those are cases where a reasonably informed observer might be surprised by the vulnerability.
Gwern, this thread is about the Basilisk. Conflating that with epilepsy is knowing equivocation. Don't be dense, thanks.
No denser than thou, David:
Who was it who brought up the Motif of Harmful Sensation, which is not limited to Roko's basilisk? Who was it who brought up in order to define away examples of depression or OCD? Thou, David, thou.
The fictional trope is of one you wouldn't expect to be harmful. That's the literary point of it, and of the Basilisk: the surprise factor.
And surely the animators who made that Pokemon episode expected it to be harmful and they made those kids seize because they're simply evil.
No denser than thou, David.
How harmful does it have to be? Noise can be hard on people, and sufficiently loud noise causes permanent damage.
There's something interesting in here about what counts as a sensation for purposes of this discussion-- probably "a sensation which most people wouldn't expect to be harmful".