You can only try to help those who have true beliefs better publicize them.
It's true that if the truth of a belief were sufficient to spread it, it wouldn't matter if one were nice or polite. However, I believe that, as a long term strategy, mockery is not the best way to spread beliefs (though it might be a good way to destroy them), because no matter how right one happens to be, people don't want to listen to a dismissive douchebag. Satire, sarcasm and irony are therefore weapons to be wielded with rather more care and precision than I have seen most of their users display.
Therefore, you might have the ethical injunction to never, ever respond to a bad argument with a bullet but might permit yourself to make your verbal counterargument more punchy.
It certainly is a matter of orders of magnitude. There's a point from which quantitative changes take a qualitative character, and causing death is one such point.
Satire, sarcasm and irony are therefore weapons to be wielded with rather more care and precision than I have seen most of their users display.
I'm definitely in agreement there; I was just under the impression that you thought they should hands-down never be used (as I would say for physical violence in a verbal argument.) Sorry for the misunderstanding.
This is my first attempt at starting a casual conversation on LW where people don't have to worry about winning or losing points, and can just relax and have social fun together.
So, Big Bang Theory. That series got me wondering. It seems to be about "geeks", and not the basement-dwelling variety either; they're highly successful and accomplished professionals, each in their own field. One of them has been an astronaut, even. And yet, everything they ever accomplish amounts to absolutely nothing in terms of social recognition or even in terms of personal happiness. And the thing is, it doesn't even get better for their "normal" counterparts, who are just as miserable and petty.
Consider, then; how would being rationalists would affect the characters on this show? The writing of the show relies a lot on laughing at people rather than with them; would rationalist characters subvert that? And how would that rationalist outlook express itself given their personalities? (After all, notice how amazingly different from each other Yudkowsky, Hanson, and Alicorn are, just to name a few; they emphasize rather different things, and take different approaches to both truth-testing and problem-solving).
Note: this discussion does not need to be about rationalism. It can be a casual, normal discussion about the series. Relax and enjoy yourselves.
But the reason I brought up that series is that its characters are excellent examples of high intelligence hampered by immense irrationality. The apex of this is represented by Dr. Sheldon Cooper, who is, essentially, a complete fundamentalist over every single thing in his life; he applies this attitude to everything, right down to people's favorite flavor of pudding: Raj is "axiomatically wrong" to prefer tapioca, because the best pudding is chocolate. Period. This attitude makes him a far, far worse scientist than he thinks, as he refuses to even consider any criticism of his methods or results.