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Comment by c8d3f7b49897918 | Hacker News Reader

This headline is a good example of getting the target (you) to think past the sale: if you deny bitcoin is "something worse" you are implicitly conceding it is, in fact, a waste of energy (when contrasted with HFT server farms, I suppose?)

Trump did this with the "and mexico will pay for it" addendum to building the wall. By getting people to say "Mexico will never pay for it!" they are mentally conceding the wall.

I dislike these sorts of verbal tactics, but they are effective manipulations.

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This might sound weird, but we should teach rhetoric in schools, which includes these kinds of dishonest player verbal tactics, because my thinking is that if we can name and speak openly on a meta level about these types of manipulative tactics, we can defend against them more effective.

Similar to teaching people how to hack for the sake of improving computer security, or maybe more similar to the old fantasy trope of the monster / sorcerer or whatever losing it's power if you know it's name. I feel like most people know of these tactics, but they can't call them out effectively, because it's cumbersome and awkward to do so.

We used to: the ‘liberal arts’ originally referred to the ‘quadrivium:’ arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy; and the ‘trivium:’ grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

"Thinking past the sale" is not a thing. It's some gibberish Scott Adams made up to sell books and podcast ads.

Let's take your example. Is there a documented case of someone who started out being against the wall and then got confused into supporting it by the "Mexico pays" canard? I'd love to see that.

There are various rhetorical tactics and yes they can be effective... but none of them amount to Jedi mind tricks.

edit: to test my assertion, google that phrase. then google it with only results from 2015 or earlier. Scott Adams all the way down.

Much of news is based on the same style of rhetoric. You're asking both the pro and con positions to be neutral in their speech. That's not going to happen.

Media with positions I agree with do this, I recognize it. It's not going way. NPR likes to say during their pledge drives that they only give us facts... Uhhuh. I mean Innskeep is notorious.

Tangent and slightly off topic... but I'm interested in the thinking here.

Maybe I take propositional statements a bit too literally? I don't see the trick, or it's not even a good trick.

Is bitcoin a waste of electricity:

  1. No. something worse? No.
  2. No. something worse? Yes. <-- doesn't make logical sense.
  3. Yes. something worse? No. It's just a waste of elec.
  4. Yes. something worse? Yes. <-- really hate bitcoin here

So in case 1, how is it conceding that bitcoin is a waste of energy? Case 3 & 4 already agrees that bitcoin is a waste of energy regardless of "something worse".

Maybe the better statement is "Bitcoin is worse than wasting electricity"(???) Then the target needs to deny that it's "worse" before considering "waste of electricity".

Thoughts?

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