# In what esteem is General Semantics held these days?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 3, 2006, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023 "2006-07-03T05:59:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/21 "2006-07-05T21:42:39Z")

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[QUOTE=Excalibre]  
I’m curious to know what your job is.  
[/QUOTE]  
Among other things, I work as a professional magician. I specialise in ‘mind’ magic and effects to do with the way we think and form conclusions.

I also sometimes lecture on something called ‘cold reading’. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it’s a very persuasive set of psychological techniques which _can_ be used to encourage people to form false conclusions, although it does have many other uses, many of them benign. You can Google on ‘cold readihng’ and find out much more. I also teach ‘persuasion skills’ to managers and sales people.

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**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-what-esteem-is-general-semantics-held-these-days/363023/22 "2006-07-05T21:47:38Z")

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[QUOTE=ianzin]  
Among other things, I work as a professional magician. I specialise in ‘mind’ magic and effects to do with the way we think and form conclusions.

I also sometimes lecture on something called ‘cold reading’. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it’s a very persuasive set of psychological techniques which _can_ be used to encourage people to form false conclusions, although it does have many other uses, many of them benign. You can Google on ‘cold readihng’ and find out much more.  
[/quote]

I’m familiar with the term.

Interesting, though. I never really thought about stage magic in that sense - deliberately deceiving people - but I guess it is a good description.

> [@](#):
>
> I also teach ‘persuasion skills’ to managers and sales people.

Again with my curiosity, but I’m wondering about what “persuasion skills” amount to. Do you have an article or something you could link to?

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