thoughtsignals

New Scientist has a pretty interesting article that goes over eight ways — supported by science — to effectively persuade people. It also examines, somewhat less thoroughly, how you can resist these techniques. It does not get into when you should use them, or when you should resist them, though — that’s the tricky questions.

1. Mimicking.
2. Framing.
3. Using few reasons.
4. Being persistent.
5. Choosing your communications medium wisely.
6. Styling.
7. Generating anger.
8. Moving them along step by step.

Link.

Yesterday my copy of Justin Catanoso’s “My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family and Miracles” arrived from Amazon. Normally, this is not the kind of book I would read. I happily left the Catholic Church a long time ago. But Justin is a former editor of mine, and I’ve read many of his previous pieces on his cousin, and more importantly heard stories first hand about the Saint and about how he wrote the book. I’ve only had time to read the very beginning, a miracle story that opens the book, but I found myself touched by the story and the writing.

I would have loved to have been at BookExpo in LA to see this panel with John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga about building online communities.

Scalzi talked about his experience establishing himself as the “benevolent dictator” of the conversational community that grew up around his blog, which has evolved into a culture that is capable of entertaining itself even when he’s not around, like when he’s up against a book deadline. Keeping the readers informed of deadlines and other parts of the writing process, he added, had an unexpected effect: “The community is kicking my ass to not blog so they can get the books.”

There’s nothing on YouTube that comes up in a quick search, but maybe somebody will post something. In the meantime, more details over at GalleyCat.