I am somewhat afraid of the fact that convincing can be tought seperate from reasoned arguing, that not the best reason wins, but the most enthusiastic speaker, and the one who can best make his point in the eyes of the people.
Fear of a fact is not a good reason to ignore a fact.
... but I do not wish to persuade unreasoned.
A good argument, like a good novel, can work on several levels.
ok, so I'm considering that a discussion post at least should be made, any thoughts?
it could potentially be part of the sequences, although Eliezer and others do cover the Dark Arts I don't recall a dedicated thread. I found some good examples from a quick googling, like Yvain's Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 or The Power of Positivist Thinking
what makes an irrational argument convincing is human biases, but what I think lacks is more focused treatment of things like good writing or effective signaling, I haven't read all of LW though so it...
SIAI's Fellows Program is looking for rationalists with skills. More specifically, we're looking for rationalists with skills outside our usual cluster who are interested in donating their time by teaching those skills and communicating the mindsets that lead to their development. If possible, we'd like to learn from specialists who "speak our language," or at least are practiced in resolving confusion and disagreement using reason and evidence. Broadly, we're interested in developing practical intuitions, doing practical things, and developing awareness and culture around detail-intensive technical subskills of emotional self-awareness and social fluency. More specifically:
We're interested learning how to "make stuff" in order to force ourselves down to object level from time to time, practice executing plans in the real world and to refine our intuitions about material phenomena. Examples:
We're interested in learning skills that require one to pay very close attention to the detail of the physical world - how things actually are instead of what our mental representation says about them. Examples:
We'd like to get better at working with people, both inside the institute and outside. Examples:
We want to become more aware and in control of our emotions. Emotional self-awareness seems very important for productivity, social success and understanding our tendencies toward motivated cognition. Aside from things that traditionally train emotional awareness like acting and meditation, we expect that certain formal systems of kinesthetic practice such as Iyengar yoga will also help because of the close association between emotional states and patterns of muscle tension. Examples:
We obviously don't have the time for everyone to learn all of these skills right now, but we would like to get the ball rolling on what's available. Whether you're interested in joining the fellows program, visiting regularly or even just video conferencing occasionally, if you think you can teach one of these skills or something else that seems to align well with the faculties we're interested in training, please send me an email at jasen@intelligence.org.
Even if you don't live in the Bay Area, I encourage you to post your skills here anyway, in case one of the regular Less Wrong meetup groups are interested. There are regular meetups in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. As always, if there aren't already meetups in your area I encourage you to start one.