Oh, by the way - talking about politics is definitely something I avoid. I grew up in a culture that was strongly in favour of being friends with people who are

Oh, by the way - talking about politics is definitely something I avoid. I grew up in a culture that was strongly in favour of being friends with people who are different from you, and this is one of the ways I try and achieve that (I have at least one friendship which I think would end if we started talking about politics, unless I were extremely careful and chose the right moment and so on). My friends generally know roughly what political directions I lean in, but I know a couple of things: I probably won't be able to change someone's mind on a political issue, and it's nevertheless important to have friends who have different politics from my own. In fact, my general uncertainty regarding political action has largely stemmed from that sort of thing. For example, I personally know people who are rabidly in favour of Trump and people who are rabidly against him, and I know those people are all reasonable in other regards. This is what makes me so unsure that I'm right: of course I have an opinion, but I personally know reasonable people who differ. I really do not know whether a given political action is right; reasonable people can clearly be wrong about politics, even granting that I am a reasonable person! This is why voting is good in principle (though not necessarily in current implementation): it allows us to aggregate the knowledge and opinions of many uncertain participants. To what extent is it worth risking a friendship by acting? That's something else on which otherwise-reasonable people genuinely differ - some will say "if a person holds evil views then you should expunge them from your life", and some will say "we are more alike than we are unalike". Of course, if a friendship is nice and solid, with good truth-seeking norms around discussing controversial things, then that kind of conversation is much less risky and so I'd be much more likely to hold it; but good epistemological norms aren't something I can impose on others (it takes two to tango). The safest way to do something I am quite confident is right (maintain friendships with people who are unlike me) is to avoid discussing politics. There is clear value in at least dropping hints of my own politics, so that my friends who disagree can realise that they have a friend who disagrees; but I fear that in some cases there is a rather tenuous social contract in place, which will pop like a bubble under excessive scrutiny. This is the only policy I have yet found which is immune to [scissor statements](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/): to recognise such statements as being scissors, on which reasonable people may reasonably differ, and to mutually agree to avoid them unless you're in a particularly hygienic epistemological environment.