Right, or just persuasive?

If you aren't persuasive, you lose in a debate. That is a sad fact of life. We recognize that reasoning must be transparent and public, and therefore our public policies should be determined by the winner of a dialogue, who demonstrates that he understands what types of reasons are compelling to others' interests. Compromise is essentially for clear speakers and thinkers.

But I think this is a problem on the individual persuasive/advisory level, where the articulate also have an advantage. A person necessarily understands her own interests better than others can. But if she cannot articulate her own position to herself, she can often be persuaded by others to follow a different course of action that is not, in fact, best for her. It is difficult to resist the persuasive power of a well-articulated intuition, unless we can defend our own intuitions in a similarly articulate manner.

I agree that the most articulate communicators are also the clearest thinkers, and often their expressed reasons simply are better than those from muddier thoughts. It is simply easier to think more deeply and complexly if one is working with clear parts. However, their reasons are often based on intuitions as well - they have just learned to understand those intuitions more clearly. The skill of explaining often doesn't change the intuition itself; the intuition may be flat wrong, whereas someone with weaker powers of communication has the correct intuition. This is especially dangerous when the articulate give advice, because their intuitions are especially ill-attuned to understand what is best for others.

Exactly how good is a Starbucks Vivanno?

Interpersonal comparisons of utility are indeed difficult to make because of the imprecision of language. Lauren Henry may think that a chocolate-banana Vivanno at Starbucks with espresso is "SO good" and gush about it for thirty seconds while I may think it is merely "a nice combination" because it is healthy, chocolatey, and full of caffeine. Or perhaps the latter is all that Lauren Henry thinks, she just takes that combination to be even more valuable than I do and thus worth thirty seconds of gush... Or perhaps she thinks no more of the combination than I do, but still thinks the combination worthy of thirty seconds of gush because of her more effusive tendencies... Which is it?

It could be that this question is as insignificant as the thought experiment of asking whether everyone sees blue as you see red, but expresses red in the same way that you express blue. But it could also be more significant, because it would seem to assign more moral weight to certain individuals based on the mere fact that they are more emotional and therefore gain more utility from certain acts - or fewer resources because they are likely to achieve the same utility from them. When we estimate utility, do we mean the mere emotional response, or the situation that normally produces a certain emotional response?