Testimonial Engineering

Estimate how a plan, investment, or claim will turn out by first asking what happened to similar cases, rather than reasoning from the specifics of this one and the story you have been told about it.

Whenever you are shown a count ("4,000 complaints", "12 deaths", "9 out of 10 dentists"), ask "out of how many?", because a numerator on its own cannot tell you whether something is common, rare, rising, or falling.

Before weighing a recommendation, find out what the person making it gains if you say yes (commission, funding, votes, attention, status), and adjust how much independent confirmation you require accordingly.

Upload or paste an image (or a video frame) into an image search engine to find where else and when it has appeared, which exposes recycled photos, stolen profile pictures, and images given a false caption.

Before a campaign, advertisement, fundraising appeal, or pitch goes out, test it against the five TARES duties: Truthfulness of the message, Authenticity of the persuader, Respect for the audience, Equity of the appeal, and Social responsibility for the common good.

List every persuasive element in a campaign, tag each one as neutral craft, dual-use, or manipulative by design, and for each dual-use element write down where the line is and which side of it you are on.

Before publishing sponsored, affiliated, incentivized, or endorsed content, check that every material connection between the speaker and the brand or cause is disclosed clearly, conspicuously, in plain language, and in the same place and format as the claim it qualifies.