this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Wether it's on the internet or at a bar counter, I like to engage in debate to better myself. If your goal is to turn every fanatic that crosses your path, you're gonna be depressed real soon.
If your goal in an argument is to change the other person's mind, then changing your mind (by taking in new information, learning, and understanding a different point of view) is seen as losing. That's a terrible way to look at what is ultimately personal growth.
Love this, thank you.
As I've just said in two other comments, "changing someone's mind" is just a return to barbarism and Middle Ages. When a few literate theology doctors would publicly "defeat" their opponents, the barely literate mass of their audience (monks, nobles and such) would watch and approve, and the illiterate mass would kinda get that those pesky heretics\infidels got totally owned by facts and logic.
So any person arguing with that emotion and visible goal should just be left to eat other such ignorami. Nobody worth arguing with has those.
There's no hope in changing the mind of every fanatic you come across.
But we generally don't have internet debates in DMs, we do it in public forums. The goal isn't to sway the fanatics, it's to publicly quash their arguments. To sway curious onlookers away from fanaticism before they become fanatics themselves.
People always forget about the lurkers. Most people with less-informed, more impressionable views on a given topic aren’t posting and debating, they’re reading and learning (despite the unfortunate exceptions). Seeing some wacko extremist nonsense or voter suppression tactic go unchallenged by a more reasonable argument may be enough to sway a not-yet-fanatic in the wrong direction.
As I've said in another comment, this is return to Middle Ages. Debating skills have not much in common with reasoning skills.
Nor are they mutually exclusive. A competent debater can intertwine rhetoric with logic to make a compelling argument for a well-reasoned position.
For my argument it's sufficient that they are very much not the same.
This is similar to saying that a big company leading in some area can be benevolent and do good things. Yes, it can, like DEC, Sun, at some point even IBM. Doesn't prove the statement that every social institution and mechanism out there must be replaced by markets.
You're the only one making that argument, and it doesn't follow from my initial point. I'm not even really sure what point you're trying to make.
How does anything you're saying negate the fact that people make bad but persuasive points online, and gullible people fall for that persuasion? Or that those gullible people lack the entrenchment of the bad actors, and can be redirected from those bad points to better ones if persuasive arguments are presented directly in response to the bad ones?
Friendly reminder that the above is what I answered first.
Sorry, but this is a load of bollocks. It's you putting yourself above some "gullible people" and still using debate skills to deceive them, just in some "good" direction. Maybe you are really right, but they believe you for the wrong reasons, and the process itself doesn't reinforce that you are right in any way.
If they're already going to believe the wrong things for the wrong reasons, why not present the right things for the wrong reasons? Those who need the right reasons to change their mind are beyond the scope of this approach.
This is outreach to the gullible for harm reduction when they might otherwise filter themselves into a dangerous pipeline. This isn't using debate skills to deceive, it's using them to counter those who do use their debate skills to deceive. Even if the content may possibly be wrong, by presenting it in contrast to preceding content it necessarily widens the debate-space from an unopposed confident statement to a dialogue that the onlooker can take into consideration while making their own decision.
That part would be right if we weren't talking about social media, which are designed to neuter this effect.
All the better to counter-act that neutralizing force at every potent opportunity.
That would be try to attract people outside of social media, not try to divert them inside social media where you'll waste energy
You aren't going to kill an idea with name calling online either. You'll, hopefully, be rightfully called out for using pointless ad hominem attacks and be shot down on the spot, pushing people to the fanatic you're arguing against.
Unless we're talking about Twitter, then yeah, louder idiot wins.
Wait...do people still do that? I shouldn't have said either lol. I dunno, the whole comment was really just a dig at Twitter.
Posting "posting isn't praxis" isn't praxis either. But like, there is value in theory, and you must believe that or else you would've believed it was pointless to post "posting isn't praxis".
Edit: wow, they deleted the entire chain. I've still got it in my inbox, but honestly it's probably for the best that it's gone. That was incredibly unhinged behaviour. Whilst I would normally not take a deletion as an admission of being wrong, one of the things that I said, multiple times, was that their arguments were circular, self-defeating and had no point. Deleting them would seem to be a strong agreement that they were indeed pointless. Since their main position was that nobody can be convinced by online posting, it seems like them changing their mind about posting implies that something in our exchange convinced them they were wrong and that makes that position wrong as well. Do they agree? Who knows, they deleted it all. Their opinion is now missing. If they don't like that well... I guess they could post about it.
This is unbelievably convoluted. You've talked yourself in knots but also somehow believe that your argument is so airtight that any attempt to refute it only invalidates my beliefs.
Your argument is circular, self-defeating and also missing some really obvious things, one of which I already pointed out.
The only thing left to do is to ask if you're actually curious to understand what I mean.
So to be clear, you're not curious to understand because you believe you can read my mind and understand the secret motivations behind my words that renders them invalid?
You literally said it's impossible to have a real discussion online, and now you're criticising someone for not engaging you in the way you want to have a "real discussion"?
I very much didn't lay out my motivations, I think you may have me confused for someone else.
But again, you're not curious to understand because you think you already know everything you need to know about me.
For what it's worth, I am actually curious to understand what you mean, but I'm struggling to for reasons I've laid out. Your reasoning is very circular and self-contradictory and also a lot of the sentences are very hard to parse out.
I am asking about whether you are curious to understand because I would like to have a real discussion, and I want to know if you are willing to also have one. So far you seem so convinced I would never actually listen to you that you therefore won't listen to me. Unless and until that changes I don't see this particular conversation achieving much.
So what you're saying is that you personally can't be convinced by a post, and you're extending that out to everyone else.
This seems like a form of solipsism. If you don't believe the posts you're surrounded by are authentic, then nothing anyone says can convince you otherwise.
Like for instance, I could tell you I've been convinced by things people have said online. Sometimes it's in a context of debate, sometimes not. But if you think I'm only cynically saying that for the points, then I'm obviously just lying. It's a perfect circle of protection.
Ultimately only you can decide if you're open to being convinced. The problem comes when you decide that's everyone else's problem. I can't say what's in your head and it's hard to figure out what you mean here.
I'd be interested to know what your online media diet is, because honestly I think most debate bros out there aren't doing much of any worth, except again maybe performing to an audience. I don't know what to say here. You say your head's a mess, and I tend to agree. I can't make head nor tails of what you're saying. It sounds like you're monologuing to yourself, and I'm not really qualified to interpret it. Only you are.
At this point, you're just kind of bloviating. Like, none of the points on their own is particularly confusing - although if you don't see the inherent contradictions I wonder if you're even listening to yourself, you seem to explicitly acknowledge them - I just don't know what the point of it all is. Like, you need to do some work to help me understand what you're actually trying to say. I'm not your therapist. Either you have something you want me to respond to or you don't.
That is literally not what I said. I could repeat it, but you would have to tell me you're curious to understand me or I'm not going to bother at this point. I've already asked you that and you ignored it, but you seemed troubled so I let it slide. I'm done with that. If you won't meet me halfway in this conversation then you can carry on wanking in the corner, but I'm not going to watch.
vs
Those are two different things.
Also:
Yet another thing that I literally never said. You couldn't have made it clearer that you're not listening and not interested in anything I have to say.
You haven't convinced me that it's impossible to change minds, but you have convinced me that you personally can't be convinced of anything as you are right now, and that you personally are incapable of convincing other people of anything on purpose. I guess I agree that you're a mess, that's something you said and which I took on board. Does that count?
Don't answer. Don't care. Fuck off.
But - debates don't better yourself. Only your debating skills in particular get better. It's a return to Middle Ages with theologists publicly "defeating" heretic and Jewish and Muslim philosophy.
And "turn" is an interesting word, making the association even stronger.
If you're debating in good faith you are bettering yourself by improving your understanding of a different view point, and letting your own views be challenged so you can reassess if you still hold them.
So who debates in good faith and how often?
Apparently not you.
Well, this comment of yours doesn't look like a good faith argument.
What I meant is that it takes two sides for one. And when two people are ready to argue in good faith, one may downgrade the level of contention from "argue" to "discuss" without any loss.
(For me and my sister it would still be "argue", but we are just rude to each other.)
Neither did your comment of
Someone JAQing off is not having a good faith argument, and it does not invalidate my argument if I don't waste effort on someone who isn't continuing in good faith.
I see the argument you're hinting at, and it doesn't invalidate the argument either, but I'm not going to spend time debating an argument you haven't bothered to actually make.
You are making a good example of a person who maybe thinks they can argue in good faith but very clearly doesn't, with emotional pressure and such.
That's true. It also doesn't invalidate it if I do waste it though. OK, bye