The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time

Narratives run the world. Here, we dissect how they work, and how to craft your own.

Join me in exploring Rhetoric, the art of influence.

Substack 👇

[Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו @netanyahu]

My salute to the Indian pilot Captain Smit Machchhar for his extraordinary bravery.

Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster.

He saved the lives of 174 people, including Israeli citizens and other nationals.

I wish Captain Machchhar a speedy and full recovery.

He is a true hero.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

"Embarrassed, obscure, and feeble sentences are generally, of not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure, and feeble thought." - Hugh Blair

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

@ben_sage AI governance steward, Efficient AI usage, Chief AI evangelist, AI consultant... Among others

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

@dishadahiyaa Any original thoughts or do you just repeat what the author says?

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

A good shorthand to protect yourself against social media brainwashing is to become deeply skeptical about whatever the algo wants you to believe.

The algo shows you content you'd be most like to agree with without scrutiny, thus it's this content that deserves to be scrutinized

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

@vivoplt Understand humans.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

Momentum solves everything.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

I'm good at writing abstract shi that means nothing to anyone except me

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

Action reveals the mechanisms of life better than contemplation ever can

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

The only business of your beliefs is to serve your ambition.

To get you to where you want to be.

Their correctness is irrelevant.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

The most powerful move in an argument is not to respond.
It is to redefine what the argument is about.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

The hardest person to teach isn't he who lacks knowledge.

It's he who doesn't know shit but thinks himself an expert. A know-it-all.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

This is highly understating AI's utility in giving someone working knowledge of a domain quickly and enabling them to make informed decisions.

Rulers/CEOs have always had an army of technocrats based on whose opinions they would take decisions.

AI is that army for everyone.

[nic carter @nic_carter]

It should be pretty obvious at this point that AI is a "force multiplier" not a "labor substitute".

It helps experts be better at things they are already good at. It doesn't let beginners match experts.

If you can't write, anything you write with AI will be unmitigated slop.

If you aren't a software engineer, anything you vibecode with AI will have security holes and won't be able to scale past a toy demo.

If you blindly trust AI to deliver on a research task without knowing the subject matter, you won't be able to fact-check it.

There's this weird misconception of AI as something that completely levels the playing field. I don't see it that way at all. There are mathematicians deriving novel lemmas with off-the-shelf models. Normal people can't do that.

AI is a tool that makes experts better. It doesn't make everyone into an expert.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

Two different kinds of control.

One controls the frame.
The other refuses to be trapped in it.

That's rhetoric in the wild.
(full breakdown here: https://t.co/ZRld4wpI82)

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

A viral exchange between @nntaleb and @lexfridman wasn't really about books. Rather about someting deeper.
Who gets to be taken seriously.

[The Rhetorician - Studying Influence Across Time @TheRhetoricianX]

By the time Lex responds, the frame is already set. And Lex does the only thing that works.

He steps out of the frame.

No defense. No counterattack. Just composure.