Respectfully, no–but that’s because we’re not talking about the same people. The purpose of my reply was to point out that these purpose-neutral tactics that are used by perfectly innocent people doing perfectly innocent things are the same tactics used by scam artists and demagogues.
Most people, if asked, would say that their ability to tell if someone is manipulating or lying to them is “above average.” That’s obviously a mathematical impossibility, but it’s also something that is readily contradicted by observation. People, even genuinely smart ones, fall for these kinds of things all of the time. What I’m doing is inviting people to take the advice given here, and rather than use it to convincing other people, use it to look for times when other people are using them to try to convince them.
I’m not trying to tell people to never change their minds, I’m trying to help them recognize when someone is unexpectedly trying to change their minds without their knowledge.
