On Feb 6, 2022, at 18:14, Khader Syed me@sidcarter.com wrote:
Trying to make people agree with you is a lost cause unless that other person is willing to listen. And that’s never the case with arguments.
This is not my experience. I have personally found that lots of people end up agreeing with things they once disagreed with following becoming more educated on the topic (whether the teaching happens by the disagreeing party, or by anyone else).
The best way to get people to agree with you is to stop trying to sell them on something, and simply teach them. (This presumes that you disagree on a point of relative objective evaluation, and not something completely subjective and arbitrary like the flavor of durian or something.)
Teaching people things always has intrinsic value, in my view. The whole "it's a teachable moment" schtick is a bit cliche, but most people who go picking arguments on the internet are usually doing so on topics for which they are not a subject matter expert.
Here's maybe my favorite example of this ultimately Socratic concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG3Kyk3Xc5A
Best, -sneak