#persuasion — Public Fediverse posts

Don’t Be Derisive

https://deirdrew.com/2026/09/12/dont-be-derisive/

We're safe here from using these two scoundrels...

Research Shows Your Brain Is Being Hijacked by X and LinkedIn

https://www.inc.com/stephanie-davis/research-brain-twitter-x-linkedin-reddit-founder-advice/91402265

#LinkedIn #Twitter #persuasion

One simple word makes children 30 percent more likely to cooperate. It works on adults, too.

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/jonah-berger-one-word-children-persuasion-technique-ex1/

» People change their own minds, you don’t do it for them

» Behind a defensive reaction are concerns – start there

» Push the open door – make allies of the people amenable to the change

I've been looking into the term #technoplasmosis, and I find it disturbing, how #marketing is described as #persuasion. At best, it is #delusional, if we assume folks just believe what they are told without #criticalthinking, which is quite likely for the majority of graduates going into marketing and #business. But the more knowledgeable folk can see Bernays' work finding refined deployment. We are being #hacked, manipulated to behave in well-defined ways.

#politics #economics #technology

One false argument can collapse an LLM's accuracy to near zero, new study shows

Share if you found this interesting.

https://1ban.news/llm-adversarial-persuasion-beliefs-2026/

#1ban #llm #adversarial #persuasion #beliefs #tech

Review: Persuasion – One of Jane Austen’s Most Underrated Books. (Spoilers)

Last Christmas, one of the books I received was Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which, as the title says, is possibly one of her most underrated books. While we have all heard of Pride and Prejudice, and maybe some of her other stories such as Sense and Sensibility or Emma, most of us probably aren’t familiar with Persuasion, despite it being one of the most heart-wrenchingly written romances Jane Austen ever put to paper.

Set in Regency-era England, Persuasion follows Anne Elliot, the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat whose poor spending habits have landed the family deep in debt. In an attempt to get out of debt, the Elliot family is forced to rent out their estate to some wealthy tenants and move to their new home in Bath. However, the guy renting their estate isn’t just a random guy, but is actually Admiral Croft, who is married to the sister of Anne’s former suitor Captain Fredrick Wentworth, the man whom she was persuaded to break up with 8 years prior to the events of the book. Thus, Anne and Wentworth are forced to reconnect and confront their lingering feelings for each other through a series of misunderstandings.

With that description alone, it is understandable why Persuasion holds such a special place in the hearts of Jane Austen fans everywhere. Whereas most of Austen’s books center around young women falling in love for the first time, Persuasion focuses on an older heroine (Anne is 27) who has despaired of ever finding a husband and believes that Wentworth would never again want her after she rejected him. Thus, instead of the story necessarily focusing on finding a husband (though that’s a big part of it), it focuses more on forgiveness and the rekindling of the relationship between the two, and Anne’s rediscovery of hope and joy after being mired in despair for so long.

Besides that, Persuasion also feels different compared to some of Jane Austen’s other novels in the sense that Austen was in a similar situation to Anne. While her family wasn’t deep in debt and weren’t high-up aristocrats, Austen never married, despite having an attraction to a young man named Tom Lefroy (though the jury is out on whether this was a fling or if she actually liked him), being engaged to a guy named Harris Bigg-Wither (which she ended the morning after he proposed), and supposedly having a romance with a young clergyman in Bath who tragically died shortly after their infatuation began. Whether she actually loved any of these men is a topic of debate, but within Persuasion, it feels as though she wrote from personal experience. The pain that Anne feels at being single and losing her shot feels as though it came from Jane’s own sadness. Though heartbreak appears in several of Austen’s books (i.e. Sense and Sensibility), here, it feels deeper and more cutting, like Jane was writing about something closer to home.

Because of that, the end of the book feels so much more deserved. Yes, the heroines of other works like Sense and Sensibility who go through heartbreak also get endings that feel consistent with their journeys and are well-earned, but because Persuasion is largely about overcoming heartbreak and rediscovering love, the end is that much better. It’s more satisfying to know that Anne has become the person she used to be – hopeful, in love, and beautiful again – instead of despairing.

For the hopeless romantics, Persuasion is a book that expresses romantic longing better than many of Jane Austen’s other works.

Until next time,

M.J.

AI Systems Out-Persuade Expert Humans, Including Professional Canvassers And World Championship Debaters

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/07/27/ai-systems-out-persuade-expert-humans-including-professional-canvassers-and-world-championship-debaters/

PsyPost: Are AI chatbots a threat to democracy? New study explores their persuasive power. “Two survey experiments comparing the cost-effectiveness of using LLM chatbots to persuade voters estimated that LLM-based persuasion costs $48 to $75 per voter, versus $100 for traditional methods, while being equally persuasive. However, they also found that traditional methods currently scale more […]

‘Never disagree with anyone’: Behavioral scientist shares conflict-free trick to changing minds

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/never-disagree-with-anyone-behavioral-scientist-shares-conflict-free-trick-to-changing-minds-ex1/

Enthymemes: The Argument You Finish Yourself

https://bolesblogs.com/2026/07/06/enthymemes-the-argument-you-finish-yourself/

Arguments can be made more persuasive if they are rephrased and intensified. Intensifying adverbs is most effective, followed by intensifying verbs, followed by repetition.

https://informallogic.ca/index.php/informal_logic/article/view/10250

#Argument #Persuasion #Communication

Just because solutions are available doesn't automatically mean they'll be used—that's old news in sociology. But how do organizations—translation agencies—try to persuade of something as a problem or a solution, and what kind of society do they picture in doing so? That's not so old—it's actually quite fresh:
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/de/document/doi/10.1515/joso-2025-0053/html
#sociology #persuasion #organization #climate #solution

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #LudwigWittgenstein #Persuasion

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Panopainting #Protest #MarchForOurLives #Florida

A quotation from Horace

For ridicule shall frequently prevail,
And cut the knot, when graver reasons fail.
 
                              [Ridiculum acri
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res.]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Satires [Saturae, Sermones], Book 1, # 10 “Nempe incomposito,” l. 14ff (1.10.14-15) (35 BC) [tr. Francis (1747)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/horace/1955/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #horace #argument #comedy #debate #derision #humor #impact #jest #jibe #jokes #laughter #mockery #rhetoric #ridicule #satire #scorn #wit #witticism #writing #persuasion #influence

📖 Storytelling: 6 claves:
1️⃣ Conoce a tu audiencia → Habla para ellos, no para ti.
2️⃣ Define el mensaje central → Una sola idea, clara y potente.
3️⃣ Estructura narrativa → Inicio, nudo y desenlace. Siempre.
4️⃣ Usa datos con propósito → Son evidencia, no protagonistas.
5️⃣ Apela a la emoción → Los números convencen, las emociones conectan.
6️⃣ Simplifica sin perder profundidad → Menos es más, pero no vacío.
#Storytelling #ComunicaciónEfectiva #Persuasión #HablarEnPúblico #DataStorytelling

Very good read on the intersection of the current lack of AI regulation and the rapid advances brought about by Anthropic's Mythos.

"This is what passes for AI governance in 2026: a single company accidentally builds an entity powerful enough to pose an existential threat to the digital systems that power modern life, unilaterally decides how to deal with it, and then loops in everyone else."

"once the threat was identified, Anthropic decided—alone—what to do about it." https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-case-for-ai-regulation #AI #Regulation #Mythos #LLMs #Zero_Day_Threats #Code #Software #Security #Anthropic #Risk #Transparency #Policy #AIRegulation #Persuasion

It’s bad enough that our culture doesn’t know how to sell; it’s criminal that people in advertising don’t. We review #TheArtofSellingYourself (sort of): http://the-agency-review.com/art-selling-yourself #selling #persuasion #advertising #marketing #business #culture @TarcherPerigee

Very glad that our research proposal 'Replicating a Classic Study on Argument Quantity and Quality' was funded by the NWO replication studies programme. List of all funded projects: https://www.openscience.nl/en/news/27-studies-re-examined #argumentation #persuasion #research

I have a friend who is pretty much a #Republican by default (i.e., he claims to be apolitical but only consistently avoids political topics when the Republican position is the status quo; he will comment on other issues). He might be trying out a new "open mindedness" thing, though, and he once even claimed to be "more or less an #Anarchist" at heart.

I'm making a list of #questions to ask him about #anarchy. They were significantly more provocative until my partner (who is very good at this kind of thing) offered some rewordings:

Anarchy questions

• How do you feel about the unrestricted movement of people? (i.e., #OpenBorders)

• What are your thoughts on loving relationships (romantic/sexual) with multiple partners (i.e., more than 2), where everyone consents, up to and including marriage? (i.e., #polyamory, #RelationshipAnarchy, etc.)

• How would you feel about your children having an equal voice in their education, along with all other individuals that are a part of their school around decisions like hours of operation, topics taught, hiring, etc.? (i.e., #AlternativeSchools, #AlternativeEducation)

• What are your thoughts about individual police accountability when officers break laws?

• What is your cost/benefit analysis of the existence of #police?

• What is your cost/benefit analysis of the existence and/or current implementation of #prisons?

• What are your thoughts on people inhabiting abandoned houses they don't own? (i.e., #squatting)

• What do you think about #RightToRoam (i.e., even private land should allow people to freely pass through, temporarily camp, etc.)?

Notes:

• I'm purposefully staying away from questions about capitalism, socialism, or other economic systems; I think his brain would just shut down.
• Same with LGBTQIA+ issues; he's LDS (and devout), so that will run directly into current doctrine/practice/programming and end the discussion.
• I'm just sharing this to share; I don't need feedback or suggestions but am open to them.
• I do not believe I can call myself an anarchist. I resonate strongly with many anarchist principles but I don't walk the walk and there are some issues I'm not totally comfortable with.

#persuasion #ProbablyWontWork

"Are you curious about the role of AI in psychological operations? Check out our new YouTube video "The Power of Persuasion 2.0: How Artificial Intelligence is Enhancing Psychological Operations" to learn more! #AI #psychologicaloperations #persuasion"

https://youtu.be/t1meQe8q1mk