mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (12/09/84)
ONLY two major means of persuasion? Utter rubbish. How about seduction? How about fictional dramatization? How about ridicule? Do you own a TV? Watch some commercials. If you want to know about persuasion, there's your best source. Science as a source of truth (or whatever) is rather overrated. Right now, it is useless in the realm of personal interaction. Since no one has thus far been able to attach numbers to emotions, what we have are behavioral studies whose meaning is quite unclear. Take the various sex surveys. Assuming that the numbers collected are sufficiently accurate, what do they mean? Kinsey didn't even bother to ask what people thought about the things that they did in bed (or wherever they did it :-)). Really, five or ten good novels will tell you more about the human mind than all of psychology can (except for works like the books of M. Scott Peck, which aren't in the least science). The arrogance of psychology in asserting the validity of its technique is certainly in the same league as almost any religion, by the way. Intimidation is not foreign to science. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe In principio est Verbum
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (12/10/84)
> ONLY two major means of persuasion? Utter rubbish. How about seduction? > How about fictional dramatization? How about ridicule? Do you own a > TV? Watch some commercials. If you want to know about persuasion, there's > your best source. [WINGATE] Ridicule probably falls into the intimidation class. Seduction and fictional dramatization could reasonably be lumped in a "deception" class. Both classes could be lumped together in a class of manipulative persuasion. (Lies and deception are the text, intimidation is the method through which the manipulation is enforced.) They are all contrary to the "other" method that fortune!polard described. He called it "the scientific method", leaving the door open for Wingate to come marching in and spouting anti-science drivel. Instead, let's call the method an appeal to reasoned thinking. Presenting verifiable facts, allowing the listener/reader to come to the same conclusion through his own reasoning power. If manipulation (in the form of deception and/or intimidation) is present, the listener/reader's ability to discern may be clouded. Thus users of this same method oftens find it necessary to point out the nature of the deception/intimidation/manipulation inherent in currently held thought patterns. > Science as a source of truth (or whatever) is rather overrated. Right now, > it is useless in the realm of personal interaction. This is a question of time and energy, not of usefulness. If we were to analyze every everyday situation which the rigor employed in scientific inquiry, we'd barely get out of bed in the morning. Nevertheless, delving deeper into what your friend is really meaning when he says "I'm fine." may prove useful; it's just that everyday life doesn't afford the time to employ such rigor. (Gee, Bill never says "I'm fine", he always says "Miserable, and you?" Maybe something's wrong.) Thus, it's only "useless" in the realm of interpersonal interaction because of the effort required to employ it. Using it WOULD (and often does, when applied) prove useful, but to survive without information overload, we make assumptions in everyday life. Sometimes we find these assumptions to be wrong. Imagine that... > The arrogance of psychology in > asserting the validity of its technique is certainly in the same league as > almost any religion, by the way. Intimidation is not foreign to science. How true. (I *do* wonder where they got the techniques from, though. The intimidation techniques, that is...) -- When you're omniscient, everything's a tautology. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr