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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.religion
Subject: Re: History as Fact / Persuasion through Intimidation
Message-ID: <1732@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Dec-84 00:03:39 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1732
Posted: Sun Dec  9 00:03:39 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Dec-84 03:22:12 EST
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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Xref: watmath net.flame:7161 net.religion:5020

ONLY two major means of persuasion?  Utter rubbish.  How about seduction?
How about fictional dramatization?  How about ridicule?  Do you own a
TV?  Watch some commercials.  If you want to know about persuasion, there's
your best source.

Science as a source of truth (or whatever) is rather overrated.  Right now,
it is useless in the realm of personal interaction.  Since no one has
thus far been able to attach numbers to emotions, what we have are 
behavioral studies whose meaning is quite unclear.  Take the various sex
surveys.  Assuming that the numbers collected are sufficiently accurate,
what do they mean?  Kinsey didn't even bother to ask what people thought
about the things that they did in bed (or wherever they did it :-)).
Really, five or ten good novels will tell you more about the human mind
than all of psychology can (except for works like the books of M. Scott
Peck, which aren't in the least science).  The arrogance of psychology in
asserting the validity of its technique is certainly in the same league as
almost any religion, by the way.  Intimidation is not foreign to science.

Charley Wingate    umcp-cs!mangoe

In principio est Verbum