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Some people on every side engage in bad faith, and some in good faith. Find the ones who are operating on good faith and engage with them, rather than painting
by nitrogen 5y ago
Some people on every side engage in bad faith, and some in good faith. Find the ones who are operating on good faith and engage with them, rather than painting an entire side with a broad brush. And be mindful of the spectators -- they're the ones who arguments are most likely to influence, not the participants.
There are hundreds of millions of nominally reasonable people who fall into opposite tribes just by happenstance. If you attack their tribe as a whole they'll stick to their tribes because of tribalism, but if you act reasonably, even if the tribal figureheads are acting in bad faith, the members of each tribe can be persuaded reasonably.
Every line in tribe B's media about how party A is destroying the world with its anti-X agenda is perfectly mirrored by a similar line in tribe A's media about how party B is destroying the world with its anti-Y agenda. "Excluding" doesn't cut off people you disagree with, it makes them stronger, by consolidating them further into their tribes and cementing their opinions ("fight makes right")! We can try to see things from the point of view of reasonable people on both sides, or we can fail as a pluralistic society.