Sometimes something can be infohazardous even if it’s not completely true. Even though the northwest passage didn’t really exist, it inspired many European expeditions to find it. There’s a lot of hype about AI right now, and I think the idea for a cool new capabilities idea (even if it turns out not to work well) can also do harm by inspiring people try similar things.
But even the failed attempts at discovering the northwest passage did lead to better mapping of the area, and other benefits so it’s not clear if it was net negative at all for society.
It certainly was infohazardous to the people who funded the expeditions and got poor return for their investment.
I would consider the hazard to be to the agent not to society, though I can certainly imagine information that hurts an individual, but benefits somebody else.
Thinking about it more, I suppose I don’t know, perhaps they were perfectly happy.
However, in my experience, when you set out to find a thing and fail to find it that often leads to dissatisfaction.
My expectation / rule of thumb for this is “People don’t often hunt for things they don’t want for some reason”.
Oftentimes in human affairs the stated reason for a decision is not the true reason. Especially for speculative investments, there are usually multiple motivating reasons.
Sometimes something can be infohazardous even if it’s not completely true. Even though the northwest passage didn’t really exist, it inspired many European expeditions to find it. There’s a lot of hype about AI right now, and I think the idea for a cool new capabilities idea (even if it turns out not to work well) can also do harm by inspiring people try similar things.
But even the failed attempts at discovering the northwest passage did lead to better mapping of the area, and other benefits so it’s not clear if it was net negative at all for society.
It certainly was infohazardous to the people who funded the expeditions and got poor return for their investment.
I would consider the hazard to be to the agent not to society, though I can certainly imagine information that hurts an individual, but benefits somebody else.
How do you know what their evaluation of their investment was?
Thinking about it more, I suppose I don’t know, perhaps they were perfectly happy.
However, in my experience, when you set out to find a thing and fail to find it that often leads to dissatisfaction. My expectation / rule of thumb for this is “People don’t often hunt for things they don’t want for some reason”.
Oftentimes in human affairs the stated reason for a decision is not the true reason. Especially for speculative investments, there are usually multiple motivating reasons.