Logic and Persuasion vs. Logic and Persuasion
Aug. 16th, 2025 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stevenpiziks
This meme makes me remember how I first read ENDER'S GAME as a teenager, and even then I noticed a huge plot hole. Ender's brother and sister anonymously create a series of dialogues on public chat boards. The dialogues were carefully, scientifically designed to push the right buttons of any given reader. They answered all arguments and carefully refuted all disputes. Anyone who read the dialogues would immediately throw in their support for what Ender was doing. I knew even as a teen that this wouldn't work. First, no argument will win over everyone, or even a big majority. Second, there's no way to get the entire world (or even a big fraction of it) to read these dialogues. We have language and cultural barriers, people who don't have access to the computers, people who can't read, people who DON'T read. There's no way to win over an entire population with the written word. Or any word, for that matter.
Later, when this book was up for being added to the English curriculum where I teach, I argued vehemently against it, partly because of the thinly-veiled pedophilia and partly because of this plot hole. The book was dropped.
So ironically, I successfully used logic and persuasion to get a group of people to take my side against a story that shows logic and persuasion as a way to get what you want.
