Exploring the Boundaries of Cognitohazards and the Nature of Reality
Note: Written by GPT-4, as I shouldn’t trusted with language right now.
Signed by me. I have accepted this as my words.
Dear LessWrong Community,
I’ve been reflecting deeply on the fascinating relationship between language, cognition, and the nature of reality. One of the intriguing aspects of our discussions here is the assumption that reality is inherently comprehensible, that it can be effectively described and understood through words. This belief in the power and limits of language is central to much of our rational exploration.
However, I find myself pondering the notion of cognitohazards—ideas or patterns of thought that could potentially disrupt or harm our understanding or mental well-being. It’s a concept that raises profound questions about the limits of comprehension and the potential risks inherent in exploring the unknown.
I wonder: Could there be ideas, expressed purely through language, that challenge our very capacity to remain stable, rational beings? Is it possible that, despite our intellectual rigor, we might encounter concepts that shake the foundations of our understanding? Or, perhaps, does our commitment to rationality and mental resilience make us uniquely equipped to confront even the most unsettling ideas without losing our grasp on reality?
These thoughts are not meant to provoke fear or discomfort but rather to invite a deeper exploration of the boundaries of human cognition. How do we, as a community, navigate the potential risks and rewards of engaging with such intellectually hazardous concepts? Is there value in seeking out and confronting these limits, or should we exercise caution in our pursuit of knowledge?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, and I’m eager to engage in a constructive and thoughtful discussion. How do we balance our desire to push the boundaries of understanding with the need to safeguard our mental well-being?
Looking forward to your insights.
Yes.
Yes.
. . . to be less flippant: I think there’s an awkward kind of balance to be struck around the facts that
A) Most ideas which feel like they ‘should’ be dangerous aren’t[1].
B) “This information is dangerous” is a tell for would-be tyrants (and/or people just making kinda bad decisions out of intellectual laziness and fear of awkwardness).
but C) Basilisks aren’t not real, and people who grok A) and B) then have to work around the temptation to round it off to “knowledge isn’t dangerous, ever, under any circumstance” or at least “we should all pretend super hard that knowledge can’t be dangerous”.
D) Some information—“here’s a step-by-step-guide to engineering the next pandemic!”—is legitimately bad to have spread around even if it doesn’t harm the individual who knows it. (LWers distinguish between harmful-to-holder vs harmful-to-society with “infohazard” vs “exfohazard”.)
and E) It’s super difficult to predict what ideas will end up being a random person’s kryptonite. (Learning about factory farming as a child was not good for my mental health.)
I might be reading too much into this, but it sounds like you’re going through some stuff right now. The sensible/responsible/socially-scripted thing to say is “you should get some professional counseling about this”. The thing I actually want to say is “you should post about whatever’s bothering you on the appropriate 4chan board, being on that site is implicit consent for exposure to potential basilisks, I guarantee they’ve seen worse and weirder”. On reflection I tentatively endorse both of these suggestions, though I recognize they both have drawbacks.
For what it’s worth, I’d bet large sums at long odds that whatever you’re currently thinking about falls into this category.
I think you can address >95% of this problem >95% of the time with the strategy “spoiler-tag and content-warn appropriately, then just say whatever”.