GuySrinivasan comments on The ethic of hand-washing and community epistemic practice - Less Wrong

44 Post author: AnnaSalamon 05 March 2009 04:28AM

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Comment author: GuySrinivasan 05 March 2009 11:10:29PM 4 points [-]

The advantage to hand-washing is that it severely reduces a specific otherwise-easy-to-use vector for disease and there is social pressure due to public restrooms to washing your hands. Can we find something similar for cognitive citizenship? A vector for transmitting bad knowledge, like forwarded emails - maybe in the future I shouldn't just reply with "Nope, Snopes, also stop." but instead ask that the sender include a disclaimer?

How about a vector for transmitting bad cognitive algorithms? That one would be far more valuable to block but I haven't been able to think of a large extant vector at all, much less one that might be attackable.

Comment author: thomblake 05 March 2009 11:52:02PM 2 points [-]

Regarding the e-mail forwards, I usually reply with "Your address has been added to my list of spammers. Any future e-mails from you will automatically be blocked." Take that, Grandma!