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Vaniver comments on The Sin of Persuasion - Less Wrong Discussion

27 Post author: Desrtopa 27 November 2010 09:44PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 28 November 2010 07:51:27PM 0 points [-]

I have never known another person to criticize evangelists for not trying hard enough to change others’ beliefs.

I would change "another person" to "a non-evangelist," because that sentence as is has some unfortunate implications.

But it’s worth wondering, when we consider a society which upholds a free market of ideas which compete on their relative strength, whether we’ve taken adequate precautions against the sheer annoyingness of a society where the taboo on actually trying to convince others of one’s beliefs has been lifted.

It seems like it's better to circumvent the taboo on persuasion than it is to remove it. You don't want to be evangelized all of the time- and so maybe a polite rationalist society would set aside Sunday as Persuasion Day, where people are encouraged to change other's minds and have their own minds changed.

Or, perhaps we would have a situation like now, where if you want to argue you head to an internet forum, and if you want to have your mind changed you head to a good internet forum.

Comment author: Desrtopa 28 November 2010 08:41:34PM 0 points [-]

I would change "another person" to "a non-evangelist," because that sentence as is has some unfortunate implications.

I haven't yet encountered any evangelists criticizing other evangelists for not trying hard enough, if that's what you mean.

If you mean that it implies that I've criticized evangelists for not trying hard enough, that's entirely deliberate.

Comment author: Vaniver 28 November 2010 09:00:48PM 1 point [-]

The first is what I meant; I imagine you must not attend gatherings of evangelists, then. Because there's definitely strong encouragement to evangelize and criticism of those that don't (but how well the criticism is hid is just a manner of politeness).

And, actually, the criticism might be hiding in plain sight. The difference between "evangelize" and "persuade" is just whether or not you make a value judgment once you've strip out the implication that you're persuading someone of the Christian gospel. Have you really never heard anyone criticize someone else for not trying to persuade a third party?

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