gjm comments on Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Clarity 27 June 2016 01:46AM

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Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 28 June 2016 04:01:49PM *  2 points [-]

Say you are a strong believer and advocate for the Silicon Valley startup tech culture, but you want to be able to pass an Ideological Turing Test to show that you are not irrational or biased. In other words, you need to write some essays along the lines of "Startups are Dumb" or "Why You Should Stay at Your Big Company Job". What kind of arguments would you use?

Comment author: gjm 28 June 2016 11:35:21PM -2 points [-]

The question seems like it has more levels of indirection in it than necessary. I mean, to pass an ITT is to behave/speak/write just like someone with the views you're pretending to have. So how is "Say you believe X and want to pass an ITT by arguing not-X. What would you say?" different from "Say you believe not-X and want to defend it. What would you say?" or, even, just "What are the best arguments for not-X?"?