At first when you mentioned that these posts looked like a sales pitch, I interpreted your use of the phrase as meaning an empty and deceptive claim. It was in that sense that I said:
FWIW (if this were a sales pitch, would I just say the same thing?) it seems that...
And the interesting idea I was surprised by was the extent to which the post seemed like a sales pitch for PUA.
In the sense of an empty and/or deceptive claim, these posts are not a sales pitch. I want to see rationality do better and I don’t want people to waste their time, or to have less expectation of success when someone else would have later given some useful advice. I would also look really silly after people realized there was nothing in the ideas, and being accepted as a rationalist is important to me; most importantly because almost all of my friends are rationalists.
In the sense of attempting to create interest in something, these posts are most definitely a sales pitch. (At least these first two, then we get into the methodology.) As for what I’m selling, all I have to offer is ideas, and for free. As for why I’m trying to sell them, I suppose the biggest factor is that I care a lot about existential risk, I have for years, and I see the advance and flourishing of rationality as really damn helpful for reducing those risks. There are other people doing things that I very much want them to succeed at, and it seems in fact that these ideas might really be able to help them do those things. (For example, be more rational themselves and increase rationality in others, but there are other things as well.)
One of the reasons that I included many of the persuasive elements I did (and one of the reasons it would be great to have more than one person using these ideas—this gets easier if people observe group behavior outside themselves) is that it can be very hard to simultaneously express only true things. For example, if someone points something out that you could be doing better, or mentions that there is a more accurate way of seeing something, this may be true but it also forms a lot of Bayesian evidence that this person is trying to gain social standing at your expense, and is going to frame themselves as more intelligent than you, etc. It’s very hard to express “that’s wrong” and “I will not put myself above you” at the same time. And for good reason! Almost nobody does that without trying to put themselves above others, and they’d be likely to say that even if they were planning to put themselves higher.
All of this makes it difficult to show people that they can trust me to look after their interests—and again, not by any fault of theirs, it’s just a matter of the particular epistemic situation. Eventually people will realize whether they can actually trust a person or not, but I wanted to make this as easy as possible by presenting information on what my actual goals and concerns are, how I see others and myself, etc.
So that’s the reason for many of the persuasive elements in these posts. They are intended to persuade, but they’re also very much intended to present actually true information.
I believe you will probably get to what you consider methodology. But that’s how sales goes: build them up; hook them, present the idea.
And yeah, in terms of a basic sales pitch, that was the intended flow. I wanted people to have some evidence for why the later material was worth reading, and why there might be something to it even if it parts of it seem counterintuitive at first.
Another data point: I wasn’t too bothered with the general sales-pitchiness of the first two posts, possibly because I’ve occasionally gained useful knowledge by reading actual sales pitches from the self-help crowd.
That said, you had me hooked by the third paragraph of Part I and I’ve been going “get to the POINT already” since then. I do see some value in personal testimony, but it should be far more condensed.
Ah. Well, if your goal is to gain credibility through the use of persuasive elements… hm.
Generally I would consider that a good strategy. Using persuasive elements on humans has a high probability of increasing trust.
That said, the format is common among sales people and con artists, and a person savvy to these techniques will actually feel less inclined to trust IF they recognize the technique. (Which requires they know the techniques and recognize them: normally a low-probability event)
I could go on about evaluating the audience of LW, of the risk/reward ratio of such manipulations and how you calculate the payoff, but if I take you at face value then there is no reason for you to have thought that far ahead. I will just note that when someone realizes that what you are doing is trying to persuade them, it often has the opposite effect. (A notable exception includes advertising, but that may have more to do with the ubiquitous nature of manipulative advertisements.) It is often far better to simply present the method and let it speak for itself.
Yes, I think this is partly what I’m looking at with the response to the posts. It seems that I underestimated LW’s tendency to notice this, and/or their general opposition to such approaches. (I’m unfortunately not that familiar with the online LW community, as I normally only read promoted posts without the comments.) It’s worth noting that a persuasive argument can also be a valid argument, and not all attempts to create beliefs in others are attempts to create false beliefs. But these attempts nonetheless look suspicious (for good reason) and while the upcoming posts have fewer such elements already, I’m going to go and clear some of them out.
At first when you mentioned that these posts looked like a sales pitch, I interpreted your use of the phrase as meaning an empty and deceptive claim. It was in that sense that I said:
And the interesting idea I was surprised by was the extent to which the post seemed like a sales pitch for PUA.
In the sense of an empty and/or deceptive claim, these posts are not a sales pitch. I want to see rationality do better and I don’t want people to waste their time, or to have less expectation of success when someone else would have later given some useful advice. I would also look really silly after people realized there was nothing in the ideas, and being accepted as a rationalist is important to me; most importantly because almost all of my friends are rationalists.
In the sense of attempting to create interest in something, these posts are most definitely a sales pitch. (At least these first two, then we get into the methodology.) As for what I’m selling, all I have to offer is ideas, and for free. As for why I’m trying to sell them, I suppose the biggest factor is that I care a lot about existential risk, I have for years, and I see the advance and flourishing of rationality as really damn helpful for reducing those risks. There are other people doing things that I very much want them to succeed at, and it seems in fact that these ideas might really be able to help them do those things. (For example, be more rational themselves and increase rationality in others, but there are other things as well.)
One of the reasons that I included many of the persuasive elements I did (and one of the reasons it would be great to have more than one person using these ideas—this gets easier if people observe group behavior outside themselves) is that it can be very hard to simultaneously express only true things. For example, if someone points something out that you could be doing better, or mentions that there is a more accurate way of seeing something, this may be true but it also forms a lot of Bayesian evidence that this person is trying to gain social standing at your expense, and is going to frame themselves as more intelligent than you, etc. It’s very hard to express “that’s wrong” and “I will not put myself above you” at the same time. And for good reason! Almost nobody does that without trying to put themselves above others, and they’d be likely to say that even if they were planning to put themselves higher.
All of this makes it difficult to show people that they can trust me to look after their interests—and again, not by any fault of theirs, it’s just a matter of the particular epistemic situation. Eventually people will realize whether they can actually trust a person or not, but I wanted to make this as easy as possible by presenting information on what my actual goals and concerns are, how I see others and myself, etc.
So that’s the reason for many of the persuasive elements in these posts. They are intended to persuade, but they’re also very much intended to present actually true information.
And yeah, in terms of a basic sales pitch, that was the intended flow. I wanted people to have some evidence for why the later material was worth reading, and why there might be something to it even if it parts of it seem counterintuitive at first.
Another data point: I wasn’t too bothered with the general sales-pitchiness of the first two posts, possibly because I’ve occasionally gained useful knowledge by reading actual sales pitches from the self-help crowd.
That said, you had me hooked by the third paragraph of Part I and I’ve been going “get to the POINT already” since then. I do see some value in personal testimony, but it should be far more condensed.
Ah. Well, if your goal is to gain credibility through the use of persuasive elements… hm.
Generally I would consider that a good strategy. Using persuasive elements on humans has a high probability of increasing trust.
That said, the format is common among sales people and con artists, and a person savvy to these techniques will actually feel less inclined to trust IF they recognize the technique. (Which requires they know the techniques and recognize them: normally a low-probability event)
I could go on about evaluating the audience of LW, of the risk/reward ratio of such manipulations and how you calculate the payoff, but if I take you at face value then there is no reason for you to have thought that far ahead. I will just note that when someone realizes that what you are doing is trying to persuade them, it often has the opposite effect. (A notable exception includes advertising, but that may have more to do with the ubiquitous nature of manipulative advertisements.) It is often far better to simply present the method and let it speak for itself.
Yes, I think this is partly what I’m looking at with the response to the posts. It seems that I underestimated LW’s tendency to notice this, and/or their general opposition to such approaches. (I’m unfortunately not that familiar with the online LW community, as I normally only read promoted posts without the comments.) It’s worth noting that a persuasive argument can also be a valid argument, and not all attempts to create beliefs in others are attempts to create false beliefs. But these attempts nonetheless look suspicious (for good reason) and while the upcoming posts have fewer such elements already, I’m going to go and clear some of them out.