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Good Persuasion

In Win Bigly, the author makes reference to Plato's allegory of the cave early on. He uses it to explain what is going on in America today:

The point of Plato’s allegory is that—figuratively speaking—we humans might be chained to a cave created by our own faulty brains and senses, experiencing a shadow world that is entirely different from objective reality.

I was drawn to the book for reasons other than understanding how we got here or what the future holds. The idea that persuasion can overcome and obviate the need for facts was more compelling. It mirrors what I have seen in life - both in personal and professional space. Being that I consider myself a logical and analytical person, I have found it deeply frustrating that facts matter so little in decision making and that the absurdity of the results rarely prompt the decision makers to revisit their thinking.

The truth is that facts and reason don’t have much influence on our decisions, except for trivial things, such as putting gas in your car when you are running low. On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.

Since I am not particularly interested in the subject of this book, it is hard for me to judge it's subjective merits. But on the topic of persuasion there could be something to learn from it


 

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