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.
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.
The trick is to argue with the voices in your own head and simply project them on to other people’s comments.
i cannot express how much i hate that, why must people keep imagining points and opinions i never said or made
No they don’t
That sounds like the words of someone who quits right before they change the other person’s mind
Hey, i think that lady by the license plate stand was talking to you…
Oh goodness, I should hope not! I love arguing on the internet, and I would hate to think that I’m actually changing peoples minds.
Gabagool was the most important story arc in the Sopranos, change my view.
Was gabagool behind the camera in the final scene?
That is one of my favorite theories. Meadow walks in and frisbee throws a full stack of gabagool to Tony. It’s covers the camera, and that was the last of the film for the day. They liked it so much they kept it.
You don’t realize that you’re wrong in the moment. The idea bounces around in your head long enough for your brain to decide it was your own conclusion. We can become less biased, but make no mistake: our brains are a total mess.
This is what happens when evolution throws hardware at a problem, succeeds, and it’s still poorly optimized.
Realizing you’re wrong while you’re still tilted is the weirdest feeling.
The last few years had made me lose all respect for debates as a field of study. Remembering shit like logos and pathos and all that nonsense for nothing.
Sir, this is the internet, nobody is allowed to quit
Nuh-uh
Nuh-uh, not me. I stop long before they change their mind.
I know this is just a joke, but I’m reading a book on quitting right now and one of the points she is driving home is that if you quit at the right time, it tends to feel too early to quit.
That sounds interesting, what’s the book?
Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away
Definitely an interesting read ( or listen as I’ve done).
90% of statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. Just because people stop replying to you doesn’t mean you’ve “changed their views”, but that’s the only thing you will encounter if you never stop before they do. A big hint that they won’t be convinced is how they will just try to nitpick the most irrelevant points in your replies, ignoring the crux of the argument.
Acting like that is a good way to get stuck wasting your time, just give them a chance to know the facts and correct themselves with actual evidence and citations, and then move on. You help more people “change their views” that way, nobody is going to your shitpost deeply nested reply threads anyway. Nobody worth considering, anyway.
