"You'll Never Persuade People Like That"

I think that usually if I say something like "you'll never convince third parties this way", it's because the conversation is about a topic that I care about, and it frustrates me that the person I'm talking with is shooting themselves and others in the foot by employing a conversational strategy that will turn people off.

Alternatively, even if I don't happen to care about the topic in particular, I might still generally feel frustrated or upset due to seeing a person shooting themselves in the foot.

Another element is that, if I'm saying something like this, then probably the person's conversational style is something that feels morally bad for me, like being needlessly aggressive and uncharitable (and thus untruthful). And their motivation for being that is probably an arguments-are-soldiers one, so appealing to its ineffectiveness is one of the few reasons that might get them to reconsider.

I don't think it's at all the case that the person is starting to convince me in those situations - rather the opposite, in that I have a massively negative reaction to what they are saying, and then I typical-mind my experience to say that everyone else is also likely to.

I think "you'll never persuade people like that" means several different things on different occasions, and usually it doesn't mean what Zack says it always means.

(In what follows, A is making some argument and B is saying "you'll never persuade people like that".)

It can, in principle, mean (or, more precisely, indicate; I don't think it's exactly the meaning even when this is what is implicitly going on) "I am finding this convincing and don't want to, so I need to find a diversion". I think two other bad-faith usages are actually more common: "I am on some level aware that evidence and arguments favour your position over mine, and am seeking a distraction" (this differs from Zack's in that the thing that triggers the response is not that A's arguments specifically are persuasive to B) and "I fear that your arguments will be effective, and hope to guilt you into using weaker and less effective ones".

It can mean "I at-least-somewhat agree with you on the actual point at issue, and I think your arguments are bad and/or offputting and will push people away from agreeing with both of us, and I don't like that".

It can mean "I disagree with you on the actual point at issue, but prefer good arguments to bad ones, and I am disappointed that you're putting forward this argument that's no good".

It can mean "I disagree with you on the actual point at issue, and it's hard to tell whether your actual argument is any good because you're being needlessly obnoxious about it and that's distracting".

Zack suggests that "you'll never persuade people like that" is an obvious bad-faith argument because A isn't trying to persuade "people", they're trying to persuade B, and it's weird for B to complain about "people" rather than saying that/why B in particular isn't persuaded. But I don't buy it. 1. "You'll never persuade people like that" does in fact imply "you aren't persuading me like that". (Maybe sometimes dishonestly, but that is part of what is being claimed when someone says that.) 2. If A is being honest, they aren't only trying to persuade B. (Most of the time, if someone says something designed to be persuasive to you rather than generally valid, that's manipulation rather than honest argument.) So it's of some relevance if B reckons A's argument is not only unhelpful to B but unhelpful generally.

Hmm. That conclusion is not where I thought you were going with the war analogy.

Suppose that the United States finds itself at war with, say, Iceland. At the height of the conflict, the two sides sit down at a negotiating table, whereupon the American diplomat says to his Icelandic counterpart: “You guys know you can’t win this one, right?”

In this scenario, are we to suppose that U.S. leaders are worried about losing the war… to Iceland? Are strategists at the Pentagon frantically drawing up plans for resisting an Icelandic invasion of Maine (with the rest of New England—according to their projections—soon to follow)?

Seems unlikely. Rather, the message here is more like: “You can’t win, and we both know it. The only uncertainty in the outcome is how much money you can make us spend on beating you. And if you make us fight you to the end, we’ll make you regret it. There won’t be a hut left standing in your whole country, when we’re done with you. So give up now, and we’ll both come out on top, compared to that counterfactual scenario. We don’t have to fight; and it’s better for both of us if we don’t. But if you insist on fighting, you definitely can’t win… and losing will be much worse for you than not fighting at all.”

How does this map to the argument scenario? Well, consider two sides, A and B (where B is just “everyone who isn’t A, and cares about the question at all”); and representatives of each side, respectively Alice and Bob. Alice makes some argument, aimed at persuading members of B to the A position. Bob (who is a B) says: “You’ll never persuade people like that.”

It seems like one obvious expansion is:

“You won’t persuade any Bs like that, and we both know it. The only uncertainty in the outcome is how much effort you can make me and other Bs expend on countering your arguments. And if you make us deconstruct your arguments in detail, we’ll make you regret it. You’ll look like an idiot, a lunatic, an ignoramus, when we’re done with you. So give up now, and we’ll both come out on top, compared to that counterfactual scenario. We don’t have to have this argument; and it’s better for both of us if we didn’t. But if you insist on arguing, you definitely can’t win… and losing will be much worse for you than not trying to argue at all.”

When a person is acting on behalf of a group, persuading the person doesn't affect their stance, you'd need to either persuade the group as a whole or convince that person to do something other than acting on behalf of the group. So in this case the metaphorical hard-to-reach boss is socially real, not centrally made up.

To give a concrete example where I said this:

My father in law wrote a book about the issue of divorce refusers in Judaism, and the apathy of the UK batei din towards the victims of this abuse.

In it he argued that if the rabbanim had been willing to, they could easily find a basis on which to unilaterally dissolve such a marriage.

I personally think that's true both as a question of historical fact (rabbis have found halachic justification to do just about anything when they really wanted to), and also from the perspective of his modern orthodox philosophy which recognises that as a legitimate flexibility important for Judaism's survival.

But having grown up Hareidi, I had a better insight into the perspective of the extremely conservative ultra orthodox Jews who run the batei din. And from their perspective, Judaism is basically unchanging, and given that the authors of the Talmud clearly tried to find a solution to the issue of agunot, and could not, it's a closed case. There's nothing to do here.

So I explained to him that whilst I might agree with him, all his arguments will do nothing to persuade his target audience, and would get him branded as at best naive, and at worse a heretic. He would do better off by completely removing that line of argument from his book, and focussing purely on the legal issues, on which he is legitimately an expert. "Sure, you might be right, but you'll never persuade people like that!"

the classical understanding of negotiation often recommends "rationally irrational" tactics in which an agent handicaps its own capabilities in order to extract concessions from a counterparty: for example, in the deadly game of chicken, if I visibly throw away my steering wheel, oncoming cars are forced to swerve for me in order to avoid a crash, but if the oncoming drivers have already blindfolded themselves, they wouldn't be able to see me throw away my steering wheel, and I am forced to swerve for them.

I wanted to spotlight this. I've never seen this dynamic described so concisely, elegantly, or effectively.

And that's what explains the attractiveness of the appeal-to-persuading-third-parties. What "You'll never persuade people like that" really means is, "You are starting to persuade me against my will, and I'm laundering my cognitive dissonance by asserting that you actually need to persuade someone else who isn't here."

Big if true. Going to look out for this in future conversations. 

You've given a plausible account of what might be happening in at least some cases that people use the rhetoric of "you'll never persuade anyone like that". I would like to give an alternate account--one that other posters have pointed to already, but that I'd like to highlight--and explore the possible consequences that adopting the strategy you've gestured at here, "going for the throat", might have.

When I say "you'll never persuade anyone like that", often what I'm feeling is something close to anger. I am "pissed off". Anger can be a sign of cognitive dissonance. If an argument makes you angry, you should try to explore the reasons for that anger; does it have to do with the contents of the message you're being passed, or the trappings, the way it's expressed? Does it have more to do with the context--were you intending to not talk about this, is it an inappropriate context for the discussion, are you avoiding something...

When I examine these feelings in that context, there is often a common link between them: my interlocutor is being a huge asshole. That is: I'm saying "okay, smartass, see how this rhetorical style works out for you". I am often forcefully trying to get them to either stop or change their tone.

Perceptions that someone is "an asshole" may well be affected by cognitive bias; no one could reasonably deny that questions of affect aren't to a great extent, in many people, mediated by the halo effect, by the speaker and listener's perceived alignments, by irrelevant trappings. But it is possible to be an asshole. It is possible to be an asshole even without intending it. Indeed, there are ways and magnitudes to what is perceived assholehood, but I will give a brief theory of what it means to be an asshole here: being an asshole is being more forceful, rude, or otherwise contentious than is necessary to communicate a point.

I think that your theory--and especially the "this is what your interlocutor really means" framing you've used, is likely to lead to precisely the opposite of the appropriate response to this kind of feedback. That is, it's likely to lead to doubling down when slowing down would have been the appropriate response. I advise anyone reading this post to take that heavily into consideration. 

This, for me, usually is noticeable as an actual pivot.  "sure, that'd be nice, but it'll never happen".  There is now sufficient agreement about the main topic, and the person is now talking about why they're not working toward it, or why it doesn't matter that you have agreement in the first place.  Or they disagree, and are jumping ahead to "how can we find out?" and pointing out that you can't convince others, so there's no way to test it.

The counter-question is "why do you object to this pivot"?  Is there something remaining that you don't understand about your discussion partner's view of the nominal proposal?  Can you just ask directly "but you agree that it would be better if this were implemented" or whatever, without conceding whether there is an actual path to implementation?

[ note: this probably varies pretty widely with context and group norms.  If my explanations don't make sense, it's worth picking a few specific examples to explore how they differ. ]

idk mate. I definitely see how this pattern can occur, but I think it would be a mistake to assume that someone wanting to persuade third parties is always being disingenuous.

I tell people that their arguments are not persuading to third parties when they insult me, because I genuinely hope that they will change the way they argue, and also because I think it's generally true that insulting anyone does not tend to convince them. I'm personally not interested in being insulted, but I am interested in people arguing for their positions well, since if they are right, I'm interested in being persuaded.

If someone said "you'll never persuade people like that" to me I'd probably just ask them what's arbitrary about my position. If it's arbitrary then they may have a point. If it's not arbitrary then people will in fact be persuaded.

Unless the belief you're arguing for is false. You checked that beforehand, right??

On further thought, I really need a few examples to understand the context of when this is happening to you.  For me, it ONLY occurs in complicated enough issues that "true or false" is very hard to define or test rigorously, and it's extremely likely that something like "directionally true" or "mostly correct" or even "preferable (to me, and I think many others) equilibrium" would be the right goalposts.  

If it's something you actually checked beforehand, you should just share that check and be done with it.  No discussion or debate required.

The bargaining model of war attempts to explain why wars are fought—and not fought; even the bitterest enemies often prefer to grudgingly make peace with each other rather than continue to fight.

However, conversely, sometimes otherwise friendly neighbours will attempt to destroy each other because they can't resolve trivial matters such as the height of a fence.