The posts titled dark arts has both simply language and complex language in it. If you mislead via using simple language that's bad. If you mislead by using complex language that's also bad.
Neither complex nor simple language is inherently dark.
The other two don't contain the term dark arts. Eliezers post on stories doesn't label them dark arts. He does the opposite. He says that in a world where people care about informing people use stories.
He says that they are distant and not a way to signal authority in academia. That's not the same thing as labeling them as dark.
I think you misread Robins article as well. It also doesn't use the term dark arts and explicitly says people practicing dark arts sometimes use language that isn't emotional for singalling purposes.
As far as your use of dark arts goes, saying that System I is mainly the amygdala and System II is mainly the prefrontal cortex.
I'm not exactly sure to what extend that's unsupported neurobabble. To the extend that it is, don't do things like that. Don't simplify complex scienctific issues in a way that ends up with wrong claims. Don't make wrong claims about neuroscience to motivate people to take up rational thinking habits.
Thanks, the feedback is appreciated. It sounds like the crux of the matter is misleading people, whatever the specific strategies involved. We'll work hard to try to avoid making wrong claims in order to motivate people to take up rational thinking habits. I think that's probably the main danger area for us to watch out for, glad you pointed it out.
I'd like the opinion of Less Wrongers on the extent to which it is appropriate to use Dark Arts as a means of promoting rationality.
I and other fellow aspiring rationalists in the Columbus, OH Less Wrong meetup have started up a new nonprofit organization, Intentional Insights, and we're trying to optimize ways to convey rational thinking strategies widely and thus raise the sanity waterline. BTW, we also do some original research, as you can see in this Less Wrong article on "Agency and Life Domains," but our primary focus is promoting rational thinking widely, and all of our research is meant to accomplish that goal.
To promote rationality as widely as possible, we decided it's appropriate to speak the language of System 1, and use graphics, narrative, metaphors, and orientation toward pragmatic strategies to communicate about rationality to a broad audience. Some example are our blog posts about gaining agency, about research-based ways to find purpose and meaning, about dual process theory and other blog posts, as well as content such as videos on evaluating reality and on finding meaning and purpose in life.
Our reasoning is that speaking the language of System 1 would help us to reach a broad audience who are currently not much engaged in rationality, but could become engaged if instrumental and epistemic rationality strategies are presented in such a way as to create cognitive ease. We think the ends of promoting rationality justify the means of using such light Dark Arts - although the methods we use do not convey 100% epistemic rationality, we believe the ends of spreading rationality are worthwhile, and that once broad audiences who engage with our content realize the benefits of rationality, they can be oriented to pursue more epistemic accuracy over time. However, some Less Wrongers disagreed with this method of promoting rationality, as you can see in some of the comments on this discussion post introducing the new nonprofit. Some commentators expressed the belief that it is not appropriate to use methods that speak to System 1.
So I wanted to bring up this issue for a broader discussion on Less Wrong, and get a variety of opinions. What are your thoughts about the utility of using light Dark Arts of the type I described above if the goal is to promote rationality - do the ends justify the means? How much Dark Arts, if any, is it appropriate to use to promote rationality?
Edit: After reading the comments, I see that this is not crossing into real Dark Arts territory in the traditional sense after all. I wasn't sure how LessWrong would perceive things, so thanks for your feedback!