I didn’t call attention to this in the grandparent comment, but: note that I used the phrase “culpably bad” (instead of simply “bad”) deliberately.
Of course it’s bad to commit logical fallacies, to equivocate, etc. As a matter of epistemic rationality, these things are clearly mistakes! Likewise, as a pragmatic matter, failing to properly explain assumptions means that you will probably fail to create in your interlocutors a full and robust understanding of your ideas.
But to call these things “manipulative”, you’ve got to establish something more than just “imperfect epistemic rationality”, “sub-optimal pedagogy”, etc. You’ve got to have some sort of intent to mislead or control, perhaps; or some nefarious goal; or some deliberate effort to avoid one’s ideas being challenged; or—something, at any rate. By itself, none of this is “manipulation”!
Now, the closest you get to that is the bit about “they always changed the topic”. That seems like it probably has to be deliberate… doesn’t it? Well, it’s a clearly visible red flag, anyway. But… is this all that’s there?
I suspect that what you’re trying to get at is something like: “having noticed a red flag or two, you paid careful attention to the guru’s words and actions, now with a skeptical mindset; and soon enough it became clear to you that the ‘imperfections of reasoning’ could not have been innocent, the patterns of epistemic irrationality could not have been accidents, the ‘honest mistakes’ were not honest at all; and on the whole, the guy was clearly an operator, not a sincere truth-seeker”.
And that’s common enough (sadly), and certainly very important to learn how to notice. But what identifies these sorts of situations as such is the actual, specific patterns of behavior (like, for instance, “you correct the guru on something and they accept your correction, but then the next day they say the same wrong things to other people, acting as if their conversation with you never happened”).
You can’t get there by gesturing vaguely at high-level, ubiquitous features of someone’s thinking like “they commit logical fallacies sometimes”. And you certainly can’t get there by entirely misleading heuristics like “you ask someone questions about their ideas, and they have answers”!
I didn’t call attention to this in the grandparent comment, but: note that I used the phrase “culpably bad” (instead of simply “bad”) deliberately.
Of course it’s bad to commit logical fallacies, to equivocate, etc. As a matter of epistemic rationality, these things are clearly mistakes! Likewise, as a pragmatic matter, failing to properly explain assumptions means that you will probably fail to create in your interlocutors a full and robust understanding of your ideas.
But to call these things “manipulative”, you’ve got to establish something more than just “imperfect epistemic rationality”, “sub-optimal pedagogy”, etc. You’ve got to have some sort of intent to mislead or control, perhaps; or some nefarious goal; or some deliberate effort to avoid one’s ideas being challenged; or—something, at any rate. By itself, none of this is “manipulation”!
Now, the closest you get to that is the bit about “they always changed the topic”. That seems like it probably has to be deliberate… doesn’t it? Well, it’s a clearly visible red flag, anyway. But… is this all that’s there?
I suspect that what you’re trying to get at is something like: “having noticed a red flag or two, you paid careful attention to the guru’s words and actions, now with a skeptical mindset; and soon enough it became clear to you that the ‘imperfections of reasoning’ could not have been innocent, the patterns of epistemic irrationality could not have been accidents, the ‘honest mistakes’ were not honest at all; and on the whole, the guy was clearly an operator, not a sincere truth-seeker”.
And that’s common enough (sadly), and certainly very important to learn how to notice. But what identifies these sorts of situations as such is the actual, specific patterns of behavior (like, for instance, “you correct the guru on something and they accept your correction, but then the next day they say the same wrong things to other people, acting as if their conversation with you never happened”).
You can’t get there by gesturing vaguely at high-level, ubiquitous features of someone’s thinking like “they commit logical fallacies sometimes”. And you certainly can’t get there by entirely misleading heuristics like “you ask someone questions about their ideas, and they have answers”!