In which Wolf opens day 15's door... Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/XWWnBAHyBIk
Welcome to the Beware of Wolf Advent Calendar of Bad Thinking. To celebrate the holidays, I'm counting down the days until Christmas with a common type of bad thinking each day, described in 60 seconds. This holiday season, give the gift of good thinking by sharing these videos with your friends!
Today is Day 15: "The Persuasive Definition"
What do you think of when you hear the term "success"? If I started a talk by saying that, "Success is achieving goals and ambitions while creating positive value in the world," you're probably going to look on the idea of success pretty positively.
But if I started off by saying, "Success is the accumulation of wealth and power, regardless of the cost to others or society," then you're more likely to look at the idea of success negatively.
Both of these are "persuasive definitions," which are definitions intended to influence the opinions of others.
You can, of course, define things in a non-persuasive way. "Success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose," is just descriptive and doesn't try to convince you it's a good or bad thing.
Words like "poverty", "racism", "fairness", and many others are often used in ways that aren't so much descriptive as they are persuasive. The problem is that by making an argument using words with strong emotional connotations, it can be easy to bypass facts and reason. And unfortunately, that is what people who use persuasive definitions are often trying to accomplish: they want to get you to do something unreasonable by making decisions without actually being informed, or without considering their wider-reaching implications.
Any topic you really care about is likely to have people on one or both sides of the debate using persuasive definitions to try to influence you do to irrational things. Because you care, always take the time to do your own research and form your own opinion.
Happy Holidays!