darius comments on Dark Arts 101: Using presuppositions - Less Wrong

65 Post author: PhilGoetz 27 December 2010 05:16PM

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Comment author: darius 28 December 2010 12:32:36PM 9 points [-]

About this article's tags: you want dark_arts, judging by the tags in the sidebar. The 'arts' tag links to posts about fiction, etc.

ObDarkArts101: Here's a course that could actually have been titled that:

Writing Persuasion (Spring 2011) A course in persuasive techniques that do not rely on overt arguments. It would not be entirely inaccurate to call this a course in the theory, practice, and critique of sophistry. We will explore how putatively neutral narratives may be inflected to advance a (sometimes unstated) position; how writing can exploit readers' cognitive biases; how a writer's persona on the page -- what Aristotle might call her ethos -- may be constructed to influence her readers.

Comment author: orthonormal 30 December 2010 05:14:53AM 8 points [-]

(continued)

...Half the writing assignments will put into practice persuasive techniques such as these. The other half will analyze course readings (by Plato, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Jane Austen, George Orwell, and others) debating whether persuasion -- in the strong sense of actually changing a reader's mind -- is possible.

On the first day, they teach you how to quote selectively...