interesting. I wouldn’t want to rule out the “dark arts” , i.e. highly non rational methods of persuasion.
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“Needless to say, those who come to me and offer their unsolicited advice {to lie} do not appear to be expert liars. For one thing, a majority of them don’t seem to find anything odd about floating their proposals in publicly archived, Google-indexed mailing lists.”—Eliezer Yudkowsky
There’s a difference between a direct lie and not-quite rational persuasion. I wouldn’t tell a direct lie about this kind of thing. Those people who would most be persuaded by a gory demo of robots killing people aren’t clever enough to research stuff on the net.
What’s “rational persuation”, anyway? Is a person supposed to already possess an ability to change their mind according to an agreed-to-be-safe protocol? Teaching rationality and then giving your complex case would be more natural, but isn’t necessarily an option.
The problem is that it’s possible to persuade that person of many wrong things, that the person isn’t safe from falsity. But if whatever action you are performing causes them to get closer to the truth, it’s a positive thing to do in their situation, one selected among many negative things that could be done and that happen habitually.
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There’s a difference between a direct lie and not-quite rational persuasion. I wouldn’t tell a direct lie about this kind of thing. Those people who would most be persuaded by a gory demo of robots killing people aren’t clever enough to research stuff on the net.
What’s “rational persuation”, anyway? Is a person supposed to already possess an ability to change their mind according to an agreed-to-be-safe protocol? Teaching rationality and then giving your complex case would be more natural, but isn’t necessarily an option.
The problem is that it’s possible to persuade that person of many wrong things, that the person isn’t safe from falsity. But if whatever action you are performing causes them to get closer to the truth, it’s a positive thing to do in their situation, one selected among many negative things that could be done and that happen habitually.