Rhetoric

Argumentation, mostly prescriptive

2017-06-07 — 2025-08-21

adversarial
bounded compute
communicating
cooperation
culture
mind
wonk
Figure 1

Handy terms and concepts in the realm of argumentation. I love arguing about stuff and I aspire to do it well. I try to maintain hygiene about my goals, though. Arguing is (can be?) fun but it is not the main thing to think about if my goal is actual persuasion. 🏗

1 Why we work by rhetoric

Are our brains intrinsically social? Do we reason best by social means? Is language more “about” reason, or persuasion? That question and the whole Argumentative Theory of Reason is explored in another notebook

Figure 2

2 Weak man

Picking the weakest of the opposing arguments to refute rather than the strongest. There are handy discussions of that by e.g. Julian Sanchez or by the original taxonomisers, Talisse and Aikin. There are some interesting hypotheses about how this might interact with coalition and identity by Scott Alexander.

Figure 3

3 Metaphor

Figure 4: Extra Ordinary on metaphor

(Kerkhoff 1996; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Sperber and Wilson 1996; Spranzi 2004).

4 Rhetorical standards

I am not invested in the details of the the Harris-Klein Controversy for the topic matter they discuss, but I think the case study is interesting. It identifies Rational Style and Activist Style in arguments, and the friction that can arise when you do not (even if you think of yourself as above the internet of dunks dogpile):

Harris isn’t doing identity politics in this sense. He doesn’t expect his identity to be an input to his arguments’ evaluation function, and from what aspects of his psyche they’re coming isn’t relevant. Not according to tradition Rational Style debate rules anyway, where evaluation functions only take the content of the argument. Identity politics means refusing to stay in this sandbox and the result is Activist Style, based on traditionally disallowed moves.

Ordinary politics and political journalism play dirty too, because when you really want to win you get out of the sandbox as soon as you think it benefits you. I think strategic use of Activist Style techniques is so normal in politics and political journalism (and frankly, everywhere except among philosophers, scientists and technologists who I, in a fit of typical-minding and wishful thinking, want to see as the norm) that members of those professions don’t think of it as playing dirty at all. At least not as playing dirtier than generally accepted and expected.

This is likely why Klein appears so surprised at Harris anger (to the extent that his surprise is honest). To him, political logic and its tactics are a fact of life and Harris being angry about him using it feels bizarre, like it would feel bizarre for a regular person just having a job to hear an anarchist yelling at them about “collaborating with the system”.

Related: conflict theory.

5 Incoming

6 References

Ajduković. 2007. Attitude change and need for cognition in debaters and non-debaters.”
Cook, Lewandowsky, and Ecker. 2017. Neutralizing Misinformation Through Inoculation: Exposing Misleading Argumentation Techniques Reduces Their Influence.” PLOS ONE.
Costello, Pennycook, and Rand. 2024. Durably Reducing Conspiracy Beliefs Through Dialogues with AI.” Science.
Kerkhoff. 1996. “Through the Looking Glass: The Role and Analysis of Metaphorical Language in Interdisciplinary Science.”
Kim. 2015. Does Disagreement Mitigate Polarization? How Selective Exposure and Disagreement Affect Political Polarization.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.
Lakoff, and Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By.
Mercier. 2020. Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe.
Nyhan. 2021. Why the Backfire Effect Does Not Explain the Durability of Political Misperceptions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Raley, and Talisse. 2008. Getting Duped.” Scientific American Mind.
Reyna. 2021. A Scientific Theory of Gist Communication and Misinformation Resistance, with Implications for Health, Education, and Policy.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Salvi, Ribeiro, Gallotti, et al. 2024. On the Conversational Persuasiveness of Large Language Models: A Randomized Controlled Trial.”
Sperber, and Wilson. 1996. Relevance: Communication and Cognition.
Spranzi. 2004. Galileo and the Mountains of the Moon: Analogical Reasoning, Models and Metaphors in Scientific Discovery.” Journal of Cognition and Culture.
Talisse, and Aikin. 2006. Two Forms of the Straw Man.” Argumentation.
Tan, Niculae, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, et al. 2016. Winning Arguments: Interaction Dynamics and Persuasion Strategies in Good-Faith Online Discussions.” In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web. WWW ’16.
Toomey. 2024. Science with Impact: How to Engage People, Change Practice, and Influence Policy.
Trouche, Sander, and Mercier. 2014. Arguments, More Than Confidence, Explain the Good Performance of Reasoning Groups.” SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2431710.
Vecchi, Van Hasseltb, and Romano. 2005. Crisis (Hostage) Negotiation: Current Strategies and Issues in High-Risk Conflict Resolution.” Aggression and Violent Behavior.