Remindes me of the tweet that said something like “My favorite moment on the internet was when someone said, they believe that people will changed their mind when given evidence. Then I linked TWO SOURCES that said otherwise and they were like I still believe it.”
Or when a hexbearian explained to me that hexbear isn’t toxic at all, it’s just when people refuse to read sources but than it’s their fault for not engaging with the material. Later they refused to open my sources.
Ya got a source for that?
/s
Good that they didn’t change their mind. If they had, you’d have been in trouble because your sources said otherwise.
The person you’re talking to is unlikely to be pursuaded but there’s usually silent, invisible lurkers who can be.
I know I’ve changed my mind on things because of arguments I’ve read on the internet.
It is proven that people do double down on their views when confronted with opposing evidence, but IMO this is more about the psychology of trust and confrontation between individuals, rather than proof of the futility of argument as a concept. Hell, Vsauce made a video called ‘The Future of Reasoning’, where he makes the case that argument might have been selected for as an essential part of human psychology and necessary for our survivial.
True. Sometimes it takes more than one random person on the internet to convince you but they might be part of starting a thought process.
Evidence shows that arguments are really only conducive to changing opinions when the person has a set of primers to find the person they disagree with otherwise agreeable. They refer to it as being in alignment with socio-epistemic conditions. Basically, people within a group identity can change opinions with others in the group, as long as the difference in opinion is not one that would be diametrically opposed to their group’s underlying identity. So, arguments between people from two different groups, like left v right, don’t really change minds towards the group they do not identify with. Those watching the debate will agree with the people who are in the same socio-epistemic group. This arguably makes public debate a bad thing. This is because those third party on-lookers will side with the person in the debate they most identify with for reasons outside of the debate. So you are simply platforming the person you disagree with, and possibly exposing people more in alignment with them, to an argument for a more extreme version of their position, rather than exposing them to a counter-opinion argument, to be considered.
Here is a good starting point on this subject, it links to a number of supporting papers early in the paper.
https://academic.oup.com/aristotelian/article/123/2/173/7207975
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.
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.
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?
he 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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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.)
Well, this comment of yours doesn’t look like a good faith argument.
Neither did your comment of
So who debates in good faith and how often?
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.
One of the most refreshing things I’ve seen since joining Lemmy is people actually apologizing in comment threads like this.
I’m sorry to hear that! Don’t worry, it’ll get better as more people join, just you wait!
Sorry
Sorry
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Wait, you mean internet arguments aren’t a game of chicken where the winner is whoever gets the last reply?
Challenge accepted.
No you’re wrong. It’s a game of votes, whoever gets the most votes is the most correct.
So, if I just wait for the argument to cool off, then start replying, over and over, to anyone but the person I am directly disagreeing with, but still in the same thread, until the automatic votes accumulate to my favor, I will always be right?
No they don’t
Well actually they do.
According to this trusted source.
Nuh-uh
I’m not reading that.
👋 Me. I clicked it.
Your facts are meaningless to me, a guy with an opinion.
Now I get angry and make hurtful accusations about you.
I’m in 10 levels of clicking it, when will I finally be able to read the details of it?
It’s trusted sources all the way down.
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…
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
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.
I’ve definitely changed my mind on a few things as a result of online discussions. I can’t remember specifically what the topics were, unfortunately. What I do remember is that it didn’t happen the moment of the disagreement. It was a few days later when the topic came back up for unrated reasons and I realized I had the other opinion.
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.
I don’t argue to make them change their mind, I argue to make them angry >:)
So you’re a troll?
Haven’t thought about it like that, but I guess you’re right. Though, I can comfort myself in thinking I only “troll” bad people.
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.
No, you actually don’t like it.
Sir, this is the internet, nobody is allowed to quit
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.
Nuh-uh
People don’t change their mind so easily…
I do, I really do. If the argument is logical and coherent.
Me too. I want someone to tell me when I’m wrong. What’s wrong with us?
Master Tang, is that you?!
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.
How to differentiate it from actually quitting too early?
It feels too early. The idea is that you have to recognize your own cognitive and social biases that make us want to persist and objectively determine whether it makes sense to go on.
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).
