Nobody ever changes their opinion on things with anything remotely like a high degree of frequency, and that's not a particularly bad thing. The "real" point of an argument is not to persuade the other side (though that is what you aspire to nonetheless) but to exchange views, and often to indirectly explore your own views more deeply, at least in the scenario where your 'partner' can bring up something you weren't aware of.
Our views actually shifting is something that only happens over many years and often for reasons we aren't really in control of. Me of 10 years ago would vehemently disagree with me of today on many things, and there's probably pretty much no argument I could have engaged with him to persuade him of what I obviously think are 'more correct' views. It required, most of all, life experience that isn't going to be able to be communicated with words. If it were we'd all have the wisdom of a man who'd lived for millennia. And if not all of us, then at least somebody - but that somebody doesn't exist.
One who wants to debate while rejecting the real state of mankind is oft going to just find themselves in an echo chamber.
I don't completely agree. (I know... How meta.)
I have worked to be as rational as I will personally tolerate, and it has been difficult, but I've achieved some success. The key is to divorce your identity from your beliefs about the world, and to realize that the opposite of never admitting you're wrong is "always being right", which is of course impossible, so if you are TRULY interested in becoming MORE right, then the only reasonable option is that you must sometimes lose arguments (and admit it to both of you).
Are most people interested in doing this? No, and in that sense you have a point. But it's available to everyone, and who wouldn't want to be more right?
The other difficult thing to do is to aim this at yourself with full candor and work through that. Interestingly, now that ChatGPT has access to all the conversations you've had with it, and assuming you've opened up to it a bit, you can ask it: "You know me pretty well. Please point out my personal hypocrisies." If you want to make it more fun, you can add "... as Dennis Leary/Bill Burr" etc. What it said when I tried this was fascinating and insightful. But also difficult to read...
> divorce your identity from your beliefs about the world
I understand not totally subjugating your personal identity to ideology, but I'm struggling to see how someone could practically completely separate these two things. To use a somewhat trite but personal example, I'm gay, so that aspect of my identity will necessarily affect my perspective on certain issues. Conversely if someone were to convince me rationally that homosexuality was wrong, it would necessitate a pretty dramatic change of my identity no?
Not every issue exists on that clear a spectrum, but you can imagine the views necessitated by different pieces of personal identity adding up over a lifetime.
Fortunately for you, there is no good argument that homosexuality is wrong. But honestly, it does take a certain nontrivial amount of understanding to realize that- an understanding of things like: the list of the most common informal logical fallacies (or... all of them, because why not, and once you learn them, you see them everywhere). And those aren't someething that is typically taught in school (I had to pursue them on my own time).
(A while back I found a personal webpage that systematically shot down every single homophobic argument using reason and those fallacies... and I haven't been able to find it since, unfortunately.)
So, among many other injustices that might be rectified (or at least ameliorated) by a broader understanding of fallacious arguments, homophobia would definitely be one of them.
(Also, personal note, I'm sorry about any injustice you've had to endure because of your orientation and others' lack of understanding.)
One thing that helped me was reading a book on good political discourse. It basically said what the GP said, that good discourse is about exploring the world. It also pointed out that vilification in its many forms is counterproductive. It undermines trust.
One of the examples used was of a party that I did not agree with - that most people didn't agree with. You'd see mainstream politicians declaring them to be bad people.
But the book pointed out that before this party existed, nobody was representing the people who were now voting for it. If you believe in democracy, how can you be disrespectful of representation?
Suppressing my value judgement also later helped me see that when the party got into a coalition and managed to get some of their politics put into law, some of those laws actually did help the rest of us, because they addressed issues that the other parties were not willing to address.
One thing I think that can help in this is trying your identity to being someone who strives to be as open minded and introspective as possible. You can turn changing your mind into a psychological reward, rather than an ego loss.
Out of curiosity, why do you think being as rational as you possibly can is a goal in and of itself. Mark Manson has a whole bit on this, in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck if I recall correctly, that lobotomized people would fit that description pretty well, purely rational. Except it turns out that once you take the emotional side out of the person, what's left is merely a hull that doesn't care about anything, because rationally, why would you. I don't think being more right is a noble goal. We all know the type, people who pick at every little thing to be technically right, but mostly they're just asshats who miss the forest for the trees.
What definition of rational are you using? Being a rational actor typically means displaying consistent goal-oriented behavior. Being lobotomized seems pretty irrational. It reduces your power and makes you less able to achieve goals (if you can achieve them at all), including basic self-care.
>Except it turns out that once you take the emotional side out of the person, what's left is merely a hull that doesn't care about anything, because rationally, why would you.
That's not what rationality is. What terminal goals one should have, which in humans is informed by emotions, is not a concern of rationality. Rationality concerns how to achieve terminal goals.
If you think rationality is a lobotomy, maybe your emotions are running a dictatorship?
Being right doesn’t make you an asshat. Refusing to correct yourself when proven wrong does.
> I don’t think being more right is a noble goal.
That’s a pretty telling sentence. If someone doesn’t value being more correct, what kind of compass are they using to navigate the world... Vibes?
Rationality isn’t about amputating emotion. It’s about not letting your emotions pilot the plane blindfolded while high on conspiracy podcasts telling you which way to bank.
Emotions are data. Rationality is how you integrate them, not ignore them. A rational person doesn’t become unfeeling; they align their feelings with reality, and update when their model of the world is provably flawed.
The lobotomy comparison is just absurd: actual rationalists care deeply about things- they just make sure their caring isn't built on delusions. That’s why rational frameworks helped de-stigmatize homosexuality, dismantle phrenology, and challenge witch trials. Emotional reasoning alone got us the burnings, not the liberation. Emotional reasoning got us Turing's chemical castration, not gay marriage rights.
A rationalist by YOUR definition wouldn't even care enough to fight homophobia with reason. See the difference?
Also, literally the entire system of justice (an exemplary combination of rationality and feeling) doesn't make sense, given your anti-justification for rationality. The accused looks like a rapist, I just know it, he's just got that look in his eyes. Let's go with that. Judgment for the plaintiff!
Also: Being “technically right” is only annoying when it’s used to score points. Being functionally right- especially when it affects policies, freedoms, or lives- is kind of the point of civilization.
Being caring and kind are simple examples of moral compasses that are considerably better than being as right as you can be. Your comment is a great example of the kind of person I'm trying to exemplify, you make up a lot of nonsense no one ever said just to argue how much more right you are against it.
We agree inasmuch as I eventually learned to appreciate nice-but-dim people over intelligent-but-needlessly-arrogant people.
But that ends as soon as there are stakes and the resolution depends on intelligent recognition of data or arguments.
> The "real" point of an argument is not to persuade the other side (though that is what you aspire to nonetheless) but to exchange views.
Maybe this is just a matter of definitions, but for me the point of an argument is to convince or be convinced. When two incompatible views exist on a subject, at least one of them must be wrong. Some topics of conversation allow for diverging views or values, but then we are just talking or sharing experiences, not arguing.
That said, it is my experience as well that actually changing someone's (or my own) mind on an important issue is unlikely. Especially on complex topics with partial and uncertain information, like political issues, our life experience and cumulative knowledge significantly influences our selection of sources and interpretation of the facts, so converging on a common point of view may require the exchange of a prohibitive amount of information, even among rational arguers.
Productive argument usually occurs in a sort of semi-echo chamber, with people who mostly agree with us on the context, and are only arguing about the top layer, so to say. But when trying to argue about the deep stuff, we are mostly just "exchanging views", in the end.
> When two incompatible views exist on a subject, at least one of them must be wrong.
Rarely can any significant argument be boiled down to something so simple that this is the case. What if there are two incompatible views on the course of action that should be taken to lead to some desired outcome? You really can't just say that one of them must be wrong. There is a whole web of tradeoffs, assumptions, and odds to consider - you can't simply determine "right" and "wrong".
> When two incompatible views exist on a subject, at least one of them must be wrong
This isn't strictly correct if the source of incompatibility is differing assumptions / axioms. Both views can be correct in their own context and incorrect in the other context.
>When two incompatible views exist on a subject, at least one of them must be wrong.
There are a lot of things that do not exist on a binary truth spectrum, although I agree with your point about open mindedness.
I notice people tend to argue about X when it's actually a proxy argument for Y, but they don't know themselves that it's Y.
Y is a legitimate concern or fear, but X may not be. But everyone wastes each other's time arguing about X.
If you figure out Y, you find common ground and compromise and that's when you find solutions.
In my experience the Y is often the even more profound disagreement between two people, and explicit discussion of Y could be enough to obliterate a relationship completely.
It takes time to have a serious debate. You both need to figure out what your unstated premises are. If you disagree on these, you won't get anywhere by arguing downstream of them. Politics is even worse, because you are supposed to have an opinion, but at the same time, most matters require a detailed understanding of the facts that few people have the time, brains or inclination to understand. Add the tribalism and this gets even worse. It's incredibly rare to find someone whose general political opinions are well thought-through. Mine certainly aren't. I could regurgitate the argument for the free market or for heavy gov control of the economy, for example, and even understand them as internally-consistent syllogisms, but really all I'm doing is linking concepts together in my mind; I doubt any of them apply to any really-existing concrete situation that any given country is in. Hence I try not to comment on political threads.
I've almost never changed my mind in an online argument but I do regularly offline. Why is that?
I think it's because online nobody acts in good faith. There is no connection and trust.
I had a customer once who would just absolutely berate people over email for the tiniest thing. Totally unbearable and unreasonable. So, whenever he would go off, I'd tell him 'look, I'll be in the area [this afternoon|later|whenever]. You going to be around if I stop by?' Any conversation with him that could be deflected to an in-person discussion could be peacefully resolved in short order. Trying to convince him of anything over phone or email was an exercise in frustration control.
I heard somebody say at a conference one time, talking about how much more productive in-person meetings are in reaching agreement, "there's a lot of bandwidth in a room". I think there's a lot of truth to that.
0 - ironically, this was at a ISP network engineering conference
I think you can have two people who, both acting in good faith, can completely lose it over textual communication. Even a phone call can make the same discussion ten times easier.
I have changed my mind on things in online discussions. Usually in the form of them saying something I disagree with, me trying to articulate why they're wrong or searching for evidence that they're wrong, and then coming up short or finding information I wasn't previously aware of. I find this is more likely to happen online than IRL since you don't really interrupt IRL conversations to go spend 3 hours looking for sources, though I do also get what you mean about a lot of online comments being so blatantly hostile that you just don't engage.
Are you saying your comment here is in bad faith? ;)
I'd say yours is in bad faith because you know exactly what I mean ;)
It’s actually not clear to me what you really mean, and I would dispute your generalization that nobody acts in good faith online.
> The "real" point of an argument is not to persuade the other side (though that is what you aspire to nonetheless) but to exchange views
to me real point is just entertainment
I feel like I change my opinion more than my outfit, but after reading that I'm not so sure. Maybe I stick to my guns more than I realized.
>Nobody ever changes their opinion on things with anything remotely like a high degree of frequency, and that's not a particularly bad thing
For a great discussion of that, cue Slate Star Codex "Epistemic Learned Helplessness"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...
I've been trying to figure out how to talk to folks on the right, and I keep looking for something, anything, I can say to make them realize the danger we are in. Reading this comment was therapeutic, because I think it's completely on the money. We can't change people's minds in a single argument; we can just try and nudge them in the right direction and hope they join us eventually.
I've found that putting arguments into simple, general terms tends to make people rethink their positions.
I had an argument with my dad a while back about single payer health care. A lot of people on the left might frame it like "don't you think everyone is entitled to access to health services?" But an idea like this is like nails on a chalkboard to my dad, who believes everything should be merit based, even access to health care.
Instead, phrasing it as "wouldn't you prefer it if we paid the same amount of money every month and when we go to the hospital we don't have to worry about any out of pocket costs?" This really nailed the point home to him. It's not about entitlements or whatever. It's about people not being destroyed financially by bad health. We skip over the feely stuff, we skip over the specifics of cost. We can both agree that this mechanism makes a lot of sense for most people, and the current system is rather arbitrary.
Anyway, he's still firmly a MAGA trumper but I do think on the aspect of health care, he does see single payer as a viable alternative.
> Instead, phrasing it as "wouldn't you prefer it if **we** paid the same amount of money every month and when we go to the hospital we don't have to worry about any out of pocket costs?" This really nailed the point home to him.
I can already hear the nails on this one, because the goal has now been camouflaged.
Nowhere in that statement is there an allowance for people to not pay into the system: Everyone is forced to pitch in, even if they don't want to. An exit door must be available, no exceptions.
"i can't understand my son, he doesn't listen to a thing I say!"
-- Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Is this ironic? Because if this is serious, note that maybe you are the stubborn person here, the one that is wrong, the one that must be nudged to the right direction and join them eventually.
It’s possible parent comment is referring to factually proven issues, such as climate change, that the right has its own set of propagandistic facts for.
I’d say the any group of people has areas of less factitious basis for their beliefs. But, We all should want to employ truthful factual real, non-propagandistic ideas, eh? Is this controversial?
If we don’t have ground truth, real facts, what can we base anything off of? Our policies will fail, our dollars will be wasted, and division will grow.
One danger with "factually proven issues" is cherry-picking facts or otherwise taking them from context. For example, there might be stats on which a president sucked for most of his term, but in the last few months those stats were decent (or vice versa); and then supporters of the president might shout those last few months' stats from the rooftops, and then do polls that show that supporters know but opponents don't know about those last few months' stats, and gleefully report, "Gosh, well, we're trying to reason with our opponents, but unfortunately they're just so ignorant, what can we do..."
Another danger is people playing with definitions. A third is people claiming things to be "facts" based on cherry-picked studies (and possibly some dubious interpretations thereof).
Progress can be made, but I think it requires a sophisticated approach. Paying attention to all the above dimensions, and probably to the motives of the people involved.
I agree with your approach but, as a generally extremely left leaning individual myself, comments solely using "the right" (or any individual group) as the example make it hard to assign to this kind of thought process alone.
Some regular self doubt "what I think are ground truth facts may need to be requisitioned and revalidated and that isn't just true for one specific group to consider" is a core requirement of trying to hold a fact based viewpoint, just as important as any other part of such an approach.
Well no, because the right's argument for why what they're good is good is:
1. We're not doing that.
2. If we are, it's not that bad.
3. If it is that bad, it's not our fault.
4. If it is our fault, just have faith it'll work out.
A lot of their belief system relies on Trump being a liar. Literally, they're hoping for and arguing that it's all a-okay because Trump is a liar so him saying XYZ terrible thing doesn't matter.
The right isn't trying to push anyone in their direction because even they don't believe their direction. They're currently in a suspended state, a type of dissociation.
Either that or you lack the wisdom and maturity to understand that people can disagree with you and be just as sincere in their beliefs as you are.
No, it's definitely this, and I'm confident in saying that because I do, actually, try to have open conversations with these people. And they always back down and undermine _their own beliefs_. It's a strange kind of paradox, in which they support a set of actions but wish to be immune from any obvious consequences of said actions. Despite those consequences being, you know, the draw of said actions.
For context, a lot of people in my family vote right always. Trust me, I have engaged with people on the right and conspiracists, and the common theme is their reliance in a distrust for the people and actions they themselves support. It's an almost supreme lack of conviction, juxtaposed with a religion-like blind faith.
If it's any consolation to you, or anyone, this isn't a new thing. You can see this kind of behavior throughout history in all populist movements that have gone sour. Their supporters stuck in a type of purgatory, where they must ignore what is actually going on while absentmindedly following the messaging. When asked "so what happens now?", they do not know. But they are certain it will be okay.
This is such a wide-sweeping generalisation that it beggars belief. And this "distrust for the people" you speak of, would that characterize your attitude to people who don't vote Democrat? And speaking of Democrats in general, do they show alot of "distrust for the people" too with their simple-minded, largely ignorant stereotypes of Republicans?
Of course it's a generalization, I'm explicitly generalizing.
But, I should note, I'm not speaking on conservatism or the GOP in general. I'm speaking on, specifically, far-right populist messaging, current-day known as MAGA.
This is a different, but related, beast. I'm confident in speaking on it in this way because populism, by it's nature, appeals to the lowest common denominator in order to be successful. We can make a lot of assumptions about populist movements because we know how, and why, populism works. MAGA operates less like a policy set and more like a Cult, like populist movements of the past.
And, to my original point, if I were to explain to you some of the objectively awful things the Trump administration is doing right now, I am very confident you would have no choice but to use the 4-step game plan written above to dismiss it.
When you have subscribed to a religion, you have no choice but to use the powers of divination and faith to argue. The populist movement never had any logical backing to begin with, so you cannot just conjure one out of nowhere.
You say alot of words without much content.
You dont think there could be any logical reason why 77 million Americans voted for Trump?
You don't think alot of contemporary Democrat beliefs could also be described as a religion that people blindly follow no matter how stupid or extreme?
> You dont think there could be any logical reason why 77 million Americans voted for Trump?
No. Well there is, but not in the way you're thinking.
Far-right populist messaging works because the message is good and designed to cater to as many people as possible.
It plays into people's emotions and sense of identity. It calls upon a sense of national pride and creates an enemy within. It plays into the ego of MAGA cultists, proclaiming them to be the true Americans while those around them are lazy, on handouts, and don't deserve to be here.
> You don't think alot of contemporary Democrat beliefs could also be described as a religion that people blindly follow no matter how stupid or extreme?
Sure, some of it, yeah. There are, after all, populists in the democratic party.
But the democratic party is almost all right-leaning ultra-capitalists. There really are next to no extremists in the democratic party. The only reason you may believe otherwise is because of - you guessed it - far-right populist messaging. MAGA would like for you to believe that the democrats are baby eaters, pedophiles, and communists. Of course, it's just not true. Please see "enemy within" above, sense of national pride, appeal to emotion (harming children) etc etc.
> You say alot of words without much content.
No, I think what's happening is you don't understand what I'm saying or are choosing not to process it, and instead just kind of going "nuh uh!".
"nuh uh!" might have worked before the election. Now that MAGA is destroying the US from the inside out and posting Deportation ASMR while committing crimes against humanity, the "nuh uh" doesn't work. I'm sorry, you have no plausible deniability. You can continue to avoid accountability, but that doesn't change reality happening around you.
Do any other right wingers actually exist on HN? I swear, you guys have the same understanding of right wingers as white suburbantites have of black people.
Yes, most of my family is right-wingers.
What you have to understand about the populist far-right is they are, by definition of populism, appealing to the bottom of the barrel. This characterization of how right-wing voters grapple with what their representatives are doing is uncomfortable because we all know it's true.
I'm a long-time politics nerd and spend more time than most people digging into the right's "evidence" for various things they believe.
So much of it's simply made-up that any attempt to engage one of them is incredibly tedious, and it's the exact same bullshit every time you start talking to a new one. You'd need weeks, at least, of consistent and very-careful engagement to fix the fact-gap so you can even begin discussing actual issues. For each one of them.
It's like trying to talk politics with someone and they keep bringing up how the real problem is the lawless Rebel Alliance and we need to trust Emperor Palpatine to set things right, and after a while you figure out they aren't joking or just trying to get under your skin and sincerely believe we live in Star Wars, so now you can't even talk about actual issues in the real world until you manage to convince them that they do not live in Star Wars. You try to talk about crime & policing or whatever and they start talking about how we need to clear all the criminals out of the pirate moon Nar Shaddaa, and... what the fuck do you even do with that? It's disheartening.
[EDIT] Real world example: Local republican politician comes to my door while campaigning and is talking about how local crime (in our amazingly safe, rather rich small town) is WAY UP and out of control and that's why we need more money for the police. I have my strong suspicions based on practically every other time this claim has been made by a Republican, and also the fact that our town is conspicuously safe and rich, but I don't fact-check her on the spot and just let her finish the spiel and politely disengage, but that was like half of her message (the rest was, I shit you not, about trans athletes, JFC).
Of course the police department's own stats fail to back up any of what she was saying, when I check right after the conversation. I mean, obviously they do, there was no reason to expect otherwise, but I did check, because that's how I roll.
Without even digging into the other half of what she was presenting, half of her message right off the bat, half of what she chose to present as important, was over a completely made-up issue. Not real at all.
They probably have data that these talking points have the best positive reaction rate for the area on average.
The fact that it didn't matter to you isn't important to them, it's the aggregate as that is the end goal. They may even disagree with it entirely and agree with your stance.
Yeah, I'm sure that's why the politician was selling those particular issues.
Those work, though, because you run into he same perspectives among Republican voters, because their media are telling them it's true and they don't bother to check (the ones who do, presumably, move away from identifying as Republicans the dozenth time they catch such an "error" in a given day of watching Fox).
As someone who has completely straddled both worlds (Arizona/Texas redneck raised, worked in woke VC/SV companies, with a social circle across the board):
I view it as planting seeds, and harvesting them later. Before that can be done though, a person generally has to understand how entrenched a person is in being a stenographer. I have found on both "sides", there are a certain amount of people that literally do no thinking for themselves at all, and only regurgitate. I've tried for years to work different angles on them, and those seeds mostly still lay dormant and un-sprouted...
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies... is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.” - Carroll Quigley
I have slipped to the right enough to be almost like a "translator" between leftwing and rightwing viewpoints. Put it this way, I can laugh at parodies of both of them...
I see some error patterns that both sides seem to uniquely make, for example. Just 1 for each side for the sake of brevity here: Rightwingers idolize success without acknowledging the systematic boosts (or pure luck) that have often assisted it, while leftwingers are not only disgusted by success but consider it heretical. Leftwingers constantly compare a situation to some unattainable ideal and are therefore constantly complaining about the current state of affairs without offering a realistic solution; rightwingers fail to acknowledge the very real injustices that a more purely authoritarian approach to things often causes (see: three-strikes laws).
Speaking as one who tests politically center, I believe that the danger is neither nonexistent nor is as high as you may believe. Note that there is some merit to the rightwing claim of "MSM bias"; harping on the same cherry-picked injustice stories for outrage clicks over and over again seems to be the last remaining successful news business model (and this should worry EVERYONE).
> while leftwingers are not only disgusted by success but consider it heretical
The entire left wing rhetoric against billionaires is that they are not in fact successful on the merits of work that everyone else is doing, they are successful in cheating the system and exploiting others. We love success that happens within the same rules that we average people all operate in.
This is like saying that CoD players who are against aimbotters are "disgusted by success" when they point out that no one will legitimately have a 100/4/0 KDA (a more appropriate ratio for billionaire vs average person would be 1000000/4/0, but that would almost be too outlandish, which is why there are so many infographics showing just how conceptually confounding a billion dollars really is).
> The entire left wing rhetoric against billionaires is that they are not in fact successful on the merits of work that everyone else is doing, they are successful in cheating the system and exploiting others
Yes. And that is false. If you don't believe me, bring that to ChatGPT and ask it to argue both sides of this claim, because I do not have time to retread this. For one thing, everyone has to abide by the rules- and if the rules are unfair, then it is the rules that deserve this scorn, not the people who played the game by them.
> We love success that happens within the same rules that we average people all operate in.
This is also false. I have not seen a single successful individual praised on this basis. I'd love to know of one. Musk graduated with college debt- something that I did not- and yet has attained massively more success than I, for example. Luigi, the guy who shot the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was raised in a far wealthier family than that CEO was!
Wait, how am I already getting downvoted? At least counterargue?
> For one thing, everyone has to abide by the rules- and if the rules are unfair, then it is the rules that deserve this scorn, not the people who played the game by them.
> Rightwingers idolize success without acknowledging the systematic boosts (or pure luck) that have often assisted it
Guess what some of those systemic boosts are? Unequal rules. And if a game maker (or a government) made a bunch of special rules or made constant exceptions to the rules, for people of a certain wealth level, no one would direct their scorn only at the unfair rules, they'd also rightly direct it at the people benefiting from them (especially when that group lobbies for the special treatment like the wealthy do).
> Musk graduated with college debt
So? His family is incredibly rich, and he was given every opportunity on earth to succeed, and any college debt would have been no threat to that. He carries millions in personal debt, and it doesn't disadvantage him now, either.
> I'd love to know of one.
Bernie Sanders? Hasanbi? The average 60+ retiree whose house is now worth north of a million? If you're asking me to list billionaires, there won't be any, but the vast majority of millionaires out there who aren't trying to use their money unethically, the Left has no issue with.
> Wait, how am I already getting downvoted? At least counterargue?
Perhaps the people who downvoted you didn't have time to retread all this.
One thing I've found helpful is to coax them to imagine dems in charge. You can't outright mention dems in charge, because they will (mostly correctly) point out that dems _have_ been in charge of our institutions for a long time.
You have to understand their position: They don't feel in danger. They feel in power - the opposite of danger. Asking them to perceive danger is asking them to give up their feeling of power - tantamount to admitting everything they voted for is void.
But the path I found was to tease out that expansion of powers are permanent, making any changes from expansion of powers temporary. And we don't want temporary positive changes, do we? With all this legislative power, couldn't we just, you know, pass laws?
I've also come to accept that we should (for the sake of progress past issues) just:
* build the border wall, but suddenly nobody seems interested - what gives?
* slash costs to balance the budget, but suddenly nobody seems interested, what gives?
etc
The problem with true discussion of these issues is that you find yourself mostly in agreement with each other's viewpoint (at least subject to their "axioms"), and have to mellow out a bit. You can't really stand still and say "Come over here" all the time.
Yeah, like they often don't have issues with their local cops, but you ask them about ATF or BLM and all of a sudden these outside it's these ridiculous outsider authoritarians, who don't know anything about what it's like where they live, trying to ruin things.
What works one on one doesn’t actually work at scale. You cannot make MAGA feel better by “building the wall” or “balancing the budget” — they don’t actually care about those things, in aggregate. In the political sphere, they care — because they’ve been conditioned to care by 40 years of increasingly strident right wing propaganda — about hurting brown people and liberals.
I don’t have an answer, but reason and logic are not going to solve the problem.
There is no ideological coherence of fascism. It's about coercing a nation into elevating a chosen group/ identity of people above everyone else (a sort of anti-pluralism).
-- I liken it to how arguing about the shortcomings of your bully's stance doesn't make them stop punching you.
EDIT: I'm going to add, that I think the solution at least begins with encouraging more shared experiences and spaces (like a movie theater). Most people want to be seen as well functioning in public limiting how much they might explore the nastiness of their own right wing echo chambers.
“Mostly correctly” is 100% false. Count the number of years under GOP presidents since 1980 vs the number under Democrats. SCOTUS has been dominated by Republican judges — and the chief justice has been a Republican — since the 1970’s.
The old-guard republicans were neo-cons. They championed things like free trade and projecting soft power through international institutions that are antithetical to the modern right.
The fact that the US only has “two parties” obscures the fact that there are wings in those parties that don’t really govern in a meaningful way.
The nationalist/populist conservative wing (MAGA née Tea Party) hasn’t really been in power pre Trump.
You'd be hard pressed to find a conservative college dean, non-profit CEO, or even a librarian. There's a belief (which I think is mostly true), that most government agencies are left-leaning in practice if not in appointed leadership. Add to that the growing (perceived!) left-leaning policies in the military and major industrial players, and you might see what they mean.
I'd be hard pressed to find a lefty college board of directors, or CEO.
I'd believe govt agency staffers, since conservatives by and large want to destroy those agencies and not work there.
The military is a weird place and contains multitudes
Well, I guess I'd roll it back to say there have been high profile, widly circulated perceived-to-be-far-left policies pushed or adopted by traditionally not-that-liberal organizations. Like "DEI" in military. It's all over conservative zeitgeist and looks like a massive power creep to them.
Why is the expansion of powers permanent? Do you think they’ve never been reversed in history? That there weren’t times when {insert government branch here} didn’t have more than it does now?
Given the downdittles: I mention two leaders at the end and am not referring to Trump for either.
As someone who loves to converse with either side, it's more often one side than the other that will listen to reason, and argue outside of logical fallacies.
I get vastly more violent threats/lame insults from one side.
I get an overwhelming amount of definition problems from one side. Which are easily solved using any dictionary (though this is becoming less true)
I get things like "True X, Y, Z or Proper X, Y, Z" overwhelmingly from one side.
And I get vastly more conspiracy theories not grounded in any reality from one side.
I know of many people from both sides that hold disgusting views such as: I want to do X,Y,Z but am mad if anyone else does this exact thing to me. Every one of these people do so on protected grounds (in Government) of one form or another.
Recently, I have noted people who scream at a leader and bootlick another while claiming each are of the other's style of governance. It's quite remarkable.
You are framing it as danger which preloads the discussion immensely. I find this is common in these situations. This already ends the talk before beginning it. Imagine starting negotiations with Putin with “How come you are such a waste of valuable oxygen?”
I am not “on the right”, but I do have the ability to entertain the idea my “opponent” is actually right and I am wrong. This can be a valuable exercise to get you in a more .. sympathetic frame of mind.
Let’s try to loosen you up. Let’s say we are actually not in danger and you and all the rest of you - excuse me, it’s for the exercise - “pearl clutchers” are actually ridiculously overreacting and misreading the situation. The world is dangerous right now and singing kumbaya is not going to cut it. Trump is weird and we all dislike him, but nothing you can offer will improve the situation.
Try to see that viewpoint. Try to feel it. Try to imagine a world where you are wrong and your “opponent” is actually right and you were “suppressing” them all that time and in your righteous might caused tremendous harm which resulted in this correction.
Next time enter the discussion with “These times are complex and there sure is a lot going on. Let’s talk because I’m confused!” instead of “I am right and why do you take so long to see that I am clearly knowledgable and you should definitely heed all my warnings (which with 98% probability come down to ‘you are basically stupid’)”
I've largely held this viewpoint for quite some time, but everyone has a line that shouldn't be crossed. Trying to literally overthrow our democracy was a line for a lot of the Trump supporters I've met who have since turned away. It personally wasn't even the line for me.
This second administration has very much crossed my line, in so many ways. We are past the point of "maybe I'm just confused?"
The people I've met who still support this guy are dangerously, dangerously stupid and hypocritical. They'd have strongly opposed all of the stuff Trump has done if they didn't know Trump was the one who did it. It's terrifying watching people completely abandon the principles they used to stand for.
We are dealing with a different phenomenon than just political disagreement; we are dealing with the type of delusion that gets millions of people killed, and we need to acknowledge it as such now.
> It's terrifying watching people completely abandon the principles they used to stand for.
If they give up principles that easily, they were never principles. They are simply ad hoc justifications for their preferred cult of personality.
If you had the chance to debate Hitler, would you start by entertaining the idea that maybe the Jews do need to be exterminated from Germany? Or would you see that as obviously absurd?
From a rhetorical point of view, yeah it may have a better chance to change their mind. Start out the idiot, assume they're right, but then ask sincerely why. After they've explained why then go back to trying to understand how their solution does that.
Many people have been conditioned to gain energy and meaning from confrontation. But when you let them explain their views they suddenly become a lot more open to being wrong about some but not all of the details.
Slowly slowly this leads to minds being changed.
I think a lot of technical debates can also be solved this way. Ask people to help you understand what they’re saying, repeat back what they said so they know you got it, and then ask about how it world work in x, y, z scenarios. Talking like this has the best chance of success.
Yeah I'm with you that its the better debate strategy.
I don't have the heart for it though. Block and move on
While painful I do think that’s a more productive mindset to enter the talk (not debate) with.
His reasons for doing so are presumably not all that rational so I’d steer clear off obvious bear traps like rationality.
I liken it more to how you engage with angry toddlers or teens. Acknowledge the issue first. Share their pain and then you can try alternatives.
Not saying I think “talking” will be helpful with guys like Hitler, but I’m not much of an assassin so if I personally where to be put on the spot I have very few other options than try this route of, at least attempted, understanding.
Is it possible the danger you think we’re in isn’t real? And are you open to that?
I’m not really what you’d call “on the right” but my left-leaning friends seem convinced democracy is teetering and to me that seems to be mostly just propaganda.
It is not propaganda that POTUS is blackmailing law firms that represent his opponents and universities he doesn't like, and "suggesting" a revocation of broadcast licenses due to unfavorable coverage.
It is not propaganda that he has signed executive orders directing the DOJ to investigate individuals who have made statements he doesn't like but were never suspected of any crime.
It is not propaganda that America is now illegally (according to court rulings) renditioning people from the US to incarceration facilities in another country with no conviction, no charges, and no sentence -- indeed, no due process at all -- and illegally (according to court rulings) circumventing habeas corpus, a principle of proto-democracy since the 12th century.
It is not propaganda that the administration is willfully ignoring rulings by SCOTUS.
These are the basic facts. It is also a fact that these, or similar, things have not happened in US history outside of some extreme events such as the Civil War or world wars.
Whether or not you integrate these extreme and highly unusual actions that go against basic tenets of democracy and reach a conclusion of "danger" or not is up to you, but if anyone does reach such a conclusion, it would clearly not be "just propaganda" or even "mostly just propaganda".
The first term was a wild shift in norms. Dozens of incidents that would have been a huge scandals normally, just faded into the background noise and nothing came of them.
One stand-out feature of the first term was a total disregard for conflict of interest. No real attempt to distance himself from his investments and businesses, multiple actions that sure looked like enriching himself at the public expense, multiple family members given roles in the administration. All of these would have been huge scandals and maybe even drawn impeachment and a conviction, not that long ago.
This feels like begging the question. But, in the interests of the topic, how should I see things when one branch of government is not only openly, but gleefully ignoring the will of a coequal branch while the third branch looks on in impotent compliance?
As a thing that happens, has happened many times, will happen many more times, and while possibly awful is not a sign that we’re about to become a fascist dictatorship?
It’s all a matter of framing and I was asking the parent if they’re open to an alternate frame because if not, they’re a toddler too and I don’t think they recognize it. The comments I got in reply were pretty solid evidence that it’s toddlers all the way down.
A legal resident of the US has already been illegally shipped to a foreign prison, with the Trump administration claiming it's impossible to get him back. Will it count as "danger" for you once the first US citizen gets the same treatment?
Illegally firing the IGs added after Nixon's shenanigans to make sure the executive isn't just wildly doing crime constantly under a veil of secrecy, right at the start of his term, was... you know, also a bad sign.
Various levels of our government under the last president prosecuted a former president for “crimes” they would not have prosecuted him for if he had not been a politician. While I despise Trump, that was lawfare, and far worse than deporting a non-citizen (though that is troubling).
So where’s the danger again? Were you worried then?
It’s all framing. You’re being primed by biased media to see everything Trump does as a hostile takeover and while I don’t agree with many of those things, if you keep an open mind and try to talk to intelligent Trump fans (which does require a fair amount of filtering, but they do exist) you can see the alternate frame.
And that’s sort of what this original article is about, right? That was my point, the comment to which I was responding was a “toddler” getting frustrated by other people being toddlers. It’s toddlers all the way down.
The first thing you should do, when you encounter a toddler, is to be really careful to ask whether you too are one. We all are most of the time and with loads of self-examination, we can occasionally overcome it.
Whether it's teetering depends on how strong it is, but here are a few of the most unequivocal reasons why we know it's under attack, and that the defenses are weakened:
- A conspiracy to refuse to leave the white house went unpunished at the highest levels of government.
- Congress is refusing to cancel declarations of emergency that grant the executive special powers with enormous impact.
- Habeas corpus has been violated many times and the judicial branch has been limited to ineffectively "ordering" it to stop in one case.
There are many others, but the ones that are overtly political tend to be "invisible" to people who agree deeply enough. For example, Chinese-style social media scanning for visa holders seems to only bother people who do not see the US as being in a state of war related to what their social media is being scanned for.
It's... the news, for the last decade or so.
2016 was when Trump suggested that his supporters could shoot Hillary if he lost, and that didn't immediately end his candidacy. That was a shocking development. It's been downhill since.
Do you know about the president banning the federal government from working with people represented by specific law firms he doesn’t like? Are you aware he has been revoking clearances of all lawyers working at law firms that have brought suit against him and/or his government?
These blatantly corrupt abuses of power against officers of the court are not propaganda.
> seem convinced democracy is teetering and to me that seems to be mostly just propaganda.
Dude, the last time Trump lost he tried to overthrow the government. Are we just supposed to... pretend that didn't happen and he's just some bastion of American democracy?
The stage for this has been set for a while now, and if you haven't noticed, Trump isn't backing down on ANY of his beliefs. He's doubling down. What other conclusion could you draw then?
Your question is rhetorical so I won’t answer it directly, but I am sure even you agree that like half the country has drawn different conclusions. So it is at least least possible, right?
If a lot of people have drawn a vastly different conclusion from the same set of facts as you, and you can’t fathom what that may be, that’s the strongest possible sign that you may be a toddler in this particular instance.
> but I am sure even you agree that like half the country has drawn different conclusions. So it is at least least possible, right?
No, it's not, because we're not living in 1984. What is possible isn't determined by what people believe. No, actually, I cannot claim I am a butterfly and then fly out of this room, even if everyone in the room sees it.
> that’s the strongest possible sign that you may be a toddler in this particular instance.
Me, worried about the value of democracy, am a "toddler". Even on hacker news, the enticement of propaganda cannot escape you. You MUST defend the fascism, like a robot. What an idiot I am, for standing by the constitution, by American morals. How foolish of me for demanding we be skeptical of our all-knowing all-powerful king. Rise ye, and lay down your hands! Your lord Trump approaches, and we must kiss his feet.
Facts matter not. Reality matters not. Courts matter not. Law matters not. We not only live in delusion, we revel in it. We are proud to be insane. We are grateful to be so smart as to denounce reality. And we, alone, can see the True Nature of the world.
PS, if you want to know the other conclusions, load Fox News or any right-aligned media. It's useful (if occasionally infuriating) to see what the other side thinks.