From doing this internet propaganda in the early years of the internet, I learned how to do propaganda. You don’t appeal to emotion, or to reason, or anything. You just SHOUT. And REPEAT, and explain the position, and let the reader defend it for himself.
In the end, most readers agree with you (if you are right), but they will come up to you, much as you did, and say “While you are right, I see that, you are doing yourself a disservice by being so emotional—you aren’t persuasive....”
But I persuaded this reader! The fact is, I am persuasive, and maximally so. When there is a hostile political environment, if a paper is called “bullshit” or “pseudoscience”, you need to first MOCK the idiots calling it that, so as to establish a level playing field. That means calling them “douchebag”, “fuckwit”, “turd-brain”, etc, so that both you and the other person sound like children fighting in the playground, no authority.
Then you need to state the objective case (after the name-calling and cussing, or simultaneously), and then wait. If you are objectively right, people will sort it out on their own time, you don’t have to do anything. The people who didn’t sort it out will say “oh my, there’s a controversy” and will keep an open mind.
It’s classic propaganda techniques, and it can be used for good as easily as it can be used for evil. Of course, when calling people idiots for not agreeing with material that is called crackpot, you had better be careful, because if you are not right about the material, if it is crackpot, you are gone for good. The main difficulty is evaluating the work well, understanding it fully, and making sure that it is not crackpot, before posting the first cussword.
I have found it interesting and thought provoking how this quote basically inverts the principle of charity. Sometimes, for various reasons, one idea is considered much more respectable than the other. Since such unequal playing field of ideas may make it harder for the correct idea to prevail, it might be desirable to establish a level playing field. In situations when there are two people who believe different things and there is no cooperation between them, the person who holds the more respectable opinion can unilaterally apply the principle of charity and thus help to establish it.
However, the person who holds the less respectable opinion cannot unilaterally level a playing field by applying the principle of charity, therefore they resort to shouting (as the quote describes) or, in other contexts, satire, although just like shouting it is often used for other, sometimes less noble purposes.
To what extent do you think these two things are symmetrical?
Of course, when calling people idiots for not agreeing with material that is called crackpot, you had better be careful, because if you are not right about the material, if it is crackpot, you are gone for good.
But you aren’t “gone for good”. You will have your own tribe of believers who will still support you. Before they had been called “fuckwits” they might have deserted you when the evidence didn’t go your way. But they’re not going to desert you now, not when doing so would be tantamount to admitting that they were fuckwits all along.
Yeah, if you want to be heard, it certainly helps to be a loudmouth. You can do it in different ways though. Eliezer’s trick of being infuriatingly certain works as well or better than Ron’s rudeness.
On the other hand, I feel that being a loudmouth can sometimes hurt your ability to do interesting intellectual work. For that purpose Wei’s communication style is the best I know, and I’ve adopted it wholeheartedly.
Ron Maimon
I have found it interesting and thought provoking how this quote basically inverts the principle of charity. Sometimes, for various reasons, one idea is considered much more respectable than the other. Since such unequal playing field of ideas may make it harder for the correct idea to prevail, it might be desirable to establish a level playing field. In situations when there are two people who believe different things and there is no cooperation between them, the person who holds the more respectable opinion can unilaterally apply the principle of charity and thus help to establish it.
However, the person who holds the less respectable opinion cannot unilaterally level a playing field by applying the principle of charity, therefore they resort to shouting (as the quote describes) or, in other contexts, satire, although just like shouting it is often used for other, sometimes less noble purposes.
To what extent do you think these two things are symmetrical?
But you aren’t “gone for good”. You will have your own tribe of believers who will still support you. Before they had been called “fuckwits” they might have deserted you when the evidence didn’t go your way. But they’re not going to desert you now, not when doing so would be tantamount to admitting that they were fuckwits all along.
Yeah, if you want to be heard, it certainly helps to be a loudmouth. You can do it in different ways though. Eliezer’s trick of being infuriatingly certain works as well or better than Ron’s rudeness.
On the other hand, I feel that being a loudmouth can sometimes hurt your ability to do interesting intellectual work. For that purpose Wei’s communication style is the best I know, and I’ve adopted it wholeheartedly.