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xiphiasI guess my reaction is that this show is appropriately named the way that Ann Coulter's book Slander is appropriately named.
My second reaction is that con men don't make terribly persuasive spokespeople for causes.
In twenty-four minutes, Penn took on two topics: fad diets, and genetically modified foods. And, damn it, before I watched this show, I agreed with the stance Penn and Teller were taking on these things. Now, I'm not so sure. Moving your audience from "agreement with your position" to "unsure about your position" is not considered successful persuasion, last I checked. Actually, in rhetoric class, if we did that, we got a failing grade.
The fad diet part, that I didn't have too much trouble with. Their point was that the only way to actually lose weight over the long term is to change your eating habits and your activity habits as a lifestyle thing. Cool, I can get behind that. There is no, to my knowledge, magic pill that causes healthy weight loss.
That said, there's a lot of interesting research going on about a bunch of topics related to weight loss. Lilke, how does our body decide if it's hungry or not? This is not, as far as I know, a completely understood topic. And if we understood more about satiety, appetite, and food craving, well, who's to say that that wouldn't result in things that could help weight loss?
Of course, that'd be years if not decades away, even if it ever happened, and the fad diets out there are, in fact, bullshit, so I didn't have a problem with that. And they made a very interesting point about "before" and "after" photos in diet ads: Penn claims that these companies find someone, normally athletic, who's been sidelined by injury or some such thing, pay them to actually eat more while they're injured, they gain a bunch of weight, they take the "before" pic, then, when the person's healed up and resumes their normal lifestyle, they, naturally, go back to where they were before, and that's the "after" picture. Interesting point.
It was the second part of the show that started really bugging me.
See, Penn was making the (perfectly reasonable) argument that genetically modifying food feeds more people. But in order to discredit the anti-GM side, they found the wackiest, looniest anti-GM people one could imagine.
I've taken classes in how to argue unfairly and deceptively -- mostly from a "how to avoid doing this, and respond if someone else is doing this" perspective. They used all of those techniques. And obviously.
Now, I've got this belief. It's that, if you actually are right about something, you don't need to decieve. You need to present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that's not an easy task, but you never need to resort to manipulation or deception. This is what I learned in rhetoric class. If you just need to convince people for ten minutes, or an hour, or maybe a day or two, sure, you can use manipulation or deception. But anything much longer than that, that just falls apart, and you're better off making the cleanest argument you can.
I've got this other belief. If someone's presenting an argument, and they're using manipulation and deception, it's probably because they can't actually get their point out if they present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that means that They're Not Right. One thing I do is listen to both sides, and see who's using more manipulation, and trust that point of view less.
So I fuckin' HATE it when people use manipulation and deception to express views that I hold.
Penn and Teller are con men. They're very good con men. They're some of the best manipulators and decievers who don't work for Karl Rove that I can think of.
That makes them lousy spokespeople for causes. Because, damnit, it's pretty CLEAR when people are using manipulation or deception, and it makes the entire SIDE of the argument look bad.
My second reaction is that con men don't make terribly persuasive spokespeople for causes.
In twenty-four minutes, Penn took on two topics: fad diets, and genetically modified foods. And, damn it, before I watched this show, I agreed with the stance Penn and Teller were taking on these things. Now, I'm not so sure. Moving your audience from "agreement with your position" to "unsure about your position" is not considered successful persuasion, last I checked. Actually, in rhetoric class, if we did that, we got a failing grade.
The fad diet part, that I didn't have too much trouble with. Their point was that the only way to actually lose weight over the long term is to change your eating habits and your activity habits as a lifestyle thing. Cool, I can get behind that. There is no, to my knowledge, magic pill that causes healthy weight loss.
That said, there's a lot of interesting research going on about a bunch of topics related to weight loss. Lilke, how does our body decide if it's hungry or not? This is not, as far as I know, a completely understood topic. And if we understood more about satiety, appetite, and food craving, well, who's to say that that wouldn't result in things that could help weight loss?
Of course, that'd be years if not decades away, even if it ever happened, and the fad diets out there are, in fact, bullshit, so I didn't have a problem with that. And they made a very interesting point about "before" and "after" photos in diet ads: Penn claims that these companies find someone, normally athletic, who's been sidelined by injury or some such thing, pay them to actually eat more while they're injured, they gain a bunch of weight, they take the "before" pic, then, when the person's healed up and resumes their normal lifestyle, they, naturally, go back to where they were before, and that's the "after" picture. Interesting point.
It was the second part of the show that started really bugging me.
See, Penn was making the (perfectly reasonable) argument that genetically modifying food feeds more people. But in order to discredit the anti-GM side, they found the wackiest, looniest anti-GM people one could imagine.
I've taken classes in how to argue unfairly and deceptively -- mostly from a "how to avoid doing this, and respond if someone else is doing this" perspective. They used all of those techniques. And obviously.
Now, I've got this belief. It's that, if you actually are right about something, you don't need to decieve. You need to present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that's not an easy task, but you never need to resort to manipulation or deception. This is what I learned in rhetoric class. If you just need to convince people for ten minutes, or an hour, or maybe a day or two, sure, you can use manipulation or deception. But anything much longer than that, that just falls apart, and you're better off making the cleanest argument you can.
I've got this other belief. If someone's presenting an argument, and they're using manipulation and deception, it's probably because they can't actually get their point out if they present the truth compellingly and clearly, and that means that They're Not Right. One thing I do is listen to both sides, and see who's using more manipulation, and trust that point of view less.
So I fuckin' HATE it when people use manipulation and deception to express views that I hold.
Penn and Teller are con men. They're very good con men. They're some of the best manipulators and decievers who don't work for Karl Rove that I can think of.
That makes them lousy spokespeople for causes. Because, damnit, it's pretty CLEAR when people are using manipulation or deception, and it makes the entire SIDE of the argument look bad.