The “dark side” has an analogy in go. It is tempting to play moves that you know don’t work because you think your opponent won’t be able to figure out the correct response. It is usually not obvious to beginners that doing this is really holding them back.
Good point! I thought about including this connection between trick moves and the dark arts, actually. They don’t seem quite parallel to me, but there are definitely similarities. If anybody is interested, you can read more about trick moves here.
Trick moves are a little more subtle than what I was talking about. A “trick move” in go usually has a refutation that is only a few points worse than optimal play, but if the opponent falls for the trick it can be devastating. (IOW, you risk a few points for the chance of making a lot of points.) These moves have their place in handicap go (and to some extent, even games where you are feeling out the level of your opponent).
I was thinking of the less well thought out moves that beginners to medium level players play, hoping that their opponent won’t see the crushing refutation. (They’re risking large amounts of points for no apparent reason, often.)
OK, I see, thanks for explaining it. I’d never really heard of this difference before. I’d have to say that the more subtle moves that risk only a little and feel out your opponent sound more akin to the “dark arts” in rationality.
This line of discussion is interesting to me because if the analogy holds, then it implies that what this community calls “the dark side” vs “the dark arts” are very different from each other despite the surface similarity of the terminology.
The dark side, as I understand it, is what you get when someone decides that beliefs have some value other than that derived via a correspondence theory of truth. Then they twist their mind into a pretzel and emotionally freak out when you show them evidence which violates their semi-consciously constructed “useful delusions”. This is like the recovering alcoholic who has a belief that Jesus will personally intervene in their lives to give them strength where the belief powers their decision not to drink alcohol. The analogy in go would be a “trick play” where seemingly solid arguments (or lines of play) can “destroy the situation” for the person relying on the trick, but in the absence of solid refutation the move might win the game.
The dark arts that you seem to be referring to just now as “subtle moves” seem to be analogous to go concepts like sabaki play, which is relatively light in the sense of putting stones on the board that are loosely connected, easy to sacrifice, but generally well placed, so that if they are attacked clumsily the other player can develop a position that is too large to sacrifice, too expensive to defend, and/or inefficient. The epistemic equivalent to sabaki play might be “sophistry”, where someone is known to be highly skilled at argument and therefore it somehow “counts less” when they win because all their “fancy words” lead to a victory for reasons that are not obvious to people who disagree and/or haven’t studied rhetoric.
The place the analogy breaks down might be that in go “sabaki play” is in some sense simply good play, whereas in argument people have a sense (justified or not) that sophisticated argumentation is somehow “dirty”. Perhaps in go the difference between trick play and sabaki play is more visible because whether play is good or not is more objective, whereas in argument things are much fuzzier. In verbal disputes there are incentives for less skilled debaters to ad hom more skilled debaters, and inferential distance might make it hard for uneducated observers to untangle the fact of the matter based on surface-level observations. Plus this same fuzziness creates opportunities for rhetorically skilled cheaters to really pull tricks so accusations of trickery might be on target.
Still, its interesting that this sense of the “dark arts” seem to most easily be deployed by people who have studied “human rationality”, whereas the “dark side” mostly involves people purposefully adopting bad epistemology and then going off the rails. It sort of seems like a critique of the terminology if dark arts tend not to be deployed by the dark side.
I would appreciate anyone who could take a counterpoint and shed light on the issue :-)
It sort of seems like a critique of the terminology if dark arts tend not to be deployed by the dark side.
I agree. I think the dark side terminology is based on the “dark side of the force” from Star Wars, which has connotations of a personal fall into temptation, and the dark arts refers to magic of evil intent or effect, perhaps from Harry Potter, where it is used by evil but not self-deceiving villains. This could explain the inconsistency.
I think you have really helped to clarify the go side of this analogy, and I’m grateful for your description of sabaki play and what makes it different from trick moves. I think the connection you draw to rationality and debate are pretty good.
I’m not sure about this, but I think there’s another sense in which the term “dark arts” is used on LessWrong: using one’s knowledge of common cognitive biases and other rationality mistakes to get people to do or believe something. That is, fooling others, not fooling yourself. For the go analogy, I think this is most closely related to trick (non-obviously suboptimal) moves. Or perhaps the technically unsound but necessary aggressive moves used by white in handicap games to which black often responds with too much humility.
It seems to me that learning trick moves and the dark arts strengthens your overall understanding and ability, relative to just learning the proper standard moves (honte) and reasoning.
Good point! I thought about including this connection between trick moves and the dark arts, actually. They don’t seem quite parallel to me, but there are definitely similarities. If anybody is interested, you can read more about trick moves here.
Trick moves are a little more subtle than what I was talking about. A “trick move” in go usually has a refutation that is only a few points worse than optimal play, but if the opponent falls for the trick it can be devastating. (IOW, you risk a few points for the chance of making a lot of points.) These moves have their place in handicap go (and to some extent, even games where you are feeling out the level of your opponent).
I was thinking of the less well thought out moves that beginners to medium level players play, hoping that their opponent won’t see the crushing refutation. (They’re risking large amounts of points for no apparent reason, often.)
OK, I see, thanks for explaining it. I’d never really heard of this difference before. I’d have to say that the more subtle moves that risk only a little and feel out your opponent sound more akin to the “dark arts” in rationality.
This line of discussion is interesting to me because if the analogy holds, then it implies that what this community calls “the dark side” vs “the dark arts” are very different from each other despite the surface similarity of the terminology.
The dark side, as I understand it, is what you get when someone decides that beliefs have some value other than that derived via a correspondence theory of truth. Then they twist their mind into a pretzel and emotionally freak out when you show them evidence which violates their semi-consciously constructed “useful delusions”. This is like the recovering alcoholic who has a belief that Jesus will personally intervene in their lives to give them strength where the belief powers their decision not to drink alcohol. The analogy in go would be a “trick play” where seemingly solid arguments (or lines of play) can “destroy the situation” for the person relying on the trick, but in the absence of solid refutation the move might win the game.
The dark arts that you seem to be referring to just now as “subtle moves” seem to be analogous to go concepts like sabaki play, which is relatively light in the sense of putting stones on the board that are loosely connected, easy to sacrifice, but generally well placed, so that if they are attacked clumsily the other player can develop a position that is too large to sacrifice, too expensive to defend, and/or inefficient. The epistemic equivalent to sabaki play might be “sophistry”, where someone is known to be highly skilled at argument and therefore it somehow “counts less” when they win because all their “fancy words” lead to a victory for reasons that are not obvious to people who disagree and/or haven’t studied rhetoric.
The place the analogy breaks down might be that in go “sabaki play” is in some sense simply good play, whereas in argument people have a sense (justified or not) that sophisticated argumentation is somehow “dirty”. Perhaps in go the difference between trick play and sabaki play is more visible because whether play is good or not is more objective, whereas in argument things are much fuzzier. In verbal disputes there are incentives for less skilled debaters to ad hom more skilled debaters, and inferential distance might make it hard for uneducated observers to untangle the fact of the matter based on surface-level observations. Plus this same fuzziness creates opportunities for rhetorically skilled cheaters to really pull tricks so accusations of trickery might be on target.
Still, its interesting that this sense of the “dark arts” seem to most easily be deployed by people who have studied “human rationality”, whereas the “dark side” mostly involves people purposefully adopting bad epistemology and then going off the rails. It sort of seems like a critique of the terminology if dark arts tend not to be deployed by the dark side.
I would appreciate anyone who could take a counterpoint and shed light on the issue :-)
I agree. I think the dark side terminology is based on the “dark side of the force” from Star Wars, which has connotations of a personal fall into temptation, and the dark arts refers to magic of evil intent or effect, perhaps from Harry Potter, where it is used by evil but not self-deceiving villains. This could explain the inconsistency.
I think you have really helped to clarify the go side of this analogy, and I’m grateful for your description of sabaki play and what makes it different from trick moves. I think the connection you draw to rationality and debate are pretty good.
I’m not sure about this, but I think there’s another sense in which the term “dark arts” is used on LessWrong: using one’s knowledge of common cognitive biases and other rationality mistakes to get people to do or believe something. That is, fooling others, not fooling yourself. For the go analogy, I think this is most closely related to trick (non-obviously suboptimal) moves. Or perhaps the technically unsound but necessary aggressive moves used by white in handicap games to which black often responds with too much humility.
It seems to me that learning trick moves and the dark arts strengthens your overall understanding and ability, relative to just learning the proper standard moves (honte) and reasoning.
Yes, both in Go and real life.