Doesn’t that get me a little leeway on the tribalism?
Afraid not. It is my role (as Machiavelli’s advocate) to be as unreasonable in my interpretation of your position as I think I can get away with. ‘Devil’s Advocacy’ is seldom fully appreciated, even with warnings and it is (or would be) my role to encourage that. You can only appeal to Devil’s Advocacy so many times without appearing insecure, a defeat from which I would benefit far more than in merely proving you to be out-of-group.
No, it doesn’t matter if your arguments are good ones. It doesn’t matter if your contribution adds much needed rigour and balance to the discussion. It doesn’t matter if your efforts probing and challenging allows the in group to more clearly understand and communicate their position. Being a team player isn’t about doing what’s good for the team, it’s about playing the team.
That Robin Hanson has argued for your position helps, but once again I get to benefit from any doubt. On topics that are difficult or unintuitive Robin or Eliezer can expect effort to be expended understanding them before their controversial claims are harvested for status. But the topics are still difficult to understand or controversial so take some time to become a norm. Until that time you are still a ripe target if you express them yourself without the high status advocacy evidenced somewhere in the context.
But be careful. Make too much effort to convey that you are supporting the position of the high status guy and I can insinuate that you are a sycophant. Yes, it’s absurd to claim that you are both out-of-group and a sycophantic in-grouper, but an even moderately competent debater will get away with such nonsense. A token effort at subtlety and a couple of posts buffer in between are more than enough. After all, nobody is going to stand up for the out-of-group guy. That usually applies even if ‘stand up for’ is replaced with ‘even become conscious of the absurdity of the accusations levelled at’.
I’m afraid playing Devil’s Advocate just gives wannabe-angels a chance to try to prove that they’re the next Archangel Gabriel.
Afraid not. It is my role (as Machiavelli’s advocate) to be as unreasonable in my interpretation of your position as I think I can get away with. ‘Devil’s Advocacy’ is seldom fully appreciated, even with warnings and it is (or would be) my role to encourage that. You can only appeal to Devil’s Advocacy so many times without appearing insecure, a defeat from which I would benefit far more than in merely proving you to be out-of-group.
No, it doesn’t matter if your arguments are good ones. It doesn’t matter if your contribution adds much needed rigour and balance to the discussion. It doesn’t matter if your efforts probing and challenging allows the in group to more clearly understand and communicate their position. Being a team player isn’t about doing what’s good for the team, it’s about playing the team.
That Robin Hanson has argued for your position helps, but once again I get to benefit from any doubt. On topics that are difficult or unintuitive Robin or Eliezer can expect effort to be expended understanding them before their controversial claims are harvested for status. But the topics are still difficult to understand or controversial so take some time to become a norm. Until that time you are still a ripe target if you express them yourself without the high status advocacy evidenced somewhere in the context.
But be careful. Make too much effort to convey that you are supporting the position of the high status guy and I can insinuate that you are a sycophant. Yes, it’s absurd to claim that you are both out-of-group and a sycophantic in-grouper, but an even moderately competent debater will get away with such nonsense. A token effort at subtlety and a couple of posts buffer in between are more than enough. After all, nobody is going to stand up for the out-of-group guy. That usually applies even if ‘stand up for’ is replaced with ‘even become conscious of the absurdity of the accusations levelled at’.
I’m afraid playing Devil’s Advocate just gives wannabe-angels a chance to try to prove that they’re the next Archangel Gabriel.