That’s the general problem Charlie is pointing to. If you want to give your argument some extra oomph beyond what the evidence supports, why do you want that? You could be slightly wrong, or (if you’re less lucky than Scott) a lot wrong, and make many other people wrong too. Better spend that extra time making your evidence-based argument better.
My goal is almost always behavior change. I can write all sorts of strong evidence-based arguments but I despair of those arguments actually affecting the behavior of anyone except the rationalists who are best at taking ideas seriously.
Said another way, in addition to writing down arguments there’s the task of debugging emotional blocks preventing people from taking the argument seriously enough for it to change their behavior. I think there’s a role for writing that tries to do both of these things (and that e.g. Eliezer did this a lot in the Sequences and it was good that he did this, and that HPMoR also does this and that was good too, and Meditations on Moloch, etc.).
My goal is almost always behavior change. I can write all sorts of strong evidence-based arguments but I despair of those arguments actually affecting the behavior of anyone except the rationalists who are best at taking ideas seriously.
Said another way, in addition to writing down arguments there’s the task of debugging emotional blocks preventing people from taking the argument seriously enough for it to change their behavior. I think there’s a role for writing that tries to do both of these things (and that e.g. Eliezer did this a lot in the Sequences and it was good that he did this, and that HPMoR also does this and that was good too, and Meditations on Moloch, etc.).