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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong
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OK, so you're saying that to change someone's mind, identify mental behaviors that are "world view building blocks", and then to instill these behaviors in others:
Such as:
Or:
The 5-second method is sufficiently general to coax someone into believing any world view, not just a rationalist one.
Um, yes. This is supposed to increase your general ability to teach a human to do anything, good or bad. In much the same way, having lots of electricity increases your general ability to do anything that requires electricity, good or bad. This does not make electrical generation a Dark Art.
Actually, it occurs to me that this can be generalized. We might feel morally worried about a technique for initial epistemic persuasion which can operate equally to convince people of true statements or false statements, which is being used without the person's knowledge and before they've come to an initial decision about the worth of the idea (i.e., it's not like they already believe it and you're trying to help them alieve it). This is what some people (not me, please note) termed the Dark Arts.
Instrumental techniques which are useful for accomplishing anything, good or bad, depending on the user's utility function? Those are fine. Those are great. Nothing Dark about them.
I think the usual statement of this idea is something like, "Tool X can be used for good or evil."
Most tools can be. Tools with moral dimensions are rare.