Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge [pdf]

Just going to say it. The table on page 6 desperately needed just one extra blank line to pad the row break onto the page break to prevent that hideous mid row page break with the row title split between pages…. All for the lack of a single extra new line.

Other than that, kind of interesting to see the terminology construction for a type of “higher order analysis” I’ve been thinking about lately.

Doesn't even mention Roko's Basilisk, so pretty safe.

I'm not sure if it would be classed as a "neuropsychological hazard" but one form of information hazard I encountered in recent years is true information that requires a finessed understanding of both risk and psychology to not act rashly upon it.

For example, let's say you get a brain scan out of curiosity only. A small aneurysm is detected with a confidence of 95%, and said aneurysm, if real, has an estimated annual risk of rupture of 0.5%. The operation to clip said aneurysm, you are told, has a mortality rate of 10%. Do you have the op?

In the books I've read covering such medical ethics topics, a disproportionate number of patients do/would have the op because the knowledge of the aneurysm will "play on their mind" even if the odds are hugely in favor of leaving it be. For this reason, amongst others, unnecessary/preventative testing is discouraged by many medical professionals. (A similar dilemma is faced by folks in affected families who have to choose whether or not to have genetics testing for fatal familial insomnia risk – would you want to know if you're likely to face this usually inherited condition?)