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.
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.