Debate isn't the best lever to reach the people I want to reach

I don't tend to debate politics (either online or offline), because for the most part, I find that people who differ from me in their opinions generally do so because they start with a different set of axioms.

Say, for example, one of us thinks that raising children is important / a duty, one of us thinks it's not / a bad idea, and from that come all sorts of policy decisions.

We can, if we want, do thought experiment style discussions around it all, we can learn more from each other, but ultimately no-one is going to convince the other.

Want to really get someone to consider your viewpoint? Carefully consider your ideas first, then tell them once. Be silent while they say whatever they want in response. Then drop the subject.

What this person doesn't understand is that debate isn't about changing your opponent's mind. A debate is won by convincing the audience.

A while ago I did a bunch of thinking about how to convince people and came down to that it's usually one of three techniques: coercion, rhetorical persuasion, or modeling good behavior. (Broken down as violence, active non-violence, and passive non-violence.) I used to believe that persuasion was generally more effective at convincing others than modeling, but these days I'm not so sure.

Social media threads also seem like a much poorer lever than a blog post or journal article.

I people constantly complaining about modern web frameworks but these people never offer concrete alternatives. It’s always “it depends” or whatever to avoid even an example of what they are arguing _for_ and why it’s better.

This post makes me want to get on Mastodon just so I can talk to this guy.

There are lots of online articles referring to studies that arguing usually just entrenches people's previously formed opinions.

Here's an opinion: Mastodon threads are just as stupid as Twitter threads.