Opening page…
Is all persuasion manipulation?
Someone who can't force your decision can still talk you into exactly what they wanted. The final choice is yours; the wanting may not be.
Your answer
A little context
A salesman lets you hold the expensive camera first, mentions that he has only two left, and asks what you'd shoot with it. Nothing he says is false, and you walk out with the camera. Later you wonder whether you were helped to decide or steered.
Nearby questions
- The oracle you can't refuseAn oracle exists that always gives the wisest possible answer to any decision — which city, which job, whom to marry. It has never once been wrong. How much of your life do you hand it?
- Do you have free will?Your genes, your upbringing and the laws of nature were all in place before you chose anything. The choice still felt like yours.
- Can you know what's right and still not do it?Socrates held that nobody does wrong knowingly, so anyone who does must not really know. Everyone who has broken a promise to themselves has doubts.
- If you've done nothing wrong, should you mind being watched?The argument sounds airtight until you picture every message, search and place you've been, laid out for the people who know you.
- Predicted before you choseIf a system can predict what you will choose before you know it yourself, is the choice still yours?
