The Rhetorician Issue #11 They’re Not Idiots for Not Agreeing With You Same World, Different Models. Src - ChatGPT. TLDR - Just because someone sounds irrational to you doesn’t mean they’re stupid or evil. It just means their mental model of the world is different from yours. We all build simplified versions of reality based on what we’ve seen, heard, and lived—and then we act rationally inside those models. So persuasion isn’t about hitting people with better logic—it’s about entering their...
28 days ago • 3 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #10 Freedom of Choice (Really?) Readers, That job you took?That feature you used?That policy you agreed with? Chances are, you didn’t choose it. You were nudged—cleverly, quietly—into consenting. Not by force, not by argument. But by design. This is manufactured consent, and it runs everything from politics to product. The most dangerous thing about it? You don’t notice it. And worse—when done well, you think it was your idea. Let’s get sharper. Manufactured consent is...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #9 How to Arrange Your Ideas for Maximum Persuasion You'll get the Judo reference, read on. Hey Reader, A good idea poorly delivered is no better than a bad one.We have all experienced the frustration of knowing we were right — yet failing to convince others.The fault often lies not in the idea itself, but in its arrangement. Understanding how to present a case is not optional; it is the difference between influence and irrelevance. While there is no universal formula,...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #8 How to Speak Such That People Want to Listen - Part 1 Miniseries - How to speak such that people want to listen Or how to write such that people want to read Hello Reader, As I might have mentioned in my earlier emails, a speech/writing has two aspects - a) How good is the content, and b) How well it is delivered. This email will tackle the latter part. Cause no matter how good your content, nobody would care to listen if your delivery sucks. Think Sheldon from The...
3 months ago • 4 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #6 Rowing upstream... Hang on, it'll make sense. Have you noticed that some ideas are easily sold to people, despite them being lacking in substance... but some other ideas which hold much more merit still get a lot of resistance? No? Think about you trying to convince your parents that you want to marry someone you love rather than a stranger you met a week ago. Get it now? Well, there's a good reason for that. The Three Types of Ideas You remember the concept of ethos,...
4 months ago • 2 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #5 Why Rhetoric? Some of you may think you don't need persuasive abilities so long as you have the truth on your side. I thought that for quite some time too... until I knew better. Aristotle has written thoroughly on the importance of rhetoric, but this time I want to draw from my own recent experience. If you think rhetoric is not important, try explaining someone a very basic and well-known (not to them) concept, something like the halo effect. The pushback you'll...
4 months ago • 1 min read
The Rhetorician Issue #4 Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty; “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” - John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn We talked about ethos - argument by character, pathos - argument by emotions, and logos - argument by logic. Today, I want to talk about argument by beauty. The Truth has an elegance to it, an element of beauty. So pronounced is this element, that beauty is often seen as a test of truth. Paul Dirac, one of the...
5 months ago • 2 min read
