Just kidding.
George Lakoff mentioned something that made me want to read his book. Namely that people who have lost the capacity for emotion through injury or stroke are unable to reason through problems and make decisions the way that comes natural to most normal people. I think he was arguing for a physiological understanding of reason, which your post skipped over (it seems to me), and that attempting to encourage humans to be more dispassionate like computers is actually impossible. I don't think he was arguing that we should try to appeal to people's emotions rather than reason with them, but rather that we change our understanding of the reasoning mechanism of humans when we communicate with them.
and that attempting to encourage humans to be more dispassionate like computers is actually impossible.
I anticipated this response. No, we're not all supposed to be like Mr. Spock and only live logically. Critical thinking requires a dispassionate view. It doesn't mean living dispassionately, it just means being objective about something. So live, love, laugh and have passion for truth, but also know when you're being manipulated and understand how emotions can cloud reason.
