Trying to argue with conservatives.
All that they’re great at is detouring, distancing, playing down, doubling-tripling down, disassociating, strawmen and more illogical fallacies. They can’t take up an honest debate unless there are rules in place that gives them any outs from being pressed when confronted with questions they can’t give truthful answers to.


Tbf, nobody is gonna convince me of anything now. Most of my beliefs are formed independent of the internet. From logics and some empathy.
None of the bigoted xenophobic shit aint ever gonna sway me. Nor the tankie stuff.
Lived experiences is more powerful than some texts on a screen.
This is part of the problem. If two people engage in open debate and neither of them can be convinced to change their minds about anything, then what exactly is the point?
I will listen to people and engage with their arguments, and remain openminded to be convinced. Life isn’t that simple and believing you know all the answers is naive.
Problem is I read comments from 3 separate users in the past few days that literally got banned within 24 hours for being a LLM bot lmao (read the modlogs, its getting crazier these days)
I would guess you didn’t live in Gaza, but you still have an idea of what is happening there. Of course if you did live there, it would likely take precedence over what you read about it.
You don’t actually need to take decisions about Gaza, so you could just ignore it. But you will need to take a decision about a cancer you’ve never lived before, and you will need to to use other people’s experiences about it to make that decision.
You are currently living by the “don’t put your fingers in the socket” rule, and you (likely) never tried it. You (likely) don’t understand why, or how bad it would actually be, but you’re following it, and it is a good thing for everyone involved.
Using other people’s expressed experience is absolutely necessary for your everyday life, and you will do it even if you don’t want to. Figuring out exactly how to deal with the mistakes and contradictions and lies gets complicated, and is a fundamental subject in science
The comment I replied to:
Key word: “online”
If I met them in person, I’d be more inclined to listen to them.
Oh, why so? Less likely to be a bot?
I think it’s just easier to be honest and not lie to someone to their face in real life. The ability to have your facial expressions be read and having to respond in a timely manner or admit you’re not sure is much more likely to make people argue in an honest manner
People not having as much time to “decide” to go for bad faith is interesting
I wonder if someone made an actual list of observed differences in behavior IRL and online, with the same discussion as input.
I guess people would tend to simply refuse to interact with the discussion, but they would have the same things to say, right? Like, they don’t have different opinions online and IRL. If you were giving people as much time and “confidentiality” to think and express their thoughts (which are generally seen as good things), it should look similar. Basically I think the online assholes would also be IRL assholes if you let them talk in similar conditions.
Anyways, there are differences, but I don’t see any causes for “don’t ever listen to anything due to this”
Everyone has a latitude of openness to new beliefs. They can be narrow, but it’s important to be mindful. Being entirely immovable is not only impossible, but maladaptive
That said, it’s a rare thing when a single argument is able to shift a person’s opinion. Opinions form over time and change over time, nobody ever reads just one manifesto and goes “oh, I guess I’m a communist now.”
That could be a bird’s-eye view of social judgment theory, basically the idea that successive pitches to a person’s latitude of non-commitment are the mechanism by which firm stances can change over time.