After reading this and your dialogue with Isusr, it seems that Dark Arts arguments are logically consistent and that the most effective way to rebut them is not to challenge them directly in the issue.
jimmy and madasario in the comments asked for a way to detect stupid arguments. My current answer to that is “take the argument to its logical conclusion, check whether the argument’s conclusion accurately predicts reality, and if it doesn’t, it’s probably wrong”
For example, you mentioned before an argument which says that we need to send U.S. troops to the Arctic because Russia has hypersonic missiles that can do a first-strike on the US, but their range is too short to attack the US from the Russian mainland, but it is long enough to attack the US from the Arctic.
If this really were true, we would see this being treated as a national emergency, and the US taking swift action to stop Russia from placing missiles in the Arctic, but we don’t see this.
Now, for some arguments (e.g. AI risk, cryonics), the truth is more complicated than this, but it’s a good heuristic for telling whether you need to investigate an argument more thoroughly or not.
After reading this and your dialogue with Isusr, it seems that Dark Arts arguments are logically consistent and that the most effective way to rebut them is not to challenge them directly in the issue.
Not quite. As I point out with my example of ‘ultra-BS’, much of the Dark Arts as we see in politics is easily rebuttable by specific evidence. It’s just simply not time efficient in most formats.
jimmy and madasario in the comments asked for a way to detect stupid arguments. My current answer to that is “take the argument to its logical conclusion, check whether the argument’s conclusion accurately predicts reality, and if it doesn’t, it’s probably wrong”
Mhm, yes. I think this is a helpful heuristic. I thought of it, but neglected to mention. Thank you for the addition! I think people will find it helpful.
(though, I must caution, many people have rather misinformed models of how the world works, so this may or may not be helpful depending on who specifically is using this heuristic)
After reading this and your dialogue with Isusr, it seems that Dark Arts arguments are logically consistent and that the most effective way to rebut them is not to challenge them directly in the issue.
jimmy and madasario in the comments asked for a way to detect stupid arguments. My current answer to that is “take the argument to its logical conclusion, check whether the argument’s conclusion accurately predicts reality, and if it doesn’t, it’s probably wrong”
For example, you mentioned before an argument which says that we need to send U.S. troops to the Arctic because Russia has hypersonic missiles that can do a first-strike on the US, but their range is too short to attack the US from the Russian mainland, but it is long enough to attack the US from the Arctic.
If this really were true, we would see this being treated as a national emergency, and the US taking swift action to stop Russia from placing missiles in the Arctic, but we don’t see this.
Now, for some arguments (e.g. AI risk, cryonics), the truth is more complicated than this, but it’s a good heuristic for telling whether you need to investigate an argument more thoroughly or not.
Thanks for reading!
Not quite. As I point out with my example of ‘ultra-BS’, much of the Dark Arts as we see in politics is easily rebuttable by specific evidence. It’s just simply not time efficient in most formats.
Mhm, yes. I think this is a helpful heuristic. I thought of it, but neglected to mention. Thank you for the addition! I think people will find it helpful.
(though, I must caution, many people have rather misinformed models of how the world works, so this may or may not be helpful depending on who specifically is using this heuristic)