Possible Cockatrice in written form

For reference if you make a post: prior threads are here and here, and a quote was posted here. (Found by googling "suicide note" site:lesswrong.com.)

Could you please not leave 15 newlines at the end of the post?

Really, really bad idea. I am not (N-O-T) in favour of the kind of censorship that happened when the Post Of Which We May Not Speak was posted, for all sorts of reasons, but if you think you've found a piece of writing which may cause severe mental harm to others, the correct thing to do is to keep quiet about it, except for maybe warning others who don't see the risk and try to spread the link.

I don't share your assessment of the risk of this, but assuming you are right, any periods of depression and/or deaths that result are your personal fault.

Well, I'll hold this paper to its own standards. Since it starts with linking the truth of the hypothesis with its supression, I'll wait and see if it's being supressed. Otherwise I'll just assume it's false.

How is this writing dangerous? I've only perused it, but it doesn't seem dangerous or even terribly interesting. Because what I've read isn't interesting, I'm inclined not to read further. Ironically, the claim that it is somehow dangerous is the only thing that would likely get someone to look at a silly-sounding overwrought work like this.

Also, I think it's great that the guy starts off with a big grandiose prediction that his work will be repressed. It's a genuinely nice thing to be able to start calibrating the accuracy of someone's claims so early. : )

I'm reading through it right now, and will provide my feedback when I'm done, likely as a front-page post.

Please don't bother to post on this. As a whole work, it is a cosmic waste of time to read or discuss. The parts I skimmed rate high on the Crackpot Index and the subjects are better examined by other authors.

If you dig through this mess and find something specific that is interesting, then a discussion area post would probably be appropriate.

I don't think this post deserves the downvotes it's getting. The comments are better than the post, but I think that's productive for the discussion section.

As I've said in the comments, I consider how to deal with possible basilisks a real issue that rationalists really seriously need an approach to. A rationalism that fails to deal with possible basilisks ... fails.

(I don't consider the linked PDF worthy of being called a basilisk. But YMMV, of course.)

Edit: Actually, I agree with AndrewHickey - even if it's not a basilisk it deserves downvotes for dickishness, or close enough resemblance not to make effective difference.

For people who are confused: A cockatrice is a basilisk.

You call that a basilisk? This is a basilisk!

Anyone who has the monumental willpower required to make it through an 1800 page suicide note that reads like a freshman philosophy paper seems rather unlikely to be inclined to commit suicide.

Not the first time I've seen this. Unbearably posturing, dishorientatingly unfocused, and offering a wholly uninteresting take on the ill-defined word "nihilism". Also a really annoying case of tunnel vision in pretending to pen a magnus opus on liberal democracy, then writing exclusively about America and its history (ignoring even Britain after it begat the American colonies).

Incidentally, how exactly is it supposed to be a cockatrice to anyone?

That aside, I doubt it's a real cockatrice - or we would've heard about it before.

Why? Cockatrices being dangerous and all I would expect some of them haven't filtered down to me in reports. Is there a list of known cockatrices out there somewhere? Now I'm curious.