Rhetoric

About

Rhetoric is the art of manipulating a debate in order to convince others of a predetermined conclusion. At its best, it is used as a tool to convey difficult new ideas and get past existing cognitive bias in situations where a rational argument may be ineffective; at its worst, it is used to induce erroneous beliefs in others, which may lead to popular support for extremely harmful actions.

Related

• Rhetorical manipulation is the negative use of rhetoric, i.e. to promote false beliefs
• Rhetorical distortion is where a rhetorical argument is based on distorted truth
  • ...in the mainstream media (instances)
• Rhetorical deceptions are specific techniques used for rhetorical distortion
  • types of rhetorical deception
• rhetorical spin
• interpretive framing

Links

• Wiktionary
• Wikipedia
• Conservapedia
• dKosopedia no equivalent page as of 2010-07-15; see Religious Political Rhetoric
• SourceWatch no equivalent page as of 2010-07-15; see Empty rhetoric
• RationalWiki (note: "CP" stands for Conservapedia; mention of RationalWiki is censored at CP)
• LessWrong Wiki (as of 2010-07-15) redirects to Dark arts, which refers to the negative uses of rhetoric: "...rhetorical techniques crafted to exploit human cognitive biases in order to persuade, deceive, or otherwise manipulate a person into irrationally accepting [predetermined] beliefs"