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.
Talking with .ml users, turns out you really can’t fix stupid
their brains are so big that anyone who doesn’t agree with them about anything ever is a fascist.
Including other .ml users
the only good revolutionary a traitor to the revolution
Figuring out that you can’t change anyone’s mind by arguing online
The only thing you achieve is a dopamine hit for being right
i’ve changed plenty of people’s minds online… but truth me told it was like 10 years ago before social media rotted their brains and everyone was living in hug boxes. and it was generally among my peer group of 20/early 30 somethings. it wasn’t teenagers or people in their 50s.
i used to be a part of tons of communities on reddit where people actually argued productively. but again, this was a decade ago. world was different, people were different. today people dismiss you based on the slightest disagreement.
hell on this site i have been told i’m a fascist for linking to government data and wikipedia. apparently facts are fascist now.
Presenting facts to conservatives.
And presenting facts to democrats, right? Both sides have basically the same people in them. Generally stupid people that learn a few things about politics, from the internet, then think they are able to suddenly have realistic opinions about a complex subject decades in the making because they watched a couple documentaries and podcasts (typically a younger crowd regarding)…
Anyway, the 1st step in keeping it real about your political opinions is remember humans make up both sides. Humans… every bit of lovely and stupid, everywhere. You too. 2. Dont be so rigid, get some flex. People switch sides, and switch back, it happens a lot. 3. Keep it real by not following the cult of personality. Its such a major issue with trumpism that all others look completely tame by comparison. 4. 9/10 people dont want you inserting your political commentary into everything, this can be very hard for some people.
Some people claim to vote 1 way but vote another actually, that was me, I wasnt keepin’ it real. Ive actuallyonly ever voted 3rd party, but ive lied to some people to avoid unwanted judgment and issues, yeah sue me.
I dont know… this was a long stupid rant. I saw this cheap shot partisan comment and felt like something should be added.
I might answer by changing the statement like so: presenting “facts” to the other political side feels like a losing battle because we stand diametrically opposed on issues, and the “facts” lead to different conclusions for both group, and neither will change their fundamental stance… hence, a losing battle.
Uhh you talking about yourself? And its pretty hilarious that you are mad about having rules for a debate? You need rules in debated so that no one will try to pull some bs. “Whataboutisms” logical fallacies (like ad hominem or false dichotomies), maintaining relevance to the topic, requiring evidence for claims, ensuring clarity and consistency in definitions and arguments…
I mean were there other specific rules they wanted that would “give them an out”?
Living in modern society.
I do everything I’m supposed to, i jump through hoops all day all week all year, making the responsible and correct decisions, and there is almost no reward. The reward is I get to keep doing it instead of getting to do anything else with my life. The reward is that I get to keep supporting this system that barely supports me, this system i was born into and never agreed to depend on for survival.
Such is the life of a slave i guess
If the boss doesn’t like you for whatever reason you’re done.
Just get out of there, fighting their bullshit never works.
All that they’re great at is detouring, distancing, playing down, doubling-tripling down, disassociating, strawmen and more illogical fallacies.
it’s all they have, facts have an overwhelming liberal bias; science and research keep making them look like fools for their decisions and lifestyles; they’re going to try to repeal the 19th amendment because they’re tired of losing the votes from half the population.
never do they try to fix their problems, address the needs of their base, it’s always doubling down on hating some portion of the population that must be to blame, see POC, transfolk, the dark scourge of ANTIFA etc
Arguing with religious people. Especially the ones who ring doorbells
“I was told there would be no fact-checking”
This is a 3 day account, looks like an LLM not too
Ironically, that very much won the battle.
trusting mods of any social media platform to apply rules unilaterally. you’d be better off trusting a bear while being slathered in bacon grease.
Trying to keep my house clean. I have a three year old and a 2 year old. The only time it’s ever truly clean is late at night after they go to bed and I’m exhausted. The minute they get up it’s like a tornado goes through here.
Really trying to change anyone’s mind online. I’ve just given up trying to debate evil, I just try to make people laugh at them now.
how do you know you’re not the evil one?
You’re very perceptive, clearly I could not deceive you. You play mind games well, so you must be Machiavellian. But Machiavelli hated the cynicism of realpolitik, so a fan of his writing clearly cannot be Machiavellian. So I must be the evil one.
So you’ve made up your mind?
I’m just getting started! Your username is funny, so you must have a sense of humour. Funny people tend to lean left, because comedy is an act of empathy! But it references frogs, which became right wing iconography last decade so you clearly are not a leftist!
I’ve decided. I’ll drink from my cup. Oh, look what’s that!
it’s not a mind game dude.
the people you think as evil, don’t think they are evil. they think they are good and you are evil.
if you get away from the stupid bilary of ‘good/evil’ you might better understand that life is more about what goals other people want and what they are willing to do to accomplish them.
You think Trump is evil probably, but for those that support him he is doing justice and truth to the world and fighting for good, because it’s the leftist/liberal forces that are causing evil.
the funny thing about life is most people think you are good… until you disagree with them or try to get in the way of their goals. Then you are evil.
Moral relativism detected - luckily I am already being hilarious. You’ll never catch me slipping, Satan.
who is your authority for morality? God?
I never said I’d discuss that with you, stop acting weird. 😐
true i’ve had discourse about communism and israel on here and people are not discussing anything
just stating their beliefs over and over
Lot of agendaposters online these days. It’s the easiest way to do that job I guess
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.
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:
Really trying to change anyone’s mind online
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”
Yeah, everything OP says about arguing with conservatives applies to arguing with any other group with entrenched views. The problem is that each of those groups will insist that their own views aren’t “entrenched”, they’re just reasonable.
Social media is largely designed to group people together into like-minded communities, so you find this everywhere. Here in the Fediverse too, though of course we here in the Fediverse will insist that contrary to all those other social media platforms we’re open and diverse and not susceptible to that sort of thing.
Personally, I’ve found that one can overcome the sense of futility by reframing the debate. When I debate with someone online it’s not to change their views, because that’s basically impossible (it rarely happens but I don’t count on it). Instead, the point of debate is to try to win over the casual onlookers who aren’t participating directly. They aren’t likely to have as much of a dog in the fight and so are more amenable to having those “huh, I hadn’t thought of it that way” reactions.
The one nice thing about the Fediverse over Reddit in this regard, IMO, is the fact that we can see both the upvote and downvote count. So even if a comment of mine is being hammered with 93 downvotes I can still see that there were 18 upvotes and think to myself “at least a few people got what I was saying here.”
I’m sorry, the notion that the Fediverse has diversity of thought is actually laughable. Not just about politics.
A very specific type of person goes here.
deleted by creator
Of course it’s a losing battle. Remember what Sartre said:
Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The fascists have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Conservatives around the world for the past ~30 years (if not longer) have been slowly adopting fascist methods and talking points. And for the past ~10 years, conservatives and fascists have formed a Venn diagram of a circle.
Ah, life. Just like, all of it.
Getting involved in a land war in Asia. Also going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
Fallen for those blunders more than once!
