@roz Yeah, that one was me, I think. I'm mostly staying out of this one, though.
I think it was pointing a stick at someone's chest and saying 'bang' and expecting it to work or something similar, but yes.
Few people object to 'can be influenced'.
People object to 'can be influenced in a hopelessly unreasonable manner' in the social arena in precisely the same way as they would object to someone pointing a stick at someone's chest, saying "bang", and expecting it to blow a hole through them in the same way a shotgun would if this were to occur in combat.
This has nothing to do with dice pools whatsoever and everything to do with absurdity. The 'my medical dice won't bring someone back from the dead!' example is also excellent. The other I like to use is 'it does not matter what your dice say, you cannot throw a baseball and hit the moon'.
These limits exist in the physical and mental aspects of the game, too. People are just generally not stupid enough to try them.
Many people refuse to recognize the bounds of absurdity in the same way in social rolls, and too many people have tried to pull the 'I fixed your car and made my roll so now you have to fuck me' when, hey, maybe I hate that car and wanted it dead so I could buy a new one, and fixing it would make me frustrated and angry with them instead. Similarly, the cheap pick-up line approach simply is not going to work on a nun no matter how hot you are, but people demand that it must.
In short: fuck those people.
If you need to have the understanding that you can't shoot someone with a stick and the word 'bang' for that firearms pool to do you any good, it's the same with social foo.
That means that, yes, you would probably have a better understanding of how to approach that other person to get your attempt to work, in the same way that 'must have a gun and not a stick and the word "BANG!"' is part of the fundamental knowledge inherent to successful use of the firearms skill.
It also means that, like the firearms expert knows they need a gun, the subterfuge expert has a better understanding of how they must appeal to their target to be believed. Neither gets to just 'make up' how they want this to happen, however we see people do this with social rolls all the time, and then demand that not only does it work, it works the way they want it to no matter how impractical or unrealistic the approach they chose is, even if it is just as impractical and unrealistic a means of impacting their target as the stick and "bang".
As a result, the way many people have traditionally approached social rolls is fundamentally broken, because they haven't traditionally been held to the same practical standard as 'no, you can't just point a stick at someone, say 'bang', and blow a hole through their chest, you need a gun for that'.
I have little issue with my character being swayed through plausible means.
I have major issues with my character being swayed through complete absurdities, same as I'd have major issues with the "Bang!"-twig blowing a hole through my chest instead of an actual boomstick.