Thanks for this. I think that even with the edits I was probably too confrontational above, so sorry about that. I’m not sure why this issue is emotional for me, that seems weird.
To start off, I agree that, ceteris paribus, the current usage of “memetic hazard” is strange. It has the advantage over e.g. “direct IH” of sounding cool and scary, which was probably desirable for SCP-like uses but is perhaps not ideal for people actually trying to do serious work on info-hazardy concepts.
I notice a conflict in my thoughts here, where I want to be able to refer to knower-harming hazards with a term that is (a) distinctive, evocative and catchy (such that it seems compelling and is actually used in real situations) and (b) sober, precise and informative (such that it can be used productively in technical writing on the subject). “Memetic hazard” satisfies (a) but not (b); “direct information hazard” satisfies (b) but not (a). This is not ideal.
I think for academic-ish work the term “direct info hazard” or something similarly bland is a fine descriptor for “knower-harming information”. I’m not sure what sort of term we would want to use for more popular work. “Knowledge hazard” seems okay to me? But I agree more suggestions here would be valuable.
So this paragraph is me suggesting that, while perhaps we shouldn’t repurpose the term “memetic hazards”, we should still avoid spreading or further entrenching the current, confusing usage of that term, and should jump aboard a different term for that concept instead.
Insofar as “memetic hazard” is being used simply to mean “knower-harming information hazard”, this seems reasonable. The term is still obscure enough that if enough people jumped on a new term it could probably gain more traction, and “memetic hazard” can be left as an obscure and kinda-confusing synonym of [whatever the new term is] that people bring up from time to time but isn’t widely used outside SCP.
[One counter-consideration. Having skimmed some existing usage of “memetic hazard” on the internet, it seems some people are using it to mean a directly (?) harmful idea that also encourages its bearers to spread it. The blandest form of this would be an idea that is harmful to know but fun to talk about; sci-fi (including SCP) contains many much more extreme instances. This usage does seem to make more use of the “memetic” aspect of the name. It also seems to (a) be hard to really capture precisely and (b) deviate from how I typically use (and how eukaryote originally used) the term, so it might be better to just leave that aspect alone for now.]
The question remains of what to call the concept you are trying to capture in your work. At present I don’t think I have a good enough understanding of what it is you’re going for to offer great suggestions. From my limited understanding, I do think “communication hazard” could do the trick – it seems to me to capture (a) the generality, i.e. that we’re not focusing on true or false info; (b) the selection idea, i.e. that part of the hazard arises from how well different ideas spread via communication, and (c) part of the mutation idea, namely the part that arises from imperfect person-to-person communication (rather than within-mind mutations).
Assuming you still think “communication hazard” is no good, I might suggest making a top-level post explaining the concept you want to capture and looking for more/better suggestions? That seems like it could generate some new ideas; we could also use a similar approach to look for suggested replacements of the current usage of “memetic hazard”. Regardless, I would also suggest that, while it’s definitely worth putting in some time and effort (and gathering of multiple opinions) to optimise terminology, it may still sometimes be worth adopting a term that is less ideal at describing what you want in order to avoid cross-term confusion.
I’ve just posted an introduction to/summary of/clarification of the concept of information hazards on the EA Forum. I was halfway through writing that when I came across this post and made these comments. You and eukaryote helped bring to my attention that it’d be valuable to note the “direct information hazards”/”knowledge hazards”/whatever subset, and that it’s just a subset, so that’s in there (and thanks for that!). The post doesn’t touch on the “memetic” side of things—Convergence will get to that later, and will think carefully about what term to use when we do.
Anyway, I’d be interested in your thoughts on that post, since you seem to have thought a lot about these topics :)
(ETA: I found that latest comment of yours interesting food for thought, and upvoted it, but don’t have specific things to add as a reply at the moment.)
Thanks for this. I think that even with the edits I was probably too confrontational above, so sorry about that. I’m not sure why this issue is emotional for me, that seems weird.
To start off, I agree that, ceteris paribus, the current usage of “memetic hazard” is strange. It has the advantage over e.g. “direct IH” of sounding cool and scary, which was probably desirable for SCP-like uses but is perhaps not ideal for people actually trying to do serious work on info-hazardy concepts.
I notice a conflict in my thoughts here, where I want to be able to refer to knower-harming hazards with a term that is (a) distinctive, evocative and catchy (such that it seems compelling and is actually used in real situations) and (b) sober, precise and informative (such that it can be used productively in technical writing on the subject). “Memetic hazard” satisfies (a) but not (b); “direct information hazard” satisfies (b) but not (a). This is not ideal.
I think for academic-ish work the term “direct info hazard” or something similarly bland is a fine descriptor for “knower-harming information”. I’m not sure what sort of term we would want to use for more popular work. “Knowledge hazard” seems okay to me? But I agree more suggestions here would be valuable.
Insofar as “memetic hazard” is being used simply to mean “knower-harming information hazard”, this seems reasonable. The term is still obscure enough that if enough people jumped on a new term it could probably gain more traction, and “memetic hazard” can be left as an obscure and kinda-confusing synonym of [whatever the new term is] that people bring up from time to time but isn’t widely used outside SCP.
[One counter-consideration. Having skimmed some existing usage of “memetic hazard” on the internet, it seems some people are using it to mean a directly (?) harmful idea that also encourages its bearers to spread it. The blandest form of this would be an idea that is harmful to know but fun to talk about; sci-fi (including SCP) contains many much more extreme instances. This usage does seem to make more use of the “memetic” aspect of the name. It also seems to (a) be hard to really capture precisely and (b) deviate from how I typically use (and how eukaryote originally used) the term, so it might be better to just leave that aspect alone for now.]
The question remains of what to call the concept you are trying to capture in your work. At present I don’t think I have a good enough understanding of what it is you’re going for to offer great suggestions. From my limited understanding, I do think “communication hazard” could do the trick – it seems to me to capture (a) the generality, i.e. that we’re not focusing on true or false info; (b) the selection idea, i.e. that part of the hazard arises from how well different ideas spread via communication, and (c) part of the mutation idea, namely the part that arises from imperfect person-to-person communication (rather than within-mind mutations).
Assuming you still think “communication hazard” is no good, I might suggest making a top-level post explaining the concept you want to capture and looking for more/better suggestions? That seems like it could generate some new ideas; we could also use a similar approach to look for suggested replacements of the current usage of “memetic hazard”. Regardless, I would also suggest that, while it’s definitely worth putting in some time and effort (and gathering of multiple opinions) to optimise terminology, it may still sometimes be worth adopting a term that is less ideal at describing what you want in order to avoid cross-term confusion.
I’ve just posted an introduction to/summary of/clarification of the concept of information hazards on the EA Forum. I was halfway through writing that when I came across this post and made these comments. You and eukaryote helped bring to my attention that it’d be valuable to note the “direct information hazards”/”knowledge hazards”/whatever subset, and that it’s just a subset, so that’s in there (and thanks for that!). The post doesn’t touch on the “memetic” side of things—Convergence will get to that later, and will think carefully about what term to use when we do.
Anyway, I’d be interested in your thoughts on that post, since you seem to have thought a lot about these topics :)
(ETA: I found that latest comment of yours interesting food for thought, and upvoted it, but don’t have specific things to add as a reply at the moment.)