I’m not sure this is true—I think we could convince them using other methods—but in either case, why tie our hands behind our back if we’re trying to win?
why tie our hands behind our back if we’re trying to win?
Because it’s unethical. I don’t think it’s so important to convince uninterested people that we should resort to unethical methods.
If we use unethical mind control tricks whose success is not correlated with the strength of
our arguments, we lose an opportunity to discover that maybe we aren’t ready to be convincing people. What if we are wrong? What if rationality is not developed enough to have the results speak for themselves? How would we know?
The fact that dark side mind control tricks look attractive is evidence that the art is not developed enough that we should even be trying to convince people of its effectiveness. When the art is ready, we will not have to convince people; they will be asking how we do it.
I don’t think it’s so important to convince uninterested people that we should resort to unethical methods.
If behaving ethically is more important in your ethics than helping people avoid huge mistakes that hurt them—like, say, choosing alternative therapies instead of something that actually cures a disease and dying because the side effects of the treatment are more available to your brain than the concept of dying—then I don’t think much of your ethics.
If there was a pill that would make people more rational, I’d be slipping it in their food without telling them. I’d be injecting it into the water supply. I’d be taking a huge dose and donating blood. Because there are people out there that refuse vaccinations, there are people out there that take alcohol and painkillers together, there are people out there that make simple silly mistakes and die. And that’s wrong.
We are not talking about slipping people some miracle cure that they are just being stupid about not taking. If that were the case, you would be right. At this point we don’t actually know that it is a miracle cure and we are just slipping them some dubious substance that shows promise but may or may not help. We need more interested people to develop the art, but not the kind of people who will only be convinced by dark side mind control tricks.
Maybe when LW rationality is at a point where reasonable people could be convinced with empirical evidence, then it will be a good idea to trick the rest.
Ethics isn’t just about right and wrong, it’s also about not doing stupid shit that’s going to bite you in the ass.
It doesn’t need to be “OK”.
I’m not sure this is true—I think we could convince them using other methods—but in either case, why tie our hands behind our back if we’re trying to win?
Because it’s unethical. I don’t think it’s so important to convince uninterested people that we should resort to unethical methods.
If we use unethical mind control tricks whose success is not correlated with the strength of our arguments, we lose an opportunity to discover that maybe we aren’t ready to be convincing people. What if we are wrong? What if rationality is not developed enough to have the results speak for themselves? How would we know?
The fact that dark side mind control tricks look attractive is evidence that the art is not developed enough that we should even be trying to convince people of its effectiveness. When the art is ready, we will not have to convince people; they will be asking how we do it.
If behaving ethically is more important in your ethics than helping people avoid huge mistakes that hurt them—like, say, choosing alternative therapies instead of something that actually cures a disease and dying because the side effects of the treatment are more available to your brain than the concept of dying—then I don’t think much of your ethics.
If there was a pill that would make people more rational, I’d be slipping it in their food without telling them. I’d be injecting it into the water supply. I’d be taking a huge dose and donating blood. Because there are people out there that refuse vaccinations, there are people out there that take alcohol and painkillers together, there are people out there that make simple silly mistakes and die. And that’s wrong.
First of all, what do you think of protected from myself?
We are not talking about slipping people some miracle cure that they are just being stupid about not taking. If that were the case, you would be right. At this point we don’t actually know that it is a miracle cure and we are just slipping them some dubious substance that shows promise but may or may not help. We need more interested people to develop the art, but not the kind of people who will only be convinced by dark side mind control tricks.
Maybe when LW rationality is at a point where reasonable people could be convinced with empirical evidence, then it will be a good idea to trick the rest.
Ethics isn’t just about right and wrong, it’s also about not doing stupid shit that’s going to bite you in the ass.