While I mostly agree with you here, which is why I’ll change the title soon, I do think that the point around encouraging a great man view of science and progress is very related to the concept of infohazards as used by the LW community, because infohazards as used by the community do tend to imply that small groups or individuals can discover world ending technology, and I think a sort of “Great Person Theory” of science falls out of that.
Beren’s arguing that this very model is severely wrong for most scientific fields, which is a problem with the concept of infohazards as used on LW.
While I mostly agree with you here, which is why I’ll change the title soon, I do think that the point around encouraging a great man view of science and progress is very related to the concept of infohazards as used by the LW community, because infohazards as used by the community do tend to imply that small groups or individuals can discover world ending technology, and I think a sort of “Great Person Theory” of science falls out of that.
Beren’s arguing that this very model is severely wrong for most scientific fields, which is a problem with the concept of infohazards as used on LW.
Edit: I did change the title.