In a world that celebrates the art of persuasion, the persuasiveness of a statement and its truth may be entirely uncorrelated. To assess the substance of an idea you have to strip it of all its appeal. Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant.
-
-
Replying to @Plinz
OTOH, in such a world most people might be equally skilled in rhetoric, meaning that an idea has to be true in order to spread, because otherwise it has no advantage against claims which are merely beautiful. And the true claims are also beautiful in such a world.
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @xuenay
This seems unlikely, because people are not equally skilled in rhetoric, so they are being parasited upon by the most infectious mind viruses, which bring their own rhetorical infection vectors as part of their payload, and skew the persuadability of their hosts against truth.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Plinz
I was thinking "normally, people's ability in rhetoric is unequal mostly due to differences in natural aptitude; giving everyone training evens out differences". Of course training can also increase differences, but also increase ability to recognize & ignore rhetorical tricks.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
Yes, training tends to increase differences, because smart people usually learn more in the same amount of time.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.