On Fearing the Whispering Earring

I recently stumbled upon a small parable called "Clarity didn’t work, trying mysterianism" written by Scott Alexander. The story is more commonly referred to as "The Whispering Earring" in reference to the magical earring that is described in the story. It’s a short parable, and I strongly suggest reading it, but the crux of it is there exists an earring that can whisper into the wearer’s ear, and it offers advice to the wearer that is always right. The earring can help the wearer make decisions better than they could ever make on their own. Eventually the earring will ditch spoken word and instead adopt more efficient forms of communication via hisses and clicks that will contract the wearer’s muscles, skipping the middle-man of the wearer’s own brain. As one can imagine, the wearer’s own brain atrophies over time as the earring takes full control. The end result is the wearer lives a life deferring all decisions to the earring and the outcome is the wearer has a perfectly happy &…

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