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> if the goal is persuasion then good-faith arguments don't scale. This is true, but only in a very narrow, specific sense. Arguments don't persuade on their o

> if the goal is persuasion then good-faith arguments don't scale. This is true, but only in a very narrow, specific sense. Arguments don't persuade on their own, they scale with the credibility of the speaker. Speakers gain credibility and respect by: - Giving good advice. - Showing good judgement and making accurate predictions. - Demonstrating that they understand various audience. constituencies, with bonus points for demonstrating that they actually care about these constituencies. Conversely, there are numerous ways for speakers to destroy that credibility, like a history of making deceptive statements. For most people, this means good-faith argumentation doesn't scale because they don't have the standing to make people take them seriously. But it isn't a rule of good-faith arguments as such: arguments are just constrained by social factors and by people's finely-tuned heuristics for who's worth taking seriously. I suspect this is the main reason people are frustrated by internet debates, to the point of wanting to give up on them and just start censoring people. I make what I think is a careful, reasoned case, and in response all I hear is crickets, or trolls, or "lol lol lol lmao lol lol lol". This is because, to almost everyone reading Twitter, Hacker News, Substack, or the NYT comments, I'm just a rando. It takes time to build respect and credibility, so keep at the good faith discussion, give people a reason to read what you're writing, and keep your relative obscurity in perspective on the way up.

jayspell 4y ago
I agree with you to a point, but it's not my experience that speakers gain credibility and respect by giving good advice / showing good judgement / making accurate predictions. This would be true in traditional discourse, but not online. Online it feels as if speakers gain an audience by demonstrating their world view as loudly and as viciously as possible. It's like a group of children where one has learned that the way to get attention is to scream louder and longer than the others. I also have this feeling that social media is ruled by those who are willing to spend their time and effort to elevate a particular point of view no matter how unpopular it is.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  I know of many specific examples in my field where the most thoughtful people who operate the most frequently in good faith have nowhere near the following of bad faith loudmouths. I assume it's entertainment. People enjoy watching drama. Social media is their drama hit, and genuine communicators are frankly more boring.
- deadpannini 4y ago
  The dynamics you describe are real, especially on the big social-media utilities like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. "Boo outgroup" is the easiest thing to sell in the attention economy, the louder and more viciously, the better. But "building an audience" is a different than building credibility, trust, and respect. If you just aim for the most eyeballs, you find yourself vulnerable to what some people call audience capture, where your audience controls you, rather than the other way around. For example, Trump has a huge audience, but that didn't stop an audience from booing him when he recommended getting vaccinated. [0] The best most of us can hope for, if we're careful, is influence on a small group of people. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-alabama-rally-after-telling-supporters-get-vaccinated-n1277404 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-al...
rootusrootus 4y ago
> Speakers gain credibility and respect by [...] Do you mean only at the local level, individually? Because it sure isn't hard to find extremely popular speakers with a great deal of influence that run counter to most of those points. It is hard not to conclude that the only thing that scales well in social media is to correctly deduce what most people want to hear, and then say it. People don't care about deception, good advice, good faith discussion, none of that, so long as you confirm the biases they already hold. People really want to be told they are right, and were always right.
- deadpannini 4y ago
  No, I mean at any level. I agree with the what you're saying, but I'm not talking about things that make people popular, I'm talking about argumentation and what makes someone persuasive. I'm talking about the relatively rare circumstances that can create opportunities to repudiate biases instead of confirm them.
- lkbm 4y ago
  Hypothesis: bad faith communicators are more persuasive among people who mostly agree with them; good faith communicators are more persuasive among people who mostly disagree with them. Not sure if this is accurate, and I'm sure misses some nuance, but rings true-ish to me.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
This is only true at simulacra level 1 [1], when communication is focused on objective facts. This is not a good way to understand communication in business relationships, social media, traditional news media, or politics. I like talking with my friends who communicate this way, but it's not the only way that people communicate, and pretending that it is will lead to confusion. There are other ways to persuade: You could lie about the facts of the argument, you could convince others you're in their group or that your opponent is in a group opposed to them, or you could say whatever you think they want to hear and sprinkle your message in among it. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulacra-and-subjectivity https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulacra-...
- deadpannini 4y ago
  I agree with all of that. The context for my comment is discussions involving good-faith arguments intended to change hearts and minds (more or less object-level or simulacra level 1 arguments). The parent commenter wrote that "good-faith arguments don't scale". I don't agree with that, because good-faith arguments do scale with social capital. People often run afoul of several problems that make it seem like they don't: - Their reach exceeds their grasp: they want to persuade strangers, but don't have enough social capital to pull it off. - They think they're involved in a good-faith discussion or argument, but the other participants are competing for status or trying to entertain themselves (or others). In other words, I don't think good-faith arguments are the only way to persuade people, but if that's your preferred technique, you have to develop credibility, respect, and trust - on top of building an audience, which is a whole different matter.

jayspell 4y ago

I agree with you to a point, but it's not my experience that speakers gain credibility and respect by giving good advice / showing good judgement / making accurate predictions. This would be true in traditional discourse, but not online. Online it feels as if speakers gain an audience by demonstrating their world view as loudly and as viciously as possible. It's like a group of children where one has learned that the way to get attention is to scream louder and longer than the others. I also have this feeling that social media is ruled by those who are willing to spend their time and effort to elevate a particular point of view no matter how unpopular it is.

SamPatt 4y ago
I know of many specific examples in my field where the most thoughtful people who operate the most frequently in good faith have nowhere near the following of bad faith loudmouths. I assume it's entertainment. People enjoy watching drama. Social media is their drama hit, and genuine communicators are frankly more boring.
deadpannini 4y ago
The dynamics you describe are real, especially on the big social-media utilities like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. "Boo outgroup" is the easiest thing to sell in the attention economy, the louder and more viciously, the better. But "building an audience" is a different than building credibility, trust, and respect. If you just aim for the most eyeballs, you find yourself vulnerable to what some people call audience capture, where your audience controls you, rather than the other way around. For example, Trump has a huge audience, but that didn't stop an audience from booing him when he recommended getting vaccinated. [0] The best most of us can hope for, if we're careful, is influence on a small group of people. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-alabama-rally-after-telling-supporters-get-vaccinated-n1277404 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-al...

rootusrootus 4y ago

> Speakers gain credibility and respect by [...] Do you mean only at the local level, individually? Because it sure isn't hard to find extremely popular speakers with a great deal of influence that run counter to most of those points. It is hard not to conclude that the only thing that scales well in social media is to correctly deduce what most people want to hear, and then say it. People don't care about deception, good advice, good faith discussion, none of that, so long as you confirm the biases they already hold. People really want to be told they are right, and were always right.

deadpannini 4y ago
No, I mean at any level. I agree with the what you're saying, but I'm not talking about things that make people popular, I'm talking about argumentation and what makes someone persuasive. I'm talking about the relatively rare circumstances that can create opportunities to repudiate biases instead of confirm them.
lkbm 4y ago
Hypothesis: bad faith communicators are more persuasive among people who mostly agree with them; good faith communicators are more persuasive among people who mostly disagree with them. Not sure if this is accurate, and I'm sure misses some nuance, but rings true-ish to me.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

This is only true at simulacra level 1 [1], when communication is focused on objective facts. This is not a good way to understand communication in business relationships, social media, traditional news media, or politics. I like talking with my friends who communicate this way, but it's not the only way that people communicate, and pretending that it is will lead to confusion. There are other ways to persuade: You could lie about the facts of the argument, you could convince others you're in their group or that your opponent is in a group opposed to them, or you could say whatever you think they want to hear and sprinkle your message in among it. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulacra-and-subjectivity https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulacra-...

deadpannini 4y ago
I agree with all of that. The context for my comment is discussions involving good-faith arguments intended to change hearts and minds (more or less object-level or simulacra level 1 arguments). The parent commenter wrote that "good-faith arguments don't scale". I don't agree with that, because good-faith arguments do scale with social capital. People often run afoul of several problems that make it seem like they don't: - Their reach exceeds their grasp: they want to persuade strangers, but don't have enough social capital to pull it off. - They think they're involved in a good-faith discussion or argument, but the other participants are competing for status or trying to entertain themselves (or others). In other words, I don't think good-faith arguments are the only way to persuade people, but if that's your preferred technique, you have to develop credibility, respect, and trust - on top of building an audience, which is a whole different matter.