Most obviously, the Streisand effect means that any effort used to silence a statement might as been used to shout it from the hilltops. The Basilisk is very heavily discussed despite its obvious flaws, in no small part because of the context of being censored. If we’re actually discussing a memetic hazard, that’s the exact opposite of what we want.
There are also some structural and community outreach issues that resulted from the effort and weren’t terribly good. Yudkowsky’s discussed the matter from his perspective here (warning: wall of text).
((On the upside, we don’t have people intentionally discussing more effective memetic hazards in the open in contexts of developing stronger ones, nor trying to build intentional decision theory traps. There doesn’t seem to be enough of a causative link to consider this a benefit to the censorship, though.))
On the upside, we don’t have people intentionally discussing more effective memetic hazards in the open in contexts of developing stronger ones, nor trying to build intentional decision theory traps.
I just realized that it has become pretty low-status to spend time talking about decision-theoretic memetic hazards around here, which might be a good thing.
Cheers, that all seems to make sense. I wonder if the Basilisk with its rather obvious flaws actually provides a rather superb illustration of how memetic hazard works in practice, and so doing so provides a significant opportuntity of improving how we handle it.
Most obviously, the Streisand effect means that any effort used to silence a statement might as been used to shout it from the hilltops. The Basilisk is very heavily discussed despite its obvious flaws, in no small part because of the context of being censored. If we’re actually discussing a memetic hazard, that’s the exact opposite of what we want.
There are also some structural and community outreach issues that resulted from the effort and weren’t terribly good. Yudkowsky’s discussed the matter from his perspective here (warning: wall of text).
((On the upside, we don’t have people intentionally discussing more effective memetic hazards in the open in contexts of developing stronger ones, nor trying to build intentional decision theory traps. There doesn’t seem to be enough of a causative link to consider this a benefit to the censorship, though.))
I just realized that it has become pretty low-status to spend time talking about decision-theoretic memetic hazards around here, which might be a good thing.
Cheers, that all seems to make sense. I wonder if the Basilisk with its rather obvious flaws actually provides a rather superb illustration of how memetic hazard works in practice, and so doing so provides a significant opportuntity of improving how we handle it.