It's a fair point. We could consider the less savory elements as "Defense against the Dark Arts" class.

However, unless you're a super-genius working on an universe-changing technology in your basement, you might well need to know how to use this stuff to get big things accomplished.

To each their own. I'm not here to preach ethics, but I'm assuming this crowd has enough of a moral compass not to turn into a pack of used car salesmen.

I'm sorry if somebody else remarked upon that, but wouldn't the obviuos area of study for people on lw not be how to influence others (supposedly without their knowing), but how to avoid such influences or recognize the associated techniques?

The first thing that popped into my mind here was the old joke "How can you tell when a politician is lying?" But then it occurred to me that that I'd be making all sorts of type II errors with that approach...