3 ms·

The “can information be harmful?” is indeed an interesting debate. I think it can. Take social media, for example. It is associated with increased depression r

by caseyy 2y ago

The “can information be harmful?” is indeed an interesting debate. I think it can. Take social media, for example. It is associated with increased depression rates, so the information people are exposed to on these networks is harmful. Another case I can think of is certain knowledge. Certain knowledge exists in the world that we are better off not knowing. Like what some war trauma or childhood abuse survivors know. Or learned helplessness. You would probably not want to surround yourself with that world view. It can be so shocking that it will stick with you for life and harm your mental health. Especially if that information is made available to a child. Trigonometry and calculus are constructive information. There is probably also destructive information.

anon373839 2y ago
> Certain knowledge exists in the world that we are better off not knowing. … It can be so shocking that it will stick with you for life and harm your mental health. This is a tangent, but I actually think this is a harmful belief that gives too much credit to the power of negative thoughts. There is no type of thought or knowledge that will damage you forever. Trauma is recoverable; and it is possible to acclimate even to the very most distressing ideas, so that we can let them go.
- startupsfail 2y ago
  There is type of thoughts or knowledge that can damage you forever. For example, if a boy or girl are put on a path to question their gender and get convinced that their gender is different from their biology, this increases a chance of depression or suicide by an order of magnitude. And if they turn to medication or other treatments to alter the biology, this increases chances of depression or suicide even more.
  - anon373839 2y ago
    > put on a path to question You’re not really talking about the effects of a thought: you’re talking about changes in behavior (questioning, taking medication, etc.). Suppose I asked you, “are you really sure your spouse isn’t cheating on you?” You may find this idea unsettling because the honest answer is no: nobody can be sure of this. Some people would shrug it off and say “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.” And they would move on and forget about it. Other people will drive themselves crazy trying to get to the answer, even to the point of damaging the relationship with the spouse. The difference between the two is not the idea (spouse could be cheating) but the reaction to the idea. This is actually what psychotherapy is for, to teach you how to react to thoughts and feelings in ways that aren’t destructive.
    - startupsfail 2y ago
      Certainly. The issue is, if you persistently push the message “are you sure your spouse isn’t cheating on you?” through all forms of media (including LLMs), down to kindergartens and preschools, you’ll inevitably will get a proportion of vulnerable population driving themselves crazy trying to get to the answer at some point of their lives, damaging the relationships and fabric of society in the process.
  - nostrademons 2y ago
    You're factually incorrect: people who are already on a path of questioning their gender and then resolve it by deciding that they are transgender experience lower levels of depression and suicide, and those who receive gender-affirming surgery experience lower levels further: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082431/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082431/ Your error is a form of Simpson's Paradox: the population that decides to go through with gender-affirming surgery is at significantly higher rates of depression & suicidal ideation to begin with, because it's not easy to feel that your gender is different from how the rest of society perceives you. Within that population, though, people who make a decision one way or another do significantly better than those who just live with the stress and ambiguity of their secret.
    - startupsfail 2y ago
      There is scientific consensus that calls for tolerance and acceptance. And there is research that so far shows null hypothesis and no biological evidence for predisposition to being a furry, tree lover, lesbian or gay. While simultaneously genes for left-handed people do readily show up. There is statistic that shows introduction of materials that attempts to set identity at early age, including religious or gender identity is very effective. Statistics about suicidal ideation snd depression actually doesn’t show any correlation to acceptance of transgender in society. And it is roughly 3x of not transgender and 10x after the surgery. And then there is rise in actual transgender youth, toughly 30x, from 0.3-0.5% to 10% over last 40 years. This can be roughly attributed to introduction and popularization of this topic in early education. Effects are similar to early religious education. I’m very happy for increased acceptance, diversity and continued increase of younger dating pool for special interest groups. And that these special interests groups get what they want. But statistics does show that in terms of depression, decreased happiness and suicides it is not the greatest idea to dislodge biological gender. You simply can get 10% of population worse off out of this. If you add to that parents that are unhappy with this turn of events, this gets to 20-30%. And then suddenly you have democracy at stake, because nationalists figured out that this is a good angle…
- caseyy 2y ago
  There is a mental health cost to trauma and to dealing with very distressing ideas. Even if you heal from trauma (and not everyone does), the consequences of having gone through that experience will be a part of your story. People are often better off not having that be the case. I have experience with trauma that made me depressed for about a decade. I've gotten over it to some extent, not entirely. But at the minimum, I lost a decade of my life. I would have been better off not losing a decade of education, career progression, friendships, pursuing adult prerogatives, and similar. If a teenage person becomes depressed due to social media, they will pay the cost of not forming friendships and not being able to engage with education in that period of their life forever. These costs will be both mental and economical. Certain knowledge like self-doubt or conviction that one has no self-worth (and some come not only from abuse but from certain reasonably commonly held beliefs in society) can cause a lot of chronic mental disorders — anxiety, depression, insomnia, various dysfunctions, etc. Finally, consuming an always-online diet of doomscrolling can make someone's worldview so skewed that they will pay significant social costs. I do believe there is a type of knowledge that will cause harm to someone for a time, or forever. It could even be a certain thought that becomes difficult to challenge. This is why there are therapists, who nowadays commonly treat people exclusively with challenging ideas, like with the CBT modality. I think, to an extent, society will help someone recover after trauma or after going off the deep end, but that extent is not very large. Society is also quick to abandon people it deems beyond worth saving.
nostrademons 2y ago
Is it having the information that is harmful, or the actual facts of life that you are being informed about that is harmful? The Internet has basically shed light on a lot of common practices and uncomfortable truths that could be swept under the rug during the 20th century mass-production, mass-consumption, mass-culture, and mass-communication era. I'd argue that the real evil isn't knowing that your politicians are screwing you - it's them screwing you. Similarly, the real evil isn't knowing that we're all about to get fucked by climate change, it was the 100 years of industrial policy that brought us to this point. It isn't knowing about all the wars and the terrible stuff going on around the world, it's the wars and terrible stuff in the first place. The Internet is going to lead to the destruction of society as we know it, but I'd argue that that society - the post-Industrial, post-Colonial, post-urban wasteland we've been living in since the 19th century - should never have existed in the first place.

by caseyy 2y ago

anon373839 2y ago

> Certain knowledge exists in the world that we are better off not knowing. … It can be so shocking that it will stick with you for life and harm your mental health. This is a tangent, but I actually think this is a harmful belief that gives too much credit to the power of negative thoughts. There is no type of thought or knowledge that will damage you forever. Trauma is recoverable; and it is possible to acclimate even to the very most distressing ideas, so that we can let them go.

startupsfail 2y ago
There is type of thoughts or knowledge that can damage you forever. For example, if a boy or girl are put on a path to question their gender and get convinced that their gender is different from their biology, this increases a chance of depression or suicide by an order of magnitude. And if they turn to medication or other treatments to alter the biology, this increases chances of depression or suicide even more.
- anon373839 2y ago
  > put on a path to question You’re not really talking about the effects of a thought: you’re talking about changes in behavior (questioning, taking medication, etc.). Suppose I asked you, “are you really sure your spouse isn’t cheating on you?” You may find this idea unsettling because the honest answer is no: nobody can be sure of this. Some people would shrug it off and say “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.” And they would move on and forget about it. Other people will drive themselves crazy trying to get to the answer, even to the point of damaging the relationship with the spouse. The difference between the two is not the idea (spouse could be cheating) but the reaction to the idea. This is actually what psychotherapy is for, to teach you how to react to thoughts and feelings in ways that aren’t destructive.
  - startupsfail 2y ago
    Certainly. The issue is, if you persistently push the message “are you sure your spouse isn’t cheating on you?” through all forms of media (including LLMs), down to kindergartens and preschools, you’ll inevitably will get a proportion of vulnerable population driving themselves crazy trying to get to the answer at some point of their lives, damaging the relationships and fabric of society in the process.
- nostrademons 2y ago
  You're factually incorrect: people who are already on a path of questioning their gender and then resolve it by deciding that they are transgender experience lower levels of depression and suicide, and those who receive gender-affirming surgery experience lower levels further: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082431/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082431/ Your error is a form of Simpson's Paradox: the population that decides to go through with gender-affirming surgery is at significantly higher rates of depression & suicidal ideation to begin with, because it's not easy to feel that your gender is different from how the rest of society perceives you. Within that population, though, people who make a decision one way or another do significantly better than those who just live with the stress and ambiguity of their secret.
  - startupsfail 2y ago
    There is scientific consensus that calls for tolerance and acceptance. And there is research that so far shows null hypothesis and no biological evidence for predisposition to being a furry, tree lover, lesbian or gay. While simultaneously genes for left-handed people do readily show up. There is statistic that shows introduction of materials that attempts to set identity at early age, including religious or gender identity is very effective. Statistics about suicidal ideation snd depression actually doesn’t show any correlation to acceptance of transgender in society. And it is roughly 3x of not transgender and 10x after the surgery. And then there is rise in actual transgender youth, toughly 30x, from 0.3-0.5% to 10% over last 40 years. This can be roughly attributed to introduction and popularization of this topic in early education. Effects are similar to early religious education. I’m very happy for increased acceptance, diversity and continued increase of younger dating pool for special interest groups. And that these special interests groups get what they want. But statistics does show that in terms of depression, decreased happiness and suicides it is not the greatest idea to dislodge biological gender. You simply can get 10% of population worse off out of this. If you add to that parents that are unhappy with this turn of events, this gets to 20-30%. And then suddenly you have democracy at stake, because nationalists figured out that this is a good angle…
caseyy 2y ago
There is a mental health cost to trauma and to dealing with very distressing ideas. Even if you heal from trauma (and not everyone does), the consequences of having gone through that experience will be a part of your story. People are often better off not having that be the case. I have experience with trauma that made me depressed for about a decade. I've gotten over it to some extent, not entirely. But at the minimum, I lost a decade of my life. I would have been better off not losing a decade of education, career progression, friendships, pursuing adult prerogatives, and similar. If a teenage person becomes depressed due to social media, they will pay the cost of not forming friendships and not being able to engage with education in that period of their life forever. These costs will be both mental and economical. Certain knowledge like self-doubt or conviction that one has no self-worth (and some come not only from abuse but from certain reasonably commonly held beliefs in society) can cause a lot of chronic mental disorders — anxiety, depression, insomnia, various dysfunctions, etc. Finally, consuming an always-online diet of doomscrolling can make someone's worldview so skewed that they will pay significant social costs. I do believe there is a type of knowledge that will cause harm to someone for a time, or forever. It could even be a certain thought that becomes difficult to challenge. This is why there are therapists, who nowadays commonly treat people exclusively with challenging ideas, like with the CBT modality. I think, to an extent, society will help someone recover after trauma or after going off the deep end, but that extent is not very large. Society is also quick to abandon people it deems beyond worth saving.

nostrademons 2y ago

Is it having the information that is harmful, or the actual facts of life that you are being informed about that is harmful? The Internet has basically shed light on a lot of common practices and uncomfortable truths that could be swept under the rug during the 20th century mass-production, mass-consumption, mass-culture, and mass-communication era. I'd argue that the real evil isn't knowing that your politicians are screwing you - it's them screwing you. Similarly, the real evil isn't knowing that we're all about to get fucked by climate change, it was the 100 years of industrial policy that brought us to this point. It isn't knowing about all the wars and the terrible stuff going on around the world, it's the wars and terrible stuff in the first place. The Internet is going to lead to the destruction of society as we know it, but I'd argue that that society - the post-Industrial, post-Colonial, post-urban wasteland we've been living in since the 19th century - should never have existed in the first place.