i’m noticing that when i read writing, on twitter or elsewhere, that is visibly trying to change the people reading it in some way, i try to guess its “theory of change”; the author’s working model of how writing changes people’s behavior. a rough provisional taxonomy:
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1. “command” - tell people to do the right thing and they’ll do the right thing. this might work on impressionable young people, or people who are desperate, but i am pessimistic about it overall. if commands were enough we’d be done by now
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2. “shame” - shame people for doing the wrong thing and they’ll do the right thing. sort of a variant of command. i’m pessimistic. i think shame has mostly broken as a mechanism for changing people’s behavior, and frequently backfires. i try not to use it myself
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3. “lecture” - tell people the right facts and they’ll do the right thing. i am mostly pessimistic about this one, with some exceptions. i think it is a holdover from school and often accomplishes no behavioral change. “facts” often do not automatically turn into motivation
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4. “theorize” - explain to people a theory / model of how some domain works and they’ll do better things wrt that domain. this is a sort of upgraded “lecture” and i like it better. good theories can be very useful and have helped me. not by themselves, tho. motivation again
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i switched to the word “better” over “right” here because for me, implicitly part of the point of sharing a theory / model rather than just its conclusions is to collaborate on constructing better theories / models in public. “all models are wrong, some are useful” etc.
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5. “inspire” - show people what the right thing looks like and they’ll do the right thing. i like “inspire” a lot. it trusts the reader more than “command” or “shame,” and i think compared to “lecture” or “theorize” it’s tied more closely to motivation
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fortunately i think there's a better option: instead of trying to enforce norms, you can try to *inspire people*, by *showing* them what better behavior is like and how good it is
twitter.com/visakanv/statu
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6. “alter perception” - show people how to perceive something differently and they’ll do something different. i’m not aware of a single word for this. this is the theory of change i am increasingly leaning towards, even more than “inspire”. i described a prototype of it here:
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writing is not about communicating facts, it is about redirecting and reorganizing attention
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I think they are sometimes doing something analogous to 's model of advertising.
meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-
Instead of convincing you of X, it tries to convince you that others are convinced of X.
Depending on X, this may suffice to bring about X.
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Some values of X for which this works:
"work starts at 8am"
"purple symbolizes creativity"
"p<0.05 is enough to publish"
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yeah, so we could broaden the "shame" category to something like "social manipulation" - writing intended to affect the reader's sense of the social landscape, what is being rewarded and punished, etc.