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Comment by dusklight | Hacker News Reader

But now you are putting your own ethics on the concept of manipulation.

If we are taught manipulation is wrong, we never learn how to use it and we are less able to defend against it, and it puts us at a disadvantage when we have to deal with a less scrupulous person who doesn't have a problem using it.

Instead if we are taught that manipulation is a tool, and like any tool can be used for good or evil depending on the tool user, maybe we would get less upset at the beer commercial with the twins in wet t-shirts, but also we would be less affected by it.

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But now you are putting your own ethics on the concept of manipulation

No kidding. That's the whole point of the parent post in the first place isn't it? He's asserting that manipulation, is self evidently wrong, that there is no justification to resort to manipulative tactics over argument through reason.

Here's a counter example for you: If we taught that murder is wrong, we'll never use it and we are less able to defend against it... etc. That's actually, exactly how most people are brought up and for good reason. We generally consider murder to be wrong.

Let me tell you something, the world seems to be raising more individuals comfortable with implementing these sort of manipulative tactics, "appealing to the audience" as it were. As far as I can tell, what this article promotes is a sure fire way to encourage your child to grow up into being a manipulating psychopath; nothing could be further from fostering talent for argument through reason.

what this article promotes is a sure fire way to encourage your child to grow up into being a manipulating psychopath

Wow, talk about employing pathos to manipulate the audience!

And appeal to probability, appeal to consequences and fallacy of the undistributed middle.. :)

Yuck. Yes, I must really resist the temptation to comment after all nighters. Manipulation == psychopathy, is a bit much.

I too assert however that manipulating the audience in spite of appealing to reason is unethical, and that some sort of notion that we should practice manipulation so as to strengthen ourselves to it is rubbish, if we consider manipulation to be unethical in the first place. Hence, if it's beneath us, even if using manipulation made us better at persuasion through appeals to ethos and pathos, or at least better apt at detecting and exposing manipulation, what what would be the point after having compromised our own values in the first place?

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