Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Of course, for "every Monday", the last one should have been dated July 22-28. *cough*

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Of course, for "every Monday", the last one should have been dated July 22-28. *cough*

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.)

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".

4FourFire13y

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.

7gwern13y

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.'