The Dark Arts – LessWrong
lesswrong.com
lesswrong.com
> your ultimate goal is to establish the credibility of your side so strongly that others' trust in you is not affected by whether what you say is actually true. Establishing credibility is the ultimate Dark Art.
> “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made.”
Using bullshit to overwhelm facts is so well known it has it's own "law", Brandolini's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law There are famous practitioners of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
I didn't see much (any?) original thought in what he said. What's more I think there are better explanations for why he won than the one he gave.
Given two arguments, one that is a stream of bullshit and one that aligns with at least some facts the audience might know, how can it be that the audience chooses to believe the bullshit? The answer he gave, which is essentially "bullshit is more believable" doesn't ring true to me.
What does ring true is that key quote of yours, so the question is how does he establish credibility. He didn't say, but if you want a plausible answer try reading this: https://theconversation.com/d-218742
For example, from [0]:-
"Consider the rules of debate: two sides are randomly assigned to argue for and against a topic – say, that we should abolish student debt. Each speaker has equal time to speak before an impartial adjudicator, who awards the more persuasive team."
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/sep/03/the-art...
This explains why rhetors are fond of enthymemes, and suggests that one defense against the dark arts is to avoid endless reraising rounds.
cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38794297
> Calculemus! -GWL
The master of this technique today has to be Trump -- who speaks in the tiniest droplets of information possible to make out a position.
This is a genius (sales, etc.) technique -- it means that moderates who hear him fill-in a moderate background, and radicals likewise.
It enables this meta motte-and-bailey defence of him too: "take trump seriously, but not literally" -- oh, except in this case, where it is literal.
In this way, the art of (mass) persuasion is saying as little as possible to be effective; quite the opposite of the dark arts outlined in OP.
I consider that exactly the same underlying mechanism as the dark arts from OP, because they both rely on maliciously using their speaking time to make evaluation of the underlying argument (if any) more difficult, rather than simpler.
(I am hoping that AI, by making waffling cheap and ubiquitous, will mean that people will start to demand crisper public statements. But this is probably much too optimistic?)
Tangent: I love the way the two other major Dutch right-wing parties have (thus far) told Geert Wilders that if he really wants to be PM, he'll state which of his too-far-right-even-for-them campaign planks he is renouncing. They've called.
In other circles this is often called a Gish gallop[1], I have no idea why they wouldn’t use more standard terms to describe it, FWIW.
What’s the point of this ?
This whole piece was kinda weird because he says "I said X but that was obviously dumb and wrong" without further explanation. Which if you bring that up, presumably it opens the door to pure insult. "Oh you actually believe that BS I said? You dumb, no further discussion". Or maybe that's why it's a blog post with his own fake dialogue, so he doesn't have to answer questions he doesn't want to.
If we're talking about actual facts, there's no substitute for reality, during conversation that means credibility. I recall hearing a climate change denier saying that it was impossible because CO2 was transparent at all relevant wavelengths. This is false, but we didn't have a book handy and nobody felt like pulling out their smartphones. If you actually care about being right (rather than having a rebuttal ready during a debate), that's why epistemic learned helpless exists [0]. And if something is really important you write down what they said, fact-check it, start looking at other arguments and counter-arguments). Which isn't how structured debate works.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...