I think it would be fair game to try to combat these specifically, especially if you could do it in an engaging way that was more of a memetic match for these sorts of things. And it would be valid from a truthseeking perspective since people swayed by these weak arguments might now see the flaws in them.
But then, you would of course have people upset in the comments that you’re depicting your ideological opponents as strawmen/weakmen, and that there are these much more reasonable arguments X, Y, and Z.
(Similarly, there is often a way in which the weakman is someone’s true reason for believing in something, and the “strongman” is creative sophistry meant to make it more defensible. I also believe in that case that it’s fair to go for the weakmen specifically (e.g. atheism debates are often like this).)
I think trying to win the memetic war and trying to find the truth are fundamentally at odds with each other, so you have to find the right tradeoff. fighting the memetic war actively corrodes your ability to find the truth. this is true even if you constrain yourself to never utter any knowing falsehoods—even just arguing against the bad arguments over and over again calcifies your brain and makes you worse at absorbing new evidence and changing your mind. conversely, committing yourself to finding the truth means you will get destroyed when arguing against people whose only goal is to win arguments.
Sometimes the “weakmen” are among the most memetically fit things in the space, even if you could also point much smarter arguments on the same ideological side. For example, I took a quick sample of reddit attitudes about current AI capabilities here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/W2dTrfTsGtFiwG5hM/origins-and-dangers-of-future-ai-capability-denial?commentId=R54z6dNqs2JpALRYe
I think it would be fair game to try to combat these specifically, especially if you could do it in an engaging way that was more of a memetic match for these sorts of things. And it would be valid from a truthseeking perspective since people swayed by these weak arguments might now see the flaws in them.
But then, you would of course have people upset in the comments that you’re depicting your ideological opponents as strawmen/weakmen, and that there are these much more reasonable arguments X, Y, and Z.
(Similarly, there is often a way in which the weakman is someone’s true reason for believing in something, and the “strongman” is creative sophistry meant to make it more defensible. I also believe in that case that it’s fair to go for the weakmen specifically (e.g. atheism debates are often like this).)
I think trying to win the memetic war and trying to find the truth are fundamentally at odds with each other, so you have to find the right tradeoff. fighting the memetic war actively corrodes your ability to find the truth. this is true even if you constrain yourself to never utter any knowing falsehoods—even just arguing against the bad arguments over and over again calcifies your brain and makes you worse at absorbing new evidence and changing your mind. conversely, committing yourself to finding the truth means you will get destroyed when arguing against people whose only goal is to win arguments.