[lbo-talk] Persuasion: Common or Rare?

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 8 07:17:17 PST 2006


"Time to Get Religion" begat "Not in Search of the Salt of Earth" which begat "Prose Style" which begat "Chomsky, Grammar, Essentialism" which begat "Foucault & Chomsky" which begat this windswept thread titled "Persuasion: Common or Rare?".

One of the intriguing things about Internet discussions is how many words are thrown at a topic and how little movement occurs. By "movement" I mean the modification of your beliefs and opinions regarding a particular subject from whatever they are to, well, something else.

To-date, I can think of three opinions I've tossed on the rubbish pile because of persuasive counter-arguments:

* That IT outsourcing to India is a 'sky is falling' event for US workers - Doug cleared that up

* That the stuff Ariel -- "Female Chauvinist Pigs" -- Levy goes on about represents an actual problem in need of solving - B|L, among others, schooled me in the history of the "sex panic" which placed Levy's belly aching in an appropriate context

* That criticisms of post modern thought built upon grumblings about a lack of clarity are spot on - B|L and Carrol convinced me otherwise

There may be a few others which I can't recall at the moment.

It appears that what I'll call 'dynamic opinion modding' (cause I'm in a mood to make up techie sounding phrases) is about as rare as surface flowing water on Mars.

.d.



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