-Mark Skousen
Chatting with a candidate, I asked them what they strongly believed in. They said, “The truth is all that matters.” My follow-up question is, “What’s the best argument for the opposite?” An ideological Turing test. They struggled to produce counterexamples. The truth is not all that matters when conflicting truths and priorities exist. There’s also a skill that trumps truth: Persuasion.
I wish the world didn’t require persuasion. I wish everyone cared solely for the truth for truth’s sake. However, most people don’t care about the truth. It’s why we have so many horrible politicians and incompetents at the head of bureaucracies. Poverty and despair are the natural state of civilization. Left to nature, truth loses.
Handwashing
Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor, was the first to discover that washing hands can prevent diseases. In 1847, he found fewer women got sick after giving birth when doctors washed their hands. However, people didn't believe him because his ideas didn't fit medical establishment theories, and he couldn’t provide a scientific explanation.
The rejection by his peers, combined with his inability to convince the broader medical community, led to his deteriorating mental health. In 1865, he was committed to an asylum in Vienna, Austria, and died.
Later, Louis Pasteur showed that tiny germs cause diseases, and Joseph Lister used this idea to introduce cleaner practices in surgery, saving lives. Their work made handwashing a standard practice in medicine.
Lister published his findings in 1867 (two years after Semmelweis passed), and it still took years to persuade the medical community to adopt handwashing. Semmelweis discovered something that would have saved millions of lives, but failing to persuade others meant it was all for naught.
AC vs. DC
Nikola Tesla was a similar example with AC (alternating current) vs. Thomas Edison’s DC (direct current). Edison, with patents on DC, successfully attacked Tesla’s AC, branding AC’s voltage as dangerous.
Edison, to prove AC's dangers, publicly electrocuted animals using AC power and developed the electric chair as a method of execution. This was all to associate AC with death in the public's mind.
AC is objectively the better system as the current can flow both ways instead of one. Even though, from a truth standpoint DC was worse, Tesla had to showcase the safety and efficiency of the AC system to the public multiple times to win what was later deemed the “War of the Currents.” It wasn’t until Tesla illuminated the Chicago World’s Fair with AC current that the public started to see AC as the better of the two.
Urban Legends
Lies often spread faster than truths. People say Daddy Longleg spiders are the most poisonous spiders, but their fangs aren’t long enough. People also think crane flies eat mosquitoes. I casually mentioned the other day that both of these are false, and people were shocked. They were very smart, creative people. I love to fact-check and used to go on Wikipedia holes, including on urban legends.
I deeply care about the truth, and the fundamental state of reality… sometimes too much. To those who inherently care about truth, it’s almost unfathomable to think that someone wouldn’t. But despite most people’s words on caring about the truth, their actions prove otherwise.
The Skill of Change
In startups, where everyone has to provide value, you create a new product to service an industry. You need to persuade clients, employees, and investors that it’s worth something. They have to believe. Failure has consequences.
Just knowing the answer isn’t enough. Nobody cares if you are right. If you’re a good, moral person, it’s incumbent upon you to learn the art of persuasion. You have to be able to convince people of it. Whether by appealing to authority, solving problems, or making it fit their worldview, how you convince them doesn’t matter too much. I mean, as long as it’s consensual and not China indoctrination camp style. You simply have to convince them.
A lot of people think that persuasion is all about values and aligning values. I largely disagree. I think persuasion generally, and political persuasion more particularly, has much more to do with explaining in new ways and connecting dots in new ways than just invoking emotions and values.
-Nick Hanauer
What matters is that you’re skilled in the art of persuasion. It’s either that or live the life of Semmelweis. A few people may read up on you later and think, “Wow, you were right!” Semmelweis died in an insane asylum because he couldn’t persuade others. The stakes are the highest in persuasion.
Look at what people are posting about Israel. From the facts– it’s the easiest, clearcut conflict of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong case in history. Yet, many people are still persuaded to side with evil.
History won’t care that “you were right.” Several of our founding fathers warned about the Constitution's “interstate commerce” and “necessary and proper” clauses. I’m glad they were correct; it would have been a lot cooler if they had fixed it.
History cares about what happened, not who was correct. Learn persuasion.