I’m not sure why this is lumped in with disinterest, but:
Claim to have held your opponent’s position, then describe why you changed it.
It reminds me of the time one of the local religious groups had dropped by. It was perhaps the second or maybe third time someone from their group had stopped in. They sent someone that appeared to be slightly more educated than their last couple. She tried to explain how she was originally skeptical of the church’s message, until she did some research and found out that Jesus really was a person who lived about 2000 years ago and somehow this validated the entirety of the church’s message. I didn’t want to discourage her from feeling open in sharing her beliefs, so I didn’t point out that that her logical implication wasn’t valid. I had more questions for her, and if I too openly refuted her logic I was worried she would become too defensive to share what she actually believed.
Her colleagues before had resorted to what one might call persuasion by fear or an appeal to fear – I forget what it was called. Essentially Pascal’s wager, but with a negative outcome that was so dire you had better believe or else that terrible thing could happen. Mixing the appeal to fear with showing they held my position previously, in this case, failed miserably.
In both of my personal examples, The author would possibly say they lacked sufficient pathos before they tried to personally relate.
updated: 2023-03-12 12:58:09 -0400
generated: 2023-10-05