I think Capla is not asking for more details about what’s on your website, but the broader question about whether this should be considered “dark arts” (and how this relates to engagement of “system 1″, as other commenters have wondered).
It feels to me like a lot of the present discussion is about defending the choices you have already made for promoting your organisation, rather than exploring the issues more broadly and engaging with others’ questions about the argumentation that underlies the original post. The core arguments: creating cognitive ease is a form of dark arts; that this is warranted in attracting new people to rationalist ideas; and that the examples on your site engage “system 1” and thus are suitable to achieve this.
Many commenters are raising issues around these themes but it seems your responses are mostly brief brush-offs, or asking a commenter a different question about one of your articles, rather than engaging in the discussion. This isn’t likely to encourage others to get involved, and gives a further impression that these posts are really just about further advertising your site/organisation and not about discussing the broader questions that are involved.
Thanks for pointing out these issues, that helps clarify things for me. Communication is hard, damn hard, as Raelifin presented at the Columbus, OH, LW Meetup yesterday.
Let me try to re-communicate what I wanted to say, maybe I can be a bit more clear about it so that I don’t screw up my communication efforts again (and fault on me for not communicating more clearly earlier). On Less Wrong, there are descriptions of a whole spectrum of Dark Arts. We are using the “lightest” of what is generally perceived as the Dark Arts, namely simple and positive language, having some stories, some flashy language and graphics.
Some rationalists may not perceive these as Dark Arts. Others do, as clearly shown by the articles I have linked to above posted on Less Wrong and Overcoming Bias about what are Dark Arts. Based on the wide variety of responses, it seems that most Less Wrongers are fine with us as an organization using these moderate Dark Arts to promote rationality. That’s the answer to the question that I posed in the original discussion post that prompted this discussion.
Finally, regarding Intentional Insights as an organization and the choices we made. Yes, we made certain choices, but we have an experimental attitude and are very open to updating our beliefs based on evidence. So if there was significant evidence that the choices we made are problematic, we would be quite open to revising the way we are doing things. So feedback is welcomed, and we already have updated our website based on feedback, as exemplified in my comment here.
The posts titled dark arts has both simply language and complex language in it.
If you mislead via using simple language that’s bad. If you mislead by using complex language that’s
also bad.
Neither complex nor simple language is inherently dark.
The other two don’t contain the term dark arts.
Eliezers post on stories doesn’t label them dark arts. He does the opposite. He says that in
a world where people care about informing people use stories.
He says that they are distant and not a way to signal authority in academia.
That’s not the same thing as labeling them as dark.
I think you misread Robins article as well. It also doesn’t use the term dark arts and explicitly
says people practicing dark arts sometimes use language that isn’t emotional for singalling purposes.
As far as your use of dark arts goes, saying that System I is
mainly the amygdala and System II is mainly the prefrontal cortex.
I’m not exactly sure to what extend that’s unsupported neurobabble. To the extend that it is,
don’t do things like that. Don’t simplify complex scienctific issues in a way that ends up
with wrong claims. Don’t make wrong claims about neuroscience to motivate people
to take up rational thinking habits.
Thanks, the feedback is appreciated. It sounds like the crux of the matter is misleading people, whatever the specific strategies involved. We’ll work hard to try to avoid making wrong claims in order to motivate people to take up rational thinking habits. I think that’s probably the main danger area for us to watch out for, glad you pointed it out.
I think Capla is not asking for more details about what’s on your website, but the broader question about whether this should be considered “dark arts” (and how this relates to engagement of “system 1″, as other commenters have wondered).
It feels to me like a lot of the present discussion is about defending the choices you have already made for promoting your organisation, rather than exploring the issues more broadly and engaging with others’ questions about the argumentation that underlies the original post. The core arguments: creating cognitive ease is a form of dark arts; that this is warranted in attracting new people to rationalist ideas; and that the examples on your site engage “system 1” and thus are suitable to achieve this.
Many commenters are raising issues around these themes but it seems your responses are mostly brief brush-offs, or asking a commenter a different question about one of your articles, rather than engaging in the discussion. This isn’t likely to encourage others to get involved, and gives a further impression that these posts are really just about further advertising your site/organisation and not about discussing the broader questions that are involved.
Thanks for pointing out these issues, that helps clarify things for me. Communication is hard, damn hard, as Raelifin presented at the Columbus, OH, LW Meetup yesterday.
Let me try to re-communicate what I wanted to say, maybe I can be a bit more clear about it so that I don’t screw up my communication efforts again (and fault on me for not communicating more clearly earlier). On Less Wrong, there are descriptions of a whole spectrum of Dark Arts. We are using the “lightest” of what is generally perceived as the Dark Arts, namely simple and positive language, having some stories, some flashy language and graphics.
Some rationalists may not perceive these as Dark Arts. Others do, as clearly shown by the articles I have linked to above posted on Less Wrong and Overcoming Bias about what are Dark Arts. Based on the wide variety of responses, it seems that most Less Wrongers are fine with us as an organization using these moderate Dark Arts to promote rationality. That’s the answer to the question that I posed in the original discussion post that prompted this discussion.
Finally, regarding Intentional Insights as an organization and the choices we made. Yes, we made certain choices, but we have an experimental attitude and are very open to updating our beliefs based on evidence. So if there was significant evidence that the choices we made are problematic, we would be quite open to revising the way we are doing things. So feedback is welcomed, and we already have updated our website based on feedback, as exemplified in my comment here.
The posts titled dark arts has both simply language and complex language in it. If you mislead via using simple language that’s bad. If you mislead by using complex language that’s also bad.
Neither complex nor simple language is inherently dark.
The other two don’t contain the term dark arts. Eliezers post on stories doesn’t label them dark arts. He does the opposite. He says that in a world where people care about informing people use stories.
He says that they are distant and not a way to signal authority in academia. That’s not the same thing as labeling them as dark.
I think you misread Robins article as well. It also doesn’t use the term dark arts and explicitly says people practicing dark arts sometimes use language that isn’t emotional for singalling purposes.
As far as your use of dark arts goes, saying that System I is mainly the amygdala and System II is mainly the prefrontal cortex.
I’m not exactly sure to what extend that’s unsupported neurobabble. To the extend that it is, don’t do things like that. Don’t simplify complex scienctific issues in a way that ends up with wrong claims. Don’t make wrong claims about neuroscience to motivate people to take up rational thinking habits.
Thanks, the feedback is appreciated. It sounds like the crux of the matter is misleading people, whatever the specific strategies involved. We’ll work hard to try to avoid making wrong claims in order to motivate people to take up rational thinking habits. I think that’s probably the main danger area for us to watch out for, glad you pointed it out.