Example of indirection This link will take you to an automated 15 second PowerPoint-like slide deck that asks you to do some basic arithmetic and then draws a conclusion from your answers. When the slide show is over, it will return you to this screen.
Since Gorgias brings up the topic of magic (Encomium of Helen), I want to say a few words about the rhetorical technique of indirection.
Indirection is the technique of doing or saying one thing while appearing to do or say something else. Based on this definition, nearly all rhetoric is a form of indirection (and magic) because the fundamental rhetorical principle is subtlety. As Aristotle explains, "Naturalness is persuasive, artificiality is the contrary; for our hearers are prejudiced and think we have some design against them," (Rhetoric, 3.2, 1404b).
Begin by disarming. Make yourself small, pleasant, helpful, unassuming, non-threatening. Under promise; over deliver.
Magicians use indirection to entertain and astonish. They convince you that you are doing something when in fact you are doing something else, so that you are amazed when the obvious consequence of what you are actually doing happens. Rhetors, that is people communicating in a conscious fashion, can use indirection so that you hear without listening to the speech they aren't giving.
The simplest method is to say something and then immediately take it back, so that in effect you are saying two things and nothing. This is sometimes called double speak. Former President Trump is a master at this. I'm paraphrasing here, but I've heard him say many things like. "It's amazing. A real game changer. Or maybe not. But it's something to look into."
Akin to apophasis, "Some people say my opponent is a disreputable, double-dealing, despicable politician. I don't throw shade."
Here's example of how another kind of indirection works. If you feel compelled to censure or rebuke someone who is more powerful than you or whose negative reaction you have some reason to avoid, or if you think they won't listen if you reprove them directly, you can always condemn the behavior and leave them out of it. Or you can condemn the motivation for the behavior and leave even the behavior out of it. You could pick a historical figure and talk about their struggles with whatever your person is struggling with, and make it sound like you are really talking about this historical person, not the person you are actually talking to. Or you could talk about some scientific study you heard about. The idea is to make whatever you are talking about interesting on it's own merits, leaving the information or instruction intact, there to be picked up on but not focused on by your listener. The trick, or magic, here is to give the sermon without preaching, without sounding holier than thou. People who are good at this are inclined toward story-telling anyway. Part of being rhetorically invisible is always doing what you always do.
A similar form of indirection is asking a question instead of making a demand. "You wouldn't happen to have a bottle of water, would you?" is obviously quite a bit different from "Somebody get me some water". A variant of this is making a statement from which you hope your listener will draw the correct inference. "I'm thirsty," for example. The advantage of such an indirect approach is that it may give you a chance to see if your listener is paying attention to you, is on the same page as you, as it were, and it may also help to hide or minimize a difference in status. You are in a position to make demands, but you're a nice boss and you don't want to pull rank. The downside of asking when demanding is that you may not get what you want. If you make someone infer your needs, they may infer incorrectly or miss the point entirely. They may think you are weak, or that you don't know what you want. Or worse.
If you play "guess what's on my mind?" a lot you may alienate people. Men and women often get into relationship difficulties because women sometimes tend toward rhetorical acts that require inference while many men tend toward rhetorical acts that are direct, with the mismatching result that she thinks he is insensitive and he thinks she is vague.
The indirect form of gift-giving is doing someone a favor. Doing someone a favor can have both positive and negative affects. Everything depends on whether the receiver feels gratitude or humiliation. To help someone in front of their friends or family or business associates is likely to cause humiliation, especially if you are helping someone who has a big ego or whose ego excludes the idea of getting others to do favors for him or her. Doing a big favor for someone greater than you can be very dangerous, while doing a small one will seem only like flattery or even tribute. The opposite is also true, doing a favor for someone lower than you in the hierarchy can cause trouble as well, making the beneficiary feel more important than they are, or ungrateful. To avoid embarrassment and resentment or ingratitude, it is sometimes a very good idea to do a favor indirectly, so the receiver does not know immediately where their good fortune came from. If you want them indebted to you, then they need to know it was you, but you may not want to tell them yourself, although perhaps it will be enough if you don't tell them until you are alone. An even less direct method would be to have someone else (who you trust) tell them, or to leave a clue or two lying around so that your beneficiary can infer it was you. There are times, too, when you might prefer your beneficiary never knows it was you--when it's really about them and not about you.
Perhaps a minute version of the favor is politeness. Being conscious of someone else's state and making small efforts to make them feel respected or even appreciated can go a long way toward creating a situation favorable to persuasion. At very least it will reduce the risk of inadvertently creating resistance. Arthur Schopenhauer put it this way (notice the topic of the opposite of the opposite at the beginning and the argument from analogy at the end)
It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter -- an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy. A sensible man will be generous in the use of it. Wax, a substance naturally hard and brittle, can be made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it will take any shape you please. In the same way, by being polite and friendly you can make people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax (Counsels and Maxims)
Saying to someone, "I really like you" is a direct form of ingratiation and thus potentially embarrassing for both parties. This is why we have flattery, which is an indirect form of ingratiation. Telling someone you like their shoes or their suit is an indirect form of flattery. Being appropriately indirect is the key to success, typically. Saying something like, "Look at those shoes! You have great taste in fashion; you must be crazy rich", is a slobbering sort of way to suck up to someone, whereas, "oooh, cool are those Prada?" is much less likely to come across grossly (assuming they are Prada or some aspiring but less expensive brand).
I did the opposite of this once, by accident, although in retrospect I was glad I did it. A young woman whose dad was rich enough to buy her a sports car gave me a ride to a restaurant, and as I was getting into her Maserati in the semi-darkness I said, "Hey cool car; is this Mazda?" She did her best to pass it off as the faux paus of a Canadian rube, but she was clearly pissed off.
Flattery only works if the person doesn't know you are flattering them, or if they do but don't suspect you have any real designs on them, or if they are the sort of person who wants to be flattered. Flattery typically works best on the vain, the young, and the insecure. It also works best if the person doing the flattering has the status or experience to know what they are praising. The simplest form of flattery is to like what the other person likes, or to show an interest in what they have to say (which won't work if the flatteree isn't interested in the flatterer's opinion). If you are going to use praise, praise them for something they fear they lack -- don't tell a conventionally beautiful person you think they are beautiful, tell them you think they are smart. (Young people want to be mature; old people want to be hip. Is that expression even used anymore? I'm too old to know.)
A more subtle because more indirect form of flattery is self-deprecation, where you make someone feel good by making fun of yourself. This will work only if you are "superior" to them or they feel "inferior" to you or are intimidated by you and you will be better off if they don't feel that way. I stumbled across an article about self-deprecation where the authors used this as an example: "I'm smart as a horse and hung like Einstein". That's hardly a universally applicable example, but if the right kind of man says it in the right way, at the right place and time, to the right person, it might get a useful laugh. I saw a tee shirt recently that said, "I'm no rocket surgeon." And then of course there is the always reliable I wrote this more than 8 years ago, when people still watched The Simpsons. It is no longer reliable, I think. Homeric allusion, "I am so smart, s-m-r-t."
Humor, by the way, often relies on indirection. The disjunction created between what you lead the audience to expect and what you eventually give them, will create laughter if it doesn't create disappointment or anger. Humor resides in the unexpected, admiration in the better than expected, amazement in the inexplicable, awe in the previously unimaginable. Disappointment in the reverse.
The most common kind of indirection is perhaps irony. The "Is this an Mazda?" question would have been a kind of irony if there had been someone there who liked to make fun of the rich and undeserving. The humor for the cynical observer would have been in our collective but hidden (indirect) stance against the unsuspecting snob.
Allegory is a more elaborate and sustained use of indirection than irony, obviously, and one that enables a wide range of audience responses. Political allegory, think Orwell's Animal Farm for example, can protect both the author and the knowing audience by distracting or confusing those in power and those too naive to realize they are being abused by those in power.
Indirection is also a dialectical technique (think cross-examination), where in the game of question and answer, as we will see when we read Plato's Gorgias one asks a question at one or two removes from what one really wants the opponent to admit, to keep them off balance and unable to prepare a defense. If you ask, "Were you at the seen of the crime?" you're less likely to get an admission you can use than if you ask, "Were you at the Corner Tavern on Halloween last year?" Turn on any detective show and you will see at least one example before it is over.
Here's a better more specific example. I found this in You Can Read Anyone, David J. Lieberman.
The question is, "Are you happy in your marriage?" The primary correlated statistic is: people who are happy in marriage are grateful for their spouse. The secondary correlated statistic is: a person who is grateful for his spouse tends not to take advantage of her [sic.] The question is, "Do you think taking advantage of your spouse is simply part of marriage?"
If you asked outright, are you happily married, convention might steer the respondent to answer untruthfully. Who admits to a room full of stranters to being unhappily married? So asking a question that allows the desired inferance while avoiding a conventional answer might be more effective.
He also offers the example of a trial lawyer who wants to know if a prospective juror is pro death penalty. Not wanting to ask directly, and knowing that most people who are pro death penalty are anti gun control, the lawyer might ask whether Smith and Wesson should be held accountable for deaths caused by their guns (38).
Another form of indirection relevant to cross-examination is what is called a complex question, where the answer necessarily incriminates the answerer: Have you stopped beating your spouse? That looks like a yes or no question but either yes or no are equally incriminating. Obviously the respondent has to object to the question. There are far more subtle forms of a complex question, of course. Plato explicitly tells us to avoid complex questions when performing dialectic (in Phaedrus I don't remember exactly where off hand. Trust me.).
Nearly all political campaigns are organized around expressions that are designed to make opposition appear unreasonable. If the opponent accepts the terms of the debate, he will lose automatically. This is why so much political discussion is fruitless. There is no stasis upon which to build a real argument. Someone who is "pro-life" is not therefore "anti-choice", just as one who is "pro-choice" is not therefore "anti-life." Those expressions disable real debate by excluding the opposition from the realm of reasonable beings. A shouting match like the kind engendered by such asystatic arguments is also a form of indirection. If you find yourself cornered by two opponents, set one against the other, and while they are fighting you can slip away.
1*9 = 9, 2*9 = 18, 3*9 = 27, etc. the result is always 9
And 9 - 5 always = 4
4 = d, and not many countries begin with d