By the way, I’m kind of weirded out by the idea that we need short terms that mean “information that should be suppressed” (i.e. in terms of Huffman coding, “we should use a short word for it” = “it is very common”), and furthermore that it’s rationalists who are trying to come up with such words. I think it’s ultimately because Bostrom picked “information hazards” for the title of his paper, and people made the obvious catchy portmanteau; but I don’t want to push the language in that direction.
I largely agree with you. Having a richer vocabulary would be helpful for thinking about problems of this theme with more nuance, if the participants used that rich vocabulary accurately and with goodwill. I also think that defining new words to label these nuanced distinctions can be helpful to motivate more sophisticated thinking. But when we try to reason about concrete problems using this terminology and conceptual scheme, we ought to taboo our words and show why a given piece of information is hazardous to some person or group.
I’m skeptical that the use of these short phrases implies that rationalists have overly normalized speech suppression (if that’s what you mean by your Huffman coding argument). Copywriters pre-emptively shorten novel words and phrases to make them catchy, or to give them the appearance of colloquialism and popularity. Since the rationalist community is primarily blog-based, I see these shortenings as part of a general trend toward “readability,” not as a symptom of rationalists being over-steeped in “infohazard” concepts.
I’m skeptical that the use of these short phrases implies that rationalists have overly normalized speech suppression (if that’s what you mean by your Huffman coding argument).
Edited to hopefully clarify. I do believe that the reasons for it are innocent, but it still feels uncomfortable, and, to the extent that it’s under our control, I would like to reduce it.
I largely agree with you. Having a richer vocabulary would be helpful for thinking about problems of this theme with more nuance, if the participants used that rich vocabulary accurately and with goodwill. I also think that defining new words to label these nuanced distinctions can be helpful to motivate more sophisticated thinking. But when we try to reason about concrete problems using this terminology and conceptual scheme, we ought to taboo our words and show why a given piece of information is hazardous to some person or group.
I’m skeptical that the use of these short phrases implies that rationalists have overly normalized speech suppression (if that’s what you mean by your Huffman coding argument). Copywriters pre-emptively shorten novel words and phrases to make them catchy, or to give them the appearance of colloquialism and popularity. Since the rationalist community is primarily blog-based, I see these shortenings as part of a general trend toward “readability,” not as a symptom of rationalists being over-steeped in “infohazard” concepts.
Edited to hopefully clarify. I do believe that the reasons for it are innocent, but it still feels uncomfortable, and, to the extent that it’s under our control, I would like to reduce it.