mstevens comments on Five-minute rationality techniques - Less Wrong

55 Post author: sketerpot 10 August 2010 02:24AM

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Comment author: mstevens 13 August 2010 02:07:58PM 4 points [-]

There's room for debate here in my book, but my argument is:

  • rational arguments are often complicated and require attention to detail.
  • Many people have problems with complicated arguments that require attention to detail.

We can try to deal with this in two ways:

  • Making the arguments simpler.
  • Dealing with the problem of people not following detailed arguments (thus my earlier comment)

I think both look like promising lines of attack. It is, of course, always desirable to keep arguments as simple as possible.

Comment author: sark 13 August 2010 02:22:37PM 2 points [-]

I think what we should do is to try getting a foot in the door. We want to intrigue people enough such that they will seek further knowledge of rationality. People have the capacity for attention if they want something badly enough.

Comment author: mstevens 13 August 2010 02:28:26PM 0 points [-]

These people will not yet be very rational (by definition of target audience). Therefore they are likely to judge arguments on emotional grounds.

So I suggest that we need to find short arguments that promote rationality, but make an essentially emotional case for it. Ideally one would find something that overlaps - it persuades at both the emotional and rational levels.

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