What do you mean by this?
If you want to open a dedicated discussion thread, I'm your man. But at least read this first. This might also be interesting reading. There were also several discussions around that topic on TV Tropes (I'm not suggesting you read them all, but TV Tropes discussions are usually interesting, so you might actually enjoy them, and TV Tropes Useful Notes pages are usually quite enlightened, balanced and well-written: see the one for atheism).
If you're going to start that discussion, then we might as well make another for someone to explain libertarianism to me, because it seems fairly popular on this site, and the superficial understanding of it I've had through the media has given me the first impression that it's the dumbest, most dangerously stupid idea on how to run a country since, and even more impractical than, pure communism. The same way the first impression one could take of LW is "The Cult of the Leizer" (and damn I'm tired of being called a cultist, but no matter how much I disagree, I see where they're coming from).
As a rationalist, when I have a prejudice, the first thing I need to do, is kill it: I must ask for a little guidance. If you decide to help me, first make me go through the beginner stuff. Same as here, my guess is that some of the more advanced writings of libertarians can be unintentionally infuriating to outsiders, the same way some of our posts here can be. If you come out of the blue and tell someone "if your children aren't signed up for cryogenics, you're a lousy parent, how do you expect them to react?)
I read it when Eliezer wrote it and remember more-or-less agreeing with it. I am not an Objectivist, though I think I'm more sympathetic to Rand than the typical LWer.
This might also be interesting reading.
I just scanned it; it looks like a good summary. Note in particular the bit about Comte and altruism. (You may not think this, but some people incorrectly think that Rand advocated a "might makes right" or "I'm better than you therefore I get to do whatever I want" ethic.)
..."The Cult of the Leizer"
AKA "The Art Of Controversy" AKA "The Art Of Always Being Right" AKA "Dialectic Eristic". Here's a pretty fun, illustrated version of the text, in actual Troll terms]. Here's an audiobook.
EDIT: In this article I adopt a bit of a Devil's Advocate attitude. I'm not entirely convinced of what I'm suggesting, but I'll try to give it my all to make it look at least worth considering. I might get carried away at some points and overtly relish the villainy like a mad Britannian prince, which is unsightly, and, more importantly, unwarranted, so please forgive that. I'll leave those elements in, so that this is a Self Demonstrating Article.
So, the rationale is as follows: sometimes you get in an argument with someone. You're not quite sure you're right. You're not quite sure he's right. Even if you play fair, there's no guarantee it's the truth that'll come out. A few hours later, you could think up of an argument that would have saved your cause, you just failed to think of it during the discussion itself. And usually it's not just a matter of finding the truth.
First, it's a matter of "being right". If you want to clash intellects, there's no more violent, crude, intimate way than this. When you're proven wrong in a discussion, especially in public and in a way that makes you look like an idiot, your ego could get hit hard. Not to mention your status. Back when this book was written, people killed themselves, and each other, over this stuff.
Second, beside your own pride and life, there might be stuff bigger than yourself riding on this. You just can't afford to stick to the truth, or to give up just because the other side has better arguments. You gotta win, in the eyes of the public, no matter what.
This book makes a fairly good job of singling out different tricks to bullshit your way into winning an argument. Or at least stall for time and take your opponent off-balance and distract them while you think of something legitimate to say. Let's review a non-comprehensive list of the tricks he proposes (the cartoon site and the full text are much more adequate, having one or many examples per case and being very eloquently phrased by the writer himself.
Let's classify them by blocks:
I'm just surprised Schopenhauer isn't an Internet idol by this point. I'm also pleasantly surprised at how our discussions avert most of this stuff, most of the time. Then again, our motivations are different from the usual, are they not? But what about our relation to the general public? Suppose one of us accepted an invitation at O'Reilly's? What about convincing people to donate when there just isn't time to convince them of how important our cause is or how we are the right people to carry it out (not to mention we're not quite consensual or certain on either ourselves)?
Spartans were famed for their laconic way of communicating. In fact, the term was named after them. It was an actual course in their education: teachers would mock them and provoke them, and the kids would be punished harshly unless they could respond quickly, forcefully and wittily. I think we should train ourselves on this. There is a time and a place for careful deconstruction of the opponent's arguments, and careful weighting of what is right and wrong. There's another for trusting in the heuristics you're following and acting on them now. Sometimes you just have to win, and worry about the truth later. So we should learn to identify when exactly the gloves should come off, and learn how to take them off quickly, so that we are never taken off-guard. If the very existence of humanity is riding on this project, I think a little verbal swashbuckling is the *least* we can allow ourselves in terms of consequentially moral leeway.
Not that just sticking to the truth is entirely ineffective, but opponents aren't always as malleable as the one in that example, we're not all as smart and witty as Eliezer, and sometimes the inferential distances are just too huge not to resort to Dan Browned, Conviction By Counterfactual Clue, or Lies To Children for the sake of expediency (there's an entire rule in Schopenhauer's book dedicated to the case of debating of technical matters before an untrained public, and he provides a really good example, to boot).
This article suggests that learning about, and perhaps embracing the dark arts may be a useful if not outright necessary necessary means to achieve our goals. The author, on the other hand, isn't so sure. However, at the very least, I think we should know about this stuff, if only in a Defense Against The Dark Arts way, and make and study a list of similar, more contemporary works that would give us a better results-to-time-investment ratio in learning these tricks and others, and, more importantly, their counters.
BTW, Robert Greene's books, despite being rather unscientific, are very promising in that regard. Their advice is fairly useless if you want to apply it, but once you've gone through all the contents (and there's a lot of stories there) you'll be on guard against practically anything: it's really hard to beat the Epic Fails he lists there, which are all the more epic because usually they involve smart, perceptive, strong, powerful people, and they all still fall for the exact same tricks, over and over again. If only because they are fascinating narrative anthologies, and a very fun intellectual read, and we are very much in favor of fun and intellectualism, right?
Also, for those that have followed this article from the start, notice how the successive rewrites make it a self-demonstration of the "defense by subtle distinction" rule. Whether its use here was legitimate or not is left to the reader.
EDIT: As usual TVTropes never fails to pleasantly surprise. Here is their wittily written, fairly comprehensive list of fallacies: they called it You Fail Logic Forever. Remebember that fallacies are just part of the Dark Arts of Winning Debates, and a very dangerous bluff if your opponent calls you out on them, second only to counterfactual arguments.