• MrMobius @sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Wether it’s on the internet or at a bar counter, I like to engage in debate to better myself. If your goal is to turn every fanatic that crosses your path, you’re gonna be depressed real soon.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      If your goal in an argument is to change the other person’s mind, then changing your mind (by taking in new information, learning, and understanding a different point of view) is seen as losing. That’s a terrible way to look at what is ultimately personal growth.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      There’s no hope in changing the mind of every fanatic you come across.

      But we generally don’t have internet debates in DMs, we do it in public forums. The goal isn’t to sway the fanatics, it’s to publicly quash their arguments. To sway curious onlookers away from fanaticism before they become fanatics themselves.

      • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        People always forget about the lurkers. Most people with less-informed, more impressionable views on a given topic aren’t posting and debating, they’re reading and learning (despite the unfortunate exceptions). Seeing some wacko extremist nonsense or voter suppression tactic go unchallenged by a more reasonable argument may be enough to sway a not-yet-fanatic in the wrong direction.

        • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          You aren’t going to kill an idea with name calling online either. You’ll, hopefully, be rightfully called out for using pointless ad hominem attacks and be shot down on the spot, pushing people to the fanatic you’re arguing against.

          Unless we’re talking about Twitter, then yeah, louder idiot wins.

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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          2 months ago

          Posting “posting isn’t praxis” isn’t praxis either. But like, there is value in theory, and you must believe that or else you would’ve believed it was pointless to post “posting isn’t praxis”.

          Edit: wow, they deleted the entire chain. I’ve still got it in my inbox, but honestly it’s probably for the best that it’s gone. That was incredibly unhinged behaviour. Whilst I would normally not take a deletion as an admission of being wrong, one of the things that I said, multiple times, was that their arguments were circular, self-defeating and had no point. Deleting them would seem to be a strong agreement that they were indeed pointless. Since their main position was that nobody can be convinced by online posting, it seems like them changing their mind about posting implies that something in our exchange convinced them they were wrong and that makes that position wrong as well. Do they agree? Who knows, they deleted it all. Their opinion is now missing. If they don’t like that well… I guess they could post about it.

            • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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              2 months ago

              This is unbelievably convoluted. You’ve talked yourself in knots but also somehow believe that your argument is so airtight that any attempt to refute it only invalidates my beliefs.

              Your argument is circular, self-defeating and also missing some really obvious things, one of which I already pointed out.

              The only thing left to do is to ask if you’re actually curious to understand what I mean.