4 ms·

Sounds like I hold the opposite politics from you (I am a conservative who believes abortion is murder) but I too am continually frustrated when my own side mak

Sounds like I hold the opposite politics from you (I am a conservative who believes abortion is murder) but I too am continually frustrated when my own side makes obviously bad (or at least obviously unpersuasive) arguments. It's true that good argument's rarely change people's mind about the issue. But a good argument, one that shows you are capable of seeing things from the other side, can change another person's mind about you.

isaacfrond 4y ago
Making obviously unpersuasive arguments is the <i>whole freaking point!</i> The whole abortion debate is a political tool to rally people behind. It is irrational precisely for this too work. Abortion proponents are not interested in debate and a reasonable outcome.
blep_ 4y ago
Yep. This is not limited to any particular issue or ideology. It's not about accomplishing any of your policy goals anymore, it's about scoring grievance points. On the left, we accomplish this by tying everything into sexism and racism, even when other things would explain it better. Everyone knows sexism and racism are bad, so if we frame X as one of those, then X must be bad. It's intellectual laziness, even if you're right. The way I see internet debates is like this: am I going to change this person's mind? Probably not. But this is a public forum, and there are many other people watching. Some are young people poking their heads into politics for the first time. Those people are the ones dragging the Overton window around. I do not want their first impression of my side of an issue to be "wow, these people are just incoherently mad about everything, but the other side has a bunch of well-reasoned arguments". Regardless of my opinion on the premises of those arguments - and that's all this is, you're starting from different premises than me and you reached the only reasonable conclusion from there - that is going to affect their perceptions of my side and push them toward the people I disagree with.

isaacfrond 4y ago

Making obviously unpersuasive arguments is the <i>whole freaking point!</i> The whole abortion debate is a political tool to rally people behind. It is irrational precisely for this too work. Abortion proponents are not interested in debate and a reasonable outcome.

blep_ 4y ago

Yep. This is not limited to any particular issue or ideology. It's not about accomplishing any of your policy goals anymore, it's about scoring grievance points. On the left, we accomplish this by tying everything into sexism and racism, even when other things would explain it better. Everyone knows sexism and racism are bad, so if we frame X as one of those, then X must be bad. It's intellectual laziness, even if you're right. The way I see internet debates is like this: am I going to change this person's mind? Probably not. But this is a public forum, and there are many other people watching. Some are young people poking their heads into politics for the first time. Those people are the ones dragging the Overton window around. I do not want their first impression of my side of an issue to be "wow, these people are just incoherently mad about everything, but the other side has a bunch of well-reasoned arguments". Regardless of my opinion on the premises of those arguments - and that's all this is, you're starting from different premises than me and you reached the only reasonable conclusion from there - that is going to affect their perceptions of my side and push them toward the people I disagree with.