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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

Framing is just perspective. Our conversation is a debate on how to frame framing.

Trying to change someone's perspective isn't always propaganda, and of course you can change your own prospective through reframing and introspection.

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There's a fine line between presenting your ideas in a clear and effective manner, and "framing" the presentation in a way that makes it more likely others will agree with you (a manipulative technique). Think of a good salesman: if the product's values sold itself, the salesman wouldn't really matter - but they do.

Often people using these manipulative techniques don't even realize they are manipulating - they just think they are "charismatic" or "persuasive".

I think it's a matter of definition. I always thought of framing as understanding your audience and expressing your ideas in a way which puts a "frame" around a viewpoint to highlight the way it matters to them. It's a general technique which is very important to effective communication, but there are ways to make it manipulative, such as preying on people's fear/greed/envy/ other negative emotions. But I think framing is a neutral term which does not exclusively mean negative emotional manipulation. Having said that, I haven't read the articles on the site to know which way the Framing Institute uses the word framing.

You are always framing your statements and questions, whether you are aware of it or not. If you dont understand what you are doing, you probably are framing things incorrectly / from wrong perspective.

An example of poor framing: "do you feel you have the right to tell private company whay to do"

Reframing the same question can expose serious logical flaws and assumptions, and every critical thinker worth his salt should be aware of it and able to examine an issue from different viewpoints

This is why my dad dislikes sales people. His job is to pick the best tool for the job, and if 3 competing sales people come to sell him a tool, at least 2 of them have as their sole job making picking the best tool for the job harder.

Rhetoric is traced back to Mesopotamia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric#History

The FrameWorks Institute is just a non-profit that's modernizing the study of rhetoric for modern political and social discourse

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