I very much agree that one should neutrally survey both sides of an argument. However, one could argue that the fact that Peter Hurford’s post is one of the most upvoted articles indicates that writing “one-sided” articles are in fact more persuasive, even though it shouldn’t. I therefore think your title is slightly misleading. But generally I think this is a very good and important post.
In the multiple factor post, I argue that illuminaries like Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker are guilty of arguing in this one-sided way, which is very pervasive indeed. Possible arguments in favour of writing in this “one-sided” way (a question that Rob discusses above) are discussed in the comments section (see the comments by DavidAgain and my responses).
I agree with Stefan that it’s more persuasive to write one-sided, and I’d point to the fact that the most popular articles out there (both here on the EA Forum and definitely elsewhere) are presented one-sidedly. I think by “persuasive” you meant “best for helping readers form accurate beliefs”, which are different things ;)
I write one-sidedly from the perspective of “offering additional considerations people haven’t thought of to the considerations everyone already knows” and I don’t spend much time talking about the considerations everyone already knows. This is mainly to save time as you said, because blogging here is definitely a very side project to me and for nearly all my pieces, I don’t have much longer than 3-4 hours to write them.
As Rob pointed out, balanced articles are normally more boring to read. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they are relatively less popular. Popularity is a (very) poor indicator of persuasiveness, because the popularity of an article giving a viewpoint is mostly a function of people who hold the same view holding it up and saying ‘Look at this. It argues for my view!’. Confirmation is not persuasion.
This is especially true if we’re going to measure popularity by ‘number of shares’ or ‘number of upvotes’.
This seems like a good opportunity for collaboration! Perhaps one-sided posts could include a disclaimer at the end of, “In this post, I’ve covered the most compelling arguments for X because I think the considerations on the other side are things most people already know. However, I invite someone with more time/interest to compile those in a comment, or message me and I can add them to the post itself.”
Of course, this assumes we want to be “persuasive” in the way Rob means rather than the common definition of, “most likely to get people to agree with you.”
For the purposes of the title I was thinking more like ‘persuasive to me’, or ‘should change people’s minds’.
Dan Keys chased up some studies suggesting that a more comprehensive treatment might be more convincing after all.
But if I can get people to think that blog posts which only present arguments on one side are more persuasive, but should actually only be slightly persuasive.
If something is one-sided, then the more persuasive it is the worse!
I very much agree that one should neutrally survey both sides of an argument. However, one could argue that the fact that Peter Hurford’s post is one of the most upvoted articles indicates that writing “one-sided” articles are in fact more persuasive, even though it shouldn’t. I therefore think your title is slightly misleading. But generally I think this is a very good and important post.
One-sidedness is generally a sign of confirmation bias, the halo effect, or some other bias. This has got quite a lot of attention in EA circles. See, e.g. Yudkowsky’s Policy-debates should not appear one-sided, and Gregory Lewis’s Beware Suspicious and Surprising Convergence. I myself have made a political bias test based on this idea and written an academic paper explicating its logic in Bayesian terms. I have also argued that one-sided multiple-factor explanations are suspicious (see also Scott Alexander’ post on this issue ).
In the multiple factor post, I argue that illuminaries like Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker are guilty of arguing in this one-sided way, which is very pervasive indeed. Possible arguments in favour of writing in this “one-sided” way (a question that Rob discusses above) are discussed in the comments section (see the comments by DavidAgain and my responses).
It’s probably persuasive to people with no existing view or knowledge, but not to people who disagree or know a lot already.
I agree with Stefan that it’s more persuasive to write one-sided, and I’d point to the fact that the most popular articles out there (both here on the EA Forum and definitely elsewhere) are presented one-sidedly. I think by “persuasive” you meant “best for helping readers form accurate beliefs”, which are different things ;)
I write one-sidedly from the perspective of “offering additional considerations people haven’t thought of to the considerations everyone already knows” and I don’t spend much time talking about the considerations everyone already knows. This is mainly to save time as you said, because blogging here is definitely a very side project to me and for nearly all my pieces, I don’t have much longer than 3-4 hours to write them.
As Rob pointed out, balanced articles are normally more boring to read. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they are relatively less popular. Popularity is a (very) poor indicator of persuasiveness, because the popularity of an article giving a viewpoint is mostly a function of people who hold the same view holding it up and saying ‘Look at this. It argues for my view!’. Confirmation is not persuasion.
This is especially true if we’re going to measure popularity by ‘number of shares’ or ‘number of upvotes’.
This seems like a good opportunity for collaboration! Perhaps one-sided posts could include a disclaimer at the end of, “In this post, I’ve covered the most compelling arguments for X because I think the considerations on the other side are things most people already know. However, I invite someone with more time/interest to compile those in a comment, or message me and I can add them to the post itself.”
Of course, this assumes we want to be “persuasive” in the way Rob means rather than the common definition of, “most likely to get people to agree with you.”
I’d be interested in doing that.
I’ll also likely invest a lot more time (and look at both sides) in posts I care a lot more about, e.g., about where to donate.
For the purposes of the title I was thinking more like ‘persuasive to me’, or ‘should change people’s minds’.
Dan Keys chased up some studies suggesting that a more comprehensive treatment might be more convincing after all.
But if I can get people to think that blog posts which only present arguments on one side are more persuasive, but should actually only be slightly persuasive.
If something is one-sided, then the more persuasive it is the worse!