The most persuasive writing neutrally surveys both sides of an argument

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).

A quick search into the academic research on this topic roughly matches the claims in this post.

Meta-analyses by Allen (1991) (pdf, blog post summary) and O'Keefe (1999) (pdf, blog post summary) defined "refutational two-sided arguments" as arguments that include 1) arguments in favor of the preferred conclusion, 2) arguments against the preferred conclusion, and 3) arguments which attempt to refute the arguments against the preferred conclusion. Both meta-analyses found that refutational two-sided arguments were more persuasive than one-sided arguments (which include only the first of those 3 types of arguments), which in turn were more persuasive than nonrefutational two-sided arguments (which include the first 2 of those 3 types of arguments).

So: surveying both sides of the argument, and making the case for why one side holds more weight than the other, does seem to lead to more convincing writing.

These results are at a fairly broad level of generality. I don't know if any research has looked at questions like whether it matters if you include the strongest arguments against the preferred conclusion (vs. only including straw man arguments) or if it matters if you act as if the arguments against the preferred conclusion have been completely refuted (vs. somewhat outweighed by the arguments in favor of the preferred conclusion).

A quick skim through the list of articles citing Allen and O'Keefe's papers turned up some studies which look for additional sources of variability which might moderate this effect, but I didn't notice any that challenge the general pattern or which get into really good detail on whether normatively good arguments (e.g., non-straw-man, measured conclusions) are more convincing.

What are the best arguments against writing in this way?

Kudos for acting on your own advice!

If you are writing a summary of existing arguments, then yes. But if you have a new argument, then there is no reason to drown it in old arguments.

Does anyone know why this article has been so heavily downvoted?

I wonder if my articles would be even more popular if I added images... (joke)

While I appreciate the sentiment expressed here, I agree with most commenters that the most persuasive writing style, and the most popular writing style, is to present one side of the argument.

If we intentionally want to change this dynamics, we have to change the incentive structure. For example, we can get a group of people to make a commitment to upvote EA Forum articles that present all sides of an argument. Other options are available as well.

However, until the incentives are changed, people will do what they naturally get rewarded for, and what takes less time and efforts.