On the Resolution of Frightening Paradoxes and Inferences

The main difficulty would lie in knowing where to draw the lines. Do you include any sort of agitated response to any sort of idea that isn't of immediate practical relevance to daily life?

I would draw the line at regular obsessions, mostly because cognitive behavioural therapy at least offer some options. I have some experience with obsessions, and those were self contained, situationally. Not a personal example, but a pre-occupation with staying away from sharp objects for fear of committing suicide, despite not having depression or violent impulses, is local to that situation of being around sharp objects, not triggered by simply thinking about sharp objects in a room completely devoid of sharp objects.

Anything within the line would be subjects whose trigger is their being facts, whose consequences are reacted to quite quickly, and are not specific to any physical situation a person may be in at the time. I'm not so sure about Pascal (based on that sentence alone I mean), but Everett's daughter would fit the bill, assuming her belief compelled her to commit suicide, rather than gave her freedom to do it. I recall one person who actually had a similar problem here at Lesswrong, not two months ago actually. I'm surprised that I forgot about it. I guess I would call these "abstract obsessions" as opposed to "personal obsessions".

I apologize for not fleshing this out in better detail in the original post; I wasn't expecting this to generate interest from anywhere outside the hypothetical target audience, though in retrospect, I would probably have dug into it too.

EDIT: I'm reading the transcription of XiXiDu's psychology session, and this looks exactly like the class of problem I'm talking about.

From (anecdotal-level) observation of examples, the famous LW basilisk is something that you need a string of things going wrong to be upset by: you need to believe certain Sequence memes, you need to believe they string together to imply particular things in a particular way, you need to be smart enough to understand for yourself how they imply what they do, and you need to be obsessive in just the wrong way.

The question then is what to do about it. Freedom of inquiry is absolutely necessary for science as done by mere humans to actually work, but this is not happening for various reasons that seemed good ideas at the time.

refs: a call to decompartmentalise, as compartmentalisation is in fact an epistemic sin; the dangers of doing so.

Wouldn't a mental illness group targeted to Lesswrongers be about basilisk-like problems, since basilisks are more prominently mentioned here?

If there's no one else who has basilisks to share, then no action ought to be taken regarding basilisks, yes. However, if other people do have basilisks, then something ought to be done, preferably in a closed environment. The thing is, right now we have no sure way of knowing if people have basilisks, because no one in their right mind would actually tell others the details without prompting.

In any case, if somebody else has a basilisk, they might come up and comment with "Yeah, let's do it". If nobody else has basilisks, then that won't happen, and only then will the group be proven unnecessary. I'd rather wait and see whether that happens or not.

you don't give me a very good reason

He's not trying to give that reason for very good reasons...

edit: just realized it might be misinterpreted as me taking it seriously.

Look. I'm #10 on topcoder marathon match impressive debuts page, of all time, that was 4.5 years ago, I was still a newbie, it was the first programming contest of any kind I ever done. Their Elo-like ranking system which penalizes losing to newbies, combined with a contest where you could as well test everything offline prompted many high ranked contestants not to submit solutions. Impairing my score bump. Trust me, I can understand the math.

I'm not concerned with it actually working, and neither should you be. I'm rather bored of this topic and this [what ever it is] deletes counter arguments to it, which is really weird, but if you actually have some anguish (and the tales of the OCD suffering are not some sort of urban legend) you can mail me and I'll talk you out of it, or try to.

It seems like he had some problems distinguishing short- & long-term. Yes, opening your house & letting homeless people sleep there will help them in the short-term, but if it destroys your life in the long-term & makes you completely unable to help them, well then it isn't the correct decision for maximizing the amount of altruism you can perform. It seems like he was trying to be a good altruist, but wasn't a very good rationalist. Apologies if that seems offensive to anyone. I'm not trying to insult the man, he did much more good than many people do, I'm just trying to think about it in a broad sense.

Not that I'm aware of. A few people in this thread actually made such an offer to me, and I corresponded with Manfred, but nothing of a group.

I'll read anything you send me.

Mine isn't a moral crisis, but thank you. The Price story was a specific example of the more general problem.

Clever. I don't suppose utility being served by theatrics occurred to you?

I suppose it was overdone though, especially the title.

I smiled, though it's starting to vex me that people still think I'm talking specifically about Roko's Basilisk.