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SilasBarta comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong
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Hm, so you're saying I should use my clever trolling skills to promote rationality, instead of to unsuccessfully satirize irrationality?
Because I used to do the reverse: whenever someone was making irritatingly stupid arguments, I would just add that technique to my trolling arsenal.
Just to add to this: Goebbels was perfectly right about the phenomenon of the Big Lie. If you repeat an argument - even a TERRIBLE argument - enough times, people will start to believe it. Exempli gratia:
'Evolution is just a theory.' 'Where are the transitional forms?' 'Hurricane in a junkyard.'
There are the partisans of evolution by n.s. and then there are the partisans of creationism, and then there are the other 85% of people who are too busy getting their GED or feeding their kids or trying to make partner in the firm, to bother really thinking about these issues. A few exposures to an unchallenged, vaguely plausible-sounding meme are enough to put them in the ID camp (say), politically, for life. You are contributing to that irrationalist background noise!
Point taken. When forming a troll post, I make the arguments with the lowest ratio of length to "confusions one needs to disentangle in order to refute". I use "isn't evolution still basically just a theory at this point?" because it's a slightly improved variant by that metric.
As with my other response, perhaps I could find the good-rationalist analog of this technique and optimize for that? Perhaps minimize the ratio of argument length to "confusions one needs to detour into to refute"?
I think part of what made me stray from "the path" was a tendency to root for the rhetorical "underdog" and be intrigued -- excessively -- with brilliant arguments that could defend ridiculous positions. I think I can turn that around here.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy arguing for the other side too, provided it's disclaimed afterward. It's a good way to see your rationalization machine shift into high gear. There is always a combination of lies, omissions, half-truths, special pleading and personal anecdotes that can convince at least a few people that you're right - or, MUCH better, that your position should be respected.
But... rationality is usually the rhetorical underdog. Tssk! :P
Want a brilliant argument defending a silly position? Try Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. To ascend such lofty heights of obfuscation, bring lots of pressurized oxygen.
To wit:
-Evolution optimizes for survival value, not truth value in beliefs
-Beliefs are therefore adaptive but not necessarily true (you could, conceivably, believe that you should run away from a tiger because tigers like friendly footraces).
-Therefore, on naturalism, we should expect the reliability of our cognition to be low
-This means we should, if we accept naturalism, also accept that our cognitive apparatus is too flawed to have good reasons to accept naturalism. QED, atheist.