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ete comments on Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Anti-polyamory propoganda which clearly had some thought put into constructing a persuasive argument while doing lots of subtle or not so subtle manipulations. Always interesting to observe which emotional/psychological threads this kind of thing tries to pull on.
Well, given how ridiculously niche polyamory actually is in the real world, maybe we should be thinking of this as pro-polyamory propoganda instead. Or rather, I think this video is using polyamory as a stand-in/steelman for mere casual relationships with no formalized boundaries, which is what actually tends to happen IRL. But then most polyamorists would agree that these are generally a bad idea.
In a time where every link is a vote Google and people care about high click rates, why link to content like this? Why do you think it's worth our attention?
Good point about Google. I've asked a question on stackexchange about how to avoid promoting a thing I've linked to. I'll switch it over as soon as I know how.
And, for the reasons in my reply to gjm. I think it's both interesting and useful rationality training to expose yourself to and analyze the psychological tools used in something you can easily pick out as propaganda. Here your brain will raise nice big red warning flags when it hits a trick, and you'll be more able to notice similar things which may have been used to reinforce false beliefs by your own side's propaganda. It's also a good idea to have accurate models of why people come to the views they do, and what reinforces their norms.
(I don't think this is super important at all, but noticed a few tricks which I had not specifically thought about before, and figured other people may get something similar out of it)
If that's your goal, read a book like Cialdini's Influence. It's time much better invested into understanding tricks then directly watching propaganda yourself. Especially propaganda that isn't annotated.
If you notice tricks you haven't thought before, why don't you write about them when directing people to the propaganda piece? Written reflection is a quite useful tool for building mental models of concepts.
That way we had something to talk about here and I wouldn't object to having the link as an illustration.
I figured anti-polyamory propaganda did not need annotations on LessWrong. It's telling that all but one reply took it as something which needs to be suppressed/counterargued, despite me calling it propaganda and saying it was interesting as an example of psychological tricks people pull. No one here is going to be taken in by this. I would not have posted this on facebook or another more general audience site.
I did not feel like writing it up in any detail would make a great use of my time, the examples to use for future pattern matching to are pretty obvious in the video and don't need spelling out. I just wanted to drop the link here because I'd found it mildly enlightening, and figured others may have a similar experience. I take the negative feedback as meaning content people are politically sensitive to is not welcome, even if it's rationality relevant (resistance to manipulation tricks) and explicitly non-endorsed. That's unfortunate, but okay.
What does it tell?
Why do you see "suppressed" and "counterargued" as similar?
Who suggested it needs to be suppressed?
You had four replies. One, from Elo, queries a claim made in a document from the Austin Institute on the same topic as the video. One, from bogus, suggests that although the video is meant to be anti-poly, maybe it's effectively pro-poly because it's consciousness-raising. One, from ChristianKI, suggests that you're giving googlejuice to an unpleasant piece of propaganda and asks why you posted it. One, from me, gives readers some information about the likely motivations of the organization that put out the video. No one tried to suppress it; no one said it should be suppressed. No one offered counterarguments, though one person questioned a claim. No one said it needs to be argued against.
So your description of what happened doesn't seem to me to match reality.
That seems to me like an overgeneralization and an overreaction.
If a trick is trivially seen, there likely no update made by seeing the trick in action and I don't see the argument for the value of seeing it in action. To the extend you claim you saw new tricks that you weren't aware of in the past that does raise the question of how you conceptualize those newly seen tricks.
Political sensitivity has nothing to do with my assessment.
You could label any bad source on the internet rationality relevant by saying that it serves to see bad reasoning in action. You haven't provided any argument why this particular piece of propaganda is more worthy of attention than other pieces of propaganda.
Apart from that I'm doubtful that the mechanism you propose actually leads to resistance to manipulation tricks. Adopting new habits is hard.
If the article lead you to see manipulation attempt at content that supports your own position that you previously haven't seen that would interesting information to talk about. Till now I haven't seen that the video had that effect on you and even less that the video has that effect on other potential viewers.
It's easily seen in this context, because of the material covered and the fact that they don't try very hard to be subtle about it. In other contexts the same set of tricks may slip past, unless you have an example to pattern match to (not a whole new habit). Immunization using a weak form of memetic attack you're primed to defend against.
The literature on the ability of people to learn about tricks and then resists them suggests that it's hard. Transfer is hard.
If you choose so. You could also choose to take it as a feedback that linking to a 15-minutes long video will mostly annoy people.
The organization that put this out has a pretty clear sociopolitical agenda.
(The second and third links there are from sites with a definite leftish tilt. It doesn't look to me as if they're telling any lies about the Austin Institute, but they're unlikely to be sympathetically disposed.)
Of course, they're very clearly trying to push a right wing traditional morals agenda, with a bit of dressing up to make it appear balanced to the unobservant. Their other major video is even more overtly propaganda.
I just find it fascinating to watch this kind of attempt at manipulating people's views, especially when a bunch of smart people have clearly tried to work out how to get their message across as effectively as possible. Being aware of those tricks seems likely to offer some protection against them being used to try and push me in ways I may be more susceptible, and knowing the details of what as been used to shape certain opinion means I am better prepared if I get in a debate with people who have been persuaded by them.
from http://www.austin-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/On-Nonmonogamy.docx - the source behind the video. citation needed