What I'm wondering is whether there are people out there who, after being confronted w the evidence of the opposite side, say 'Huh. The other party may be wrong about Issue X, but it appears they are correct about Issue Y.' Ie, does public debate even work? Does it still have a function? - ThreadSky

gwillow.me • 268 days ago

What I'm wondering is whether there are people out there who, after being confronted w the evidence of the opposite side, say 'Huh. The other party may be wrong about Issue X, but it appears they are correct about Issue Y.' Ie, does public debate even work? Does it still have a function?

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bryantfrancis.me•268 days ago

First thing they told us while phone banking in 2020: “do not argue with people, arguing does not change minds. Your job is to see if they are voting and see if they’ll commit to bringing friends to vote.”

Internet does more arguing than conversing, which is what I think can shift views.

mattoak.bsky.social•268 days ago

I seem to recall debates about taxes and funding and foreign policy and like fiscal responsibility and functional ideas. policies. lot easier to argue than like people's right to exist which is where we're at now.

I'm rambling a bit but there's a thought in there somewhere.

gwillow.me•268 days ago

You make a good point; when it's a policy debate--where ppl have more or less the same goals, and the disagreement is about how to implement them--that's one thing. Whereas a lot of the conflicts now are existential and fundamental.

rainmanjr3.bsky.social•268 days ago

I used to be a Republican but that was 20 plus years ago. There was a while where I did not vote as neither side weighed out one way or the other.

larand.one•268 days ago

I started out as a Republican from a Republican family. My first vote was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. I’ve come to regret that bitterly (it was a gradual process based on life experience) and in US terms I’m now basically a socialist. The older I get, the farther to the left I am.

travisjohnson.bsky.social•268 days ago

I did. Like 20 years ago. I used to defend "civil unions" as fair. I was persuaded by a person who's become a good friend that I was wrong.

robbeales.bsky.social•268 days ago

I think the more local you go the more that you can appeal to the senses of a small board or administration or the like. The larger the venue, the more dug in are the people engaging.

trosen76.bsky.social•268 days ago

Occasionally there is some fact or figure I look up and didn't know about before but no it has never changed my stance on an important issue. In fact it usually reinforces that a lot of people are full of shit.

guspowers.bsky.social•268 days ago

I think there is absolutely value in debate, but it needs to come between people who know each other on a level beyond "yelling online."

Especially where you hit a subject that you have a feeling on, but realize a friend disagrees from a point of expertise.

jessicakusiak.bsky.social•268 days ago

I think, if you look at the research, what it shows is that debate can work, but it is usually most effective between people who already have a close relationship. So argue with Uncle Joe, but don't waste your time with Joe Twitter.

zzyzx.bsky.social•268 days ago

At first I bought into the fears about trans athletes in women sports but arguments - both persuasive for and weak against - made me realize it was massively overblown.

tamorishosei.bsky.social•268 days ago

I was raised hyper-conservative (of the Catholic variety) in the 80s and 90s. When I got to college, I was forced to realize that at least some of what I had been taught about the lgbt community was outright false, and took the first step to the left. (Cont’d)

tamorishosei.bsky.social•268 days ago

(Cont’d) After college I very easily could have gone incel (I had very poor luck with women at the time), but thanks to some good female friends, ended up reading @jessicavalenti.bsky.social at Feministing instead of 4chan, etc. A few years later, I met my now-wife, who has pulled me further left.

tamorishosei.bsky.social•268 days ago

In a nutshell: reasoned arguments from people I trusted needed to be combined with the right environment to believe the evidence of my eyes instead of my upbringing.

uzisuzuki.bsky.social•268 days ago

I think the biggest for me is the debate about guns. The longer I am on social media, the more I find myself in favor of banning all of them. I started very much at the opposite end of that argument.

totient.bsky.social•268 days ago

I don't think any of my reevaluation of deeply held beliefs has been at all helped by social media. That mostly comes from research and introspection. But spirited debate on social media has certainly been helpful for forming deeply held beliefs where none previously existed.

denniskdraws.bsky.social•268 days ago

I don't know that it does, at the moment.

In my personal experience, I'll be like "I'm not a fan of X's policy on this" and the response I'll get is "you know X is [insane conspiracy theory I've never even heard before just now]?"

dungeonfacts.bsky.social•268 days ago

When I was in high school (late 90s early 00s) I thought libertarians had a lot to offer because they have a really versatile rhetoric that seems to dissolve problems into a single dimension. As I learned more, it became clear that the party doesn't actually believe it's espoused principles, and 1/2

dungeonfacts.bsky.social•268 days ago

Even if they did, it was too simplistic in its assessment of the causes and tools available to address different problems. I'm currently not entrenched on many positions, because I think having a meaningful opinion requires a lot of information. I'm vaguely left on everything but not clearly more./2

dungeonfacts.bsky.social•268 days ago

Separately, we don't have "debates" at a national level. You can debate two different solutions to an agreed upon problem ("do we prioritize wind or solar investment to reduce GHG emissions and why?") But instead D's can't form a real opinion, and R's "problems" are all detached from reality.

jeffhamilton.bsky.social•268 days ago

(short answer: no, but,) emotional persuasion and rational persuasion are two different modes. rational persuasion requires the recipient feels safe and has nothing pulling them into an emotional state emotional persuasion usually requires a perceived similarity between the persuader + recipient.

jeffhamilton.bsky.social•268 days ago

so you can emotionally appeal to your ingroup on social media but not really to your outgroup (they will not perceive you as alike to them). And you can't make rational appeals at scale because social media is an emotional dysregulation machine that riles us all up, esp. on topics that are discourse

ebrooks.bsky.social•268 days ago

…Oh holy crap. I had not thought about it this way but YES.

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