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?
Debates aren’t always about changing the mind of the person you’re debating, they are about presenting your ideas to an audience.
Follow up question: Have you ever read a thread where a bunch of people are arguing and changed your opinion because of it?
Personally, I’ve never changed my mind because of an online post. I’ve changed my mind from articles, papers, documentaries, video essays, discussions with friends and family, but never from a comment section.
I have. But, they did have facts to back it up and sources. That helped a lot.
Yes. The Lindsey Clancy case.
My opinion on it changed wildly the more I learned about it, and as I learned about it from difference sources, some of which were online comments. I used those comments to investigate further, look up references, precedents, laws, etc. So i could start developing more of my own opinion and understand why the case was such a lightning rod for so many for so many different reasons.
And it made me distrust a podcast I listen to because the hosts initial take on the trial was so heavily biased in her favor, and they didn’t acknowledge several facts about the case that were acknowledge by people online and in other commentary about the case… and many media sources presented heavily biased reporting on the case.
And now all this argumentation has me questioning how our legal system can ever be fair in a media environment that is so toxic and wants to doxx and assault jurors for doing their job. The amount of truly awful journalism surrounding the case was alarming.
I did. Not from a single thread, but many-many accumulating over the years, combined with other sources.
It is especially true with new topics which I don’t have a pre-existing knowledge.
Same for me. A few comments are unlikely to be persuasive by themselves but they are great at introducing me to new perspectives. It’s not uncommon with some follow up research that I do change my mind, and comments are what get the ball rolling. Especially true for topics I haven’t thought much about.
Yes: Reddit threads planted the seeds for veganism because all the counter arguments were so easily disputed
wow. totally opposite thing happened for me.
Yea we know, you dedicate your life to arguing against animal rights.
not exactly. and importantly, I don’t believe in any rights.
I bet you have if you’ve been using the internet for any substantial amount of time. It might not have been a moment of clarity where you can say that moment that your mind has changed, but you’ve almost certainly been shifted one way or another over time on different topics. That’s normally how it works. We don’t usually suddenly change our minds. We change a few pieces of our opinion, or decrease our certainty of a specific thing. Eventually that leads to larger changes, but rarely all at once.
Personally, no.
But I think that I’ve become more knowledgeable because of arguments I’ve read.
Bingo.
You don’t even need cover the debate subject to win, if you can convince the audience your opponent is an idiot.
In highschool (which is a very long time ago), I was woefully underprepared for a debate. My opponent not so much. He made some very good arguments. Unfortunately, he made a fatal mistake with his opening, “Good morning”. It was the first period after lunch.
That allowed me to eviscerate him. If you don’t even know what time of day it is, how can you possibly know anything about the subject of the debate.
I won the debate handily. I barely touched on the actual debate subject.
That’s like 90% of political debates.
Who/what decided you won the debate (handily)?
A show of hands. A couple of my opponent’s friends voted against me, but the rest of the class voted for me.
One of the friends complained that I hadn’t stuck to the topic, but the teacher sided with me. It helped that I’d been on the debating team in lower school and had seen other debaters treat mistakes in a similar manner. Having a drama teacher that loved theatre sports (which was relatively new at the time - at least where I lived) also probably helped my improv skills.
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.
Yes, I believe I have and recently too.
A post came up about sexism and someone mentioned the wage gap. Men always go to the talking point of “well women don’t want the hard and dirty jobs, men do all that work”. So I mentioned my experience as a woman trying to become an electrician:
I overheard another electrician and the foreman talking about my body in a way that made me know I was unsafe around those men. Speaking about how I’m not “woman enough” because I have short hair or the things they would do to my body without my permission to make me a “real womantm”.
I received a direct message from someone saying that they reached out to women they knew in the trades who confirmed my experience was not unique. It was just not something they thought about and it’s not talked about enough or pushed back on when talking about the gender wage gap.
Women enjoy working in trades but we are sexually harassed and assaulted out of these spaces and it has nothing to do with “men do all the hard work”.
Early Gen X here, been on line since 1992.
I’ve had the interwebthingies change so many bad ways of thinking of mine. And I was (relative to the normal Lemmy/Piefed user) already a pretty lefty liberal. And I used to adore a defending my “point” in a good internet argument.
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.
yep. especially if you go and look up the facts somewhere else and see what evidence supports which side and to what extent.
I don’t debate or argue to win. I debate and argue just to get my points across and to be heard.
Have we not learned as to what you look like when winning is your top priority in online arguments?
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.
What if I feel no hatred towards anyone and people are trying to convince me that I must?
That’s the weird position I find myself in the past few years.
And I ask these people what I said that is hateful and they have no evidence, it’s just because… you know I’m white and a guy… I must hate black people by default?
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!
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.
yes, a lot. but it was a decade or two ago.
there were a few subreddits long time ago where I was popular precisely for debating people and ideas and regularly got messages about how interesting my comments were and how they made people re-evaluate things they believed or thought. after I left there were some posts about ‘where did he go?’
but post 2016 or so anytime I do that it just results in name calling and being labeled and demonized. open and civil discussion in general is just harder to facilitate online or in real life… because more and more people perceives it as an existential threat. i have noticed especially the past few years all the toxic online attitudes are filtering into the real world.
I forced Ben Shapiro to change his views on gender with well-thought-out counterpoints.
He was literally saying sex and gender were the same. After a spelled out comment on why they weren’t, he changed his tune on the next show.
Brother take it easy, are you trying to get the man shot or something? Not being radical enough is literally life threatening for the Turning Point guys.
I have a conspiracy theorist at work that (I think) I got to shut up a bit.
He started going on about how leftists are getting chips implanted and that that’s the mark of the beast. I basically told him no one knows what the fuck he’s talking about with these chips, but a real, visible, example of the mark of the beast is the MAGA hat. I think I cracked him a bit with that one.
I also told him that I’m down to hear his thoughts about Bigfoot because I think cryptozoology is fascinating even though I’m not a believer.
So now he tells me about his camping trips looking for Bigfoot.
I’m ok with that. It’s harmless. 🤷♂️
Talk Bigfoot vs. talk politics?
❤️🤣
I think it depends on the tone. I’ve had my mind changed and view adjusted many times in online discussions. Does the other person come at me in a “debate” mindset, very aggressive, dismissive, hostile, or calling me names? Bye, I’m probably going to block them and move on with my life. But if they come at me with a spirit of discussion, education, and kindness as a fellow human with a differing opinion, I’ll consider what they say. I may not agree with it, but many times I have adjusted my views or even completely changed them.
I remember years ago I was completely against legalization/decriminalization of drugs. I thought that it would never be a good thing and didn’t understand why people would support it; why would you want to give people MORE access to heroin? I had commented on a website making a statement along those lines, and someone responded with a well educated comment about how a certain country (was it Brazil? I can’t remember, it was so long ago) had either legalized or decriminalized drugs and how not only did it allow them to put in place systems to help addicts, but the crime rate dropped substantially because the cartels no longer had a market to operate. I ended up doing some research and realized that this person was right, and ever since then I’ve been firmly on the side of decriminalizing drugs and putting efforts towards healthcare and helping addicts rather than punishment.
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”.
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.
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. :)
