Skip to the list of proposed poisons

Coining a new term for this constellation of ideas that halt critical thinking, damage relationships between people and society, and incur harm towards the person affected and the people around them.

Been looking into information hazards, but I dislike the notion that it is the information itself that carries the harm, that the act of knowing is to be feared. Too limiting and christian for my taste. The very framing of the concept makes it ripe for both anti-intellectualism and intellectual superiority - killing curiosity and propagation of beneficial information by encouraging paranoia of its unknown consequences, and being fertile ground for narratives of a Special Chosen Hero who can Wield the Knowledge and its Dangers Correctly to Save the World.

Its close ties to the effective altruism movement puts me off as well.

Semantics

"Philosophy"

Philosophy is the love of wisdom and the art of seeking the truth, and so I will use "philosophical" here to refer to "love", "wisdom", and "truth", all of which are corroded by these poisonous ideas.

For the sake of this concept, I define "love" as the deliberate choice to act with kindness. Intentional choice. Not just thoughts and intentions, not just careless habit, but a willful, concrete action with concrete consequences. Whether or not it was fully altruistic and well-meaning does not matter. What does is that this act, out of every other possible ones, was chosen and made. "Kindness", however, is a bit more nebulous. There are infinite ways to be kind. Comfort (physical and emotional), correction, support, access to tools and resources, etc. All of them with the goal of helping the recipient move into a better place, both physically and metaphorically.

"Wisdom", then, is the skill of synthesizing past experiences, present conditions, other's perspectives, and even uncertainty into good decisions and further understanding of the world. Unlike rationality, it does not ignore the emotional dimensions of a situation, and unlike science, it can operate on things with no empirical measurements. Wisdom is love integrated into cunning and slyness, transforming them from tools of selfish progress (often at other's expenses) into a gift that nourishes what is around it.

"Truth", despite the substance it implies, is the hardest to define. It's usually clustered with objectivity and reality, but they only reveal a facet of what truth is. Truth is also clarity and revelation, definition and solidity. It is more than facts, more than information. Truth has weight. It is capable of changing the person who found it, for better or for worse. The heaviest truths can even bend or break humanity.

"Poison"

It is the dose that makes the poison. Even in modern medicine, the line between poison and cure is drawn by amount and method of administration. What kills a healthy man may save another's ailing heart. Likewise, these ideas don't affect everyone equally, nor are they something that is inherently harmful to encounter and handle.

At the right doses, in the right situations, they may even be helpful.

Working Definition

Philosophical poisons are concepts and behaviors that, when mishandled, interfere with a person's ability to love, be wise, and find the truth, resulting in faulty decisions and actions that alienate them from themselves, other people, and the world. These open the person to being manipulated into furthering a cause whose outcomes they do not support, and, in the worst case, lead them into becoming a person full of hate and cruelty.

Careless Use of Language

Metaphor shapes thought, for better or worse.

Purity Culture

Thought-Stopping Narratives

Thought Crimes and Thought Heroics

Maladaptive Simplicity

Black-and-White Thinking / Polarization

Dysfunctional Relationships with Knowledge

Anti-Intellectualism

Maladaptive Pattern-Seeking

Scientism

Dysfunctional Relationships with Emotion

Guilt and Shame Spirals

Hopelessness

Over-reliance on "Gut Instinct" and "Intuition"

Toxic Positivity

Dysfunctional Relationships with (Society/Environment/Others/Self ??)

Dehumanization

Essentialism

Resistance and Cure

Medicine cannot be administered against a person's will. They must want to change themselves first. The first step is to give them the opportunity to self-reflect and desire change.

Brandolini's Law / Bullshit Asymmetry Principle
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.