socratic method

Guided exploration?  Or gentle persuasion?

Whichever, clearly out of fashion.  Nowadays other people’s opinions are pure inconvenience.

Within the culture of mass marketing, to entertain them earnestly is considered quaint at best.  

Nuisances, rather, to be dispatched as quickly as possible:

Nothing that I think matters so long as, when I act, I act in your best interests, to increase your wealth and power,

which means – more often than not and essentially – in my own worst interests.

A surprisingly easy thing to convince me to do.

Madison Avenue, not the Athenian Agora.