Those things which you describe so casually as your own preferred behaviors are seen by those with a lesswrong mindset as disengenuity and the abuse of the dark arts.
It is not dark arts if you are honest about what you are doing.
What I am often doing is exploring various viewpoints by taking the position of someone who would be emotionally attached to it and convinced about it. I also use the opponents arguments against the opponent if it shows that it cuts both ways. I don’t see why that would be a problem, especially since I always admitted that I am doing that. See for example this comment from 2010.
It is not dark arts if you are honest about what you are doing.
That’s absolutely false. The terror management theory people, for example, discovered that mortality salience still kicks in even if you tell people that you’re going to expose them to something in order to provoke their own feeling of mortality.
EDIT: The paper I wanted to cite is still paywalled, afaik, but the relevant references are mostly linked in this section of the Wikipedia article. The relevant study is the one where the threat was writing about one’s feelings on death.
It is not dark arts if you are honest about what you are doing.
That’s absolutely false.
Okay. I possibly mistakenly assumed that the only way I could get answers is to challenge people directly and emotionally. I didn’t expect that I could just ask how people associated with SI/LW could possible believe what they believe and get answers. I tried, but it didn’t work.
It is not dark arts if you are honest about what you are doing.
What I am often doing is exploring various viewpoints by taking the position of someone who would be emotionally attached to it and convinced about it. I also use the opponents arguments against the opponent if it shows that it cuts both ways. I don’t see why that would be a problem, especially since I always admitted that I am doing that. See for example this comment from 2010.
That’s absolutely false. The terror management theory people, for example, discovered that mortality salience still kicks in even if you tell people that you’re going to expose them to something in order to provoke their own feeling of mortality.
EDIT: The paper I wanted to cite is still paywalled, afaik, but the relevant references are mostly linked in this section of the Wikipedia article. The relevant study is the one where the threat was writing about one’s feelings on death.
Okay. I possibly mistakenly assumed that the only way I could get answers is to challenge people directly and emotionally. I didn’t expect that I could just ask how people associated with SI/LW could possible believe what they believe and get answers. I tried, but it didn’t work.