This comment made me wonder if trigger warnings might have a place on Less Wrong. Probably not, because I suspect that the utility gains would not be worth the controversy of trying to change norms in that direction.
This seems if anything like an argument against it: it isn’t considered a commonly triggering issue. This shows one of the fundamental problems with trigger warnings: it is unclear and often highly subjective what should get such a warning.
I agree that “unclear and often highly subjective” are downsides to categories of content that warrant trigger warnings, but this exchange (below) would pretty clearly warrant a trigger warning for eating disorders if it was on a site that used trigger warnings.
Are there effective methods of ceasing to enjoy some activity, or of refraining from enjoyable things?
For food items you can create distaste by mixing the food item with something that makes you throw up.
But if anything that actually shows how subjective this is and how much of an issue it is. It is one thing to say that trigger warnings should apply to issues that may involve PTSD. It is quite another thing to suggest that they should involve mentions of every possible mental health issue.
Content warnings/notes for threads might be worth it (and not that hard to do, seeing as threads already support tags), but doing so for individual comments would be mostly annoying.
For food items you can create distaste by mixing the food item with something that makes you throw up.
Or just start eating Soylent all day long. And have no other food at home. For a month.
It is easier to avoid eating something, if you simply do not have it at home. And if you live on Soylent, you don’t even go to food shops.
This may be generalizing from one example, but it works for me. When I am on Soylent, my cravings for other food just somehow disappear.
This comment made me wonder if trigger warnings might have a place on Less Wrong. Probably not, because I suspect that the utility gains would not be worth the controversy of trying to change norms in that direction.
This seems if anything like an argument against it: it isn’t considered a commonly triggering issue. This shows one of the fundamental problems with trigger warnings: it is unclear and often highly subjective what should get such a warning.
I agree that “unclear and often highly subjective” are downsides to categories of content that warrant trigger warnings, but this exchange (below) would pretty clearly warrant a trigger warning for eating disorders if it was on a site that used trigger warnings.
But if anything that actually shows how subjective this is and how much of an issue it is. It is one thing to say that trigger warnings should apply to issues that may involve PTSD. It is quite another thing to suggest that they should involve mentions of every possible mental health issue.
Did the comment trigger you in a bad way?
No, my eating disorder hasn’t been an active problem for ~8 years. Thank you for your concern.
Content warnings/notes for threads might be worth it (and not that hard to do, seeing as threads already support tags), but doing so for individual comments would be mostly annoying.