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My persuasion is so low lol can’t convince anyone of anything
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@pwm @Tony
Are you drunk again
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@Tony all persuasion is coercion. And by proving this to yourself, you can also prove the existence of free will.
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@syzygy @Tony I'll walk you through it if you like
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Other ppl persuading you to improve your life by showing you what's possible isn't coercion. You seeing a quality of someone else and trying to meet the same standard is just normal healthy behaviour, and you need more of it in your life.
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This is what happened to thegreatape probably
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yes
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@Tony @syzygy
So, imagine that there were some magic, intrinsic quality to the Truth such that, when you hear it, you couldn't deny it. The only way to not believe this Truth would be to be completely ignorant of it.
Now imagine how conversations would go, where eventually, everyone would hear the truth, and believe on it. There would be no dissent, because, in our scenario, it would not be possible.
Now, in the real world, we know this is not the case, we know that there are those who can and vociferously do deny things that are true. They relieve believe things that are not the Truth (which, we are presuming does exist, but lacks this magical quality outlined above).
So, we can conclude that merely hearing the Truth, does not necessarily mean that someone believes it. Thus, how does anyone arrive at believing in the Truth?
Well, you arrive at believing in the Truth, because someone helped make the Truth make sense to you, that is, you followed some reasonable (to you) progression of logic such the final step to the Truth made sense, and you chose to take the final step to believe in the Truth as a consequence of your belief in previous truths, or ways of thinking.
However, what happens when that train of thought, leading to the truth is not complete enough, or is simply not there, because you share no common body of rationale or knowledge?
Well, when logic fails, we must persuade. And persuasion skips steps in this logical chain, and to do so requires force of some kind. Someone arrives at the Truth in this way not because of their own internal belief but because they were made to by some external pressure (which is the threat of violence of some kind, consequence).
This means that they can profess this Truth with great gusto to avoid consequences visited upon them by some external power (and I need not remind you, all power derives from violence), but that, in their hearts, this Truth is either not believed at all, or is doubtful to them and they just go with it to escape punishment.
The conclusions we can draw from this explanation, is that persuasion uses threats or actual violence to skip necessary steps of belief, and that, people are able to hear, and not believe Truth.
The former, is pithily phrased so as to spark discussion as, "all persuasion is coercion," and the latter shows us that we are free to believe or not, that which is logically understandable, demonstrating the exercise of free will.
There's your essay.
Mr. Bacon
pwm
Fediverse Contractor
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