When something is said loudly enough, often enough, or confidently enough, the repetition starts to feel like evidence. These entries are about the many ways conviction can arrive through channels that have nothing to do with whether a claim is actually true -- and about why those channels feel so convincing in the first place.
| That moment of noticing when your sense of certainty is coming from how something was said rather than what was said |
| A growing awareness of the gap between feeling persuaded and having good reasons to be persuaded |
| The ability to sit with the discomfort of asking 'but is it actually true?' even when everything about the delivery says 'of course it is' |
There is a particular kind of confidence that feels like it must be backed by something solid -- a speaker so sure of themselves that questioning them feels almost rude. Proof by Assertion is what happens when that confidence is doing all the work, and the evidence never actually shows up. A claim gets stated with enough conviction or emphasis that the statement itself starts to feel like proof.
There is something almost hypnotic about hearing the same thing over and over. At some point, the sheer familiarity of a claim starts to feel like evidence for it -- not because anything new has been offered, but because our brains tend to confuse 'I have heard this many times' with 'this is well-established.' Ad Nauseam is when repetition itself becomes the argument.
Sometimes agreement comes not from being persuaded but from being pressured. Ad Baculum is what happens when threats, intimidation, or the specter of negative consequences are used as reasons to accept a claim -- when the argument, stripped of its coercive element, has nothing underneath it. The feeling of 'I had better go along with this' gets confused with the feeling of 'this must be right.'
We have a deep and understandable reverence for things we do not fully understand. Ad Mysteriam is what happens when that reverence gets exploited -- when obscurity, jargon, or an air of esoteric depth is used to make a claim seem more profound or credible than the evidence warrants. Instead of clarity inviting evaluation, mystery becomes the argument itself.
Compassion is one of the best things about us. Ad Misericordiam is what happens when that compassion gets redirected -- when pity or sympathy is used to support a conclusion that the suffering itself does not actually justify. The feeling of 'I should help this person' quietly transforms into 'therefore what they are saying must be right,' and we do not always notice the shift.