Nauseam, argumentum ad 113Advertisers have long been life members of the ad nauseam
society. They know that a specious claim acquires credibility and
force if it is repeated often enough. They know the importance of
building up not a rational conviction but a habit of association.
It washes whiter than bleach; that's whiter than bleach; yes, whiter than
bleach.
(What they tell us three times is true.)Many of the proverbs we hear in childhood are dinned into us
so many times that we often come to suppose that there must be
truth in them. This assumption seems able to survive all of the
contrary evidence which life thrusts before us, and in some cases
survives a simultaneous belief in contradictory proverbs. It is
quite hard to look before you leap without being lost through
hesitation, and while many hands make light work, they do tend
to spoil the broth. All of which shows the power of the simple ad
nauseam.
To use the argumentum ad nauseam is easy enough: all you
have to do is to repeat yourself. It is harder to recognize the
situations where it might succeed. The general rule is that con-
stant repetition over a long period of time is more effective than
short bursts. You must be totally impervious to arguments
against you, always reiterating the same point. This not only
bores your audience to tears, it also instils in them the futility of
opposing you. And when they give up in total weariness,
observers will begin to suppose that they can no longer counter
your claims.
The civil servant advising his minister provides a case-study of
the argumentum ad nauseam:
But Minister, as I have been explaining for two years, there is no way in
which we can cut the administrative costs of this department. Every