“As a human being, we have marginalized him, but as an artist, he has no sense of himself as an outsider, or an insider for that matter, because he has no sense of what these categories mean. He has no sense of the an audience at all, critical or otherwise. He simply needs to express something. Compulsion without ambition. Not only can this not be faked, it cannot be willed either. He could not stop what he is doing or change it, or tailor it to someone else’s expectations, if he wanted to.”

This from Jonathan Dee’s novel, The Privileges, page 180. Spoken by Agnew, the art professor, it describes a fictional street artist outside the Art Institute of Chicago doing Art Brut, raw art, an art unschooled, untrained, and nearly mad. The key element of Art Brut glows in the sentence,

Compulsion without ambition.

And, as well observed,

. . . a condition that can neither be faked nor willed.

Shade off these meanings just a bit and you must find related concepts like Sincerity and Authenticity. Authenticity often feels compulsive; you just have to say it regardless of the consequence. And, it is an act that cannot be faked or willed – another great way to see Authenticity.

Persuasion is never compulsive and is always ambitious. And, it Changes best when both faked and willed. Persuasion cannot be Art Brut. Persuasion is only Art.

And since you can do Science with Persuasion, Science is Art!

P.S. The Privileges is a great metaphor of persuasion and self-persuasion. Jonathan Dee shows how people Change Other Guys and in so doing Change themselves. And while Adam, Cynthia, Jonas, and April Morey understand the Changes in the Other Guys, they do not see it in themselves. I find parallels to the Great Gatsby, another who aspired to Change and in so doing doomed himself. While none of the Morey’s end up floating dead in a pool, all of them have died in ways they cannot see.

Psychological science makes the New York Times again . . . on the opinion pages with the delightfully headlined, “Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay.” The opinion writers who also play psychological scientists in their day job offer a couple of familiar anecdotes about notorious gay-bashers like Ted Haggard who had strong gay tendencies themselves. They then narrate quickly their scientific science that demonstrates why folks with repressed gay tendencies respond with anti-gay prejudice: It’s implicit, baby, implicit.

But, as careful, thoughtful, and cool scientists and opinion writers they are quick to note limitations to their science and opinions.

It’s important to stress the obvious: Not all those who campaign against gay men and lesbians secretly feel same-sex attractions. But at least some who oppose homosexuality are likely to be individuals struggling against parts of themselves, having themselves been victims of oppression and lack of acceptance. The costs are great, not only for the targets of anti-gay efforts but also often for the perpetrators. We would do well to remember that all involved deserve our compassion.

Aren’t you glad there are people like this who do the hard work of science to figure this out for you?

Don’t hate the haters, baby. Wouldn’t be compassionate. And besides, the haters can’t help themselves because their parents were haters. Except for the haters who don’t fit our data, but still feel the compassion.

So, says psychological science.

Do I exaggerate? A writer at Slate reads the editorial, oops, the science and says . . .

Their argument—summed up in the Times headline as “Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay”—promises to resolve a long-running debate in the field. For at least 15 years, scientists have been trying to use objective laboratory measures to prove the he-who-smelt-it-dealt-it theory of human sexuality.

Again, who wants their science on the opinion page of a newspaper? And who wants two handed science – here’s why, on the other hand, here’s why not – anywhere? The Rules.

All Bad Science Is Persuasive.

While I’m pretty sure that this story is true in the details, I think that it is not true in the main point. The NYTimes profiles a sweet and loving academic who built a computer model of health insurance that drove Health Care legislation.

Mr. Gruber has spent decades modeling the intricacies of the health care ecosystem, which involves making predictions about how new laws will play out based on past experience and economic theory. It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance.

Jonathan Gruber’s equations proved beyond reason, doubt, and faith that reform would fail without the mandate that all individuals must participate. You see the trail in the enthymeme. The equations prove reform requires the mandate. The equations are irrefutable Science. Legislation then requires the mandate. We now wait to see whether the mandate is Constitutional, an element in reality apparently omitted from computer models.

Just as I assert that there are No Laws of Persuasion, I’d extend that to say there are No Laws of Computer Models. The Rule proves itself. If you could Lawfully create Computer Models of complex systems, you could control and manipulate those systems at your whim, impulse, or insight. Without much effort you can find fabulous failures of computer models for economic phenomena like the stock market, climate change, and just about any complexity in the world some bright thought he could fashion into wings and fly to the sun. Modeling is a fun tool for developing theory, but is a proven failure as even a metaphor for reality. Life does not operate like a model.

What, a math geek disdains math models? No. As a persuasion geek I disdain math models that exclude persuasion concepts. They’re great for Science, but terrible for Change. By definition the exercise had to assume that everything in the model was at least legal and would be properly written into law. If that assumption is wrong, the equations may still form a great model, but they have no meaning or worth in the real world. As a persuasion guy, I think that models alone usually do not capture all the relevant features in the Local, as in this case, considerations of Constitutionality.

The modeling failure here is not in Gruber’s work alone. The failure is in making the models too small and excluding how to write and pass the legislation so that it gets the science you want along with niceties like surviving court challenges. FauxItAlls often fail to see that turning science into practice requires science plus persuasion and not science alone. As a great and terrible illustration, theoretical physicists alone did not build the atomic bomb that ended World War II. Without engineering, the device was nothing more than a computer model of Bang! You’re Dead. Analogously, I metaphor that these computer models of health insurance are little more than expressions of Bang! You’re Cured.

Here’s a really nice NYT article looking at academic researchers looking at the Occupy movement. Quite against the main point of the effort, the article reveals why OWS persuasion is so bad. Consider just two observations.

But getting a handle on Occupy, with its amorphous structure and aims, could be more challenging, Ms. Skocpol said. “The Tea Party from the beginning saw themselves as leveraging and changing the Republican Party, while the Occupy people are much more ambivalent,” she said. “That makes them harder to pin down.”

The absence of strategic TACTs kills OWS as a persuasion force and leaves them little more than Dancing Bears, just entertainment from zealots. Passion without purpose destroys persuasion. It’s also pretty bad for research.

Some researchers also say that the sympathy many academics feel for the movement risks undermining objective research. Edward Maguire, a criminologist at American University who is leading a study of attitudes toward the police and the law among Occupy protesters in six cities, cited an incident in which one research assistant at a demonstration in Washington in March “handed in her ID, turned in her clipboard and within minutes got arrested.”

Youth. Passion. Sincerity. I get it. Hurray Passion! But, please understand the limits of passion. Especially when you are trying to Change the World.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

All Sincere Research Is Worse.

Peggy Noonan destroys the re-election chances of President Obama in this clear, accurate, and pugnacious WSJ takedown.

But — and forgive me, because what I’m about to say is rude — has anyone noticed how boring he is? Plonking platitude after plonking platitude. To see Mr. Obama on the stump is to see a man at the podium who’s constantly dribbling away the punch line. He looks pleasant but lacks joy; he’s cool but lacks vigor. A lot of what he says could have been said by a president 12 or 20 years ago, little is anchored to the moment. As he makes his points he often seems distracted, as if he’s holding a private conversation in his head, noticing crowd size, for instance, and wishing the front row would start fainting again, like they used to.

She then details the wide, deep, and persistent failures of Obama ranging from his elegant empty suits to his revulsion at the politics of the fleshly with important stops along the way for personnel and policy failures. Counting his flaws, Noonan finds hope for change in November.

Anybody in political persuasion will read this article and stop. Noonan is not a fool on this one and what she writes resonates. But, she’s wrong. Let’s zig on her zag.

Progressive Democrats have spent a lot of time in the Presidential desert since 1980. In those past 32 years they had Clinton for 8 years, but progressives hated Clinton and grit their teeth counting his years in their column. Only 2009-2010 with Obama were golden. They had a bad year in 2011 and 2012 won’t be better, but they are in power with a guy they love. You think they won’t be standing when the bell rings?

Obama will take terrible hits over serious failures in office, most notably on the Say-Do gap between his spoken campaign promises on the economy and the Administration performance on the economy. Romney will clobber him on this. So what?

If Obama can take a punch, then he’ll be dangerous on Election Day. His base will be energized if only at the punishing prospect of loading up the camels and the tents for Four More Years in the sand. If Obama survives the punishment of the campaign AND runs a first class Get Out The Vote operation on Election Day, then progressives will send camels to the Republicans.

Now the analysis gets interesting. All elections depend on turnout, but this one will be crucial, more like George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign. John Kerry could have easily won that race, but made blunders that left him a nose behind at the finish line. Bush needed blunders and a great turnout to win. That’s the standard that Obama wants to hit.

Again, while all elections are difficult, Mr. Obama has never faced a race like this one. Everyone knows him and lots of them hate his guts. In none of his prior races has he confronted so much resistance and enraged counter-attacking. This is an Existential Race and Obama’s first.

Thus, this election turns less on Obama’s performance than on his will. He starts with incumbency, a strong base, a lot of money, and plenty of experience. Even with his failures and the energized campaigning of his opponents, Obama only needs to take a punch and deliver the turnout on Election Day to win. And that demands a will to win.

If you’re old enough then you might recall the 1992 election when George H.W. Bush ran for re-election versus Bill Clinton. Bush had triumphed in Desert Storm, but then mishandled a slumping economy, seeming out of touch and unconcerned. Bush knew the economic numbers were better than they looked and felt confident the slump would end soon. But, his confidence came across as boredom or disdain. It was captured in this shot.

Bush always seemed like he wanted to be somewhere else than campaigning for his job. He lacked the will to power in every sense of that clichéd phrase. Bill Clinton, by sharp contrast, was nothing but an earnest job-seeker, telling anyone who would listen that he wanted the job and would work hard at it.

Does Obama have the will to power?

Persuaders Can Be Famous or Effective, but Not Both.

P.S. Scroll down for two related posts on Obama election persuasion.