But… emotional appeals make me sad. Lesswrong, I thought we were friends?
Eleizer Yudkowsky used emotional appeals in the Sequences, generally in regards to cryonics. However, it should be noted that convincing someone to be frozen is literally a life-or-death situation given his axioms. If you are in a life-or-death situation, by all means use emotional appeals.
However, should you listen to them? Certainly. If someone claims injury or offense without some sort of emotional appeal, they are probably faking it. Some people also cannot make their points without emotional appeals. Just because someone is reliant upon emotion while communicating does not mean that they do not have valid points to make. Further, failing to appear moved by emotional appeals is a reliable way to appear psychologically weird. However, I’m sure that we all knew this.
If we largely manage to broadly ignore emotional appeal, then we shut out not only harmful manipulations, but worthwhile rallying cries. We are motivated only by the motivation we can muster ourselves, rather than what motivation we can borrow from our peers and leaders. This may go some way towards explaining not just why Our Kind Can’t Cooperate, but why we seem to so often report that Our Kind Can’t Get Much Done.
Most rallying cries are harmful manipulations, by opportunity costs if nothing else. However, the akrasia-hypothesis is interesting. If I recollect correctly, pjeby has theories that are not too dissimilar from it.
But… emotional appeals make me sad. Lesswrong, I thought we were friends?
Eleizer Yudkowsky used emotional appeals in the Sequences, generally in regards to cryonics. However, it should be noted that convincing someone to be frozen is literally a life-or-death situation given his axioms. If you are in a life-or-death situation, by all means use emotional appeals.
However, should you listen to them? Certainly. If someone claims injury or offense without some sort of emotional appeal, they are probably faking it. Some people also cannot make their points without emotional appeals. Just because someone is reliant upon emotion while communicating does not mean that they do not have valid points to make. Further, failing to appear moved by emotional appeals is a reliable way to appear psychologically weird. However, I’m sure that we all knew this.
Most rallying cries are harmful manipulations, by opportunity costs if nothing else. However, the akrasia-hypothesis is interesting. If I recollect correctly, pjeby has theories that are not too dissimilar from it.