The Myth and Illusion Of Persuasion

Why is it so difficult to convince people of certain things?

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What would it take for me to convince you that you’re genuinely made of glass?

If I’d offer you a billion dollars, would you’ve believed so? If I were to torture you on the electric chair and zap you till you’re barely conscious, would you’ve believed so? If I’d told you a tale about the Great Glass God who’s created humanity made it so that no one will ever perceive they’re made of glass, would you’ve done so?

Of course not.

You could, in fact, acted as if you genuinely believed so. But it’s just impossible, in this life, to sincerely believe we’re made of glass. Without completely altering your physiology, there’s just nothing anyone could do to persuade you into believing you’re made of glass.

The business of a philosopher is to convince you of certain ideas. We’re like salesmen attempting to persuade you into buying an idea (for free!) But here’s the caveat. Ideas are way, way harder to sell than a house, or a Buggati for that matter.

So, it’s ironic for me to say this, but I don’t think it’s ever possible to verbally persuade someone into believing an idea.

Persuasion v. Acquisition

Before I defend my thesis, I need to clarify the distinction between “persuasion” and “acquisition.” We often conflate the two.

Persuasion assumes that the listener already possesses a conviction, a belief, or an idea. The role of the persuader is thus to change, alter, or diminish said conviction. Oftentimes, we do this by employing rigorous argumentation, either verbally or empirically.

An example of this is an atheist trying to convince a theist that she’s wrong about her religious beliefs. The goal of the atheist in persuading the theist is to undermine her initial religious convictions. It assumes that she has said convictions.

On the contrary, “acquisition” makes no such assumptions about the listener. The listener often enters the dialogue with a tabula rasa, a “blank slate.” The role of the speaker then is simply to offer a (novel) perspective to the listener. There is no intention to undercut the listener’s conviction, as there is none.

An example of this is a teacher explaining the atomic structure to her students. The goal of the teacher is to educate her students. And the students enter the classroom intending to acquire knowledge about chemistry. This doesn’t assume the students have an initial conviction about how atoms should look like. In fact, the opposite is true. We assume that the students have no initial beliefs about the atomic structure.

So, when someone plants an idea into our head insofar as we unconsciously internalize it, we’re not actually persuaded. Rather, we’ve merely acquired an idea. But let’s not pass “acquisition” as a simple and blind process of consuming information. No, “acquisition” is often accompanied by rigorous argumentation.

Because, as much as “acquisition” doesn’t seek to dismantle our initial convictions, we don’t consume any kinds of information. If I were to suggest that a teapot is now orbiting the Earth, you would likely pass it off as a joke. That’s because I’ve provided you no good reasons to believe me despite you having no prior commitments to “anti-teapot astronomies.”

That said, “acquisition” can be far more dangerous than “persuasion.” This is because when someone attempts to persuade us of things, we instinctually want to defend our convictions. In doing so, we learn to evaluate two juxtaposing ideas.

But when someone plants an idea into our head, it sometimes bypasses the instinctual filter. We consume that idea unconsciously. And it can germinate into an idea that we think is our own, but it came from some external source. Propaganda works like this.

In political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, she argues that the dangers of totalitarianism, propaganda, and ideology lie not in their capacity to persuade people to do evil. Rather, it’s in their ability to make people believe that evil is their own conviction. Successful propaganda plants an idea in people’s minds, not one that changes people’s beliefs about certain things.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

Persuasion Is A Myth

Many people felt that they’d been persuaded by someone or something in their lives because they’ve conflated “persuasion” with “acquisition.”

It’s almost impossible for someone to change our convictions once we’ve developed them. Why? Because these convictions form the very foundation of our epistemic lives. They’re the framework of how we interpret the world and how we interact with the people around us. So it’s nearly impossible to change them unless we’ve personally gone through something radical in our lives.

But some of us might retort. Clearly, some of us have experienced a change in our beliefs and values. Surely, I can’t be delusional?

No, we’re not. But the reason why we were able to shift our stances so readily is that we didn’t have a conviction to those stances in the first place. But as dark and repulsive this sounds — people who lack conviction, these are the people who would sit down and have a constructive, lively, and enjoyable discussion about anything with you. They wouldn’t force their ideas onto you, nor would they fervently attack yours.

This, in Christopher Robin’s terms, is curiosity.

Think about the last time you felt “persuaded” about something. Do you have an initial conviction about an idea that you attempted to defend to your deathbed? Did you already have an open mind going into a discussion? Were you already “on the fence” or indecisive?

I’m willing to bet that you do. If that’s the case, what you’ve gone through is a mere “acquisition” of information that passed itself as “persuasion.” As “acquisition” is oftentimes accompanied by explanations, justifications, data, and cogent arguments, we take it as we’re being convinced of something. We’re actually just buying information.

An analogy I would use here is building a house. “Acquisition” is like building new houses. Various people might talk you into getting a new house for very good reasons. “Persuasion” is like demolishing your own house to build a new one under the orders of someone else.

Self-Persuasion Is Not Persuasion

Based on my initial interpretation of “persuasion,” it’s impossible to self-persuade. It’s like saying I don’t believe what I believe. It’s axiologically impossible.

So, how do we explain the feeling when we’ve changed our beliefs or convictions on our own?

Well, the condition for “self-persuasion” is prior open-mindedness. We’re already unsure about our own values and beliefs and thus made no firm commitment to defend those. We call this many names: humility, open-mindedness, curiosity, etc.

I can’t remember how many times a book or an article has changed my prior beliefs about something. Just two weeks ago, an animation “convinced” me that Zhuangzi was no maniac whose philosophical writings are no mere than unintelligible ramblings.

But that’s because I never actually committed to that idea in the first place. I positioned in on precarious grounds. And when a better, more appealing idea comes to take its place, I let it do so.

Using the house-building analogy, self-persuasion is like rent. You don’t commit to it in the long run. Instead, once you’ve found a better place to stay, you stop paying rent and move.

So why is it impossible to persuade you that you’re made of glass?

That’s because you have a very, very strong conviction about your anatomy. No amount of good reasons could alter this conviction of yours. No amount of pain or torture is going to move this belief. No amount of “persuasion” is going to change that.

Each of us has a set of convictions that cannot be altered easily. Religious beliefs are one example. Have you ever tried convincing an atheist that her views are false? If you’re an atheist, try convincing a believer that God doesn’t exist. You’ll likely take your religious beliefs to your deathbed.

But that’s to say radical changes in our beliefs don’t occur. They do. But when they do, it’s never the result of a mere persuasion. It’s usually a combination of “self-persuasion” and some existential torture.

Thus, thinking about persuasion as an intention to alter someone’s prior convictions makes it look like a myth, an illusion. There are certain ideas that we, no matter how hard we try, cannot alter.

Related Works

I’ve once argued that certain beliefs are beyond our control. Some of them are given to us, rather than us freely choosing them. As a result, we tend to develop deep convictions for these beliefs. So, it’s not morally wrong to believe that the Earth is flat.

Furthermore, a surprising sociological phenomenon I observe between many science v. theology debates is that science and theology can each look at the same “evidence” and believe in radically different things. While some quickly criticize this to be “confirmation bias,” I argued otherwise: there is no such thing as “neutral evidence.”

Finally, why has the debate between theism and atheism has persisted for so long? This is a classic case study for why it’s just impossible to persuade people of certain ideas. In short, the God debate will continue to fail.