Not to troll, but if we’re assuming someone needs LessWrong’s services, shouldn’t we create the least rational pitch we can, deploying the deepest of Darkest Arts and when they say “save me brother!” reply “it’s good that you’ve seen the light, now we can work on not being blinded by it”?
Poor rationality skills do not necessarily translate to an incapacity for rationality.
In my case I’d just say “I prefer to be less wrong. I use the best tools to make the best outcomes I can. Wouldn’t you want to?” (Usually I time this after I’ve given extensive advice to someone based on just that.)
Not downvoted because Hyena said “shouldn’t we” and didn’t perfectly hold off on proposing solutions and raise his or her ideas a bit more abstractly first, and harsh responses aren’t terrible against that.
But Hyena was the first to raise an excellent point, so your response is far too strong, I think.
Phrasing it as a question was certainly enough for Hyena to get an upvote from me; it’s a middle ground between “There are advantages and disadvantages of using the Dark Arts that we should discuss,” and “Let’s deploy the deepest Darkest Art we can!”
Sorry, I’m new on the site, so I’m missing some of the jargon. What are these “Dark Arts” of which you speak ? The reason I ask (besides my everlasting hunger for power, mwa ha harghble) is because you seem to be (to my newbie eyes) claiming to possess some set of conversational techniques that will make almost anyone believe almost anything. I have heard such claims in the past, and they have all failed spectacularly, so now I’m more than a little wary of them.
Then again, I could be completely mistaken about what you mean by “Dark Arts”; if so, I apologize.
One issue is the matter of “persuasion” and “manipulation”. Some people see them as words describing things that are different in kind, others see them as words describing different areas of a continuum.
See my comments here. These are some of the more common things meant by the term.
claiming to possess some set of conversational techniques that will make almost anyone believe almost anything.
I think similar sounding claims come from people claiming to be far better at manipulation than others as a means of selling you the knowledge. For this to be plausible, the skill has to come from a few simple key insights that universally apply.
The claim here is different, it’s that for each person, there are ways to manipulate them beyond persuading them or more generally influencing them as they would wish to be influenced. As we are not trying to sell a simple technique that always does this, the claim is far less ambitious—it isn’t that manipulation is something so simple it’s easy to buy and learn, and so universal that you don’t need anything else. The claim is similar in that it is about people being manipulable, but the discussion is about the morality and efficacy of pushing those levers consciously at all. Sellers of manipulation have to claim it works every time or nearly so, the discussion here is relevant if one tactic works once in a hundred tries—and the consensus here is that yes, people are somewhat manipulable, and there are many tactics.
Thanks lessdazed and others, that was very informative. In retrospect, I totally should’ve searched the wiki, but I kind of forgot this site had a wiki—sorry about that.
I can see at least one problem with using the Dark Arts for the purpose of persuading people to learn about rationality: breach of trust. If your target person ever finds out that you manipulated him—as he is in fact likely to do, assuming that he actually does learn more about rationality due to your successful manipulation attempt—you will lose his trust, possibly forever. As the result, he may come to view rationality as a sort of seedy mind-game that evil people (such as, in his newly acquired opinion, yourself) play on each other for sport, and not as a set of generally useful mental techniques.
The Less Wrong thing to do is to say, “Oh, better pay attention when untrue things are being said, so my brain can classify them properly.”
The Dark Arts thing to do is to say, “I’d better distract people when I lie to them, so that even if they know I’m lying, they will still believe me subconsciously.”
Not to troll, but if we’re assuming someone needs LessWrong’s services, shouldn’t we create the least rational pitch we can, deploying the deepest of Darkest Arts and when they say “save me brother!” reply “it’s good that you’ve seen the light, now we can work on not being blinded by it”?
I’d be concerned about getting a culty reputation (well, more).
Poor rationality skills do not necessarily translate to an incapacity for rationality.
In my case I’d just say “I prefer to be less wrong. I use the best tools to make the best outcomes I can. Wouldn’t you want to?” (Usually I time this after I’ve given extensive advice to someone based on just that.)
...um, no? Same way that one shouldn’t try to cure people’s headaches by banging them on the head with a hammer?
Not downvoted because Hyena said “shouldn’t we” and didn’t perfectly hold off on proposing solutions and raise his or her ideas a bit more abstractly first, and harsh responses aren’t terrible against that.
But Hyena was the first to raise an excellent point, so your response is far too strong, I think.
Phrasing it as a question was certainly enough for Hyena to get an upvote from me; it’s a middle ground between “There are advantages and disadvantages of using the Dark Arts that we should discuss,” and “Let’s deploy the deepest Darkest Art we can!”
Sorry, I’m new on the site, so I’m missing some of the jargon. What are these “Dark Arts” of which you speak ? The reason I ask (besides my everlasting hunger for power, mwa ha harghble) is because you seem to be (to my newbie eyes) claiming to possess some set of conversational techniques that will make almost anyone believe almost anything. I have heard such claims in the past, and they have all failed spectacularly, so now I’m more than a little wary of them.
Then again, I could be completely mistaken about what you mean by “Dark Arts”; if so, I apologize.
Looking for the term in the search engine will lead you to a good description at the wiki: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Dark_arts
Basically any technique that seeks to persuade by exploiting (or even amplifying), not correcting, the cognitive biases of others.
Holding off on proposing solutions.
Dark Arts. And here and here.
One issue is the matter of “persuasion” and “manipulation”. Some people see them as words describing things that are different in kind, others see them as words describing different areas of a continuum.
See my comments here. These are some of the more common things meant by the term.
I think similar sounding claims come from people claiming to be far better at manipulation than others as a means of selling you the knowledge. For this to be plausible, the skill has to come from a few simple key insights that universally apply.
The claim here is different, it’s that for each person, there are ways to manipulate them beyond persuading them or more generally influencing them as they would wish to be influenced. As we are not trying to sell a simple technique that always does this, the claim is far less ambitious—it isn’t that manipulation is something so simple it’s easy to buy and learn, and so universal that you don’t need anything else. The claim is similar in that it is about people being manipulable, but the discussion is about the morality and efficacy of pushing those levers consciously at all. Sellers of manipulation have to claim it works every time or nearly so, the discussion here is relevant if one tactic works once in a hundred tries—and the consensus here is that yes, people are somewhat manipulable, and there are many tactics.
Thanks lessdazed and others, that was very informative. In retrospect, I totally should’ve searched the wiki, but I kind of forgot this site had a wiki—sorry about that.
I can see at least one problem with using the Dark Arts for the purpose of persuading people to learn about rationality: breach of trust. If your target person ever finds out that you manipulated him—as he is in fact likely to do, assuming that he actually does learn more about rationality due to your successful manipulation attempt—you will lose his trust, possibly forever. As the result, he may come to view rationality as a sort of seedy mind-game that evil people (such as, in his newly acquired opinion, yourself) play on each other for sport, and not as a set of generally useful mental techniques.
A simple way of describing Dark Arts is as the mirror image of (ir)rationality used for evil.
For example Eliezer writes about how our brains literally believe everything they’re told, and are unable to filter out falsehoods while distracted.
The Less Wrong thing to do is to say, “Oh, better pay attention when untrue things are being said, so my brain can classify them properly.”
The Dark Arts thing to do is to say, “I’d better distract people when I lie to them, so that even if they know I’m lying, they will still believe me subconsciously.”