Cognitohazards pt 1 - An Introduction to Infohazards

What are Infohazards?

These thoughts go by many names. Infohazard, cognitohazard, and memetichazard all refer to the same kind of mental or metaphysical malevolence. While we could argue the semantics and difference between these terms, we’re going to label them infohazards and categorise them under that term. But first: what are they?

Simply put, it’s an idea, thought or concept that is potentially harmful to the observer and others. A common misconception is the idea that infohazards have to be false information or misinformation, but this isn’t true. While both of those can also be harmful, infohazards are more insidious, and sometimes true knowledge of a thing is more dangerous than misinformation or ignorance of it. 

The hazards have several properties, and we’re going to be categorising them into three distinct types and going into depth about each of them. All of them have both mental and potentially metaphysical qualities, and the difference between the two is mostly whether or not they need to be perceived by intelligence or if they can hide in our subconscious. 

There are two ways information can be dangerous: adversarial or intrinsic. Adversarial means the information can be used by a bad actor to cause harm, and intrinsic means that the thought itself causes the harm as an unintended consequence of learning about it. Because of the potential harm these thoughts can have, this writing will try its best to be informative but not spread any of these cognitive hazards. 

Reader discretion is advised, and delving further into the subject outside of this document is not recommended and best be done with great caution. There are many examples of thought experiments, ideologies and more which can pose a real threat. Examples provided are there for discreet and broad when possible. There might be famous examples you are already aware of, and if you take them seriously, you will be cautious about spreading that information further. This is an introduction and part one, and before we go into each type of infohazard, let’s ask and answer one simple question.

Can Thoughts Be Dangerous?

It might seem obvious that thoughts can cause harm; after all, the very legal definition of murder is the killing of another human with malice aforethought, and is done intentionally and with premeditation. Some ideas also go on to cause great destruction, and perhaps none were as treacherous as the atom bomb, which wasn’t only a threat to the lives of many but a threat to the entirety of humanity’s existence. After its development, the mind behind it, J. Robert Oppenheimer, cited the Bhagavad Gita after witnessing the first atomic bomb explosion. 

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. 

The danger in knowledge of nuclear fission isn’t intrinsic, but it is adversarial and possessing the knowledge alone isn’t enough to cause great harm, but in the wrong hands, it could be devastating. This opens up the debate regarding freedom of speech and the availability of knowledge, including dangerous knowledge. This is the reason why some information is classified based on its sensitivity. When it comes to adversarial infohazards, you can only hope that the information stays in the right hands and that it isn’t used for evil. 

There are many historical examples of adversarial knowledge being used to cause great harm, and in 2018, a research paper was published with detailed instructions on how to synthesise a poxvirus. On the internet, there is now a free flow of information and knowledge, and a lot of it can be adversarial. No longer do bad actors need to be engineers to have the know-how to build bombs and other homemade weapons. All of this knowledge isn’t intrinsically dangerous, but it can potentially be if used with malice and ill intent. Can thoughts in of themselves be inherently dangerous?

As far as our culture is concerned, it’s a resounding yes. The myth and story trope of “knowing too much” is old, but is perhaps best exemplified in the various works of H.P. Lovecraft, where a character, oftentimes the protagonist, comes across some hidden, ancient knowledge which causes them great harm or oftentimes to go insane. This often possesses an existential and mental anguish rather than an inherently physical harm. But we also see many examples in pop culture of story tropes where a character seeks out the aid of the occult and demons. This knowledge of the forbidden rarely ends well for them, and especially not if they act upon that knowledge. There are many examples in literature, movies, and other cultural media where knowledge of something is harmful and is best left hidden. These ideas can also sometimes translate to our everyday lives.

Especially dangerous for individuals with mental illness or delusions, some thoughts can be so existentially painful that just knowing about a concept can cause immense mental stress. An anonymous Reddit user, reportedly diagnosed with several disorders, ended his own life after grappling with the thought experiment of “quantum immortality”. While there are probably underlying causes for this person’s mental health, they found the concept and sheer thought of this philosophical idea to be so excruciatingly mentally painful that it led them down a very, very dark path. They would constantly seek out help from people on the site and ask for definitive proof that quantum immortality wasn’t a real concept, and to have it disproven. However, whatever explanations the community provided were never sufficient to calm this individual down. 

While there is no definitive proof of the objective truth concerning quantum immortality, this example proves that some thoughts don’t have to be used with ill will to cause harm to individuals. Some knowledge itself can be so painful to an individual that it becomes a cognitive hazard.

Other thoughts that include intrinsic danger but also a bit of adversarial are ideologies that are misanthropic and hostile by philosophy alone. Ideas, thoughts and ideologies that completely disregard life and invert ethics and morality are dangerous and breed not only extremism but also give reason to murder, kill and harm others. This can be intrinsically dangerous because if nihilism causes me to not care for my own wellbeing, I can engage in dangerous behaviour or put others in danger if I do not care for their wellbeing. The thought can be adversarial if it’s used for bad, but it’s also inherently dangerous because of its values. 

Knowing that thoughts can be dangerous is a good identifier, and we should be cautious of what we think and the concepts we engage with. It’s important to remember that at the end of the day, most of them are just thoughts, and intrusive thoughts do not need to be acted upon. We can watch them like birds and just let them pass us by. We know that infohazards can be adversarial or intrinsic, but beyond these two, there are three main identifying kinds of infohazards.

The Three Types of Cognitohazards

We’re going to be categorising these hazards into three categories following the formula of: subconsciousness, consciousness and superconsciousness. Being more than just thought and information, some of these are communications which aren’t fully articulated in intelligence and perception alone. 

Lanthanic (Subconscious)

The first level of consciousness and the first type of cognitive hazard is subconscious. This means the information is outside of mindful, intellectual perception. It’s called lanthanic because, being outside of regular conscious perception, it can often go unnoticed by the individual. The perceived infohazard is only experienced through feelings, intuition or intrusive thoughts. Unlike conscious dangers, this kind doesn’t need to be understood. The information it relays is simply enough on its own, and because of this, most lanthanic infohazards are intrinsic rather than adversarial. 

What drives this kind of information in humans is often basic and most likely social instincts, and mass psychosis is an example of a lanthanic infohazard. Where a thought or concept doesn’t have to be understood by the individual to act upon it. It can simply be going along with the group, following trends or any other pattern which isn’t necessarily conscious or actively reflected upon. It’s enough that a person should perceive the information on some baseline outside of the intellect to be attacked by this kind of cognitive harm. 

This means that lanthanic infohazards often attach themselves to emotions and manipulate the subconscious levels of an individual’s consciousness. E.g an individual may get unreasonably angry at dogs and hold a lot of hate for them. This information was passed down to them from their parent, who got the information from their parents because somewhere along the line, one person was viciously attacked by a dog. The current individual has the information, but they don’t understand it logically in their mind, but rather experience it subconsciously and through the feeling of anger and fear, seeing dogs.

This information may serve a good use, namely protecting the individual from the harm their ancestor experienced, but it becomes an infohazard when it no longer serves the individual but instead hinders and harms them as well as their environment. Somebody being afraid of dogs and being cautious doesn’t suffer from a lathanic infohazard, but somebody irrationally attacking, harming dogs or themselves to avoid dogs is suffering from that information. 

Another lathanic cognitohazard is passion or desire for malice, torture and murder. They can be intellectualised, but often are not, the person acts upon some more base instinct and passion rather than logic to engage with these heinous acts. If murder is the conscious and intellectual premeditation to kill, then the knowledge and instinct that if enough harm is caused, somebody ceases to exist is the lathanic infohazard. In the spur of the moment, that passion is derived from a variety of things, but all rooted in the knowledge that life can be taken, and it doesn’t have to be actively and intellectually understood, but rather as a base to existence itself. In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, eating the forbidden fruit grants them knowledge of Good and evil - one might think this is good initially, after all, it sounds like the discernment between the two, right? 

It is this knowledge of evil, however, which presents itself as the first lathanic cognitohazard, because from the awareness of evil rise desires and passions for wrongdoing. Not knowingly and not intellectually, but instinctively, that evil and wrong can be done and it can be used, not only for survival but for prosperity and self-gain. The serpent, which presented the information to them, however, did so adversarily and with full intellectual understanding of the hazardous information. 

Hermeneutic (Conscious)

Hermeneutic infohazards are noetic and relate to the mind and its intellect. It’s active participation in thought and thorough understanding which makes it dangerous. This is the most common and perhaps well-known type of infohazard, and it’s the most obvious. When philosopher Nick Bostrom started formalising and exploring the ideas of infohazards, this was where his focus was. He would continue to divide this infohazard into several subsections, which we will not be going into detail with.

This type of information is interpretive, explorative and understanding of a thought, concept or entity. E.g. the understanding that nuclear fission can be used to create nuclear weapons to harm others is in itself enough to cause potential harm if there are resources and desire to fulfil the idea. The information to harm others can be lathanic, e.g trauma or severe mental disturbance, but the information on how to cause that harm is hermeneutic. That is to say that the desire to harm may not be intellectually understood, but acting upon that desire through intellectual means, devising plans on how to cause that harm. 

To be aware of harmful information usually isn’t enough for it to be intrinsically dangerous; this kind of cognitive danger often relies on malice and ill intent to be dangerous, but not always. We can share infohazards not out of malice but out of naivety or well-meaning, we can be knowledgeable and interested in morbid subjects or dangerous thoughts not because we want to act it out but in order to protect ourselves and others from it, however not being cautious and aware of how we share this information with the world this information can get into the wrong hands. The example provided earlier about the medical researchers publishing their synthesis of the poxvirus is such an example; their discovery could potentially bring a lot of good, but having that information publicly available also increases the risk of it getting into the hands of people who would use that information for harm. 

When we talk about infohazards, it’s important to remember that the information itself doesn’t necessarily imply or intrinsically mean harm, but if it has the potential, then it is a hazardous piece of information. It’s also worth noting that on the other side of the coin of securing information for good, you also have a cognitohazard there.

Withholding and gatekeeping information can also be a dangerous idea, it depends on the purpose and intent of withholding and securing that information. Paranoia is a good example of the dissemination of dangerous ideas, and while this isn’t hermeneutic, typically it can seem to be understood by the person experiencing these delusions. If I have what I perceive to be the information that a person in my surroundings means me harm, I could come to the understanding and seemingly logical conclusion to rid myself of this person, this misinformation is intellectually understood and dangerous because it can lead me to justify harm towards another individual, and for no real reason other than my own delusions. I can also cause harm to this individual by withholding potentially important and lifesaving information. 

For argument’s sake, let’s assume this person is ill and I know the cure, I can logically wriggle myself out of the moral dilemma by claiming inaction and withholding that information. The information about the cure isn’t the infohazard here, but my understanding of withholding it, resulting in the harm or death of the person afflicted, is the dangerous information. This kind of wilful blindness demonstrates a deeper, underlying and dangerous information that most of us logically understand the potential benefits and harm of. Namely lies.

We can, of course, lie subconsciously and instinctively, highlighting the lathanic nature of lies as well, but we can also consciously conjure up lies and spread misinformation to further our personal gains, and so potentially cause harm to others. This part of infohazards is known to most of us, especially these days with the prominence of the World Wide Web and how easy it is to reach out to people and say anything. We see misinformation and lies every day, and sometimes they are spread consciously, and this information spreading causes real harm. There is one final form that these concepts manifest as, and that’s in the higher faculties of our consciousness. 

Daimonic (Superconscious)

This kind of cognitohazard is abstract and even metaphysical. It’s an aspect of consciousness which passes information to the conscious mind, and later even down to the subconscious level. Because of this, the harmful knowledge which can be found here is the most dangerous, as it pertrudes all other aspects of consciousness and spreads like wildfire from here down to our other aspects of being. 

This type of infohazard gets its name from the psychological term by the same name, but also from the etymology of the word demonic. Oftentimes, these types of dangerous capsules of information can be understood as demons, and just like their supernatural counterpart, this information can possess and take control of the individual to harm themselves and others. 

This part of consciousness encapsulates more than just information; it also holds ideals, goals, aspirations, abstractions, and self-understanding. It’s the very source of epistemology and should this well be poisoned with cognitohazards, it’s the most dangerous of them all. Beyond the cultural trope of forbidden knowledge of the universe, which drives us to madness, the harmful information that can be perceived here is the root of all evil in itself. It’s self-destructive and impersonal. It’s the very foundation of us as individuals. It’s the core of all of our beliefs.

It can be religious and ideological, and it influences the other two aspects of consciousness. That is to say, if my ideology has the dangerous information, it may influence both my subconscious and mind to cause harm, both through my desire, that is my subconscious, (to reach the ideal of my ideology), but also through my intellect (turning theory into action and devising plans on how to further the goals of the ideology). Being the seat of all our convictions, daimonic infohazards are especially insidious. 

They combine the worst of the two other aspects. Just like lanthanic infohazards, these are difficult to be self-aware of, as they make up the very foundation of perception. One has to observe oneself to even begin to grasp it, and not only do so through perception but also through discernment, and to be able to differentiate Good from bad. There is also an active principle to the superconscious, and this is what likens it to hermeneutic hazards. 

This principle is the engagement with infohazards on this level. Illustrated through art as bargaining with the devil or demonic possession through the practice of occult ritualism and similar metaphysical practices, this level of information is gained through the reading and practice of such information. In folklore, a vampire can’t enter your home without an invitation, and similarly, these infohazards and demons can’t influence this aspect of your consciousness without your consent in one form or another. It’s not an explicit yes or no kind of situation, but rather what you let your mind and body consume. 

The invitation for this kind of hazard is often breaking taboos, and as a psychological term, daimonic is often understood to be a dynamic unrest which forces the individual towards individuation and often leads to either self-discovery or self-destruction, this drive is often viewed to be involuntary by the individual, akin to what we understand to be possession. This possession is the final form for hazardous information of this kind. 

It’s possessive because the individual is driven towards harm, not by their own choice, necessity, or by their own instincts, but because of this information being spread throughout all of their consciousness. It alters and changes the very perception of the individual, and it turns bad into good, pain into pleasure, shame and guilt into a thrill and excitement. It is the very corruption of the human spirit and its morals and values.

Daimonic cognitohazards are almost always intrinsic. It’s the information itself and even possessing it which causes harm, both to the individual and the people around it. Ignorance is bliss, or as H.P. Lovecraft put it:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” 

Final Words

Information hazards have many names, at their core, they’re the same thing: information which can cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm. This information is understood and picked up by different aspects of our consciousness: subconscious, conscious and superconscious. In each category exists a distinct type of infohazard corresponding accordingly: lanthatic, hermeneutic and daimonic. These entities of knowledge can be either adversarial or intrinsic, or in some cases, even both. Adversarial infohazards are not inherently harmful but can be used to cause great harm. Intrinsic infohazards are inherently harmful, and just possessing the knowledge itself is enough to cause distress and harm.

Each type of hazardous information is uniquely dangerous and expressed depending on its type. Lanthatic are mostly expressed subconsciously and takes the form of imperatives through emotions, feelings and so on. Hermeneutic hazards require understanding and intellectual grasp, not necessarily true understanding, but some mental grasp and perception at least. Daimonic influence the two others and are exceptionally dangerous because of how difficult they are to notice and reflect on, but also because of how much control they have over an individual's actions and choices. They are the rarest kind of informational entity, but there have been many examples where this kind of cognitive hazard has taken charge of human history. 

Infohazard can be compared to mental or metaphysical viruses, especially in the way they spread. Ideas are easily passed from person to person, and next time we’re going to go into explore how these cognitive hazards spread. 

Don’t believe everything you think.