Its difficult to discuss this topic on lesswrong for several reasons:
1) The bulk of most people’s experience ‘trying to convince other people of things’ comes from political discussions. This is probably not an optimal state of affairs but its still true for most rationalists. Most of my experience ‘learning how to persuade people’ comes from discussing things like libertarianism and climate change. I can’t go into details about those things on lesswrong.
2) Talking about how persuasive you are makes you sound arrogant and might make you sound manipulative. So its difficult to talk about successes you have had. Even worse, people you convinced of things don’t want to hear about your master persuader powers.
3) The ‘Dark Arts’ taboo is pretty strong. When I was younger I was very bad at persuading people. Looking back I was just spamming arguments that only made sense to people who shared my moral foundations (and they are relatively but not ridiculously rare). At some point I decided to stop trying to make ‘good’ arguments and just try to convince people of things. I would not actively lie or mislead but I stopped trying to follow especially truth seeking norms (as I understood them). This was actually very educational. The later approach led to me spending much more time trying to really understand and engage with different points of view. I followed this approach for many years until I decided I had learned enough to change mindset. I only practiced this sort of attitude in political discussions with little or no real world ramification. But even talking about this can be socially risky if one is not careful. Among other things I argued for lots of positions I didn’t actually hold (with no disclaimers) and made tons of arguments I personally found unpersausive. This rubs alot of people the wrong way.
But even talking about this can be socially risky if one is not careful. Among other things I argued for lots of positions I didn’t actually hold (with no disclaimers) and made tons of arguments I personally found unpersausive. This rubs alot of people the wrong way.
Well, and so it should, right? It should be socially risky; it is expected, and good, that it rubs people the wrong way—because arguing for positions you don’t hold (without disclaimers), and making arguments you personally find unpersuasive, is deceptive and antisocial; it’s a betrayal of cooperative norms.
Yet here it seems like you’re implying that, actually, it’s fine to do these things, but that you just have to be careful, because unfortunately people don’t like when you do them, for some reason (which reason is definitely not “these are actually bad things”). Have I misunderstood?
Lawyers are the quintessential speakers-for-hire who apply rhetoric to mercenary causes. Yet lawyers are accepted and high-status in most parts of society. In play, debate clubs are often popular; and at a recent LW meetup we played an Ideological Turing Test game, where we had to convince each other of positions we didn’t always hold.
Lawyers don’t hide the fact they’re biased and mercenary in court. Maybe that helps them disassociate enough from the practice that people don’t feel uncomfortable with them in a personal setting. And yet, most people are not bothered by the idea that the justice system runs in part on rhetoric persuasiveness, or that the wider political system runs in part on politicians convincing voters of things. People compliment politicians on their public speaking skills without thinking “dark arts!” every time.
In general, the average person’s reaction to “wow what a skilled orator” isn’t “therefore I won’t listen to them, persuasiveness is orthogonal to truth”. How do you reconcile this with your analysis of “betraying cooperative norms”, which people are usually good at enforcing?
Note: I’m not well familiar with modern lawyers and exactly how important rhetoric is to them. In classical antiquity it was extremely important; that is relevant insofar as it partially explains why rhetoric is present in today’s classical liberal education.
I’m not sure I agree re: lawyers, or about how people/society thinks of this. For one thing, I don’t think most people are that OK with lawyers—they tend to get a lot of flack, and e.g. criminal defense attorneys will often get pushback from people who identify them with their clients, irrespective of the fact that they know the lawyers don’t necessarily condone their clients’ actions.
Another thing—most people absolutely hate hypocrisy. I think it’s considered a death-blow to most people’s arguments. People compliment politicians on their speaking skills, but if they discovered that the politician’s are not saying things they believe in, they’d turn on them. (Well, theoretically—President Trump is a good counterexample).
Btw, an aside, but I also think you misrepresent what lawyers do in some way. They’re supposed to be advocating for the rights of their clients, and supposed to persuade, but they can’t for example lie. They are a check on the system that works from within the system—they need to make sure everyone is playing by the rules, but they can’t just make up their own rules or anything. That said, of course rhetoric is important for trial lawyers.
Trump is a good example. Trump appears to most voters to not be a skilled orator but to simply state the facts in a down to earth way as he believes them to be.
He’s persuasive without signaling that he is a great orator.
I did not mean to misrepresent what lawyers do (or are allowed to do). I noted they are restricted by lawyer ethics, but that was in a different comment than the one you replied to. Yes, absolutely, they not supposed to lie or even deliberately mislead, and a lawyer’s reputation would suffer horribly if they were caught in a lie.
I’m not sure I understand people who aren’t OK with ethical lawyers, as a concept. Is there something they would like instead of lawyers? (See: my other comment.) Or do they feel that lawyers are immoral by association with injustice—the intuition of “moral contagion” (I forget the correct term) that someone who only partially fixes a moral wrong, is worse than someone who doesn’t try to fix it at all?
Hypocrisy is anathema to me, but I’ve notice that many (most?) people are happy to let other people live with their contradictions as long as they are not very painfully glaring.
The best persuasive speakers I’ve ever seen in person are, unsurprisingly, lawyers. I saw Robert P. George speak once and thought “This is an atom bomb in the form of a man; I want that power.”
It’s not mere demagoguery. There’s structure to the arguments. And I’m pretty sure the same places that trained him to make arguments also trained him to speak effectively.
And yet, most people are not bothered by the idea that the justice system runs in part on rhetoric persuasiveness, or that the wider political system runs in part on politicians convincing voters of things.
Uh… I don’t think that’s true. Lots of people are bothered by this. Maybe you’re right, maybe a majority is unbothered, but this is interesting only to the extent that it doesn’t embody a larger pattern of what proportion of people care about injustice. My impression is that this is not a deviation from that pattern.
In general, the average person’s reaction to “wow what a skilled orator” isn’t “therefore I won’t listen to them, persuasiveness is orthogonal to truth”.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
It’s not just average people who are put off by impressive talk. The charge of “sophistry” comes from the sophists, teachers who were skilled in the arts of rhetoric and persuasion. These teachers acquired a (dangerous) reputation for being able to convince anyone of anything, true or false, to the point where our word for such argumentation references them.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
Then the skilled orator will take that into account, speak simply, and avoid impressive or skillful rhetoric.
Marketers have noticed that some people are suspicious of slick corporate brands, but they haven’t conceded those customers to local producers and small businesses and whatnot—they’ve rolled out product lines that appeal to those people. Farmer’s Garden pickles are a good example of this, although the Vlasic branding is maybe a little too visible.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
I’ve met fewer people like that, but then I’m not a native English speaker, so not all of the speechifying I’m exposed to is in English.
It sounds like the thing being described is in part a desire for the speaker to talk in a particular dialect and style, associated with a social class or background, with the appropriate choice of acrolect/mesolect/basilect, etc.
Do you think such people are unaware that the “plain” speakers they like still harness rhetoric, just one tailored to that audience? Good plain speech still needs to be concise, address the right points, have good body language, good delivery (e.g. not stutter or repeat yourself), and in the end say things that the audience will like as speech as well as on the object level. An untrained speaker will rarely carry an audience, however plainly they speak.
Do you think such people are unaware that the “plain” speakers they like still harness rhetoric, just one tailored to that audience?
I am not convinced that the “plain” speakers do “harness rhetoric”, unless by “rhetoric” we mean something much broader than what seems to be being discussed in the OP. For example:
Good plain speech still needs to be concise, address the right points, have good body language, good delivery (e.g. not stutter or repeat yourself)
If this counts as “rhetoric”, then “rhetoric” seems to be a useless term.
and in the end say things that the audience will like as speech as well as on the object level
Yes, I think this absolutely does count as rhetoric in the classical sense (being concise, expressing the right points, good body language and good delivery.)
I think my definition of rhetoric is the same as OP’s: namely, the art of shaping words or a speech to be beautiful, moving, convincing, or otherwise effective. How to best verbally convince others of an idea: I think that’s a useful term.
In particular the OP referred to dispositio (concise, addressing the right points) and pronuntiatio (body language and delivery).
I’m not convinced this is true.
I’m not sure what exactly you’re not convince of. That speech is much more effective when its form is liked as well as its object level claims?
I don’t think that’s true. Lots of people are bothered by this. Maybe you’re right, maybe a majority is unbothered, but this is interesting only to the extent that it doesn’t embody a larger pattern of what proportion of people care about injustice.
I agree that most people are bothered by anything they perceive as injustice. But if they don’t know a way to make things better, or what things being better would look like, then they tend not to blame e.g. lawyers for participating in the system and being good at it.
Is there a better way of doing things, that lots of people would prefer to be the case? Not just “I wish judges applied the law fairly and for Justice”—then you might as well wish for people not to commit crimes in the first place. But a system that would work when being gamed by people desperate not to go to jail?
Alternatively, is there a relevant moral principle that people can follow unilaterally that would make the world a better place (other than deontologically)? If we tell a defendant not to hire a lawyer, or a lawyer not to argue as well as they can (while keeping to lawyer ethics), or the jury not to listen to the lawyers—then the side that doesn’t cooperate will win the trial, or the jury will ignore important claims, and justice won’t be better served on average.
Lets look at a relatively non-controversial example. Say people are arguing about conciousness. As it turns out I do not agree with Dan Dennett’s point of view on this topic. However lets say I start making for the Dennett point of view. How might I be hurting by doing this? I can think of some plausible mechanisms:
1) I might be disrupting Aumannian Agreement. However in most arguments I don’t see many aumannian processes at work, people are rather reluctant to change their views. I agree its important to state your beleifs accurately in situations with substantial aumannian processes ex: A double crux or a friend asking me for advice.
2) I am slightly distorting the sample of community opinion. I suppose this is a real harm but it seems slight. In addition trying to gauge the distribution of community opinion based on observing discussions seems problematic anyway. The majority of people do not comment much at all. Its better to look at various community surveys. Some questions are not represented on surveys but in those cases its very hard to get info anyway.
3) Maybe since I disagree with Dennett I will probably argue for his views badly? I think this sort of issue comes up alot for people trying to ‘steelman’. However since I am trying to persuade my incentives are alligned with arguing well. I am not trying to ‘steelman’ Dennett then shoot down his views. I am actually trying to spread them. Various debate organizations seem to think its possible to argue well for many sides of an argument. The legal profession also seems to assume you can argue well for ‘both sides’. (though in the conciousness debate there are more than two sides).
4) Maybe its actively bad to ‘spread wrong ideas’. First off this seems like it conflicts alot with the ideology around having a ‘marketplace of ideas’. People can evaluate ideas for themselves, I don’t think exposing them to Dennett’s pint of view is hurting them (or hurting society). Maybe this is a crux but I think the concept of a marketplace of ideas has proven very beneficial (even if its an over simplication). Secondly I don’t know Dennett is wrong! I should not privilege my own opinion too much.
===
Can you explain why you think this sort of behavior is harmful and which norms are being broken?
Why should I seriously engage with anything you’re saying, given that you just admitted that you find it perfectly fine to say things that you don’t believe, just to win an argument? If you’re willing to say whatever it takes to be persuasive, then I am, in effect, not talking to an actual person with actual beliefs—I’m talking to some sort of mutable simulacrum of a person, who has no beliefs, no values, no interests, etc. I can’t rely on this simulacrum to be honest, or to be charitable, etc.; it can have no consistent character at all. Why should I waste my time conversing with such an entity? I rather prefer to deal with humans!
That aside, I notice that in your question, you assume a strictly harm-based ethics—and not only that, but, apparently, an act-utilitarian ethics. I reject that assumption. I am not a utilitarian, much less an act utilitarian.
As for “which norms are being broken”, I think you know the answer to that one perfectly well. We have norms against saying things you don’t believe. We have norms against hypocrisy, and against two-facedness. We have norms against lying, and against deception in general. All of these are being broken.
Well, and so it should, right? It should be socially risky; it is expected, and good, that it rubs people the wrong way—because arguing for positions you don’t hold (without disclaimers), and making arguments you personally find unpersuasive, is deceptive and antisocial; it’s a betrayal of cooperative norms.
And so we end up selecting for people who have passionate beliefs that don’t pay any kind of rent whatsoever. Instead of deception, we got dissonance, and I’m not convinced this is better.
Its difficult to discuss this topic on lesswrong for several reasons:
1) The bulk of most people’s experience ‘trying to convince other people of things’ comes from political discussions. This is probably not an optimal state of affairs but its still true for most rationalists. Most of my experience ‘learning how to persuade people’ comes from discussing things like libertarianism and climate change. I can’t go into details about those things on lesswrong.
2) Talking about how persuasive you are makes you sound arrogant and might make you sound manipulative. So its difficult to talk about successes you have had. Even worse, people you convinced of things don’t want to hear about your master persuader powers.
3) The ‘Dark Arts’ taboo is pretty strong. When I was younger I was very bad at persuading people. Looking back I was just spamming arguments that only made sense to people who shared my moral foundations (and they are relatively but not ridiculously rare). At some point I decided to stop trying to make ‘good’ arguments and just try to convince people of things. I would not actively lie or mislead but I stopped trying to follow especially truth seeking norms (as I understood them). This was actually very educational. The later approach led to me spending much more time trying to really understand and engage with different points of view. I followed this approach for many years until I decided I had learned enough to change mindset. I only practiced this sort of attitude in political discussions with little or no real world ramification. But even talking about this can be socially risky if one is not careful. Among other things I argued for lots of positions I didn’t actually hold (with no disclaimers) and made tons of arguments I personally found unpersausive. This rubs alot of people the wrong way.
Well, and so it should, right? It should be socially risky; it is expected, and good, that it rubs people the wrong way—because arguing for positions you don’t hold (without disclaimers), and making arguments you personally find unpersuasive, is deceptive and antisocial; it’s a betrayal of cooperative norms.
Yet here it seems like you’re implying that, actually, it’s fine to do these things, but that you just have to be careful, because unfortunately people don’t like when you do them, for some reason (which reason is definitely not “these are actually bad things”). Have I misunderstood?
This seems to depend a lot on social context.
Lawyers are the quintessential speakers-for-hire who apply rhetoric to mercenary causes. Yet lawyers are accepted and high-status in most parts of society. In play, debate clubs are often popular; and at a recent LW meetup we played an Ideological Turing Test game, where we had to convince each other of positions we didn’t always hold.
Lawyers don’t hide the fact they’re biased and mercenary in court. Maybe that helps them disassociate enough from the practice that people don’t feel uncomfortable with them in a personal setting. And yet, most people are not bothered by the idea that the justice system runs in part on rhetoric persuasiveness, or that the wider political system runs in part on politicians convincing voters of things. People compliment politicians on their public speaking skills without thinking “dark arts!” every time.
In general, the average person’s reaction to “wow what a skilled orator” isn’t “therefore I won’t listen to them, persuasiveness is orthogonal to truth”. How do you reconcile this with your analysis of “betraying cooperative norms”, which people are usually good at enforcing?
Note: I’m not well familiar with modern lawyers and exactly how important rhetoric is to them. In classical antiquity it was extremely important; that is relevant insofar as it partially explains why rhetoric is present in today’s classical liberal education.
I’m not sure I agree re: lawyers, or about how people/society thinks of this. For one thing, I don’t think most people are that OK with lawyers—they tend to get a lot of flack, and e.g. criminal defense attorneys will often get pushback from people who identify them with their clients, irrespective of the fact that they know the lawyers don’t necessarily condone their clients’ actions.
Another thing—most people absolutely hate hypocrisy. I think it’s considered a death-blow to most people’s arguments. People compliment politicians on their speaking skills, but if they discovered that the politician’s are not saying things they believe in, they’d turn on them. (Well, theoretically—President Trump is a good counterexample).
Btw, an aside, but I also think you misrepresent what lawyers do in some way. They’re supposed to be advocating for the rights of their clients, and supposed to persuade, but they can’t for example lie. They are a check on the system that works from within the system—they need to make sure everyone is playing by the rules, but they can’t just make up their own rules or anything. That said, of course rhetoric is important for trial lawyers.
Trump is a good example. Trump appears to most voters to not be a skilled orator but to simply state the facts in a down to earth way as he believes them to be.
He’s persuasive without signaling that he is a great orator.
I did not mean to misrepresent what lawyers do (or are allowed to do). I noted they are restricted by lawyer ethics, but that was in a different comment than the one you replied to. Yes, absolutely, they not supposed to lie or even deliberately mislead, and a lawyer’s reputation would suffer horribly if they were caught in a lie.
I’m not sure I understand people who aren’t OK with ethical lawyers, as a concept. Is there something they would like instead of lawyers? (See: my other comment.) Or do they feel that lawyers are immoral by association with injustice—the intuition of “moral contagion” (I forget the correct term) that someone who only partially fixes a moral wrong, is worse than someone who doesn’t try to fix it at all?
Hypocrisy is anathema to me, but I’ve notice that many (most?) people are happy to let other people live with their contradictions as long as they are not very painfully glaring.
The best persuasive speakers I’ve ever seen in person are, unsurprisingly, lawyers. I saw Robert P. George speak once and thought “This is an atom bomb in the form of a man; I want that power.”
It’s not mere demagoguery. There’s structure to the arguments. And I’m pretty sure the same places that trained him to make arguments also trained him to speak effectively.
Uh… I don’t think that’s true. Lots of people are bothered by this. Maybe you’re right, maybe a majority is unbothered, but this is interesting only to the extent that it doesn’t embody a larger pattern of what proportion of people care about injustice. My impression is that this is not a deviation from that pattern.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
It’s not just average people who are put off by impressive talk. The charge of “sophistry” comes from the sophists, teachers who were skilled in the arts of rhetoric and persuasion. These teachers acquired a (dangerous) reputation for being able to convince anyone of anything, true or false, to the point where our word for such argumentation references them.
Then the skilled orator will take that into account, speak simply, and avoid impressive or skillful rhetoric.
Marketers have noticed that some people are suspicious of slick corporate brands, but they haven’t conceded those customers to local producers and small businesses and whatnot—they’ve rolled out product lines that appeal to those people. Farmer’s Garden pickles are a good example of this, although the Vlasic branding is maybe a little too visible.
I’ve met fewer people like that, but then I’m not a native English speaker, so not all of the speechifying I’m exposed to is in English.
It sounds like the thing being described is in part a desire for the speaker to talk in a particular dialect and style, associated with a social class or background, with the appropriate choice of acrolect/mesolect/basilect, etc.
Do you think such people are unaware that the “plain” speakers they like still harness rhetoric, just one tailored to that audience? Good plain speech still needs to be concise, address the right points, have good body language, good delivery (e.g. not stutter or repeat yourself), and in the end say things that the audience will like as speech as well as on the object level. An untrained speaker will rarely carry an audience, however plainly they speak.
(I, also, am not a native English speaker, fyi.)
I am not convinced that the “plain” speakers do “harness rhetoric”, unless by “rhetoric” we mean something much broader than what seems to be being discussed in the OP. For example:
If this counts as “rhetoric”, then “rhetoric” seems to be a useless term.
I’m not convinced this is true.
Yes, I think this absolutely does count as rhetoric in the classical sense (being concise, expressing the right points, good body language and good delivery.)
See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Oratore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
It’s not meaningless if you view rhetoric as “how to speak well” rather than “how to speak artificially and misleadingly.”
I think my definition of rhetoric is the same as OP’s: namely, the art of shaping words or a speech to be beautiful, moving, convincing, or otherwise effective. How to best verbally convince others of an idea: I think that’s a useful term.
In particular the OP referred to dispositio (concise, addressing the right points) and pronuntiatio (body language and delivery).
I’m not sure what exactly you’re not convince of. That speech is much more effective when its form is liked as well as its object level claims?
I agree that most people are bothered by anything they perceive as injustice. But if they don’t know a way to make things better, or what things being better would look like, then they tend not to blame e.g. lawyers for participating in the system and being good at it.
Is there a better way of doing things, that lots of people would prefer to be the case? Not just “I wish judges applied the law fairly and for Justice”—then you might as well wish for people not to commit crimes in the first place. But a system that would work when being gamed by people desperate not to go to jail?
Alternatively, is there a relevant moral principle that people can follow unilaterally that would make the world a better place (other than deontologically)? If we tell a defendant not to hire a lawyer, or a lawyer not to argue as well as they can (while keeping to lawyer ethics), or the jury not to listen to the lawyers—then the side that doesn’t cooperate will win the trial, or the jury will ignore important claims, and justice won’t be better served on average.
Lets look at a relatively non-controversial example. Say people are arguing about conciousness. As it turns out I do not agree with Dan Dennett’s point of view on this topic. However lets say I start making for the Dennett point of view. How might I be hurting by doing this? I can think of some plausible mechanisms:
1) I might be disrupting Aumannian Agreement. However in most arguments I don’t see many aumannian processes at work, people are rather reluctant to change their views. I agree its important to state your beleifs accurately in situations with substantial aumannian processes ex: A double crux or a friend asking me for advice.
2) I am slightly distorting the sample of community opinion. I suppose this is a real harm but it seems slight. In addition trying to gauge the distribution of community opinion based on observing discussions seems problematic anyway. The majority of people do not comment much at all. Its better to look at various community surveys. Some questions are not represented on surveys but in those cases its very hard to get info anyway.
3) Maybe since I disagree with Dennett I will probably argue for his views badly? I think this sort of issue comes up alot for people trying to ‘steelman’. However since I am trying to persuade my incentives are alligned with arguing well. I am not trying to ‘steelman’ Dennett then shoot down his views. I am actually trying to spread them. Various debate organizations seem to think its possible to argue well for many sides of an argument. The legal profession also seems to assume you can argue well for ‘both sides’. (though in the conciousness debate there are more than two sides).
4) Maybe its actively bad to ‘spread wrong ideas’. First off this seems like it conflicts alot with the ideology around having a ‘marketplace of ideas’. People can evaluate ideas for themselves, I don’t think exposing them to Dennett’s pint of view is hurting them (or hurting society). Maybe this is a crux but I think the concept of a marketplace of ideas has proven very beneficial (even if its an over simplication). Secondly I don’t know Dennett is wrong! I should not privilege my own opinion too much.
===
Can you explain why you think this sort of behavior is harmful and which norms are being broken?
Why should I seriously engage with anything you’re saying, given that you just admitted that you find it perfectly fine to say things that you don’t believe, just to win an argument? If you’re willing to say whatever it takes to be persuasive, then I am, in effect, not talking to an actual person with actual beliefs—I’m talking to some sort of mutable simulacrum of a person, who has no beliefs, no values, no interests, etc. I can’t rely on this simulacrum to be honest, or to be charitable, etc.; it can have no consistent character at all. Why should I waste my time conversing with such an entity? I rather prefer to deal with humans!
That aside, I notice that in your question, you assume a strictly harm-based ethics—and not only that, but, apparently, an act-utilitarian ethics. I reject that assumption. I am not a utilitarian, much less an act utilitarian.
As for “which norms are being broken”, I think you know the answer to that one perfectly well. We have norms against saying things you don’t believe. We have norms against hypocrisy, and against two-facedness. We have norms against lying, and against deception in general. All of these are being broken.
Don’t use your answer to an argument to make a point about (your interpretation of) another argument.
And so we end up selecting for people who have passionate beliefs that don’t pay any kind of rent whatsoever. Instead of deception, we got dissonance, and I’m not convinced this is better.
How?
Indeed, it’s enough to make you wish for a feature to disable identities/voting in the comments for certain posts.