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MBlume comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong
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I'm here because of SoullessAutomaton, who is my apartment-mate and long term friend. I am interested in discussing rhetoric and rationality. I have a few questions that I would pose to the group to open up the topic.
1) Are people interested in rhetoric, persuasion, and the systematic study thereof? Does anyone want a primer? (My PhD is in the History and Theory of Rhetoric, so I could develop such a primer.)
2) What would a rationalist rhetoric look like?
3) What would be the goals / theory / overarching observations that would be the drivers behind a rationalist rhetoric?
4) Would a rationalist rhetoric be more ethical than current rhetorics, and if so, why?
5) Can rhetoric ever be fully rational and rationalized, or is the study of how people are persuaded inevitably or inherently a-rational or anti-rational (I would say that rhetoric can be rationalized, but I know too many scholars who would disagree with me here, either explicitly or implicitly)?
6) Question to the group: to what degree might unfamiliar terminology derived from prior discussions here and in the sister-blog be functioning as an unintentional gatekeeper? Corollary question: to what degree is the common knowledge of math and sciences--and the relevant jargon terms thereof--functioning as a gatekeeper? (As an older woman, I was forbidden from pursuing my best skill--math--because women "didn't study math". I am finding that I have to dig pretty deeply into Wikipedia and elsewhere to make sure I'm following the conversation--that or I have to pester SoullessAutomaton with questions that I should not have to ask. sigh)
I rather like Eliezer's description of ethical writing given in rule six here. I'm honestly not sure why he doesn't seem to link it anymore.
That's what I was going to reply with. To begin with, a rationalist style of rethoric should force you to write/speak like that, or make it easy for the audience to tell whether or not you do.
(Rationalist rethoric can mean at least three things: ways of communication you adopt in order to be able to deliver your message as rationally and honestly as possible, not in order to persuade; techniques that persuade rationalists particularly well; or new forms of dark arts discovered by rationalists)
(We should distinguish between forms of rhetoric that optimize for persuasion and those that optimize for truth. Eliezer's proposed "ethical writing" seems to optimize for truth. That is, if everyone wrote like that, we would find out more truths and lying would be harder, or even persuading people of untruths. Though it's also awfully persuasive... On the other hand, political rhetoric probably optimizes for persuasion, in so far as it involves knowingly persuading people of lies and bad policies.)