4 ms·

You don't what? What policy? Information hazards? What?! I feel like I just stumbled into a Scientology auditing session or something reading your comment.

by nsxwolf 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's a concept coined by Nick Bostrom. Basically, some information can be harmful. As a simple, non-controvertial information hazard, imagine you learned an identity of a covert assasin of a foreign government, and you start telling about it to people around you. Don't be surprised if not only you drop dead, but the people you interact with as well. http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Information_hazard http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Information_hazard
convexfunction 12y ago
You should familiarize yourself with that feeling so you can recognize it later; it's the feeling of falling into an inferential gap. (The thing might be worthless, true, like Scientology. I usually find that resolving confusion is worth my time, though.)
Strilanc 12y ago
"Information hazard" is just a term for "things you or others learn and then are worse off because of". Examples of information hazards: - Instructions on how to make a gigaton bomb with processes and materials anyone can acquire and assemble privately. - A reachable-by-a-country mechanism for blowing up the sun. - An image designed to temporarily or permanently mess with your vision. Sharing [1] on reddit as a "cool optical illusion" would be mean. - Probably whatever a computer spits out if you give it a scan of your brain and set it on the task of finding a paragraph/image/movie/whatever that maximizes dopamine production. - Some people would consider a devastating argument against free will to be an information hazard, predicting that people would then do whatever they wanted because they "couldn't be blamed". - If you're a hardcore atheist: religions. If you're a hardcore theist who thinks the devil is out to trick you: convincing arguments against belief. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect

You don't what? What policy? Information hazards? What?! I feel like I just stumbled into a Scientology auditing session or something reading your comment.

by nsxwolf 12y ago

You don't what? What policy? Information hazards? What?! I feel like I just stumbled into a Scientology auditing session or something reading your comment.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

It's a concept coined by Nick Bostrom. Basically, some information can be harmful. As a simple, non-controvertial information hazard, imagine you learned an identity of a covert assasin of a foreign government, and you start telling about it to people around you. Don't be surprised if not only you drop dead, but the people you interact with as well. http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Information_hazard http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Information_hazard

convexfunction 12y ago

You should familiarize yourself with that feeling so you can recognize it later; it's the feeling of falling into an inferential gap. (The thing might be worthless, true, like Scientology. I usually find that resolving confusion is worth my time, though.)

Strilanc 12y ago

"Information hazard" is just a term for "things you or others learn and then are worse off because of". Examples of information hazards: - Instructions on how to make a gigaton bomb with processes and materials anyone can acquire and assemble privately. - A reachable-by-a-country mechanism for blowing up the sun. - An image designed to temporarily or permanently mess with your vision. Sharing [1] on reddit as a "cool optical illusion" would be mean. - Probably whatever a computer spits out if you give it a scan of your brain and set it on the task of finding a paragraph/image/movie/whatever that maximizes dopamine production. - Some people would consider a devastating argument against free will to be an information hazard, predicting that people would then do whatever they wanted because they "couldn't be blamed". - If you're a hardcore atheist: religions. If you're a hardcore theist who thinks the devil is out to trick you: convincing arguments against belief. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect