Reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's works have always inspired an insidious feeling in me, sort of a cross between righteousness, contempt, the fun you get from understanding something new and gravitas. It's a feeling that I have found to be pleasurable, or at least addictive enough to go through all of his OB posts, and the feeling makes me less skeptical and more obedient than I normally would be. For instance, in an act of uncharacteristic generosity, I decided to make a charitable donation on Eliezer's advice.
Now this is probably a good idea, because the charity is probably going to help guys like me later on in life and of course it's the Right Thing to Do. But the bottom line is that I did something I normally wouldn't have because Eliezer told me to. My sociopathic selfishness was acting as canary in the mine of my psyche.
Now this could be because Eliezer has creepy mind control powers, but I get similar feelings when reading other people, such as George Orwell, Richard Stallman or Paul Graham. I even have a friend who can inspire that insidious feeling in me. So it's a personal problem, one that I'm not sure I want to remove, but I would like to understand it better.
There are probably buttons being pushed by the style and the sort of ideas in the work that help to create the feeling, and I'll probably try to go over an essay or two and dissect it. However, I'd like to know who and at what times, if anyone at all, I should let create such feelings in me. Can I trust anyone that much, even if they aren't aware that they're doing it?
I don't know if anyone else here has similar brain overrides, or if I'm just crazy, but it's possible that such brain overrides could be understood much more thoroughly and induced in more people. So what are the ethics of mind control (for want of a better term) and how much effort should we put in to stopping such feelings from occuring?
Edit Mar 22: Decided to remove the cryonics example due to factual inaccuracies.
Status/self-image fears are among the most powerful human fears... and the status-behavior link is learned. (In my work, I routinely help people shed these sorts of fears, as they're a prominent source of irrationality, stress, procrastination... you name it.)
Basically, you experience one or more situations (most often just one) where a particular behavior pattern is linked to shaming, ridicule, rejection, or some other basic social negative reinforcer. It doesn't even have to happen to the person directly; it can just be an observation of the response to someone else's behavior. Under stress, the person then makes a snap judgment as to what the causes of the situation were, and learns to do TWO things:
To internalize the same response to themselves if they express that behavior, and
To have the same response to others having that behavior.
It also works in reverse -- if somebody does something bad to you, you learn to direct anger or attempts at ridicule towards that behavior, and also against yourself, as a result of "judging" the behavior itself to be bad, and the marker of a specific social group or class of people.
This can then manifest in odd ways, like not wanting to exhibit behaviors that would mark you as a member of the group you dislike.
One of the prime issues for me as a rationalist trying to learn about marketing (especially direct/internet marketing) was having to get over the fear of being a "dupe" pulled into a "scam" and "cult" situation. Essentially, if you have learned that some group you scorn (e.g. "suckers" or "fools" or whatever you call them) exhibit joining behavior, then you will compulsively avoid that behavior yourself.
I got over it, of course, but you have to actually be self-aware enough to realize that you chose this attitude/behavior for yourself... although it usually happens at a young enough age and under stressful enough conditions that you weren't thinking very clearly at the time.
But once you've examined the actual evidence used, it's possible to let go of the judgments involved, and then the feelings go away.