In my never ending quest for Persuasion Truth, consider with me now, this scripture . . .

8 But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. 9 Now God had brought Daniel into the favor and goodwill of the chief of the eunuchs. 10 And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who has appointed your food and drink. For why should he see your faces looking worse than the young men who are your age? Then you would endanger my head before the king.”

11 So Daniel said to the steward[a] whom the chief of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 12 “Please test your servants for ten days, and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then let our appearance be examined before you, and the appearance of the young men who eat the portion of the king’s delicacies; and as you see fit, so deal with your servants.” 14 So he consented with them in this matter, and tested them ten days.

15 And at the end of ten days their features appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s delicacies. 16 Thus the steward took away their portion of delicacies and the wine that they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

Daniel 1:8-16

Holy Comparison and Control!  Daniel directs the King’s chief of servants (who were also eunuchs) to conduct a pre-post control group design experiment with diet as the independent variable and appearance and fatness of flesh as dependent variables.  This is the oldest example of experimental research I’ve ever encountered.  Even Plato, Aristotle, and those really smart Greeks missed this!

Unstated is whether the chief used randomization to assign his young men to either the Treatment (Daniel’s diet) or Control (the King’s diet).  Given the Divine Inspiration here, God’s hand would have directed random selection and assignment of the King’s eunuchs to either condition, since God must understand the power of randomization even if evolutionists, economists, epidemiologists, and environmentalists don’t.

Realize, too, that Daniel uses experimental research as a persuasion Argument – information that bears on the central merits of the issue – to convince the chief of the King’s eunuchs to change the eating habits of the servants.  Daniel argues his case with empirical evidence.

Hey, do the Food Police know about this?  Yet another Biblical example of the importance of diet and nutrition (cf. Genesis and the Apple Diet)!  The news here is better than the Garden of Eden fiasco.  Daniel recommends a diet high in veggies and low in wine and the “King’s delicacies.”

P.S.  This Daniel is the Old Testament prophet from the Babylonian Captivity.  Not only did he introduce experimental research, he survived a meeting in the lion’s den.  He also left a beautiful and wise Book of prophecy and wisdom that is another kind of writing on the wall.

“Which is it?  Is man only God’s mistake or God only man’s mistake?”

from Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, Number 7.

Thus spoke Nietzsche, revealing to those with eyes behind eyes, a fabulous persuasion tactic, I coin up as Paradoxy.

Paradoxy takes three terms – in Nietzsche’s case, God, man, and mistakes – and poses them in linguistic opposition.  Two concepts must share overlapping meaning (God and man) and the third term takes a critical stance (mistake) that forces you to determine whether and how A -> B or B -> A best fits the critical stance.

Let’s play with Paradoxy.

Beautiful:  Do you wear Versace or does Versace wear you?

Faithful:  Do you follow Osama or does Osama follow you?

Trivial:  Steve paradoxes Nietzsche or Nietzsche paradoxes Steve?

Paradoxy generally functions as a WATTage switch.  Paradoxy makes the target think more about the message and also provides a bias in a particular direction.  For example, Nietzsche’s Paradoxy makes you think more about God and man, but from the bias of Mistake.

Of course, to a persistent Low WATT processor, a Paradoxy may nicely function as a Cue with that critical stance term, Nietzsche’s Mistake in our running example, pointing to the “correct” take on God and man.  You don’t have to think about the conceptual relationship between God and man or which came first or whether the whole thing is altogether foolish; you need only know that it is a Mistake!

Paradoxy could also function as an Argument.  A well done Paradoxy requires a bright mind and a clever facility with language.  People who can create more and better Paradoxy’s are certainly providing crucial information about verbal intelligence.  Thus, the quantity and quality of Paradoxy is an Argument.

So, my new play, Paradoxy, functions as either a WATTage switch, an Argument, or a Cue depending on prespecified conditions.  Most commonly, Paradoxy will function as the WATTage switch with just a bit of Bias.

Paradoxy is similar to rhetorical questions.  It’s a linguistic variable that performs a persuasion function.  With rhetorical questions, let’s make sure we know the terminology.

A rhetorical question is an utterance that is a statement, but looks like a question.  A rhetorical is a polite way of making a claim without appearing to take a stand.

People who study longer get better grades, don’t they?

Persuasion blogs build character, don’t they?

He’s made his point, hasn’t he?

What provides the persuasion force with both rhetorical questions and Paradoxy is their linguistic attribute.  They force us to use language in a way that affects persuasive processing.

Of course, Nietzsche is neither the first nor the last paradoxy trickster.  Paradoxy, properly dressed, is in the Dialectic clan, which shows Socrates, Hegel, and Marx in the family picture.

Let’s get out of here on this Paradoxy.

Origins:  philosophy makes persuasion or persuasion makes philosophy?

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

Genesis 22:1-2

One of the most harrowing and confusing episodes in the Old Testament occurs in Genesis with Abraham giving his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering to the Lord.  The Lord directs Abraham to do this and Abraham faithfully complies.  Isaac apparently shows no resistance even while his father ties him to the altar.

Some people can read this as the Terrible God demanding cruel obedience, nervously testing His subjects to see if they will indeed comply.  Yet, this interpretation is obviously illogical because God being God knew the end of the story even before He ordered Abraham to make the sacrifice.  God clearly did not do this to see what would happen – He knew.  So, why?

Consider persuasion theory.  Performing actions strengthens beliefs and attitudes.  Thus, if you want your children to form a positive attitude about cleanliness and conscientiousness, have them engage in behaviors like brushing their teeth or picking up their room.  Merely by performance of behavior, children can develop the desired beliefs and attitudes.  You thus create the attitude through action, not through Central Route Arguments.

Even more compelling here is Dissonance Theory.  A classic method of internal change with Dissonance is through the Counter-Attitudinal Behavior.  You set up some situation that provokes people into doing something they do not like and after they do the action, their attitude will move to support the behavior.  And, if a father standing over his beloved son with a fatal knife in his hands is not an example of a Counter Attitudinal Behavior, we need to rewrite a lot of journals and books.

Now, this is human nature.  All people respond this way.  They tend to develop, strengthen, or change attitudes and beliefs from the behaviors they enact, creating, if you will, change from the outside in.  Apply this to our problem with Abraham’s attempted sacrifice.

Think about the persuasion source and the persuasion receiver in this story.  Abraham is the Other Guy, the receiver, and God is the persuasion agent, the source.  God wants to strengthen Abraham’s faith (belief and attitude) and has Abraham perform behaviors that serve this purpose.  God orders the sacrifice not because God needs the reassurance, but because God wants to prove Abraham’s faith to Abraham – and so too with Isaac.

A persuasion perspective on this event provides a very different understanding.  Instead of the Terrible God, we have God doing persuasion on his beloved Abraham.  And, God uses persuasion not because God is limited, but because humans are limited with their human nature.  Along with signs and miracles, God uses plain old persuasion.

Modern persuasion research associates the foot in the door persuasion tactic with a 1966 study from Jonathan Freedman.  Freedman showed that if you get acceptance with a first, small request, you can get greater acceptance with a second, larger request.  Turns out there’s an earlier and well documented test of this tactic.  Consider the text.

And the LORD said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, “I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the LORD. And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? “Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? “Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And the LORD said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.” Then Abraham answered and said, “Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: “Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five?” And He said, “If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it.” Then he spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose there should be forty found there?” And He said, “I will not do it for the sake of forty.” And he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Suppose thirty should be found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” Then he said, “Indeed now, I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: Suppose twenty should be found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty.” And he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.” So the LORD went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

This from Genesis 18:20-33.

Now, here’s the interesting question.  Who is using foot in the door:  Abraham or the Lord?

If you count and think, you know that the Cool Table is on a Nudge bender seeking small effects to make big changes in that nuanced way of Cool Table Intellectuals.  They think they are making a three-rail, four-ball combination to drop the nine ball in the corner pocket when all they produce is a bad break, but in all the noise and confusion, no one remembers the original aim of the nine ball in the corner pocket, so All’s Well That Ends Well and yet another way that Shakespeare is a smart persuasion commentator.  But I digress in my faux Cool Table way, mixing Shakespeare with billiards to illuminate the Other Guy’s folly . . . back to the opera!

Small is once again beautiful, particularly in health and safety.  Small salt.  Small sugar.  Small warning labels.  Small climate change.  Small financial reform.  All leading to Big Change (Nudge, baby, Nudge).  I need to burnish my credential here as a Small Guy, so let me make a Small Nudge for Big Health.

Let’s regulate church attendance.

The research on this is painfully Cool.  Read this nice observational study for your first sting of truth.  More church attendance produces longer and healthier lives.  And, the effect size is right in the power alley of Nudgers:  Small.  Taken as a simple main effect (just the correlation between church attendance and health at age 70), the Windowpane is about a 40/60, a smallish size.  If you add new variables, you can reduce the effect to zero, but no one in public policy would ever try to do that – in fact they usually have to add new variables to make their Nudge appear merely statistically significant, much less practically useful.  So, the research evidence for church attendance all by itself is a much better Nudge for Health than:

Calorie Counts on Menus

Lower Salt in Processed Foods

Tax on Sugared Sodas

Health Care Reform for Mortality

Stated more plainly, church attendance has a more clear effect on health and longevity than these other Nudges.  Thus, you don’t have play the statistics guitar like a maestro to make music.  Best of all, the effect isn’t Large, but is Small.  Which we know is beautiful for the Cool Table.

Thus, if the Obama Administration was to regulate church attendance to increase consumption of this activity (rather than decrease consumption as is more often the case), Americans would live longer and healthier lives.  But just a little.

Consider various advantages of this Nudge.

1.  It is a regulation to Increase rather than Decrease activity.  Most Obama Nudges take that sour School Marm orientation where what is Bad is Good for you!  Less sugar.  Less salt.  Less trans fat.  Less!  Less!  Less!  With church attendance, we can play to human nature.  More!  More!  More! the Cool Table can cry to us because the observational research proves that More Attendance is More Healthy!  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a government that wants you to do More?

2.  This does not establish Religion, so is Constitutional.  Nothing in the research says that anyone believes anything while sitting in church.  It only measures how often you show up at a shul, mosque, cathedral, or VFW basement.  Church attendance does not require:  1) a particular kind of building, 2) belief or acceptance of anything said in the building, 3) behavioral consistency with anything said in the church.  All the research demonstrates is that the behavior of regularly going to a particular place where a particular activity occurs produces better health outcomes.  Thus, atheists can attend any Church of any faith, not believe a Word they hear, do nothing suggested by the Word they hear, or attend a different Church every time.  So, too, that Christians of the most nominal theology could attend Jewish or Muslim buildings, not believe the Word they hear or do anything consistent with that Word, and still obtain the positive health outcome.  We’ve got no Constitutional problem here, folks.

[FauxItAll Sidebar:  Interestingly, behavior is a better predictor of health than cognition.  If you ask people to rate themselves on how religious they are, then track their health into the future, you find a virtual zero relationship between religiosity and mortality.  You might have heard of the startling distinction between the Visible and the Invisible Church.  The Visible Church is the one filled with all the people while the Invisible Church, known only to God, is the one filled with only the genuine  believers among all the people in the building.  Well, according to the research, it doesn't matter whether you are part of the Visible or Invisible Church (faith), but whether you are in Church (behavior).  End of Sidebar!]

3.  Church attendance has been falling in the US over the past 50 years, but the infrastructure is still there.  Thus, we can have a surge of new attendance and we’ve got plenty of capacity to handle it.  This isn’t like the interesting problem we’re facing with health care reform where an additional 30 million customers are going to be crowding into the already jammed waiting rooms demanding more services from a reduced corps of health care professionals.  We’ve got the ways and means already!

Hey, if this doesn’t put your knickers in a twist, you don’t think before you shout.

Or Nudge.

Amen.