Hey Sophistry! There's a big difference between convincing the person you're arguing with and convincing an audience. I may persuade you, or you may persuade me

Hey Sophistry! There's a big difference between convincing the person you're arguing with and convincing an audience. I may persuade you, or you may persuade me and I think in that situation we both get closer to the truth. But if we have an audience, our arguments are restricted to what might convince each other AND what might convince the audience. If the audience is the real decider, I can't really know how logical the audience is, so I'm going to play every dirty trick I can to win. it's subtle, and textured. If I gotta convince you - say for funding, I've got a broader array of arguments to use. if I've gotta convince you and the audience, I've got a fairly narrow range of options. If I gotta convince the audience, well, that's all analogies about how my dog died and it sucked, so if we'd done this my dog would still be around and it's better for everybody. historically you'd have to worry about the audience of 20 or so people that cared. and we'd probably both know them and how to sway their opinions. Kennedy Nixon is held up as a big example of persuading millions. You gotta scope in two dimensions. Your interlocutor and the audience. They have different weights. It's hard. Our ancestral heritage doesn't really give us much support for persuading a bazillion people. But that's sort of the table stakes today. Maybe not persuaded, but the audience must remain indifferent.