Several years ago, I used to go to predominantly Christian conservative forums and get in arguments. It was mostly for entertainment, but it was also kind of an eye-opening experience. I did the same sort of thing, in different forums, for nuclear power. Most big controversial issues are so steeped in the Dark Arts that you’ll just get overshouted if you try to calmly lay out a reasonable and well-organized argument. As the saying goes, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
It’s possible to be frightfully effective in such an argument, but the methods you have to use feel pretty dirty, because they are. If you can force people to defend indefensible implications of their position, you score points. If you can trick a bunch of opponents into saying something obviously stupid, you score points. If you can find a loud idiot and make a fool of them in public, so that the lurkers don’t want to be associated with him, you score big. And often pure typing speed helps; if you’re answering the same arguments again and again, you can fire off a lot of replies very fast, flying on autopilot. A handful of vocal people using such tactics can change the default views of a whole forum. It works.
...But none of this feels right. I feel like there ought to be a better way to influence people’s views, but I just don’t see it. This is part of why I like Less Wrong: people are actually looking for the truth instead of trying to fling a conclusion at the world. I don’t know if it’s even possible to have that kind of discussion in most places.
It’s possible to be frightfully effective in such an argument, but the methods you have to use feel pretty dirty, because they are. If you can force people to defend indefensible implications of their position, you score points. If you can trick a bunch of opponents into saying something obviously stupid, you score points. If you can find a loud idiot and make a fool of them in public, so that the lurkers don’t want to be associated with him, you score big. And often pure typing speed helps; if you’re answering the same arguments again and again, you can fire off a lot of replies very fast, flying on autopilot. A handful of vocal people using such tactics can change the default views of a whole forum. It works.
That’s the kind of methods we should get good at calling out here. I’m not sure we are yet. The skills for group rationality are different from those for individual rationality, which are those that have been discussed the most here.
Listing the dirty, dark-arts techniques is a good first step towards fighting them.
Listing the dirty, dark-arts techniques is a good first step towards fighting them.
The bulk of this work was done a couple of centuries ago, with the same intent, by Schopenhauer in The Art of Being Right. Mass-media and Internet bulletin boards offer new techniques, but a lot hasn’t changed from the days of handwritten letters and literary salons.
Several years ago, I used to go to predominantly Christian conservative forums and get in arguments. It was mostly for entertainment, but it was also kind of an eye-opening experience. I did the same sort of thing, in different forums, for nuclear power. Most big controversial issues are so steeped in the Dark Arts that you’ll just get overshouted if you try to calmly lay out a reasonable and well-organized argument. As the saying goes, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
It’s possible to be frightfully effective in such an argument, but the methods you have to use feel pretty dirty, because they are. If you can force people to defend indefensible implications of their position, you score points. If you can trick a bunch of opponents into saying something obviously stupid, you score points. If you can find a loud idiot and make a fool of them in public, so that the lurkers don’t want to be associated with him, you score big. And often pure typing speed helps; if you’re answering the same arguments again and again, you can fire off a lot of replies very fast, flying on autopilot. A handful of vocal people using such tactics can change the default views of a whole forum. It works.
...But none of this feels right. I feel like there ought to be a better way to influence people’s views, but I just don’t see it. This is part of why I like Less Wrong: people are actually looking for the truth instead of trying to fling a conclusion at the world. I don’t know if it’s even possible to have that kind of discussion in most places.
That’s the kind of methods we should get good at calling out here. I’m not sure we are yet. The skills for group rationality are different from those for individual rationality, which are those that have been discussed the most here.
Listing the dirty, dark-arts techniques is a good first step towards fighting them.
The bulk of this work was done a couple of centuries ago, with the same intent, by Schopenhauer in The Art of Being Right. Mass-media and Internet bulletin boards offer new techniques, but a lot hasn’t changed from the days of handwritten letters and literary salons.