Are there non-trivial cases where ideas q, r, and, s are infohazards only as a whole? (Trivial case might be like 3 parts to knowing how build a nuke.)
Good question! I hadn’t explicitly thought about that, but I think the answer is “yes, in a sense”, and that that’s important. E.g., people have wondered whether some nuclear physics research, and possibly even broader sets of research, were harmful in that they helped lead to nuclear weapons. I’d guess that these pieces of research would have been pretty much purely positive if certain other pieces of research, ideas, info, etc. hadn’t occurred. But given that the other pieces of research did occur, they were harmful.
I say “in a sense” because I think this may be better framed as such research having been an information hazard by itself, given the chance that the other information would later occur and cause harm, and that that was made more likely by this initial research. (Rather than that each piece of information “wasn’t risky”, and only the collective was.)
But I think that highlighting that information doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and that there can be interaction effects between different bits of information, lines of research, uses of research, etc., is interesting and important.
Interaction between different pieces of info
Good question! I hadn’t explicitly thought about that, but I think the answer is “yes, in a sense”, and that that’s important. E.g., people have wondered whether some nuclear physics research, and possibly even broader sets of research, were harmful in that they helped lead to nuclear weapons. I’d guess that these pieces of research would have been pretty much purely positive if certain other pieces of research, ideas, info, etc. hadn’t occurred. But given that the other pieces of research did occur, they were harmful.
I say “in a sense” because I think this may be better framed as such research having been an information hazard by itself, given the chance that the other information would later occur and cause harm, and that that was made more likely by this initial research. (Rather than that each piece of information “wasn’t risky”, and only the collective was.)
But I think that highlighting that information doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and that there can be interaction effects between different bits of information, lines of research, uses of research, etc., is interesting and important.