“E.g., writing a paper on a plausibly dangerous technology can be an information hazard even if it turns out to be safe after all.”
So you’re talking about probability. If a gun has a bullet in one of chambers, but it isn’t known which one, and the rest are empty, then firing it once has the same physical risks as a fully loaded firearm with 1/n probability, where n is the number of chambers. Even if in one instance tragedy does not occur, that doesn’t (necessarily) change the ‘probability’ we should assign in the same situations in the future.
If I’m understanding you correctly, I think you’re indeed understanding me correctly :)
I’m saying, as per Bostrom’s definition, that information hazards are risks of harms, with the risks typically being evaluated ex ante and subjectively/epistemically (in the sense in which those terms are used in relation to probability). In some cases the harm won’t actually occur. In some cases a fully informed agent might have been able to say with certain that the risk wouldn’t have ended up occurring. But based on what we knew, there was a risk (in some hypothetical situation), and that means there was an information hazard.
So you’re talking about probability. If a gun has a bullet in one of chambers, but it isn’t known which one, and the rest are empty, then firing it once has the same physical risks as a fully loaded firearm with 1/n probability, where n is the number of chambers. Even if in one instance tragedy does not occur, that doesn’t (necessarily) change the ‘probability’ we should assign in the same situations in the future.
If I’m understanding you correctly, I think you’re indeed understanding me correctly :)
I’m saying, as per Bostrom’s definition, that information hazards are risks of harms, with the risks typically being evaluated ex ante and subjectively/epistemically (in the sense in which those terms are used in relation to probability). In some cases the harm won’t actually occur. In some cases a fully informed agent might have been able to say with certain that the risk wouldn’t have ended up occurring. But based on what we knew, there was a risk (in some hypothetical situation), and that means there was an information hazard.