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robzahra comments on Persuasiveness vs Soundness - Less Wrong
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Comments (19)
This is the Dark Side root link. In my opinion it's a useful chunked concept, though maybe people should be hyperlinking here when they use the term, to be more accessible to people who haven't read every post. At the very least, the FAQ builders should add this, if it's not there already.
Actually, the term "Dark Side Epistemology" seems to be tending towards over-generalization (being used to describe any persuasive art, say, rather than explicitly defended systematized bad rules of reasoning). "Dark Arts" isn't even a term of my own invention; someone else imported that from Harry Potter. It seems to be trending towards synonymy with "Dark Side". I may have to deprecate both terms as overly poetic and come up with something else - I'm thinking of Anti-Epistemology for systematically bad epistemology.
I have to say that I like the term "Dark Arts". It's kind of... cute.
I enjoy the sort of warm-and-fuzzy atmosphere that poetic vocabulary like this tends to foster.
We do actually need a term for "persuasion by cold blooded dirty tricks, even though possibly for noble ends"
Okay, in this case, how about this :
We have persuasive arguments in general, that which may be used to efficiently change someone else's opinion in a predictable way (for instance to bring their opinion or beliefs closer to yours).
Those persuasive arguments may or may not be, intellectually honest or epistemically correct ones. The subset of persuasive arguments which are thusly wrong, overlaps with the set of arguments and techniques that are used in "anti-epistemology", which is more general and contains methods and arguments that are not only wrong and deceptive, but also of no use to us.
As to the subset of arguments and methods which are epistemically wrong or dishonest, their specificity is that they are instrumentally right, and therefore whether the end result of their use is instrumentally rational, hinges on the epistemic rationality, and honesty, of the one who uses them.
I'm certainly not against using chunked concepts on here per se. But I think associating this community too closely with sci-fi/fantasy tropes could have deleterious consequences in the long run, as far as attracting diverse viewpoints and selling the ideas to people who aren't already pre-disposed to buying them. If Eliezer really wanted to proselytize by poeticizing, he should turn LW into the most hyper-rational, successful PUA community on the Internet, rather than the Star Wars-esque roleplaying game it seems to want to become.
yes, what to call the chunk is a separate issue...I at least partially agree with you, but I'd want to hear what others have to say. The recent debate over the tone of the Twelve Virtues seems relevant.