A thought experiment

Here's what you do. You need to find a topic that is controversial but that you don't care or have strong opinion about. If that isn't possible for you, you will have to find another experiment to do, sorry.

Then, you find a web article about it. You can read this or not as you choose.

Then, go to the comments portion. Read a lot of them. If the comments to not divide into about 3 or 4 perspective with increasing levels of restatement for emphasis, test conditions are not right, and you will have to bide your time for another environment.

Now, you must analyze the feelings you have in response. If that consists of revulsion at these vulgar folks who have nothing better to do with their time, you need to lighten up and open up and also probably come down a peg or two. But, the idea here is that you are testing to measure the sway. We will assume that you can be swayed many ways here, and that there are at least some comments from each perspective that are sufficiently well-put to have effect on you.

However, my results indicate this:

1. This is a good experiment on the nature of the interplay between underlying convictions and the role of logic or argument or expression in the formulation of one's outlook at any given time.

1a. You will find that you can be swayed in multiple directions if you haven't already developed a perspective.

1b. You will find that you will be very unlikely to be swayed sufficiently at this point to develop a conviction, simply by the arguments, but may begin to develop a tendency that could be further developed if you became interested enough in this topic. (Conviction as a function of interest...hmmm, that suddenly is striking to me for some reason).

1c. You may find two types of intelligence: a "brute" intelligence that is forceful and unrefined, and a "refined" intelligence that is more anemic and self-referential but probably easier to read.

1c1. Brute intelligence represents thoughts that are effective, but language that employs fewer transformative rules.

1c2 Refined intelligence may represent weak thoughts that employ language that allows them to be expressed quite complexly via transformative rules.

2. If done carefully, this experiment may help you to understand your own process for creation of "persuasive" or "argumentative" statements, which can be valuable in the way it reveals to you an underlying structure to your thought you may not have fully noticed before, particularly if you are one who employs more complex syntactic structures in general.