The Dying Art of Persuasion

I think that Scott Alexander or whatever his name is, does a much better job than say, Paul Graham, at presenting the best counterargument whenever he presents something that he believes, but it's intrinsically a game of trust.

I think what the New York Times intrinsically understands is that the art persuasion is not actually the art of being rational and critical. It is the art of convincing someone else that you have been rational and critical. I am not generally defending the New York Times, I just think that they do understand how good faith persuasive essays can be gateways to bad faith persuasive essays.

The existence and effectiveness of bad faith persuasion is nowhere clearer than in court, where you are essentially obligated by the system to act in bad faith (lawyers would not describe it this way, but presenting an argument that you know to be flawed is bad faith), and lawyers are very convincing. However without an adversarial court system, lawyers are about as good a way of getting to the truth of the matter as crystal balls.

A reasonable, but not infallible heuristic for evaluating an essay for good faith, is to just imagine how much different the essay would look if counterarguments could be inserted after reaching some threshold of support by the general population.

The aggregate problem remains, however. Persuasive essays maintain a shared credit score which is extremely problematic for the process of truth-seeking. Even essays from the same author, can operate on wildly different points on the good/bad faith spectrum.

I guess my point is that the solution is not "more rational essayists", but rather provably adversarial comment systems, in which authors are not advantaged.

This presents a fairly narrow view of persuasion, a romanticized version. Broadly defined persuasion is alive and well.

Consider the massive political demonstrations that have occurred in the last year, who persuaded these people to leave their homes and congregate during the middle of a pandemic?

Consider the rapid decriminalization of marijuana and even other drugs. Who persuaded these voters to change the law?

Consider all the new start-ups and other business that rely on a sales force to persuade customers of their value and to sign up?

Persuasion is very much still alive

The article asserts a strawman, that we had, in the past, cool, rational, reasoned debates that we all stroked our beards and decided what the right choice of action would be.

I would suggest several counter examples:

* Hearst Newspapers and "Yellow Journalism"

* McCarthyism

* Revolutionary War era op-eds (e.g., https://thefederalistpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/T... )

I've noted an increasing trend in US papers that the headline or the first few paragraphs sort of level where the author expects your beliefs will be, and much of the article is precicated on such beliefs. For me personally, it makes trying to read the rest of the article, whether I agree with the headline/first few paragraphs or not, much more difficult.

It was a little uncomfortable that the author found it necessary to keep referring to Rationalists as "nerds and weirdos". Presumably he left these irons in the fire in case someone tries to associate him with the Rationalists. Not sure I want to read his book if the conclusion is "I only feel like I can talk about them safely if I call them derisive names".

I agree with the comments positing that persuasion is clearly alive and well, given the enthusiasm of today's e.g. demonstrations. I believe the author's point, however, is that persuasion can (should?) engage the conscious, rational mind, rather than just fear-based, tribal instincts leveraged today.

Persuasion is a symptom of a broken system in which everyone votes independently.

Systems like "liquid democracy" make it so not everyone needs to be an expert on every issue, they just have to choose someone slightly smarter than themselves.

In academic spaces, persuasion is still alive and well.

Lol. The art is not dead. It has simply moved on from ancient forms. Nobody's mind is being changed by editorials in some paper-and-ink newspaper. Minds are changed through social media. The skill now isn't about formulated argument. It is about subtle pushes delivered through a variety of means. Want grandma to change her mind about politics? Don't send her a well-reasoned letter. Manipulate her social media feeds. Hit her with targeted adds/messages from apparently like-minded people. Manufacture something that she fears that will draw her to where you want her to move. The art of persuasion isn't dead. It is just now operating on a wider playing field and softer rulebook.

I think your line "It’s also more fun" sums it up. Social media is about dopamine. As for the art of persuasion, while it might be marginalized in the current online environment, I'm encouraged when I hear people acknowledge that rational arguments have never been the best tool for changing people's minds, especially not in the short run. I think more often they come in handy after the fact, to rationalize people's feelings and memberships. But that's not to say we should throw up our hands and give up on reaching people. There's the alternative of delaying rational debate until a foundation of decency and emotional goodwill has been established--again, pretty tough to do online. There was an episode of Yascha Mounk's podcast from 9/4/20 where these two approaches are discussed. Elizabeth Anderson offers this critique to Mounk's project (called, oddly enough, "Persuasion"): "This is why I think I have some slight reservation against your Persuasion project, because it's all about argument. I don't think Americans in general are ready for argument, what we have to have is testimony. That's where people just sit down and talk about their lives, and open up in ways that other people can actually listen, and hear what the experience of others is like. Where people are speaking from the heart, about their experience. It's not about larger scale, policy arguments about principles; it's just about experience."

"But the line in which he “aligns himself” with Murray is on whether there is a genetic component to poverty (which surely there must be), ..."

What? Genetic component of poverty?!

"Another example. “Free speech” has become a left-right battleground issue, and the instances we read about are always of right-wing speech being limited by left-wing activists. So, inevitably, left-wing people think it’s a partisan attack on them, or a smokescreen for people who just want to say unpleasant things (which, let’s be clear, it often is). But Alexander takes a different tack. In one post, for example, he calls attention to a woman fired for “having a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on her car” by her George W Bush-supporting boss. The point is, or at least the effect on me was, to drag the issue away from partisan sniping. It wasn’t firing shots in the culture war, it was talking to liberals and left-wingers, trying to persuade."

Alexander's post is from 2013, which was before much of the current free speech hoopla. Somehow, I'm not finding this persuasive.

Ultimately, in fact, I think this article is exactly what it seems to be complaining about, just in regard to an issue that is orthogonal to the big political discussions it uses as examples: Chivers is writing to a rationalist audience about how rationalists are wonderful.

consider the reciprocal, how persuadable are people? how much humility do we temper our views & stances with?

the internet exposes so many of us to torrents of information. the world seems more firm & certain, now that the cold war is over, now that capitalism's steady gobbling up of all local systems has proceeded space for decades unabated & unchanged. my guess is that people feel more resolute in their own views, & that the world seems less in flux/malleable than ever.

Persuasion is dying but it's not dead. It has morphed in this age of echo chambers. How do you persuade someone who is stuck in a situation not hearing opposing viewpoints?

Why persuade when you can simply cancel your opponent?