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pataz1 comments on The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom - Less Wrong
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Frankly, I'm more inclined to agree with brandon's take on it, that its "a social rather than individual process," an aspect the writer of the Against article didn't consider. This is linked at the bottom of the "Against" article.
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-devils-advocacy.html
Brandon puts forth, "Yudkowsky is right that people who play games by thinking up arguments, however absurd, for a position, are simply being irrational; but this is to no point whatsoever: everyone knows that the devil's advocate is supposed to come up not with any old argument but with good or at least reasonably plausible arguments, arguments with at least some genuine strengths. People play devil's advocate for a reason, not simply in order to start making things up without any rational restraint. There are less elaborate and roundabout ways to play-pretend."
I would point out that online discussion forum are entirely social enterprises, so Brandon's approach at Devil's Advocacy would seem to apply.
Pat
I associate claims of 'Devils Advocacy' with a tendency to use whatever clever rhetorical gambits seem most effective. That is, I associate Advocacy, including 'Devil's advocacy' with bullshit. This I hold in low esteem and more so because this kind of debating is highly respected in many contexts. If the impressiveness of arguments was more reliably correlated with quality of arguments this association would be weaker.
ETA: I can only assume that someone objects to the use of 'bullshit' as a descriptor as a distaste for the kind of advocacy I mention is not uncommon here. I tend to use the term to capture a rather precise philosophical concept that we don't have a better word for. The term is 'woo' is the closest approximation.
Personally, I thought you were referring to Frankfurt's theory of bullshit.
Well spotted.
It seems not entirely unrelated to your issue with advocacy in this context that advocate is also another word for lawyer...
I can vaguely recall a conversation here a while back in which someone was advocating a lawyer, judge and bailiff metaphor for rational discourse and also professing devil's advocacy in a nearby context. I suspect I disagreed with him.