Tom_McCabe comments on Bayesian Judo - Less Wrong

71 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 July 2007 05:53AM

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Comment author: Tom_McCabe 01 August 2007 01:48:30AM 15 points [-]

"Funny, I've always thought that debates are one of the most entertaining forms of social interaction available."

We may not have rationality dojos, but in-person debating is as good an irrationality dojo as you're going to get. In debating, you're rewarded for 'winning', regardless of whether what you said was true; this encourages people to develop rhetorical techniques and arguments which are fully general across all possible situations, as this makes them easier to use. And while it may be hard to give public demonstrations of rationality, demonstrations of irrationality are easy: simply talk about impressive-sounding nonsense in a confident, commanding voice, and people will be impressed (look at how well Hitler did).