> I could have designed an adversarial lecture that would have driven everybody in this room halfway crazy—except for Keltham
I… would love to see one of those, unless you consider it an infohazard/Shiri’s scissor.
I think this might just mean using the drowning child argument to convince the students they should be acting selflessly all the time, donating all their money above minimal subsistence, etc.
If the people on the other side of the argument ended up behaving coherently, rather than twisting themselves into knots and burning themselves out as their inner gears ground against themselves in unresolvable circles, it wouldn’t be much of an adversarial lecture, would it?
I think this might just mean using the drowning child argument to convince the students they should be acting selflessly all the time, donating all their money above minimal subsistence, etc.
If the people on the other side of the argument ended up behaving coherently, rather than twisting themselves into knots and burning themselves out as their inner gears ground against themselves in unresolvable circles, it wouldn’t be much of an adversarial lecture, would it?
Knot-twisting is indeed the outcome I was imagining.
(Your translation spell might be handling the words “convince” and “should” optimistically… maybe try them with the scare quotes?)