Recently, James_Miller posted a conversation between Sam Harris and Scott Adams about Donald Trump. James_Miller titled it "a model rationalist disagreement". While I agree that the tone in which the conversation was conducted was helpful, I think Scott Adams is a top practitioner of the Dark Arts. Indeed, he often prides himself on his persuasion ability. To me, he is very far from a model for a rationalist, and he is the kind of figure we rationalists should know how to fight against.
Here are some techniques that Adams uses:
- Changing the subject: (a) Harris says Trump is unethical and cites the example of Trump gate-crashing a charity event to falsely get credit for himself. Adams responds by saying that others are equally bad—that all politicians do morally dubious things. When Harris points out that Obama would never do such a thing, Adams says Trump is a very public figure and hence people have lots of dirt on him. (b) When Harris points out that almost all climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and that it is wrong for Trump to have called climate change a hoax, Adams changes the subject to how it is unclear what economic policies one ought to pursue if climate change is true.
- Motte-and-bailey: When Harris points out that the Trump University scandal and Trump's response to it means Trump is unethical, Adams says that Trump was not responsible for the university because it was only a licensing deal. Then Harris points out that Trump is unethical because he shortchanged his contractors. Adams says that that’s what happens with big construction projects. Harris tries to argue that it’s the entirety of Trump’s behavior that makes it clear that he is unethical—i.e., Trump University, his non-payment to contractors, his charity gate-crashing, and so on. At this points Adams says we ought to stop expecting ethical behavior from our Presidents. This is a classic motte-and-bailey defense. Try to defend an indefensible position (the bailey) for a while, but then once it becomes untenable to defend it, then go to the motte (something much more defensible).
- Euphemisation: (a) When Harris tells Adams that Trump lies constantly and has a dangerous disregard for the truth, Adams says, I agree that Trump doesn’t pass fact checks. Indeed, throughout the conversation Adams never refers to Trump as lying or as making false statements. Instead, Adams always says, Trump “doesn’t pass the fact checks”. This move essentially makes it sound as if there’s some organization whose arbitrary and biased standards are what Trump doesn’t pass and so downplays the much more important fact that Trump lies. (b) When Harris call Trump's actions morally wrong, Adams makes it seem as if he is agreeing with Harris but then rephrases it as: “he does things that you or I may not do in the same situation”. Indeed, that's Adams's constant euphemism for a morally wrong action. This is a very different statement compared to saying that what Trump did was wrong, and makes it seem as if Trump is just a normal person doing what normal people do.
- Diagnosis: Rather than debate the substance of Harris’s claims, Adams will often embark on a diagnosis of Harris’s beliefs or of someone else who has that belief. For example, when Harris says that Trump is not persuasive and does not seem to have any coherent views, Adams says that that's Harris's "tell" and that Harris is "triggered" by Trump's speeches. Adams constantly diagnoses Trump critics as seeing a different movie, or as being hypnotized by the mainstream media. By doing this, he moves away from the substance of the criticisms.
- Excusing: (a) When Harris says that it is wrong to not condemn, and wrong to support, the intervention of Russia in America’s election, Adams says that the US would extract revenge via its intelligence agencies and we would never know about it. He provides no evidence for the claim that Trump is indeed extracting revenge via the CIA. He also says America interferes in other elections too. (b) When Harris says that Trump degraded democratic institutions by promising to lock up his political opponent after the election, Adams says that was just a joke. (c) When Harris says Trump is using the office of the President for personal gain, Adams tries to spin the narrative as Trump trying to give as much as possible late in his life for his country.
- Cherry-picking evidence: (a) When Harris points out that seventeen different intelligence agencies agreed that Russia’s government interfered in the US elections, Adams says that the intelligence agencies have been known to be wrong before. (b) When Harris points out that almost all climate scientists agree on climate change, Adams points to some point in the 1970s where (he claims) climate scientists got something wrong, and therefore we should be skeptical about the claims of climate scientists.
Overall, I think what Adams is doing is wrong. He is an ethical and epistemological relativist: he does not seem to believe in truth or in morality. At the very least, he does not care about what is true and false and what is right and wrong. He exploits his relativism to push his agenda, which is blindingly clear: support Trump.
(Note: I wanted to work on this essay more carefully, and find out all the different ways in which Adams subverts the truth and sound reasoning. I also wanted to cite more clearly the problematic passages from the conversations. But I don't have the time. So I relied on memory and highlighted the Dark Arts moves that struck me immediately. So please, contribute in the comments with your own observations about the Dark Arts involved here.)
(1a) Adams never claims that Trump is a good person, and consequently this wasn't a point of disagreement between him and Harris and thus not relevant to their conversation.
(1b) Yes, that's my opinion as well. What's relevant is what we should do about climate change, and as Adams pointed out even if all the climate change stuff is true, the economics doesn't necessarily support taking immediate action.
(2) This is more two conditions have to be true than Motte and Bailey. It's like a legal argument that my client didn't do X, but even if he did do X it wouldn't have been a crime.
(3) Yes, but Adams was honest about this. I think Adams takes a consequentialist view of morality and so, for example, thinks it would be OK for Trump to lie if it helped our economy or harm ISIS. Adams wants his audience to understand the worldview of a master persuader, and from this worldview facts are often not relevant. Also, it's too simple to say that Trump lies when Trump says something that Trump knows is false, but which Trump also knows that his audience knows is false. This is more emotional signaling.
(4) Disagree. I love Sam Harris's podcasts but I think Harris has a case of Trump de... (read more)
Yes, after the Access Hollywood tape came out Adams lowered his estimate of the chance of Trump winning.
I haven't listened to the debate (I'd read it if it was transcribed), but I want to object to a part of your post on a meta level, namely the part where you say:
Being able to effectively convince people, to reliably influence their behavior, is perhaps the biggest general-purpose power a human can have. Don't dismiss an effective arguer as "not rationalist". On the contrary, acknowledge them as a scary rationalist more powerful than you are.
The word "rationalist" means something fairly narrow. We shouldn't make it into an applause light, a near synonym of "people we like and admire and are allied with". Being reliably effective, on the other hand, is a near synonym of being rational(ist).
If Adams employed "dark arts" in his debate, the only thing that necessarily means is that he wasn't engaged in an honest effort to discover the truth. But that's not news - it was a public debate staged in order to convince the audience! So Adams used a time-honored technique of achieving this goal - how very rational of him. At least, it's rational if he succeeded, and I assume you think he did succee... (read more)
I think the term "Dark Arts" is used by many in the community to refer to generic, truth-agnostic ways of getting people to change their mind. I agree that Scott Adams demonstrates mastery of persuasion techniques, and that this is indeed not necessarily evidence that he is not a "rationalist".
However, the specific claim made by James_Miller is that it is a "model rationalist disagreement". I think that since Adams used the persuasion techniques that Stabilizer mentioned above, it's pretty clear that it isn't a model rationalist disagreement.
I dunno man. I feel like 'practitioner of Dark Arts' is a sneaky way to describe 'rationalist who disagrees with me'.
Surely, as a rationalist, you are also a relativist, yeah? Like, you get that there is no giant stone block with the One True Morality on it somewhere? Like, when you say that Adams doesn't believe in morality...you agree with him, right?
There's nothing wrong with Adams here, because
1) Harris's implicit argument is that Trump is unethical compared to other politicians, even if he doesn't actually say it. Thus, poi... (read more)
The OP is an interesting twist on the usual "Dark Arts" political argument.
It is commonplace as an extended exercise in confirmation bias to poison the well.
Seek, and ye shall find, o' confirmation bias.
But "the well" is not just Scott himself, but his epistemological method. This is much more powerful than just attacking the person, as it provides a fully general counterargument to dismiss anyt... (read more)
Hello everyone, I am from USA. I am here to share this good news to only those who will seize this opportunity.I read a post about an ATM hacker and I contacted him via the email address that was attached in the post. I paid the required sum of money for the blank card I wanted and he sent the card through UPS Express Delivery Shipment, and I got it in 3days. I got it from him last week and now I have withdrew $50,000 USD. The blank ATM card is programmed in a way that it can withdraw money from any ATM machine around the world. Now I have so much money to... (read more)
For my part, I found the interview itself as an exercise in Dark Arts by Sam. He wants to pretend that he has given Trump politics a fair hearing. But he doesn't have on someone who actually supports the politics in any conventional sense.
He has on a persuasion analyst who doesn't believe in that there is much utility in us having political opinions because of our lack of knowledge and ability to be objective, and will say that his political opinions are so outside the mainstream that there is no point in discussing them. Similarly, he doesn't argue morali... (read more)
I just posted a bit called "Beliefs as Body Language."
I explore the idea that most people basically do not have beliefs, and are essentially incapable of thinking in terms of beliefs. You cannot tell them what you want them to hear, because what you want them to hear is a proposition about reality, and they are only capable of hearing signals of tribal affiliation or personality traits.
I definitely see some flaws with Adams' methodology, but a few of the things he says that are identified as epistemologically unsound, I understand in terms of com... (read more)