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Eww, automated arguments. I toyed with a similar idea, it can be pretty easy to write a chat bot that automatically responds to common arguments. Anyone who's e

Eww, automated arguments. I toyed with a similar idea, it can be pretty easy to write a chat bot that automatically responds to common arguments. Anyone who's ever debated the religiously-indoctrinated will see a similar thing, a "script" of common talking points that you pretty quickly see or what they are, thought-terminating cliches. At least with real people you can sometimes find a path through those thought-terminating cliches, or they can find a path through yours, and you can actually think about things. I'm not looking forward to the future where every time I try to discuss something I'm linked to an (out of date and poorly maintained) playbook that has obvious flaws in it's arguments but is considered an irrefutable source of truth by it's proponents. At least when you're dealing with people on an individual level you can point out when there are issues with an argument. I know it's hard to have productive discussion about a lot of these things but I can't help but think it would be much better to try and teach people basic epistemology, how to assess what you should count as evidence, how much weight you should give different standards of evidence, rules of debating in good faith, etc. All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. If you're going to make a tool like that realize that everyone can use tools like that, even your ideological opponents. Try to think about the consequences of your actions, what happens if everyone adopts this technology for "controlling the narrative"? What happens if the "alt right" this post mentions starts using it? I guess it's nice to make the script you're following explicit though.

some_furry 7y ago
> All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. The alt-right already takes control of the narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA Even if this platform ever "took off" enough to be used by bad people, the only thing that would happen is we'd have a level playing field.
- traverseda 7y ago
  They'll use it better than you. That's a very common trend, the far-left develops some new tool to control the narrative or otherwise excerpt social control and they discover that the alt-right is better equipped to use it then they are. We've seen this time and time again. If you're going to try to use that tactic at least don't be so obvious about it. Do what the geek-feminism-wiki or derailing-for-dummies does and put all your thought-terminating cliche's into a wiki that you can claim is authoritative or otherwise supported be science, and link people to that (for bonus points tie identity politics into it so that the arguments can only be used against people in your outgroup). You're trying to use technology to make a fully-general-counterargument which is just bad epistemology. What's worse is that if you normalize that style of discourse it will be used against you to much greater effect then you can hope to wield it. The thing about tools like this is that they're force multipliers, if you're not already winning bringing in a force multiplier like this won't help. Force-multipliers inherently favour entrenched power structures unless there's some reason why your group would be better at using them, some asymmetry. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-o... for more on asymmetric memetic warfare. Seriously, if you're going to mess around with persuasion technology be very careful.
  - some_furry 7y ago
    I appreciate the reading material and words of caution. I will take those to heart. <3
    - traverseda 7y ago
      Awesome, if you want to talk about that kind of thing in more depth, or if you want some more reading material recommendations from that particular community, feel free to shoot me an email. $thisusername@gmail.com Also I just realized I linked you to the wrong article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gone-bad/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gon...

some_furry 7y ago

> All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. The alt-right already takes control of the narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA Even if this platform ever "took off" enough to be used by bad people, the only thing that would happen is we'd have a level playing field.

traverseda 7y ago
They'll use it better than you. That's a very common trend, the far-left develops some new tool to control the narrative or otherwise excerpt social control and they discover that the alt-right is better equipped to use it then they are. We've seen this time and time again. If you're going to try to use that tactic at least don't be so obvious about it. Do what the geek-feminism-wiki or derailing-for-dummies does and put all your thought-terminating cliche's into a wiki that you can claim is authoritative or otherwise supported be science, and link people to that (for bonus points tie identity politics into it so that the arguments can only be used against people in your outgroup). You're trying to use technology to make a fully-general-counterargument which is just bad epistemology. What's worse is that if you normalize that style of discourse it will be used against you to much greater effect then you can hope to wield it. The thing about tools like this is that they're force multipliers, if you're not already winning bringing in a force multiplier like this won't help. Force-multipliers inherently favour entrenched power structures unless there's some reason why your group would be better at using them, some asymmetry. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-o... for more on asymmetric memetic warfare. Seriously, if you're going to mess around with persuasion technology be very careful.
- some_furry 7y ago
  I appreciate the reading material and words of caution. I will take those to heart. <3
  - traverseda 7y ago
    Awesome, if you want to talk about that kind of thing in more depth, or if you want some more reading material recommendations from that particular community, feel free to shoot me an email. $thisusername@gmail.com Also I just realized I linked you to the wrong article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gone-bad/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gon...