lessdazed comments on Not for the Sake of Selfishness Alone - Less Wrong

22 Post author: lukeprog 02 July 2011 05:37PM

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Comment author: lessdazed 03 July 2011 03:46:23AM 2 points [-]

I'd try a different tack to get there

Stylistically, I would organize the article around the cleverness of the experiments. I'd invite the reader to pause and think of how to test the questions at hand, with hints. This has the benefits of stretching people's minds, making people less prone to arguments from ignorance because it confronts them with the fact they couldn't think of how to test something and thought it impossible, making them feel good when they can think of how to test it, and it might even lead to someone thinking of a novel and superior way to do so.

Then I'd linger on how details of the experiment disambiguates subjects' reasons behind actions. This makes the issue an exercise in problem solving rather than receiving a teacher's password from authority.

It is of course lukeprog's show, and he's doing a great job. His way has its advantages.