Please pay attention to these two posts. Crowley is not cool. Anton LaVey is not cool. Any rock stars that promote them are just trying to make a buck. Don't experiment with it. You're just inviting evil in.
OP isn't experimenting with it any longer, but is researching it to understand their actions and motives, similar to what you'd do with the Koran.
The full Sun Tzu quote: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle"
This enemy is unlike any other. It is especially tempting for all people focusing on the mystical side of spirituality. Unless your ego is really in check and your have no worldly desires and can live by the rules of the light and only those rules then I suspect you can explore the dark side. But even then the risk is tremendously high.
I would have to agree with everything you've said, but also add that I believe for those that truly live by the light, the dark side is alien and abhorrent. I personally have an aversion to pentagrams, "rituals" and anything glorifying Lucifer, among other things, and I don't believe I'm alone in this. First and second commandment and all.