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Persuasion through status rather than argument
- AmpsterMan 3y agoTo whatever extent this article is true suggests that the way to convince people of certain positions is to hook them via peripheral route, but then keep them there via the central route. If the position is such that any central route reasoning would lead to a rejection of the position, than the next best option is to overwhelm the critical faculties with peripheral route persuasion
- Animats 3y ago> In the 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, 13.4 percent of Americans reported that “felt less free to speak their mind than they used to.” In 1987, the figure had reached 20 percent. By 2019, 40 percent of Americans reported that they did not feel free to speak their minds. This isn’t a partisan issue, either. Gibson and Sutherland report that, “The percentage of Democrats who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40 percent, respectively.” That's a scary number. And it's probably not wrong.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoI certainly keep my mouth shut about certain things, lest the people whose beliefs I find vile and unconscionable (and who view mine the same way) ostracize me, or worse, my child in the community. Far better to gently feel people out before revealing my beliefs entirely.
- rayiner 3y agoAnd you gotta socialize your kids to keep their mouths shut too. My daughter attends a progressive school, and she’s intuited that there’s a de-facto racial hierarchy that she’s none too happy about. (She was recently invited to attend a school-sponsored weekly lunch for black girls, but once a month because she’s half white and half south Asian and I guess that’s how the math works out.) I pointed out that she needs to keep her mouth shut about it if she doesn’t want to get cancelled. Funny thing is, she already kinda knew that. Even at 11 she had an inkling about the possible social consequences of complaining about that.
- sgu999 3y agoWhat a strange society you live in... I don't see how any kind of racial segregation can help the next generation do better than the previous one. Having to explain to your kid that they can't do X because of their phenotype feels simply wrong.
- pen2l 3y ago[flagged]
- forgingahead 3y agoHis daughter is getting discriminated against, and you have word salad justification for that?
- rayiner 3y agoIt was easy for me to have theoretical ideas about culture when I wasn’t trying to raise three mixed kids in that culture.
- selimthegrim 3y agoI grew up mixed just fine, we just didn’t have TikTok and smartphones.
- zlg_codes 3y ago[flagged]
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- fasthands9 3y agoI'm not sure the solution. The problem seems to be a less homogenous society with less homogeneous viewpoints, rather than society getting actually less accepting of speech. It's pretty easy to speak your mind (both then and now) when your opinion is in the majority.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lapcat 3y agoI'm not sure that it's scary. After all, casual racism and sexism used to be a lot more common in the past. Now people are called out and criticized on those. Is that bad? The other factor is the rise of internet social media, which didn't exist back then. When people spoke their mind, it wasn't broadcast publicly to the whole world, so there was less fear of backlash.
- patrick451 3y agoYes. Just like sexuality, racisism and sexism are part of what it means to be human. They are all natural instincts. Suppressing them is leading to the same sort of dysfunction that sexual suppression lead to in the Victorian age. That said, in the same way it's not healthy for society to be full of sexual deviants, it's also not healthy for it to be full of flaming racists. Moderation in all things, but nothing wrong with a little here and there.
- lapcat 3y ago> Moderation in all things, but nothing wrong with a little here and there. Would you say the same about rape, violence, and murder? Those seem like "natural instincts". Nothing wrong with a little here and there? I would dispute that racism and sexism are "just like" sexuality, and I would also dispute that all "natural instincts", you might call them animal instincts, ought to be accepted and encouraged. One of the great accomplishments of humanity is to rise above our animal instincts and become, at least temporarily, rational and enlightened. Sex is necessary for the propagation of the species, and when done right, it's consensual to all parties and also pleasurable, harming nobody. Can you say the same about racism and sexism?
- intalentive 3y agoNot sure how you define sexism, but more traditional patriarchal groups have higher birth rates and more social cohesion. In the long run those traits propagate themselves. The stereotypical cat lady, not so much. As far as racism, it may not propagate the species but surely it helps propagate those genetically closer to oneself. Isn’t in-group preference pretty common? Don’t need to be EO Wilson or Richard Dawkins to see why.
- xyzelement 3y ago[flagged]
- astockwell 3y ago[flagged]
- yoniyoniyoni 3y agoI wouldn't even consider these 'extreme left' or 'far left' people to really be on the left, they're like a whole other ideology separate from that. For instance, someone whose advocacy is fixated mostly around demolishing women's spaces for the pleasure of men, or is obsessed with manifesting racial divides everywhere they look, has really missed the point. They're not even attempting to achieve a society based on egalitarian ideals, all they want to do is set up and maintain new identarian hierarchies.
- jLaForest 3y agoI don't find that number scary or surprising... I'm less likely to overhear racial slurs being thrown around in casual conversation now compared to the past, some selfcensorship is good Not everyone thinks political correctness is bad
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- montalbano 3y agoI was surprised the blog post did not mention Modes of Persuasion, which were codified in 4th century BCE by Aristotle. Ethos: appeal to authority Pathos: appeal to emotion Logos: appeal to logic I found the post's added description of more recent psychological studies interesting though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion
- hoborobo 3y ago[dead]
- hoborobo 3y ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoActual title: "Why dumb ideas capture smart and successful people"
- hcks 3y agoCan the author provide example of dumb ideas? Or is it "dumb ideas" == "ideas I disagree with" More generally, it seems like the recipe of this breed of substack author is to take a basic object level opinion e.g. "I don’t like pronoun people" or "AI people are dumb" and turn it a whole pseudo intellectual rant without ever getting to the point.
- Apocryphon 3y agoSeems relevant to the past couple days’ of events re: OpenAI.
- quickthrower2 3y agoMadoff, WeWork, Theranos, NFTs, … Looking ahead… Probably these vector db company valuations, most companies doing AWS competitor DX plays.
- cornholio 3y agoAll of those listed were well executed financial frauds. I don't think successful people are particularly more likely to fall for scams - they just have the necessary capital/disposable income and are targeted by more sophisticated scammers. I think the author thinks more along the lines of Steve Jobs trying to cure his cancer with herbal tea, Elon Musk sleep depriving himself into a twittering idiot, Scientology, NLP and various "success hacking" fads etc. The answer there might be that in reality successful people are not really very different from unsuccessful ones, and have very little control over the contingencies and luck that put them onto their respective paths. This is certainly the case with financial success.
- rsynnott 3y agoI mean, define “well executed”. Theranos, in particular, it’s notable that very little of their money came from _conventional_ sources (traditional VCs, sovereign wealth funds etc). It was largely, essentially, _personal_ investment by stupid rich people; often via a family office, but ultimately at the direction of the stupid rich person. IIRC one attempt by Theranos to get investment from a real VC collapsed because they _could not provide audited accounts_. Like, they didn’t even have a fake set, they were not providing them to their investors _at all_. I don’t think that any of the named ones were particularly well-executed, and people were trying to warn that all of them were problems for a while. Madoff might be the closest, but even there it was verging on being an open secret that there was something up; again, Madoff’s investors were not actually that sophisticated.
- flybrand 3y agoIsn’t this similar to a short-seller mantra from finance? “The masses can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
- earth-adventure 3y agoIsn't it "the market" rather than "the masses"?
- 123pie123 3y agothis reminds me of the 5 laws of stupidity https://youtu.be/3O9FFrLpinQ?t=16 https://youtu.be/3O9FFrLpinQ?t=16
- jagrsw 3y agoA cool article by Maciej Ceglowski (https://pinboard.in https://pinboard.in) in the spirit of the original article (and times too): https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm Not that I agree with it, just another wittingly-written take on the topic.
- mjburgess 3y agoThe only issue here is calling the 'tribal mode' peripheral -- no, no, it's the default. The human species is first divided into tribes, and much latterly, individuals. ie., Individual human psychology is governed principally by tribal logic -- though 'thinking for oneself' in the broadest sense is always available, it is rarely exercised outside of certain kinds non-social problem environments. Intellectuals are of course those who choose non-social problem environments. Consider Aristotle placing the purpose of life within Reason, rather than the survival and prosperity of the tribe (the only empirically defensible answer). This should, on the face of all evidence, seem outright absurd. So, it's no mystery that tribal logic is absent from the academic presentation of human activity. This becomes extraordinarily dangeours when academies find themselves in power or otherwise academic projects (eg., the neocon inclination to democractise) find themselves elevated to tribal practice. There ought be more explicit presentation of this in our education system -- it is a shame it has to be rediscovered so late. > This means we can be more easily manipulated through the peripheral route. This is only true if you're qualified to reason through the information yourself. Pseudointellectuals are easily manipulated (consider the CIA pushing a UFO conspraicy). By not understanding the tribal logic of our psychology, this article repeats the mistake: thinking for oneself is not an inherent virute, nor is it inherently feasible or purposeful in most cases
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago> The human species is first divided into tribes, and much latterly, individuals. ie., Individual human psychology is governed principally by tribal logic -- though 'thinking for oneself' in the broadest sense is always available, it is rarely exercised outside of certain kinds non-social problem environments. No, this priority varies between individuals. And you left out the mating pair-bond from your analysis. This is a very basic introduction, and there are some arguments and nitpicks from others who study the subject, but it gets across the gist of the idea: https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/variants https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/variants These three instincts are present in everyone (barring gross brain damage), but are in varying orders of priority.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago> It might seem intuitive to believe that people with less education are more manipulable. But research suggests this may not be true. > High-status people are more preoccupied with how others view them. Which means that educated and/or affluent people may be especially prone to peripheral, as opposed to central, methods of persuasion. There is a hidden assumtion in the above part. Did you spot it? It is that educated people are also high status people, are also (overly) concerned about their reputation. If this assumptions breaks, all the following about perpetuated ideology stands on a weak basis. After all, more educated people could tend to be more rational too. To be fair, i would my left leaning ideology be based more on reason and not on my educational sociotope. May be just my bias.
- cdot2 3y agoEveryone believes their ideology is based on reason and not determined by their sociotope. My sociotope just happens to be the most reasonable one.
- calderknight 3y agoEveryone? Plenty of people don't practice ideological thinking in the first place.
- fourthark 3y agoUnless one doesn't think at all, or is completely inconsistent, one will have ideology.
- calderknight 3y agoSeems like a pretty crazy claim, want to share your reasoning?
- fourthark 3y agoMerriam-Webster: "Ideology: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture" No ideology = no characteristic thinking. If you think you don't have ideology, you probably have the dominant one. Or don't think.
- hennyting 3y ago[flagged]
- namaria 3y agoCalling precautions superfluous after the uncertainty is gone is not clever.
- Bostonian 3y agoIt was known early that covid was rarely spread outdoors, but it took a long time for rules and recommendations to catch up to that, especially in Australia IIRC.
- habinero 3y agoBefore we had vaccines, covid was killing more people than heart attacks and car accidents. Combined. Deriding people for caring about their own safety is callous and puerile.
- hef19898 3y agoEvem worse, masks work better for others than yourself. What came a bit as shock during COVId for me, was how little people cared for each other, that people couldn't even bothered with the smallest inconveniences to do something good for everyone. I am a cynic, but didn't that level egoism.
- JaDogg 3y agoIndeed. However, I believe that we, as humans, have always been indifferent to those outside our immediate circle. Similarly, people often don't show concern for the homeless or those in inescapable servitude due to mortgages. Yet, there is a desire to increase the number of people in office, rather than converting more spaces into houses or apartments. I have observed on Hacker News that some individuals don't even rent places; instead, they keep those spaces closed to inflate prices. Despite the significant progress we've made from tribal times, our emotional evolution seems limited.
- jackcosgrove 3y agoI was nodding a lot reading this piece, but something did seem incongruous. The author claims "peripheral route" opinions are becoming more common because of information overload and the need to be parsimonious when forming opinions. He also claims that peripheral route opinions are more weakly held than central route opinions. How does that account for increasing ideological polarization, when you would expect people's opinions to shift more with the breeze?
- h2odragon 3y agoI would suggest that the polarization is advantageous to the people shaping public opinion. Sells more soda and antacids. I dont agree its "ideological"; instead it is "tribal". Ideology: "My body my choice" == vaccination and abortion should be individual decisions. "Free speech is good" == people can protest for and against racial separation or elimination, regardless of the race in question. As the tribes we see society dividing into stand on both sides of those two examples, and many others, I can't say I see "ideology" as the dividing factor.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI thought he kind of addressed that. > This means we can be more easily manipulated through the peripheral route. If we are convinced of something via the peripheral route, a manipulator will be more successful at using the peripheral route once again to alter our initial belief. emphasis mine. So basically, he claims that because peripheral information is more loosely held, peripheral beliefs are also more easily altered. Thus you have the rabbit hole effect leading to "pilling" and extreme beliefs.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoWe should not conflate what is ostensibly “intelligence” with wisdom, virtue, and character. Without genuine virtue, the mind cannot function properly. Without a spine, without virtue, temptations to throw the truth under the bus for the sake of lesser goods easily overwhelm. It leads to the misuse and abuse of intelligence. It leads to skillful evasion of the truth. It leads to rationalization rather than reason. The author gives us one example. It’s not his wealth, objectively a good thing, that prevents a rich man from getting into heaven, it is his prioritization of it over superior goods, his idolatry even. And riches come in many forms.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoI thought about that myself since I actually self-censored lately despite my free-speech belief. As I am learning, the belief is not as strong as the drive to survive and comfort. It is disheartening in a way. I was expecting more of myself. On the other, it offered a look into the mirror. I an easily argue it is wisdom or even that there is good and right of me to focus on my family's well-being, but I know those are still just rationalizations.
- hasoleju 3y agoA better title could maybe be: "Smart and successful people don't express their true opinion because they fear a loss of status" The author explains, that the more status people gained in their life, the more they try to stick to the common sense of opinions people of their status hold. This behavior really stabilizes the status quo. For me this also explains why the consequent climate change protests are mainly supported by young people. They presumably have acquired less status yet and therefor don't feel the fear of status loss if they express a new opinion.
- akoboldfrying 3y agoMostly agree but I would argue that protesting climate change is the high-status norm for young people today. Though we oldies may have forgotten, or disregard it as "not real", status amongst their peers is incredibly important to the average teenager.
- marssaxman 3y agoIt strikes me oddly that you describe climate change protest as a "new opinion". From my gen-x view of the world, it has been a big deal through my entire adult life - we're up to COP 28 now, after all!
- hasoleju 3y agoI agree with you, that phrase is misleading. What I tried to express is: The sense of urgency to act upon the climate catastrophe even if it decreases your own quality of life in the short term is somehow “new” or at least only really felt and pointed out strongly by a minority.
- Kye 3y agoWould you have clicked on that title? Everyone says they hate clickbait (defined here as "titles people actually click"), but it's about the only way to get anyone to look at anything unless they're already familiar with your work, regardless of the merits.
- User3456335 3y ago
- hackandthink 3y agoI noticed some group think posts lately. Perhaps some feel uncomfortable with the official assessments of the current wars. Fortunately, everyone is capable of learning. Today's dogma is tomorrow's stupidity.
- mgaunard 3y agoI think it's educational/cultural; the peripheral route seems particularly prevalent among Americans as opposed to say, continental Europeans, which are much more independent thinkers. Now Americans apparently also have a weird relationship with education (highly status correlated and rejected by certain bands of society) and often appear to interpret the world through the lens of their binary political divide. Coincidence?
- Georgelemental 3y ago> the peripheral route seems particularly prevalent among Americans as opposed to say, continental Europeans, which are much more independent thinkers As a dual US/EU citizen, I can assure you that neither side of the North Atlantic has a monopoly on groupthink or status-worship. I think the means are similar, though perhaps US has larger variance.
- dalbasal 3y agoThe majority of all argument, debates, polemics... it's all "hacks." We're all dirty tricks, if we're being honest. Formalizing and naming templates of fallacies and dirty tricks... it's kind of a fallacious trick in itself. Logically valid, convincing, and the way we actually think a completely different. There are places where these come together, often requiring a lot of effort. The reality that we, all of us, way through the slush. None rise above it. To take the least noxious example, stories work on us. Stories. Narratives. They're very central to communicating, central to how we make sense of things. Who is what in which story. Telling the story, is unanimously agreed by all practitioners.. primary to convincing people, or even getting them to listen to you in the first place. Is this logically sound? Is it conducive to keeping track of one's assumptions, presumptions and biases? Of course not. It is, how we work though. The way formal logic works, and the way we think, talk and convince one another.. they are very far apart. That doesn't mean we can't grasp logic. We can. It does mean, that we don't employ it on its own very often. The argument that would take, this post is the "central" path. The other half of this dichotomy. The assumed default state. People say things for a lot of reasons, and then argue their way back.
- mistermann 3y ago> The way formal logic works, and the way we think, talk and convince one another.. they are very far apart. Strict logic is "pedantry", "JAQing off", Sea-lioning, "conspiratorial thinking", etc. I know of no social media platform where this is not true (based on replies and voting). And (seemingly) ironically, "scientific thinkers" are often particularly prone to the phenomenon. > That doesn't mean we can't grasp logic. We can. That which is physically possible is not necessarily metaphysically possible. People can use logic sometimes, but very often it is culturally (thus consciously) non-permissible, like during COVID[1], war time[2], etc. I am not aware of any current or historical attempts to solve this problem, the scientific method being somewhat of a specialized exception. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332076 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332346
- aDyslecticCrow 3y ago
- motohagiography 3y agoA lot of intelligent people aren't very smart, and a lot of smart people aren't very intelligent. The smart achive desirable outcomes, and usually that means not rocking the boat. The intelligent have a capacity for abstraction, which means it's easy to misunderstand why people are parroting absurdities. Where a good programmer is intelligent, a good product manager is smart. I was surprised he didn't include this Dalrymple quote, "propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control." It captures the issue more succintly, but it would also have limited the reach of the article. I'm sure he's familiar with it, but the author was probably just being smart.
- corporatenight 3y ago[dead]
- bloomingeek 3y agoGreat response! I always remind myself: information isn't the same as knowledge, knowledge isn't the same as wisdom. Lies have nothing to do with wisdom, integrity is destroyed by the actions of lies.
- karmakaze 3y agoThe use of smart vs intelligent here is arbitrary though illustrates the difference. I've also seen the reverse: smart aleck/smart ass, too smart for their own good. I would say that being pragmatic captures the outcomes one. A good programmer and product manager are both, but with switched weightings as indicated.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago> The use of smart vs intelligent here is arbitrary though illustrates the difference. Dungeons and Dragons insightfully divided these intelligences up into Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
- ferociouskite56 3y agoNoone understands the brains' details and how to administer targeted medicines. Yet many rich people assume antipsychotics can magically prevent crime.
- NooneAtAll3 3y agohey, I don't understand it either
- lapcat 3y agoThe author is trying to push a consistent narrative throughout the article, and unfortunately this results in the omission of alternative explanations for the phenomena discussed. For example: > Likewise, in a fascinating study on the collapse of the Soviet Union, researchers have found that university-educated people were two to three times more likely than high school graduates to say they supported the Communist Party. White-collar professional workers were likewise two to three times more supportive of communist ideology, relative to farm laborers and semi-skilled workers. Alternative explanation: university-educated people and white-collar professional workers personally benefitted more from the Communist Party, so of course they supported the party more. > Educational divides within the US today are consistent with these historical patterns. The Democratic political analyst David Shor has observed that, “Highly educated people tend to have more ideologically coherent and extreme views than working-class ones. We see this in issue polling and ideological self-identification. College-educated voters are way less likely to identify as moderate.” Alternative explanation: highly educated people spend more time and effort thinking about politics, indeed are forced to spend more time and effort thinking about politics by their teachers and peers, so of course they have more highly developed views and stronger opinions about politics. > Research by Caitlin Drummond and Baruch Fischhoff at Carnegie Mellon University found that people with more education, science education, and science literacy are more polarized in their views about scientific issues depending on their political identity. For example, the people who are most concerned about climate change? College-educated Democrats. The people who are least concerned? College-educated Republicans. In contrast, less educated Democrats and Republicans are not so different from one another in their views about climate change. Alternative explanation: again as above with regard to politics, highly educated people are forcibly confronted with the issue of climate change and are forced to think about it, discuss it, and form opinions about much more than less educated people. Let's do a poll to see which group has more highly polarized opinions about sports, for example.
- M95D 3y ago> researchers have found that university-educated people were two to three times more likely than high school graduates to say they supported the Communist Party Ignorant researchers. Those kind of people were required to be members of the Party or else they could not get jobs according to their education. Also they were the most actively monitored by state security. Phones tapped, spied by neighbors, required to speak in public in support of the Party, etc.
- bloomingeek 3y agoWow, that's a lot to unpack! For my part, trusting experts can be risky. I can trust my doctor, but I can also question him about what he wants me to do. Unless he is willing to explain a treatment to my understanding, I'll seek out another opinion. I can't pretend to understand everything, I need some experts for that, however I can gather information. Intellectual laziness from my side leads to heartbreaking dread if I didn't attempt to understand what an expert was saying.
- shannifin 3y agoIs there a way to self-evaluate whether or not your belief is the product of social status preservation? If not, what good is it to recognize the possibility, save for accusing others of it?
- itronitron 3y agoIf the person speaking is wearing glasses or has a British accent then odds are good that any beliefs you have based on what that person has said are a product of social status preservation. You can correct for this bias by imagining that same argument being presented by Donnie Baker [0] and if you still find it compelling then it's probably a reasonable point that is being made. I swear to God it is. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQDsKoMCz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQDsKoMCz0
- Georgelemental 3y agoIf you radically changed your beliefs and told all your friends and peers about your conversion, what would happen to your status?
- handoflixue 3y agoI've found it very useful to ask "what would it take for me to change this belief?" If you can't think of anything, you're almost definitely in social status territory. The follow-up is how comfortable you'd feel sharing this with your friends - do you think they'd also change their minds, or do you think they'd ostracize you? Would you feel comfortable sharing the hypothetical, or only if those events really came to pass? (For example, if every major university did a press release saying the moon landing was a hoax, I'd have to seriously entertain the idea that they're right. I don't think any of my friends would be upset if I shared this hypothetical with them, and I think most of them would join me if it really did happen. So my belief that the moon landing is real is probably a "real" belief and not just a social product.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lapcat 3y agoThere's a past-oriented and a future-oriented question you can ask with regard to your beliefs. Past: How did I come to believe what I currently believe? Future: How skeptical should I be about what I currently believe? The past-oriented question is difficult to answer; it's a causal story that may have a number of different factors, and of course it depends on your brain wiring. It seems to me that that the future-oriented question, on the other hand, is much easier to answer: if your beliefs personally benefit or comfort you, then you should be very skeptical of them. This is a natural corollary of “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- GalahiSimtam 3y agoSave you some reading, it's about political biases of academia in USA, not about "why Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X" kind of ideas/people.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago"Results from a recent paper titled `Keeping Your Mouth Shut: Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States' by the political scientists James L. Gibson and Joseph L. Sutherland is consistent with the findings from Cato/Yougov." Here is that paper. No SSRN Javascript required. https://academic.oup.com/psq/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/psquar/qqad037/51309225/qqad037.pdf https://academic.oup.com/psq/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093...