It’s About Making Babies!

Scott Adams posits a question on the Morality of Influence on The Dilbert Blog:

Suppose you were a skilled hypnotist, and so charismatic that you knew you could change the opinion of an average person simply by your choice of words. Would it be ethical to be that persuasive?

Scott blithely trips through a land mine. (Emphasis mine.)

You can extend the methods of hypnosis into normal conversation, the way a trial lawyer, politician, or top salesperson would.

I think Scott has his cart before the horse. The onus is on the audience, the listener. Every speaker is in a position where the speaker, the listener, and anyone employing either, expects that speech to be persuasive – to affect the listener. That is the point of the comment, the speech, the lecture, the commercial advertisement, or – the political ad.

That is why the reputation of a merchant, and that merchant’s salespeople is so important – if the reputation is for sleazy product, for deceptive sales practices, then the wise consumer avoids that den of iniquity. If a church has a reputation for weird practices, for teachings anathema to their professed allegiances – one has to be careful about attending. Which is why the Rev. Wright and Obama’s 20-year membership at that church is so troubling. You hear the same, persuasive speech over and over, it affects the congregation. If Obama wasn’t going to be affected by the message, why was he exposing himself to that persuasive speech?

And that gets to campaign finance reform, spending limits, and the ethics of negative ads. A candidate is expected to present his/her opinions, values, intentions, and proposals. Self-promotion is good, clean, ethical persuasion.

Where things get dicey is when you try to convince people that your opponent will cause harm if elected. That your audience will suffer if they buy a competing product.

And by using saturation advertising, because marketing strategies work. Negative ads work. They persuade people to change their opinions and minds without providing additional information. Simple repetition of lies causes people to believe the lies to be true. The fallacy of The Big Lie has been know for decades.

And the onus is on the voter, the citizen, the adult and adolescent exposed to campaign reporting and rhetoric – to listen to persuasive speakers with respectable ethics.

Listen long enough, and often enough, and you will be persuaded.

This was part of the damage Bill and his wife Hilary Clinton did to the country. They lowered the expectations of voters that the government told the truth. They convinced a nation that appearing to be a liar didn’t matter.

Obama is making hay with that attitude. This supposedly anti-racist candidate has no trouble labeling anyone opposing him as racist. As if voting against a white guy, because he is white, isn’t racist – bigotry against someone because of their race.

Scott, it must be ethical to unilaterally decide what is good for another, to bend their will to yours. Otherwise the Salvation Army wouldn’t be stationing bell-ringers at stores during the Christmas season. Pastors wouldn’t give sermons. Salesmen wouldn’t particularly care if you bought the car, the refrigerator, the movie ticket they are selling. Senators and Representatives wouldn’t be elected to Congress to ‘represent their district’. To spend more on campaign advertising than it takes to reach 80%-90% of the voters with your basic message about why they should vote for you. To protest what someone else is doing.

It is what you influence the listener to do that matters. If your influence leads them to commit crimes, or otherwise harm themselves or others, then you have done wrong. Until then, it is the listener that is responsible for deciding to listen – or to turn away.