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Comment by philh | Hacker News Reader

> I find such warnings an insult to my intelligence and a trivialization of people's personal responsibility

How so? If an article says "trigger warning: (rape/Mohammed/spiders/flashing lights)", then people who don't want to be exposed to those things (e.g. due to PTSD, religion, phobias, epilepsy - or simply because it upsets them and they don't particularly want to be upset right now) can choose not to read it.

How does it erode someone's personal responsibility to give them the information they need to make that choice?

> where is my warning?

If there's a largish number of people for whom "trigger warning: trigger warnings" would actually make life less stressful, then I'd endorse people including that warning.

I don't think that population is very large. For that matter, I don't think it includes you.

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For epilepsy we have well-justified reason for warnings. For all the other things you mentioned, trigger warnings are wrong approach. What people tasked to cure PTSD will tell you, is that you want constant exposure to the stimuli until your brain starts to ignore it, and not constant evasion.

Trigger warnings are also harmful because they legitimize the idea that you can be offended about pretty much anything you like and therefore such content should not be published. It enables people to behave like children, instead of grownups. Mature people don't get offended because someone says something they don't agree with.

EDIT: What I mean is the danger of those utility monsters you just referred to downthread.

> What people tasked to cure PTSD will tell you, is that you want constant exposure to the stimuli until your brain starts to ignore it, and not constant evasion.

From http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/30/the-wonderful-thing-abo... :

YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.

I somehow missed that article. After skimming the first few paragraphs I still sort of disagree with Scott, but I'm going to read it carefully. Scott has really good arguments and reasoning in his writings, so I expect it to influence my opinion on the subject.

Big thanks for the link.

I think the disparity here is that the "trigger warning" is warning that there's a possibility someone's feelings might be hurt which is ridiculous. If we start down that path, where do we draw the line?

Please edit your post to include a trigger warning: comparing epilepsy and religious belief may insult some people. See? Absurd.

I care about people's feelings. I agree that there's probably a qualitative difference between offending someone and causing them to have a seizure. But I'd still prefer not to offend them, all else being equal, and this would be true even if there was no such thing as epilepsy.

There's no hard line. We use our best judgement, based on what we know of our audience.

However, I will note one counterargument that I find compelling, which is utility monsters. If we reward people for getting upset, that gives them an incentive to get more upset. I don't know the best way to deal with this, but I suspect that "no trigger warnings" is not optimal.

> If there's a largish number of people for whom ... make life less stressful...

This kind of thinking, that society should accommodate a populations likes and dislikes, is why we get groups that want to forbid Mohammad cartoons and others in the same country that want to forbid religious clothes like Burqa. No matter the combination, forbid one, forbid both or neither, you will always end up with one or both groups being offended and wanting government to intervene.

The alternative as I see it is to not acknowledge the problem, making it a point that what ever people like or dislike is their own problem.

Who is talking about forbidding anything? That's a total non sequitur.

I couldn't agree more! Socialism and equality are among THE most dis-empowering and evil ideas to come out of humanity. Unfortunately, these ideas have taken over reason so completely that they are now universally hailed as virtues.

> If there's a largish number of people for whom "trigger warning: trigger warnings" would actually make life less stressful, then I'd endorse people including that warning.

Good point. However people keep saying that it's all about extremists, not the general population of Islamists, therefore I would also think that (by definition) that population of extremists (who would be offended by such pictures) is not very large.

Extremists have an extreme response, but that doesn't mean they're the only ones who get offended.

The reaction of committing murder is all about extremists. I think there are plenty of Moslems who would find the iconography uncomfortable viewing. It just goes against the grain.

Your proposition makes no sense, simple warning someone would offend them that way.

I relate to the OP that trigger warnings are an insult to my intelligence. If such a thing offends me, I should be able to judge it by myself or stop reading. The title is explicit enough to assume the "triggering" content is present.

Trite response: if trigger warnings offend you, you can choose to stop reading when you encounter them. Or just skip them, they take up one line in any given article. Problem solved!

Longer response:

I accept that you, and others like you, don't like trigger warnings. What concrete action would you like me to take in response to this?

If the answer is "stop posting this thing that I don't like", well... sorry, but I'm not going to do that. I think there's a lot of good that comes from trigger warnings, and I don't think the harm they do to you outweighs that.

Meanwhile, other people are saying "I don't like when you post things like this. Please warn me when you're going to post them." That costs a lot less to comply with.

I understand that it doesn't cost much to warn people, I was just stating my disliking of it, not asking for them to be removed. I believe humans should be able to judge things on their own and to handle their emotions at the very least.

>That costs a lot less to comply with.

You think it does, but you couldn't be further from the truth. The very concept of trigger warnings are costly: Anytime you want to voice an opinion, you're forced to enumerate all the possible ways every reader might be offended or triggered or upset by what you're saying. It's an unscalable solipsistic self-centered notion that implies people are not in control of their own feelings and emotions and how things affect them (I say this as someone who has dealt with mild PTSD). Trigger warnings on banal content trivialize the whole thing, and encourage people not to help themselves.

Getting triggered sucks and is painful and throws everything off balance and is just a horrible thing to experience. But only a fool feels those things and blames the stimulus that brought up the associations. The last time I felt those feelings, I realized that I needed to get help or I was always going to be a broken, unhappy, scared person.

The problem as I see it comes from the fact that a bunch of teenagers on tumblr co-opted trigger warnings from legitimate uses (like on PTSD and abuse forums) and started applying them to idiotic things like fat shaming and otherkin.

Nobody's forcing me to use trigger warnings. I choose to use them for some things. I don't choose to enumerate all the possible ways that anyone might be upset by my writing, and nobody's asking me to do that. There is a potential slippery slope, but even if I go a little too far down it, I'm not worried about going all the way to the bottom.

(I don't read tumblr, or any blogs where I think trigger warnings have gotten out of hand. It's possible such blogs exist. That doesn't mean my own use of trigger warnings is excessive.)

Not everyone can easily get help. If you want a therapist for example, that costs time, possibly money, and depending on your social circle you might fear being made fun of or cast out if they discover.

(Actually, as it happens, I approximately never write anything that needs trigger warnings. I'm mostly speaking in the first person for simplicity, and as a hypothetical "this is what I think I would do if I wrote about such things". I don't recall ever issuing a trigger warning though, so it's possible that I'm being somewhat hypocritical here.)

See this comment [1] for some cites to articles discussing research showing that trigger warnings probably cause more harm than good to the people they are trying to help.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801995

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