Making fun of things is actually really easy if you try even a little bit. Nearly anything can be made fun of, and in practice nearly anything is made fun of. This is concerning for several reasons.
First, if you are trying to do something, whether or not people are making fun of it is not necessarily a good signal as to whether or not it's actually good. A lot of good things get made fun of. A lot of bad things get made fun of. Thus, whether or not something gets made fun of is not necessarily a good indicator of whether or not it's actually good.[1] Optimally, only bad things would get made fun of, making it easy to determine what is good and bad - but this doesn't appear to be the case.
Second, if you want to make something sound bad, it's really easy. If you don't believe this, just take a politician or organization that you like and search for some criticism of it. It should generally be trivial to find people that are making fun of it for reasons that would sound compelling to a casual observer - even if those reasons aren't actually good. But a casual observer doesn't know that and thus can easily be fooled.[2]
Further, the fact that it's easy to make fun of things makes it so that a clever person can find themselves unnecessarily contemptuous of anything and everything. This sort of premature cynicism tends to be a failure mode I've noticed in many otherwise very intelligent people. Finding faults with things is pretty trivial, but you can quickly go from "it's easy to find faults with everything" to "everything is bad." This tends to be an undesirable mode of thinking - even if true, it's not particularly helpful.
[1] Whether or not something gets made fun of by the right people is a better indicator. That said, if you know who the right people are you usually have access to much more reliable methods.
[2] If you're still not convinced, take a politician or organization that you do like and really truly try to write an argument against that politician or organization. Note that this might actually change your opinion, so be warned.
I believe I have a bad habit of leaping between points for understanding them to be more directly obvious than they commonly are. I think it might clarify things considerably if I start from the very beginning.
When I first saw Making Fun of Things is Easy as a heading, I was pleased, because I have long recognized that numerous otherwise intelligent people have an extremely disuseful habit of refusing to spend thought on things—even to the point of failing to think about it enough to make a rational assessment of the usefulness of thinking about it—by dismissing them as "hilariously wrong." If LessWrong is getting to the point where they're starting to recognize positive emotional responses (laughter) can be disuseful, then I have reason to celebrate. Naturally, I had to read the article and see if my suspicion—that LessWrong is actually getting less wrong—was correct.
A large part of the damage caused by laughing things into mental obscurity is that the laughing parties lose their ability to think rationally about the subject they are laughing at. The solution to this is to stop laughing, sit down, and take ideas that you consider ridiculous as potentially holding value in being even preliminarily considered. Ideas like telepathy, for example. It's bothersome that a community of rationalists should be unable to mentally function without excessive disclaiming. I realize this isn't actually the case, but that members still feel the need to specify "this-isn't-nonsense" is telling of something beyond those individual members themselves.
So I read the article, and it's great. It touches on all the points that need to be touched upon. Then, at the very last sentence on the very last line at the very last word, I see a red flag. A warning about how your opinions could change. Good golly gosh. Wouldn't that be ever so horrible? To have my own ability to reason used against me, by my own self, to defeat and replace my precious now-beliefs? Oh what a world!
...You can begin to see how I might derive frustration from the fact of the very problem caused by epistemic laughter was explicitly warned against solving: "Don't make fun, but still be wary of taking the stance seriously; you might end up with different beliefs!!"
I figured I really ought to take the opportunity to correct this otherwise innocuous big red flag. I suppose my original phrasing was too dualistic in meaning to be given the benefit of the doubt that I might have a point to be making. No no, clearly I am the one who needs correcting. What does it say about this place that inferential silence is a problem strong enough to merit its own discussion? Of course the ensuing comments made and all the questions I asked were before I had identified the eye of LessWrong's focal mass. It's a ton easier to navigate now that I know the one localized taboo that literally every active member cannot stand is the collective "LessWrong" itself. I can be vicious and vile and impolite and still get upvoted no problem, because everyone's here to abdicate responsibility of thought to the collective. I can attack any one person, even the popular ones, and get upvoted. The cult isn't bound to any one individual or idea that isn't allowed to be attacked. It is when the collective itself is attacked that the normal human response of indignation is provoked. Suffice to say all my frustration would have been bypassed if I had focused more on arguing with the individuals rather than the mass of the collective where the actual problem here lies.
To get back to your actual argument: Any method of generating an argument is useful to the point of being justified. Making fun of things is an epistemic hazard because it stops that process. Making fun of things doesn't rely on making bad arguments against them; it relies on dismissing them outright before having argued, discussed, or usefully thought about them at all in the first place. Bad arguments at least have the redeeming quality of being easy to argue against/correct. Have you ever tried to argue against a laugh and a shrug?
A list, of the most difficult things to argue against:
Each of these comes in two flavors: Vanilla and meme. I'm working against memetic rationalized apathy in a community of people who generally consider themselves generally rational. If I were even a fragment less intelligent, this would be a stupid act.
I find that reply easier to follow, thanks.
The last sentence of katydee's post doesn't raise a red flag for me, I guess because I interpret it differently. I don't read it as an argument against changing one's opinion in itself, but as a reminder that the activity in footnote 2 isn't just an idle exercise, and could lead to changing one's mind on the basis of a cherry-picked argument (since the exercise is explicitly about trying to write an ad hoc opposing argument — it's not about appraising evidence in a balanced, non-selective way). Warning people abou... (read more)