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I think that Scott Alexander or whatever his name is, does a much better job than say, Paul Graham, at presenting the best counterargument whenever he presents
by ouid 6y ago
I think that Scott Alexander or whatever his name is, does a much better job than say, Paul Graham, at presenting the best counterargument whenever he presents something that he believes, but it's intrinsically a game of trust.
I think what the New York Times intrinsically understands is that the art persuasion is not actually the art of being rational and critical. It is the art of convincing someone else that you have been rational and critical. I am not generally defending the New York Times, I just think that they do understand how good faith persuasive essays can be gateways to bad faith persuasive essays.
The existence and effectiveness of bad faith persuasion is nowhere clearer than in court, where you are essentially obligated by the system to act in bad faith (lawyers would not describe it this way, but presenting an argument that you know to be flawed is bad faith), and lawyers are very convincing. However without an adversarial court system, lawyers are about as good a way of getting to the truth of the matter as crystal balls.
A reasonable, but not infallible heuristic for evaluating an essay for good faith, is to just imagine how much different the essay would look if counterarguments could be inserted after reaching some threshold of support by the general population.
The aggregate problem remains, however. Persuasive essays maintain a shared credit score which is extremely problematic for the process of truth-seeking. Even essays from the same author, can operate on wildly different points on the good/bad faith spectrum.
I guess my point is that the solution is not "more rational essayists", but rather provably adversarial comment systems, in which authors are not advantaged.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y agoWhat would a provably adversarial comment system even look like? Maybe my uncreativeness is showing - but I can't even imagine this.
- Dracophoenix 6y agoReddit's CMV should qualify
- HDMI_Cable 6y agoWhat does CMV stand for in this context?
- Kevguy 6y agohttps://reddit.com/r/ChangeMyView https://reddit.com/r/ChangeMyView
- ouid 6y agoThe provably adversarial part is just about moderation. How much power does the author, or anny party for that matter, have over what shows up in the comment section. I think the unprivileged part is harder, and probably requires some system for putting comments inline.
- isoskeles 6y ago> A reasonable, but not infallible heuristic for evaluating an essay for good faith, is to just imagine how much different the essay would look if counterarguments could be inserted after reaching some threshold of support by the general population. I'm not sure I follow what you mean here, and how this looks in either a good faith or bad faith presentation of some argument. Would 'good faith' be closer to an essay that presents its arguments in a somewhat neutral but supportive perspective (e.g. without lying or misleading), such that adding its counterarguments wouldn't almost convincingly disprove everything that was just written? Whereas a 'bad faith' argument with its counterarguments presented would look quite flimsy?
- ouid 6y agoA good faith argument looks less different from the imagined argument. It's a heuristic, peoples imaginations are different, but if you can tell that there are objections that people would have that haven't been addressed, it is likely the author could tell as well.
- mcguire 6y ago"I think what the New York Times intrinsically understands is that the art persuasion is not actually the art of being rational and critical." Catarina Dutilh Novaes once pointed out something that has stuck with me: logic is a branch of rhetoric. The original purpose of logic is the building of convincing, persuasive arguments. In short, it's the other way around from what most believe.