Discussing politics and other contentious sunjects online feels to me like it’s counterproductive these days and even though I try not to get suckered in, I often can’t help myself. Usually though I just end up feeling frustrated and sometimes angry at the other person either missing my points or refusing to accept them.
Thinking back to conversations I’ve had here and previously on Reddit, not only can I not remember an example of me “winning” the discussion and the other person changing their mind or conceding the point, I also cannot think of a time where my mind was changed either.
So have you ever begun a discussion online with someone with a different view point to yours and either you, or they, changed the others mind?
No but I have been the other party who was convinced. Not in a big philosophical way but convinced that I didnt know what the hell I was talking about and that I had drank the proverbial kool aid.
Have you ever perused a thread on a subject and had your mind changed without engaging? Maybe you had the wrong perspective and changed your mind or didn’t know enough to have an opinion going in but came out with a more informed stance?
That’s why I do it. And I’ve had that happen numerous times.
As person who use to be anti gay and racist I was changed.
Now I’m bi and have admitted to having it bad for women of color.
Which has led me to a happier life overall. Loving people is a lot easier than hate I can tell you that.
May I ask what changed your mind?
Do you remember Gmod? There used to be, I don’t know if it is still going, a forum that Gary (the creator of gmod) made called Facepunch.
I went on there to download models for gmod, dived deeper and found different subsections like news and stuff.
I am the type of person to tell you my beliefs. Well I talked about how being gay was against God and blah blah blah.
I got chewed out and banned for like a month. For some reason it kept going over n my head. Over n over n over. I went back and lurked. Read what people thought and felt.
Ended up losing both my faith in religion and my bigotry. I started seeing how black folks were and are treated. How the LGBT folks are treated.
Then I asked myself do I want to make people feel small? Is that me? I have been made to feel small. To feel powerless. I hated it. I wouldn’t want anyone else to feel how I have felt.
I will always hold Facepunch and its members in high regard for knocking sense into me.
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing!
Once, maybe 3 years ago or so, I had the ignorant belief that if the US went to war with Iran, it would be a walkover. (Mind you, this was at least a couple of years before the US was dumb enough to do it.) Someone on Lemmy made very logical and cogent arguments as to why it would be orders of magnitude more difficult than I thought. I read their points and was actually fully convinced that their standpoint was correct. And now here we are in this shittiest of timelines, and that individual was proven correct by, of all things, reality.
I mean… if it were done in an intelligent, tactful way, the US could be far more effective in a war (not that I support it at all). This strongarm BS is just ridiculous when viewed logistically, which is 90% of modern warfare.
Maybe, but if it were done intelligently they’d avoid it totally if possible. Trump is an idiot, but it’s not like there’s a particular strategic error with the current war. It is being conducted by fairly intelligent people. It’s just not a war the US was set up to win.
Iran’s military is largely underground (in the literal sense, not figurative). There just aren’t any bombs that can defeat that. Even a largest nukes wouldn’t do it. After the entrances are collapsed, they have the equipment in the tunnels to dig themselves out, and then they can continue to launch drones.
The only way to actually win would be a ground invasion. That’s the big strategic failure. If you’re going to invade Iran, you need to be committed and willing to send in people to die fighting for these tunnels. I’m not saying the US should do this (we absolutely should not), but that’s the only time an attack on Iran should have happened.
I have had my mind changed, or at the very least been introduced to new ideas that I then went on to explore, which led to me changing my mind.
Online arguments are for the audience, anyway. This is more obvious if you watch some old debate videos from the mid 2010s, especially involving right wing “intellectuals” like JP. He is clearly uninterested in convincing his opponent. Most of the time, his aim is to (a) confuse and (b) enrage his opponent, and then adjust his suit and tie, lean back, and smugly tell them to calm down.
It’s not debating to convince your opponent (or even the audience) of your ideas, hence his tendency for useless tangents and unnecessarily esoteric language. It’s debating to look like the smart and collected guy, while making your opponent look unhinged in comparison. It’s not about the substance, it’s about the show.
He is clearly uninterested in convincing his opponent.
Having watched his debates with Sam Harris, I’ll at least give him credit for being able to steelman the views he’s arguing against.
Whether one is able to get others to change their deeply held beliefs is another thing but simply being able to demonstrate that you’ve actually understood the point you’re arguing against is a rare skill in of itself.
That’s only because he mostly agrees with sam harris. Who also does something similar, just not as well.
There’s a reason those guys always debate college students, and then when they run into college students that happen to be on the debate team and call them on their bullshit, those videos never make it to YouTube.
Peterson mostly agrees with Harris? The guys who spend an hour trying to define the word “truth” and failing to do so? I could not disagree more.
Correct. Their disagreements are largely performative. There is a reason they get platformed by the same people and are both considered “deep thinkers” by those people. Same with Ben shabongo and the fourth guy.
Note they all use the same tactic of decorum in their “debates”.
Yes, I have changed a mind or two. Low single digit percentage, I’m sure. I’m more focused on countering bad information information or presenting a perspective that hasn’t been represented yet. I don’t really expect to change the mind of the person I’m arguing with.
As for not getting sucked in, does the Lemmy app you use have User Tags? Best feature reddit was completely missing (aside from, you know, the whole FOSS federation thing). I use the feature to apply a tag and color to users. I use yellow to warn myself about someone who I think previously argued in bad faith or might be trolling, a “proceed with caution” warning. I use red for “do not engage”; on reddit I probably would have blocked them but just red-tagging them, I can still see the rest of the community respond to them. Any time a post or comment comes up from someone I’ve red-tagged, I know not to get sucked in. I use Voyager app on Android. I don’t block much, just spam, bots, and full Nazi/CSAM apologist types.
Good point, and I love when someone presenting other perspectives (even when I disagree!)
Tags are a good suggestion. I did not know about them before. Probably won’t use them. I hate to categorize ppl, and would fear that my current emotions and their state of mind when they commented would missplace them.
I think I never blocked anyone either. (probably not enough engagement from my part to feed trolls)
Never preemptively blocked obvious trolls or repost bots? Brave of you. I guess by ‘preemptive’ I mostly mean without engaging first.
I just tagged your name with ‘guy who colors people’ and put it in blue.
What a cool option!
Everybody’s getting tagged up now
I tag ppl I want to pay special attention to, as well. They get green. There’s a dude around here somewhere who works on the Jellyfin for Roku app, tagged green so I can spot their posts easier.
The main problem is that people don’t even know how to talk to each other, much less make a convincing case to have someone change their mind. It is possible though. If a black man can convince dozens of KKK members to abandon their racist beliefs through conversation alone, then there’s a reliable and repeatable way to change deeply hardened ideas. But no one wants to bother to learn this, they would rather shout at others and try to “own those retards” to make themselves feel better.
Different podcast on changing people’s minds on polarising social topics with deep canvassing
Also worth considering how open you (the royal “you”, not OP specifically) are to having your own mind changed; before getting worried about the minds of others.
Wow, thanks for the sources. I don’t listen to podcasts but will check out his book.
Also worth considering how open you (the royal “you”, not OP specifically) are to having your own mind changed; before getting worried about the minds of others.
To add a personal point: For me if I feel anger, in a debate where the oposition just countering my arguments (and not obviously trolling or use fallacies), that usually means I ran out rational arguments and my brain tries to protect me by turning on the fight/flight/freez reaction, that’s the point I can learn if I can keep my emotions in check.
I usually only join a debate when I am interested in the other side’s perspective.
I haven’t heard his name in a while, loved his ted talk. What a good dude. But yeah, excellent points. Too many people seem to think ostracizing others is going to solve things, I think it has only made things worse.
I can’t remember changing anyone’s mind, but I’ve changed my mind when someone has given me more information than I previously had. “Oh, huh, I hadn’t thought about that. I think you’re right” type of thing.
Not in an actual argument but reading a back and forth between two people as long as at least one of them is giving solid info and the other one is semi coherent, it’s changed my mind.
Delete this right now before the bots learn to do it!
I try to. Debates aren’t (or at least in an ideal world shouldn’t be) a victory to win over the other party. It’s to present your ideas and convince. Because of that I try to do it for a few reasons. Namely:
I would wish the other party to hear me out, I should do the same. Especially in a debate with emotional stakes putting yourself in there shoes can help
And considering the other party’s point of view puts you in a position to understand them, and if you’re going to be debating against it then that’s important to know
Plus, especially in politics, I feel as if I become naive enough to become convinced by an idea of moral dubiousness then that is partly a failure on my part to be fooled by it
It’s rare to straight up change someone’s mind. But most change is about planting a seed that will grow over time as they remember what you said and start seeing patterns that align with it. I’ve had a few more of those, and they are still productive.
I convince myself I convinced them.
Don’t know about changing my opinion while actively arguing with someone, but I have had opinions that formed for the first time when I read through comments of other people arguing. So, there’s still some value in arguing your own points for a third person observer. :)
Have you ever changed your mind?
I often feel like debate entrenches a belief in both audience and debaters.
Personally, I have on some things in decades being online. Especially if there is peer-reviewed evidence/studies about the topic in question.
I’ve changed my mind over time; quite a lot in fact. However, debates just stoke the fight or flight for me.
I suppose the interpretation of “debate” here is important. I was thinking more of disagreeing and presenting facts to back up point rather than necessarily trying to attack or win something (though I did plenty of that in my younger days as well)
You could never know. A lot of people are not self confident enough To admit they were wrong. Even of they do, they may not tell you.
