Repetition makes lies seem true, but repetition also makes truth seem true. All persuasion (and indoctrination) happens through repetition, whether in a classroom setting, a forum like this one, or in sales.
This realization is also deeply depressing, because it means you're doomed to repeat yourself over and over if you want to persuade people.
Let's take Noam Chomsky for instance. He gives more than a hundred talks every year for the past 50 years. He has written dozens (if not a hundred) books, given thousands of interviews. His message is always the same. Because after you've figured out what your best and most persuasive arguments are the only thing left to do is repeat yourself over and over. Every day is groundhog day.
Startups also have to learn the value of repetition. Long form sales text works, because of repetition. Long form video demos work, because of repetition. Drip email campaigns work, because of repetition. It's often better to give customers one good reason to use your product, repeated three times than to give three distinct reasons why they should purchase. Counter-intuitive, perhaps, unless you've heard this argument before.
Another example is Ronald Reagan. I can't remember who said it, but one of the people around him was asked how he managed to become president and known as the great communicator, and the reply was along the lines of, "he made the same speech [1] every week for 25 years."
Richard Stallman is another example of someone who gives the same handful of speeches over and over (many times in almost exactly the same words). I've heard him describe over and over again the wastefulness of not being able to write software to interact with a university printer because the printer manufacturer choose to keep the necessary details secret.
his copyright and community talk has stayed with me since I heard it 12 years ago, it certainly was special (well argued) and left a lasting impression.
> This realization is also deeply depressing, because it means you're doomed to repeat yourself over and over if you want to persuade people.
Yes. Embrace this.
Patience is a virtue; and not getting angry because the person you've stated something to doesn't get it even the third time you've stated it. I actually find it fun to try and come up with different ways to state things such that people might better understand it.
"Doesn't get it" isn't always (or even usually) the problem, though. It's more "wasn't listening" or "didn't have time to comprehend what you meant (or the implications of what you meant) before the conversation moved on."
The biggest component of success in communication comes down to saying things enough times that your message can actually be listened to and digested at least once. You can vary the way you say things each time, but literal repetition works nearly as well, because the problem is almost never "I don't know what those words in that order mean" but rather "I didn't hear half that sentence" or "I was thinking about lunch" or "that might have been important but it just sort of passed by and I forgot."
Repetition of a true message to a variety of audiences may be valuable because one gains a better understanding of the common misconceptions and opposing arguments. Which leads to subtly improved arguments and rhetoric. Also there's always the possibility that the message is in fact wrong and that this may be brought to light by new criticism or fresh evidence.
I take your point, but I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that all persuasion happens through repetition. Maybe I'm a bit full of myself, but I like to think that with sound enough logic, I could be persuaded from my position by hearing an argument only once.
That would probably be the distinction I would draw between persuasion in general and indoctrination / brainwashing. Of course, generally indoctrination and brainwashing seem to have a much higher rate of success in changing minds, which is indeed depressing.
Learning is repetition. Exercises. Flash cards. Midterms followed by exams. You either hear the argument once and you repeat it to yourself, or you get the argument spoon fed multiple times, but the bottom line is the same. Without repetition there is no memorization or internalization, and no learning can take place.
Phrasing the challenge as "sound enough logic" puts the burden of proof in the wrong place. It implies that whenever you're not persuaded it's the fault of the other person for not being persuasive enough. That's the opposite of open-mindedness. It is exactly because of the presumption that your current beliefs are true that you won't change your mind as easily as you might think. Even Scientologists say they'll leave the church if somebody could just provide them with evidence it's all baloney, but it's a standard of proof nobody can meet.
When I say all persuasion is repetition, it's really not an overstatement. Maybe you're closer to believing me this time ;-)
Um, what about the Elaboration Likelihood Model? It's about persuasion and it contends that there are two ways it happens: through a rational evaluation of the material, or based on the credibility of the source (and other social cues).
Now, sometimes you might come to believe something through repetition, but it's possible to verify things (some of the time) and you shouldn't just claim that repetition is the only route.
I think the model is wrong, because it presumes people are rational agents that change their mind either through careful evaluation of the arguments or by outsourcing this rational evaluation to a trustworthy person. This model doesn't take repetition at all into consideration, so I don't think it holds up empirically.
Back in Aristotle's day it was about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. I don't think that model has stood the test of time either.
I don't want to open Pandora's Box, but look at Trump's speeches. He persuades through repetition, and it demonstrably works.
Ok, I didn't mean to beg the question by simply claiming that people can rationally evaluate statements.
The things people learn are not noise. They have structure, they have hidden consistencies. Whatever you think of the rationality or otherwise of thought, surely you will agree that trying to learn inconsistent facts is going to be more trouble than learning consistent facts which support each other in a cumulative way.
People might identify with the opinions of a politician because they already hold those opinions, or similar opinions. They are unlikely to ever agree with/be persuaded by complete inconsistent nonsense, however often it is repeated. Like, I mean nonsense that doesn't even have linguistic structure or maybe any meaning.
> People might identify with the opinions of a politician because they already hold those opinions,
Agree and I think it is even more than that. It is about how genuine they seem. I've listen to Hillary, Trump, Sanders and Obama, and some just naturally sound more genuine. Obama seemed genuine, like he believed what he was saying, Trump and Sanders as well. But not Hillary. She said all the right things, she was very polite, and seemed to be personable with jokes and remarks sprinkled here and there. But overall she sounded fake and scripted.
I posit, hearing someone who seems to truly believe what they say is a solid first step in persuading others to change their opinions. Otherwise it becomes an uphill battle and it is just pandering to people who already believe and agree with the argument.
I guess we look at the world very differently, because:
> They are unlikely to ever agree with/be persuaded by complete inconsistent nonsense, however often it is repeated. Like, I mean nonsense that doesn't even have linguistic structure or maybe any meaning.
If the US election hasn't persuaded you that complete gibberish can be persuasive when repeated endlessly, there's nothing I can say that will.
I'm aware of the theory of the "big lie", and the fact that neurons that fire together, wire together...
But what about Feynman's injunction: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool." Is that kind of empirical principle just out of reach for the standard human?
In terms of repetition, I think David Hume's theory of causal inference is pretty relevant too.
Just because something is repeated regularly, e.g. seems to happen every day doesn't mean that on the day when it doesn't happen, our heads explode because we have built a rigid expectation. Instead we can usually discern possible, exceptional, reasons why it isn't happening.
I'm totally in agreement with you on the role of repetition in eroding the landscape of memory to create convictions. We might rarely remember a one off event that is never referred to. But you seem to be claiming that there's no higher-level activity, or even possibility of higher-level activity involved in mentally evaluating what to believe.
The famous Star Trek scene where Picard is encouraged/"brainwashed" to lie about the number of lights he sees comes to mind. He resists and continues to report what his senses tell him. This cultural theme of reason resisting the repetition of lies is a big one, and you haven't really presented any convincing evidence to discredit it.
> Is that kind of empirical principle just out of reach for the standard human?
What if it's out of reach even for the best among us? To me it looks like many of our core beliefs cannot be shaped through reason, and are not the product of reason in the first place. Our convictions have simply been copied from our environment through osmosis.
I'm sure you can't help but notice the amount of groupthink that takes place in any community, whether in real life or right here. How does this groupthink come to be? People don't really change their minds in long discussion threads like these; it certainly doesn't feel like they do. And yet minds get changed or there wouldn't be groupthink. By reading, responding, and reading some more, we slowly change over time; like water carves its way through rock. We shape HN by our responses and in turn HN shapes us: the relation is symbiotic.
We can, sometimes, if we try really hard, and then only for a moment, apply real reason. I see no evidence that this has a big impact on what people believe and how they act, though. People who are good at formal reasoning are good at arriving at the correct answer in reasoning puzzles, but there is no matching improvement when it comes to the decisions they make in their life. It's pretty clear that even really smart people can't reason themselves out of their problems. This is a big problem for the view that convictions are the product of reason.
In contrast, the friends you keep and the media you consume does make a tremendous impact on what you believe and how you act. Change who your friends are and, through repeated exposure, your convictions will change subliminally.
Ok. I think most of this sounds reasonable. We do necessarily adopt the attitudes and dispositions of those we associate with. HN is a pretty ambiguous place from that perspective: an internet gold-rush town inhabited by those who feel the need to justify/discuss their position by engaging online.
In a spirit of hopeful insight into what's going on, I'm linking to the Wikipedia page for Skagway, Alaska.
It might be gibberish at a factual or logical level, but at least for a certain portion of the populace, it hits all the right emotional notes and checks all the right boxes in their value and belief systems.
Of course, you won't see it yourself if you don't share their worldview and are unable to empathize and put yourself in their shoes.
I think that's right, but in part because it's all gibberish people with wildly different values can hear him speak and still and hear what they want to hear.
> If the US election hasn't persuaded you that complete gibberish can be persuasive when repeated endlessly, there's nothing I can say that will.
I depends. Mass media has proven that false. They almost unilaterally backed one candidate and attacked others, spewed lies and misinformation, and they failed to make a difference it seems. I would argue they made things worse. Here is a multi-billion dollar apparatus designed to persuade people and control opinions and it has failed. So it is not always true. I think there is stuff that is more nuanced in how it works, not simply "repeat this X amount of times and you're done, you'll get Y% more percentage of believers".
The media talks to their own base and you can't persuade people who don't tune in.
The media on the left did persuade their audience that Trump stood no chance of winning the election, even as Trump was drawing larger and larger audiences at every stump speech. Everybody could see the flood of pro-Trump signs, hats, and bumper stickers in swing states, but this was apparently of no consequence. People were expected to disbelieve their own eyes, and so they did. I think there was a stunning amount of groupthink going on in the media this past election. Who consumes the news all day, every day? Media people, politians, and policy wonks. And so they brainwashed themselves.
The "brainwashing" part is not related to the repetition, but the way you "acquire" the information, "acquire" on the sense of taking it for yourself.
If you learn something through repetition, it's a good thing, it is learning.
If you're fooled by repetition, then it's brainwashing.
Also important to note, that quite often, the one that fools you is yourself.
Now to distinct between "being fooled" and "learning". I would say that learning comprises understanding, while being fooled only comprises agreement. Thing is, defining "real understanding" is a pretty hard problem.
I've read geometric/mathematical proofs that have convinced me immediately. Just seeing the logical steps flow from step to step was enough to prove the assertion was true.
I consider this as an object of argument as well, however, axioms seem to be the underlying structure of repetition for all proofs [as far as I understand mathematics].
Somewhat true but at some point, some people look around and realize even though something is at that point part of their psyche, they come to the realization that they've been had. I am aware that some people won't believe their eyes despite seeing evidence right in front of them, but a few aren't that foolish.
As that old Lincoln saying goes, you can fool some people all the time, all people some of the time, but you can't fool all people all the time.
I forget who said something like this, but "the danger is not in being heard. The reality is in having a good idea and having to repeat yourself over and over."
Reminds me of the zillion articles that have been published over the years explaining why net neutrality is important. Sadly, this message doesn't even stick very well.
This realization is also deeply depressing, because it means you're doomed to repeat yourself over and over if you want to persuade people.
Let's take Noam Chomsky for instance. He gives more than a hundred talks every year for the past 50 years. He has written dozens (if not a hundred) books, given thousands of interviews. His message is always the same. Because after you've figured out what your best and most persuasive arguments are the only thing left to do is repeat yourself over and over. Every day is groundhog day.
Startups also have to learn the value of repetition. Long form sales text works, because of repetition. Long form video demos work, because of repetition. Drip email campaigns work, because of repetition. It's often better to give customers one good reason to use your product, repeated three times than to give three distinct reasons why they should purchase. Counter-intuitive, perhaps, unless you've heard this argument before.