Debating is not how you change someone's mind. You can change the mind of an undecided audience perhaps, but not who you're debating.

I have had my mind changed, or at the very least been introduced to new ideas that I then went on to explore, which led to me changing my mind.

Online arguments are for the audience, anyway. This is more obvious if you watch some old debate videos from the mid 2010s, especially involving right wing "intellectuals" like JP. He is clearly uninterested in convincing his opponent. Most of the time, his aim is to (a) confuse and (b) enrage his opponent, and then adjust his suit and tie, lean back, and smugly tell them to calm down.

It's not debating to convince your opponent (or even the audience) of your ideas, hence his tendency for useless tangents and unnecessarily esoteric language. It's debating to look like the smart and collected guy, while making your opponent look unhinged in comparison. It's not about the substance, it's about the show.

I discuss on social media media to hear other opinions and it constantly helps me to change my mind. I won’t broadcast that though. I presume the same is true for most others as well.

Not exactly, but one time way way back in the day when I was on Reddit, I was debating this far right guy on some kind of culture war issue and I told him if he was such a gigachad who was gonna get a wife and make a ton of white babies, why not do it? Get offline, delete his reddit, and go live in the real world.

He messages me, "okay" and some time later, I see he deleted his reddit account. Legit, it was gone. I felt almost proud of him in that moment. I hope he is out there living his best life and moved away from online arguing.

The other way around (who has been convinced themselves) would make more sense imo, because when people change their mind about things it happens after they've had time to process it, not immediately on the spot. If you change someone's mind with an argument online you are likely not going to find out about it. I've changed my mind about a lot of things and what people say online plays a big role in that, but it happens later, unless it was like a clear factual oversight on my part in which case I try to admit glaring mistakes.

If I did I didn't know it. But probably not. The best I could hope for is to give them something to think about. People believe what they do for often very personal and emotional reasons and an online scuffle isn't going to change that.

I have learned a lot and even changed my mind on things watching other people hash it out, though.

As for getting in the mix, I don't even bother anymore. I suck at debating and every time I get into an argument I just end up feeling really stupid, doubting my own convictions, and mad and embarrassed by the end of it.

I do often learn something from it but the emotional disturbance of constantly being on the losing end of an argument makes it a shitty lesson and one I'm rarely eager to repeat.

Most of the time now I just say what I gotta say and if someone wants to debate it I ignore them. They can debate themselves, if it's a subjective opinion I don't care if they like it or not. I'm too old to give a fuck what some rando on the Internet thinks. If more than one person chimes in with the same criticism, especially over a fact, I'll still ignore them but I will probably go do some more research to see if I was mistaken.

It's rare, but I've been on both convincer and convinced sides. If both people arguing are rational, it often ends with both of them learning something new and adjusting their worldviews to fit each other.

Though usually it very quickly becomes obvious whether the other person actually looks for a debate or is just trying to provoke an emotional response.

My strategy is usually to ask them questions that challenge their assumptions. Studies have shown this to be the best way to get someone to change there mind. However, most of the time they stop replying before I can gage if they have changed their mind or not. I assume that my questions make them uncomfortable so they stop engaging instead of evaluating their opinions.

Yes

The only times I have had my mind changed are when I merely listened, and heard, and said nothing. It is tough to be vulnerable enough to be open to change. I think that even approaching it as a debate implies being combative, and thus makes it hard to be vulnerable.

There is also that some people just aren't online to convince anyone of their point of view, or to be convinced otherwise, but just to say what they want to say and find people who agree with them. You're most likely not going to change their mind because they just aren't even in a position to entertain that there is something that could change.

There is one time I'd like to think I brought up something that the person hasn't considered... But, if I'm generous, it only brought nuance to the subject.

I have convinced every single person I've talked to online that all my ideas are correct.

And other lies I tell myself.

Only with debating reasonable people. Otherwise they just detract, use whataboutism, or unplug.

Online debates are more about influencing the audience, who are undecided, the opponent doesn't matter.

No one could ever convince me of anything ever.

I try to. Debates aren’t (or at least in an ideal world shouldn’t be) a victory to win over the other party. It’s to present your ideas and convince. Because of that I try to do it for a few reasons. Namely:

I would wish the other party to hear me out, I should do the same. Especially in a debate with emotional stakes putting yourself in there shoes can help

And considering the other party’s point of view puts you in a position to understand them, and if you’re going to be debating against it then that’s important to know

Plus, especially in politics, I feel as if I become naive enough to become convinced by an idea of moral dubiousness then that is partly a failure on my part to be fooled by it

Have you ever perused a thread on a subject and had your mind changed without engaging? Maybe you had the wrong perspective and changed your mind or didn't know enough to have an opinion going in but came out with a more informed stance?

That's why I do it. And I've had that happen numerous times.

Debates aren't always about changing the mind of the person you're debating, they are about presenting your ideas to an audience.

I can’t remember changing anyone’s mind, but I've changed my mind when someone has given me more information than I previously had. “Oh, huh, I hadn’t thought about that. I think you’re right” type of thing.

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.

I think at least one position argued in a forum like Lemmy/Reddit is not often arrived at through reason.

I convince myself I convinced them.

Not in an actual argument but reading a back and forth between two people as long as at least one of them is giving solid info and the other one is semi coherent, it's changed my mind.

As person who use to be anti gay and racist I was changed.

Now I'm bi and have admitted to having it bad for women of color.

Which has led me to a happier life overall. Loving people is a lot easier than hate I can tell you that.

Once, maybe 3 years ago or so, I had the ignorant belief that if the US went to war with Iran, it would be a walkover. (Mind you, this was at least a couple of years before the US was dumb enough to do it.) Someone on Lemmy made very logical and cogent arguments as to why it would be orders of magnitude more difficult than I thought. I read their points and was actually fully convinced that their standpoint was correct. And now here we are in this shittiest of timelines, and that individual was proven correct by, of all things, reality.

Closest I’ve come was being in a discussion thread infested with antivaxxers. This was at the height of Covid and right around the time the first vaccines were being given. I had just gotten mine a few weeks prior.

I picked one guy more or less at random and all I did was reiterate my experience getting the vaccine and that I had no regrets doing so. I made it a point not to belittle his point of view and only suggested that maybe at some point in the future he be open to seeing things differently. And then we parted ways, he with what seemed like some increased level of respect for my point of view, and me with still absolutely no respect for his.

Yes, I have changed a mind or two. Low single digit percentage, I'm sure. I'm more focused on countering bad information information or presenting a perspective that hasn't been represented yet. I don't really expect to change the mind of the person I'm arguing with.

As for not getting sucked in, does the Lemmy app you use have User Tags? Best feature reddit was completely missing (aside from, you know, the whole FOSS federation thing). I use the feature to apply a tag and color to users. I use yellow to warn myself about someone who I think previously argued in bad faith or might be trolling, a "proceed with caution" warning. I use red for "do not engage"; on reddit I probably would have blocked them but just red-tagging them, I can still see the rest of the community respond to them. Any time a post or comment comes up from someone I've red-tagged, I know not to get sucked in. I use Voyager app on Android. I don't block much, just spam, bots, and full Nazi/CSAM apologist types.

The main problem is that people don't even know how to talk to each other, much less make a convincing case to have someone change their mind. It is possible though. If a black man can convince dozens of KKK members to abandon their racist beliefs through conversation alone, then there's a reliable and repeatable way to change deeply hardened ideas. But no one wants to bother to learn this, they would rather shout at others and try to "own those retards" to make themselves feel better.

Daryl Davis

Podcast with Daryl Davis

Different podcast on changing people's minds on polarising social topics with deep canvassing

Also worth considering how open you (the royal "you", not OP specifically) are to having your own mind changed; before getting worried about the minds of others.

No, I suck at it. I suck at defending my opinions with facts and logic. That is why I am always changing my opinions. It is hard to form an opinion that might work, and then find out all the reasons why it is wrong and then have to change it. I should have payed attention in school when they had us write persuasive essays.

Years ago, I got into it with somebody on Reddit over climate change. They thought it was normal and expected that the earth went through cycles of temperature ranges, and saw little harm in human acceleration of the process.

I at least got them to go "huh, that's true" by approaching it from the typical conservative top priority: money. I said even if it's "normal to have cyclical temperature range extremes," human acceleration of that is going to be extremely costly as our infrastructure - farms, warehouses, transportation, etc. are all going to have to be rebuilt around where things we need grow better after such changes. And it will frequently have to be done again as accelerated changes keep occurring.

You wanna convince someone of your perspective? Hit 'em where their priorities lie.

I think and folks have given me new perspectives. There is decent discourse that develops but not always and not even the majority. Like the rest of life you got to appreciate it when its good because its certainly not always going to be.

In his book Synergetics , Buckminster Fuller points out (don't have the exact quote) that you almost never hear a politician say, "you know, the evidence and logic of the other side are now overwhelmingly persuasive; I must change my political affiliation" -- but among scientists, you hear the equivalent all the time.

Yes. I have had my owned changed as well.

In my encounters it's more often that a counter argument to what I say is not wrong either. When a morsel of nuance can be introduced, we can understand each others' argument without necessarily having anyone flip around their opinion to the opposite.

However I have tried sometimes to no avail, if there's no progress after around 3 back-and-forths I end the conversation.

If you want some advice to increase your success in getting people to consider, try this: Start with the part you agree or share with the other person's perspective. Try for a "Yes... and..." if possible, or "Yes... but..." if you can't. After the and/but, that's where you can go into the difference in opinion you have.

Have you ever changed your mind?

I often feel like debate entrenches a belief in both audience and debaters.

A few times, all of which I remember being with someone who started with a point of view based on ignorance about the topic and changed their mind because they gained new knowledge and understanding. In all of the cases they didn't seem too committed to their point of view because of follow up questions and being engaged by asking for more information in more and more nuanced ways.

One person had the opinion that crime stats showed minorities committed more crimes. I presented something that explained how the stats are based on police behavior and decisions prosecutors make that lead to systemic racism. The real point that made it through was the statistic that black people are pulled over disproportionately during the day compared to night, which shows who is driving plays a part. Stop and frisk being targeted into minority neighborhoods resulting in more stops reinforced the police effect on stats.

But that only worked because they were interested in finding out more. I've never convinced anyone who dug their heels in immediately.

I have changed my opinion on exchanges between other people, which is how I learned about the cause of the bias in police stats. Hopefully I changed a few minds for the better without hearing about it as well.

Yep, happens frequently enough to make discussion worth it in my view. People often message me and let me know that.