There are some people who have just been filled with so much wrong information over the course of their life that it’s impossible to reach them. Anything you say to them will have a keyword that puts their guard up, any fact you share would be fake news. It’s like their brains have been encrypted with the propaganda and hate. It’s pavlovian. I try to recognize it in myself and maintain an open mind but it’s hard.
Now imagine that they’re your parents.
It’s fucking awful.
I don’t have to
Now imagine it’s your children too.
Very true. And we have to remember that our own views are informed by years of study/observation in areas other people will not have paid any attention to. So often it would take a book worth of real life examples to give someone the same background experience, and they would have to read that book carefully over many months for those examples to sink in, and still then they might think those are cherry-picked examples, whereas you came across them organically.
It hurts man. Especially knowing that the road I took has crumbled behind me, like in those old Looney Tunes cartoons where someone redraws the road lines to lead people off a cliff. Everything at a user level online feels like an infomercial. All of it has that veneer of being fake and cheap, trying to sell you something while pretending not to.
I know what you mean. But it doesn’t have to be that way if enough people walk away and decide to do something positive instead.
So often it’s me typing out a big old comment. Realizing I can preempt some nuance to help the conversation. Thinking of a dozen more little nitpicks that might happen and realizing it’s just not worth it and it’s really the idiocy of the argument that’s making it so hard to explain myself.
You encountered Brandolini’s Law aka the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle: it takes an order of magnitude more effort to debunk bullshit than it takes to produce it.
Exactly that, one bullshit goes into circulation, it spreads everywhere strengthening its flawed position. And just like it was said, facts dont even matter at that point - requiring a novel approach to disprove it.
Hi, are you me?
No they are me
I met a guy in a sauna the other day who started preaching to me and saying that he doesn’t believe in science because it contradicts the bible story of creation.
I just had nothing to say to this man. His perception of reality is so far off base that I cannot comprehend his thought processes.
Maybe the temperature of the sauna was a little too high? /s
I went to a catholic school in my country. We got teach biology, evolution, genetics and we also got sexual education including abortion (the practice was illegal at the time). One of the first things that i remember from our teology classes was that “we shouldn’t take what is written in the bible in a literal sense and that it was written to a particular volk in a particular time by men”… and the example the Father used was specifically the Genesis, meaning “earth was not created in 6 days”.
I read stories of those lunatics, i mean, those who trully are in a crusade against reality. Are those more common over the equator or something?
did you ask him why he thinks that the bible is true?
“Because it is the word of god”
“Ok, and you know that because…?”
"The Bible says so.’
“And why do you think the Bible is true?”
Rinse and repeat
deleted by creator
This is what lead me to question my own faith: just someone asking honest questions with real curiosity
Keep it mind it can take years for those seeds to bloom from doubt to realisation
I was trying to relax in the sauna, so I didn’t want to get into it. Which is part of the problem with preaching like that!
It’s pointless, then they go on a tangent about how it’s the word of god etc. To them god is real and everything is about god and if they have to make leaps in logic it’s just because mere people can’t understand god’s will
Do you think he understands everyone else’s though processes? Presumably if you were surrounded by guys like him then you would be able to comprehend the way they think.
That’s a classic one too
7/10 ppl online.
But w lemme its still 7/10…but there’s obly like 10 users so I can handle it.
MAGAs. Sometimes I don’t even debate them, I ignore them and talk about them as if they weren’t there, make fun of their arguments, laugh at them, mock them, just generally bully them, without even addressing them directly. They really hate that.
MAGAs and Anti-Vaxxers are about the only acceptable bullying targets, and they should be bullied as viciously and as relentlessly as possible. The damage they have done is incalculable, they deserve it.
I’ve yet to encounter either on Lemmy.
Finding lemmy requires a certain level of knowledge they don’t really have. They go for the path of least resistance: Reddit.
Oh they’re out there. Talking ABOUT them, instead of talking TO them pisses them off because they are looking for an argument with a “Liberal®” so they can practice the conservative debate skills they hear on the radio or TV when the host sounds so smart debating nobody. They think they can do it for real (they can’t), so it is immensely frustrating when their intended target won’t engage, and mocks them instead.
This reminds me of that quote
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Yeah, everytime Kenny the fascist comes to tell me the woah’s of the world from his perspective. They get one conversation when I establish their position. The second convo is to establish my own. The third and subsequent conversations are purposefully hostile.
You have to maintain hygiene when dealing with these creatures.
In my wise old age I don’t waste time on fools. I no longer have the patience. I used to try to talk them out of whatever stupidity they’re peddling and it was rarely successful. Not worth the effort.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
That fact that there is a term for it is just as depressing.
It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person. It’s damn near impossible to win an argument with an idiot.
The point you know you’ve beat an idiot in an argument…either they wanna fight you, they start attacking your character or they end the argument with a bullshit excuse.
Yeah, but then why have you bothered?
For the love of the game. I’m a world-class hater.
Why indeed? After a while, you learn to not bother in the first place.
To pat yourself on the back
I have heard the way to do it, is to take their crazy and take it WAY past their line until they back off themselves.
Moron: “There are only two genders!”
Normal: “Right?!”
Moron: “Ma-”
Normal: “Trans and supergay”.No comment on the contents of my example. It’s the only comic strip I remember at the moment.
Yes, i have meet a person before. I have also commented on the internet.
I live in rual northern Nevada and everyone here is hardcore brainwashed republicans. I used to try to correct them when they said dumb shit but it just made me look stupid, so now I just watch and listen to there ramblings. It’s more entertaining for me and less of a headache.
I lived in rural Idaho during the Obama years and I can’t count the times I had to hear people joking about lynching him. My kids even reported to me their peers would regularly fantasize about shooting the President on the school bus. It was a real eye opener for me and I lost what little respect I had for conservatives.
Same here, actually that is still a thing. The day after Obama won in 2008 I came to work you would’ve thought a second 9/11 had happened. People were legitimately depressed and in raged by it.
online arguments never change minds, they only serve to galvanize each persons prior beliefs
Its not about changing your opponent’s mind. It’s about the people reading along. You aren’t talking to your opponent. You’re talking to the audience you share with that opponent. Never forget that.
False. I was deeply religious growing up but can remember the exact “debate” with an online athiest that planted the doubts and lead to my deconversion.
The majority of my currently held opinions on things have been shaped and influenced by over a decade of online forums discussion boards and conversations with strangers who hold different views as mine
I usually explain the phenomenon of the internet similar to that of the printing press. It makes the smart people smarter (easier access to information) and dumb people dumber (they can’t detect misinformation and manipulation thus will trend towards the worst possible outcomes). If you are a smart person without access to higher education YouTube and Wikipedia is the greatest invention of mankind; if you are a retard then YouTube leads you to binge watching Candace Owens
liar!
disagree, I’ve changed my mind several times through online arguments. Not always a flip but often reality is not as binary as you think and opposition has some important points.
- This is not always true.
- There is a third person in this equation.
You’re wrong and I am going to harass you until you change your mind to prove it!!
Oh, wait…
i don’t see it that way, my views have changed significantly because of the discussions i’ve had (mostly online)
I think this is mostly true IRL too
People will not show you that they’ve been convinced, but inside something may have shifted.
Probably true…
People will not show you that they’ve been convinced,
And this is a major fucking problem imo.
If people would just be ok with admitting they were wrong about things, the situation wouldn’t be nearly as dire
Keep in mind that they themselves probably don’t realize things have started shifting. They just have an inkling of doubt that they need space to nurture into something more.
I speak from experience, being wrong about something and not knowing it feels exactly the same as being right about something.
Most people read internet comments even if they never participate. Regardless of what they say they will be influenced by those comments. If you never have the argument your view will be represented and will die out.
1/5
A fifth out of one
Sure. Charlie Kirk was a fantastic example.
He’s alive debating gun laws on here, that video was AI.
