Please avoid abusive/trollish claims, as you have previously explicitly acknowledged your intentions to be. Don’t use argument-style Dark Arts, which is your skills set as you previously clearly acknowledged, to attack Intentional Insights through pattern-matching and making vague claims.
Instead, please consider using rational communication. For example, be specific and concrete about how our articles, for example this one, are problematic. Thanks!
If I wanted to -attack- you, I’d have accused you of using credit card information from a donation or t-shirt purchase to make illicit purchases. I’d send off for your IRS expense reports to see where your budget goes, and spin that in a very unfriendly way (if any spin were necessary). I’d start spreading rumors that your polyamory posts from your early days were proof that you were sleeping with your students. And trust me, you’ve spread enough nonsense around Less Wrong to make each one of these accusations stick in a very uncomfortable way. I did the research, trying to decide if you were legitimate or not.
I’d -destroy- you. And your regular and completely uneducated attempts at the Dark Arts would make it -absurdly- easy.
But I’m not even talking about you here. This is me talking about marketing generally.
I will save you the trouble of sending off to the IRS for the Intentional Insights expense reports. We are committed to transparency, and list our financials on our “About Us” page. I cannot control what you do with that information—it’s your choice.
My purpose for revealing it is my goal of being open. I know that doing so makes me vulnerable to the kind of destruction you describe above. It’s easy enough to frame me with fake screenshots doctored with Adobe Photoshop or other forms of framing. And then who can tell what’s real, right? The accusation would be out there, I would have to defend myself, and then people who don’t know me would suspect things. I would never be able to throw off the taint of it, would I? The same would be the case with rumors, etc.
Very clever and strategic Dark Arts stuff. Never thought about any of these until you raised them. I know you are an expert Dark Arts practitioner as you showed here in your deliberate efforts to attack my reputation on Less Wrong, as you clearly describe here. Didn’t know how expert you were. Updating on how much of a danger it is to me personally for you to be this upset with what I’m trying to do by getting more people out there in the world to be more sane.
I also noticed you chose not to respond to the point I made about the article. I would encourage you to be clear and specific. Thanks!
Updating on how much of a danger it is to me personally for you to be this upset with what I’m trying to do by getting more people out there in the world to be more sane.
I’m not upset with you. I’m at worst irritated, and that’s entirely because your style bothers me on a visceral level, and honestly, the amusement factor usually makes up for it.
The common element of all of those things is that they’re things I suspect or have suspected might be true of you, because of the way you behave—and by using the various materials that created those suspicions as “evidence” for them, the rumors are [ETA: Could be, rather] made to sound disproportionately valid. (Something you’ve said elevates hypothesis to “Extremely weak” plausibility levels for me; I suggest the hypothesis, elevating it to “Extremely weak” plausibility levels in others, then, after that update is made, separately present circumstantial evidence, causing them to elevate further. Double-counting evidence, basically.)
In the end, however, I assign very low probabilities to any of them (which is to say, I don’t believe them), and I think you’re a muggle pretending to be a Dark Lord, with just enough success at the pretense to achieve the effect of making my skin crawl, and probably benefitting from it on a personal level because it’s a step up from your previous level of social expertise. And at any rate, I wouldn’t actually unleash any such attacks, regardless of how antagonistic I felt towards you, unless I actually thought they were true.
You may notice a tendency about my use of Dark Arts: I try to always be clear about when I’m using them and what I expect them to do, if not while I’m doing it, after the fact. I’m not a fan of them, because I think that they have negative-on-average payouts. Which I suspect you’d disagree with, for the aforementioned reason that I suspect your social skills aren’t terribly good, and you’re experiencing more success using them. If this is the case: So far, you’re relying on luck. As I hope I’ve demonstrated, a single suspicion produced by their use could do far more than erase the positive benefits you may have accrued so far.
I actually do not consider myself a practitioner of Dark Arts as they are traditionally understood.
I feel pretty icky even about the “light Dark Arts” marketing stuff I am doing. As I told Lumifer in an earlier post, I cringed at that feeling when I was learning how to write for Lifehack, Huffington Post, etc. You can’t believe how weird that feels to an academic. My Elephant kicks and screams and tries to throw off my Rider whenever I do that. It’s very ughy. The only reason I am choosing to do so is to reach the goal of raising the sanity waterline effectively.
After bringing this question to the Less Wrong community in an earlier post, I updated to not think of what I do as in real Dark Arts territory. If I considered it to be in real Dark Arts territory, I don’t think I could bring myself emotionally to do it, at least without much more serious self-modification.
Please avoid abusive/trollish claims, as you have previously explicitly acknowledged your intentions to be. Don’t use argument-style Dark Arts, which is your skills set as you previously clearly acknowledged, to attack Intentional Insights through pattern-matching and making vague claims.
Instead, please consider using rational communication. For example, be specific and concrete about how our articles, for example this one, are problematic. Thanks!
If I wanted to -attack- you, I’d have accused you of using credit card information from a donation or t-shirt purchase to make illicit purchases. I’d send off for your IRS expense reports to see where your budget goes, and spin that in a very unfriendly way (if any spin were necessary). I’d start spreading rumors that your polyamory posts from your early days were proof that you were sleeping with your students. And trust me, you’ve spread enough nonsense around Less Wrong to make each one of these accusations stick in a very uncomfortable way. I did the research, trying to decide if you were legitimate or not.
I’d -destroy- you. And your regular and completely uneducated attempts at the Dark Arts would make it -absurdly- easy.
But I’m not even talking about you here. This is me talking about marketing generally.
I will save you the trouble of sending off to the IRS for the Intentional Insights expense reports. We are committed to transparency, and list our financials on our “About Us” page. I cannot control what you do with that information—it’s your choice.
My purpose for revealing it is my goal of being open. I know that doing so makes me vulnerable to the kind of destruction you describe above. It’s easy enough to frame me with fake screenshots doctored with Adobe Photoshop or other forms of framing. And then who can tell what’s real, right? The accusation would be out there, I would have to defend myself, and then people who don’t know me would suspect things. I would never be able to throw off the taint of it, would I? The same would be the case with rumors, etc.
Very clever and strategic Dark Arts stuff. Never thought about any of these until you raised them. I know you are an expert Dark Arts practitioner as you showed here in your deliberate efforts to attack my reputation on Less Wrong, as you clearly describe here. Didn’t know how expert you were. Updating on how much of a danger it is to me personally for you to be this upset with what I’m trying to do by getting more people out there in the world to be more sane.
I also noticed you chose not to respond to the point I made about the article. I would encourage you to be clear and specific. Thanks!
I’m not upset with you. I’m at worst irritated, and that’s entirely because your style bothers me on a visceral level, and honestly, the amusement factor usually makes up for it.
The common element of all of those things is that they’re things I suspect or have suspected might be true of you, because of the way you behave—and by using the various materials that created those suspicions as “evidence” for them, the rumors are [ETA: Could be, rather] made to sound disproportionately valid. (Something you’ve said elevates hypothesis to “Extremely weak” plausibility levels for me; I suggest the hypothesis, elevating it to “Extremely weak” plausibility levels in others, then, after that update is made, separately present circumstantial evidence, causing them to elevate further. Double-counting evidence, basically.)
In the end, however, I assign very low probabilities to any of them (which is to say, I don’t believe them), and I think you’re a muggle pretending to be a Dark Lord, with just enough success at the pretense to achieve the effect of making my skin crawl, and probably benefitting from it on a personal level because it’s a step up from your previous level of social expertise. And at any rate, I wouldn’t actually unleash any such attacks, regardless of how antagonistic I felt towards you, unless I actually thought they were true.
You may notice a tendency about my use of Dark Arts: I try to always be clear about when I’m using them and what I expect them to do, if not while I’m doing it, after the fact. I’m not a fan of them, because I think that they have negative-on-average payouts. Which I suspect you’d disagree with, for the aforementioned reason that I suspect your social skills aren’t terribly good, and you’re experiencing more success using them. If this is the case: So far, you’re relying on luck. As I hope I’ve demonstrated, a single suspicion produced by their use could do far more than erase the positive benefits you may have accrued so far.
I actually do not consider myself a practitioner of Dark Arts as they are traditionally understood.
I feel pretty icky even about the “light Dark Arts” marketing stuff I am doing. As I told Lumifer in an earlier post, I cringed at that feeling when I was learning how to write for Lifehack, Huffington Post, etc. You can’t believe how weird that feels to an academic. My Elephant kicks and screams and tries to throw off my Rider whenever I do that. It’s very ughy. The only reason I am choosing to do so is to reach the goal of raising the sanity waterline effectively.
After bringing this question to the Less Wrong community in an earlier post, I updated to not think of what I do as in real Dark Arts territory. If I considered it to be in real Dark Arts territory, I don’t think I could bring myself emotionally to do it, at least without much more serious self-modification.