The object-level arguments here have merit, but they aren’t novel and there are plausible counterarguments to them. It remains unclear to me what the sign of talking about these topics more or less openly is, and I do think there’s a lot of room for reasonable disagreement. (I’d probably recommend maintaining roughly the current level of caution on the whole—maybe a little more on some axes and a little less on others.)
But on the meta-level, I think posting a public argument for treating a potential infohazard more casually—especially with a somewhat attention-grabbing framing—is likely quite unilateralist.
The procedure I’d recommend people in this situation follow would be to thoroughly discuss scepticisms about infohazardyness privately with people who are more concerned. Then if you still disagree, you can try to get a sense for the spread of opinions and evaluate whether you might be falling victim to the unilateralist’s curse.
(Possibly you did do all that already! In case you haven’t I’d suggest pulling this post until you’ve had the opportunity to get more feedback on it first.)
It’s usually much easier to avoid publicising a potential infohazard and reasons to talk more about it, than it is to try to take those actions back later. Public discourse on topics like this might also be biased towards the side of less caution, since arguments on whether a potential infohazard is in fact infohazardous are often going to involve some of the object-level discussion that more concerned people will want to avoid.
The object-level arguments here have merit, but they aren’t novel and there are plausible counterarguments to them. It remains unclear to me what the sign of talking about these topics more or less openly is, and I do think there’s a lot of room for reasonable disagreement. (I’d probably recommend maintaining roughly the current level of caution on the whole—maybe a little more on some axes and a little less on others.)
But on the meta-level, I think posting a public argument for treating a potential infohazard more casually—especially with a somewhat attention-grabbing framing—is likely quite unilateralist.
The procedure I’d recommend people in this situation follow would be to thoroughly discuss scepticisms about infohazardyness privately with people who are more concerned. Then if you still disagree, you can try to get a sense for the spread of opinions and evaluate whether you might be falling victim to the unilateralist’s curse.
(Possibly you did do all that already! In case you haven’t I’d suggest pulling this post until you’ve had the opportunity to get more feedback on it first.)
It’s usually much easier to avoid publicising a potential infohazard and reasons to talk more about it, than it is to try to take those actions back later. Public discourse on topics like this might also be biased towards the side of less caution, since arguments on whether a potential infohazard is in fact infohazardous are often going to involve some of the object-level discussion that more concerned people will want to avoid.
Yeah, I’ve already spoken privately to a bunch of people about this and haven’t heard any arguments that have changed my mind.
I’d love to hear counterarguments though! Perhaps there are ones I haven’t heard that would change my mind.