Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So I was talking with a leftist friend recently about race-swapping in movies, as well as the general topic of racism, and we clashed on a bunch of things. I'm not sure how well I did, and I'm worried I capitulated too much - I usually take more moderate stances when speaking with leftists IRL than I do online, since I'm usually trying to persuade and shift them towards a point of view which is more critical to wokeness and the usual mainstream narrative.
If you go "Your entire worldview and perception is wrong, here's the evidence" from the outset all you're going to have is an opponent that won't listen to you. It's a fine line you have to tread and I'm still finding my feet as to how to navigate real-time debate. He did capitulate to quite a good portion of my points too (or at least seemed to, from my perspective), but again it's hard to know how hard to push your ideas. There's also the fact that they've got a lot of "common wisdom" on their side which is a big boon in conversations because they can simply make statements and disproving big claims in real-time communication can't be effectively done, as opposed to online where you can take the time to organise things and fully make your case against certain common preconceptions.
What are your methods of debating with people in the real world, and how do you know how hard to press your point?
There is an awesome technique called "Street epistemology", with the specific purpose to challenge someone's beliefs in a respectful way. It is similar to the Socratic Method and you can find many videos where people try to use it. It is truly beautiful to witness the moments where someone really starts to have doubts about some cherished belief. I really like Anthony Magnabosco on Youtube, he is so nice and respectful while at the same time relentless in demanding logic in the arguments of his interlocutors. Here an example I liked particularly well: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mwBF5cSRHFA
The disadvantage is that street epistemology seems very time consuming, and only works when there is positive rapport.
More options
Context Copy link
This is complicated - on the one hand, capitulating does mean you make a less strong point than you could. If you convince someone that 'maybe they should only have 1/6th of the actors be black instead of 1/3 because that's representative of the US population more' - that's tame, but doesn't accomplish much. On the other hand, just agreeing to a lot of points to seem friendly, have points of agreement to work from, and keep a rapport, and then working on specific disagreements, can lead to progress where entering the local Party meeting with a swastika pin or the Hitlerjugend with a hammer and sickle wouldn't. And that can create a base you can work from later on.
More options
Context Copy link
Common wisdom is the worst, but it's easy to twist it around in your favor if you're reasonably well-informed. I used to always ask my friends "what is one of Trump's non-immigration-related policies that you disagree with?" and they never had an answer. Of course he had plenty of bad policies, but that question I think helped lay bare that a lot of the animus against him was driven by a sort of negative enevery field constantly emanating from the press.
The other useful tool was to bombastically deny certain claims. For example, "I'll bet you $100 to $1 that I can find 10 different news articles in left-leaning newspapers that say that that's not true." Most of the time the confidence was enough to make them rethink the claim, which was convenient because when they did call me on it I looked terribly argumentative finding the sources.
Due to the media's strong slant, there will always be plenty of real-world facts, that are easy to verify, that most normies are not aware of. Stick to those facts and you can be unassailably confident about things that damage your counterpart's narrative. I like to argue viciously about the facts of what happened, then be a lot more reasonable about their interpretation.
More options
Context Copy link
It would help if I knew from your post what you mean by leftists and what your respective capitulations were. Sorry but since the move it seems a lot more common to see huddle-up posts against a "leftist" outgroup without clear definition of what that even means.
One thing I do when talking, for example, to someone with an intractable view--say, against Rings of Power, two episodes of which at leat I watched and enjoyed--is ask them if they themselves have actually watched it or if they are reacting against internet outrage. If they have, then a discussion can begin. If not, what's the point of even talking abiut it?
It means he falls on the political left, which is associated with a constellation of broadly predictable beliefs (for example: he's invested in race politics in the direction you'd expect, believing that racism is widespread and omnipresent and that there was a historical injustice perpetrated by whites that needs to be corrected for and which still needs to dictate our behaviour in the present). And I don't even mean this to be derogatory, it's just a shorthand so people here can generally understand his positions (and by extension mine) without needing much explaining.
Though they are definitely my out-group, "leftist" here isn't exactly meant to be an epithet, it's a label I've seen him repeatedly apply to himself. I'm not using it to mean "Bad People Who Believe Bad Things".
Fair enough. I always considered myself left-wing, until around the second Obama era. But I won't go too CW here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but I don't get into this kind of debate because nothing good can come of it and I find it beyond irritating to be scolded for my opinions.
What do you mean by 'that kind of debate'? People who vehemently disagree or even are mad and arguing can still make informative and useful statements, and a lot of intellectual progress past and present, both at a large scale and a small one among random people, was made by antagonistic debate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Almost always Socratic Method.
I know where I'd like the conversation to end up, and I know the series of questions I would ask in order to lead someone along a trail of breadcrumbs to come to that point, and then confront them with the final argument after we've already hashed out most of the terms leading up to it, and see if they resolve the cognitive dissonance in my favor or not.
And maybe in the process of such questioning they'll bring up a point that I myself would find convincing and I can examine that within the discussion.
Also, be absolutely willing to surrender a point that isn't critical to your position or argument. The quickest route to a discussion degenerating is to haggle over every minor point when you could just say "I accept that as true at least for the sake of argument" and keep moving. This tempers the tendency to be emotionally invested in your position to the point of refusing to cede an inch as it would run against your own principles.
Occasionally someone will react very poorly to being Socratic Method'd into a position they find distasteful and get angry at being 'tricked,' however I try to make it clear that I'm always honest in my questioning and willing to accept different arguments they may present, so its not as if I'm hiding the ball.
Its really the only way to have a meaningful 'debate' in a format where there are no rules, no judges/refs to enforce rules, and the audience probably doesn't have the training to identify which side is actually making better arguments. Better to just frame it as a collaborative discussion where you are working towards a mutually agreeable answer, instead.
More options
Context Copy link
It's difficult for me to think of a lower status take than consternation about, say, the casting decisions in the Little Mermaid remake. There's a few layers to that -- the content is for children, and these live action remakes are kind of shameful to have any investment in even before getting to the politics that is easily read as a kind of adolescent, race-fragile myopia.
With low-status, I mean something a little more subtle than just oppositional to the general social mores that might define my own social circle (or how I might ascribe that to a kind of cosmopolitan hegemony writ large). There are plenty of subcultures which define themselves oppositional to the dominant culture without degrading themselves in the process. There are orthogonal axes here that signal a kind of noble worthwhileness outside simple questions of alignment, and these takes seem to me to naturally occupy whatever the distal pole of magnanimity and taste is.
The ensuing conversations can accordingly be less of a debate and more of a slightly embarrassing condescension as if one is explaining social niceties to a child -- not a particularly productive frame for bringing others to one's worldview. What can be read as conciliation or reluctance to gore sacred cows, from one side, may simply be efforts to find tactful ways to bring an embarrassing conversation back to a kind of civility.
Lower status by far is consternation about people's consternation; "why do you care so much?" is, as always, a malicious trick of a phrase, designed to shame people into not noticing or being silent.
It is appropriate to care about the Little Mermaid and oppose it for the same reason the shepherds of culture support it and promote it: control over the building blocks of culture is significant.
Honestly thinking you can opt out of status games, or that obstinate refusal to 'play' doesn't impact how you and your arguments are perceived, is just cope. There's an autistic tendency to conflate a social illiteracy with the kind of practiced sprezzatura that seems effortless on the surface level, or writing off deviations from the norm (a real and valuable thing -- see the 'basic' sneer) as essentially the same.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, I want to focus on this part, since it undergirds the rest of your comment.
One of the primary concerns of the left regarding representation etc is about programming tailored to children as well as the messages it purportedly ends up conveying (which is part of why race-swapping is happening in kid-tailored IPs as well), so if such a leftist were to go on to subsequently believe that being concerned with children's content reads as shameful it would come off as at least somewhat hypocritical to me. It is entirely possible to be invested in a piece of entertainment solely on a "meta-level", so to speak.
With regards to "adolescent, race-fragile myopia", it might be easy for people to read it as being that. In most cases, I think it would be entirely a strawman of the position based on wilful misunderstanding, but anyone certainly can form whatever ideas of their opponent they want independent of the things said opponent actually expressed (sadly a common occurrence in the current climate). That doesn't mean discussion about woke ideology being forced into every production under the sun is inherently unwarranted.
Unless I've misunderstood, this doesn't seem to be a criticism of the take itself so much as it is "if a position can be argued not to look good on X level, you shouldn't even try to argue it at all" which is an idea that doesn't resonate with me whatsoever and is very disconnected from my method of approaching things. It's a focus on aesthetics over all else, which is a consideration that in my view shouldn't inform anyone's decisions as to whether to argue something or not. If there's a valid argument there, it should be promoted regardless of how dignified the take looks on an instinctual, knee-jerk level, and the challenge is getting people to see your point of view.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is what I do:
put importance on empirical results and logic & axioms. So far I've never been called problematic for that.
use mistake theory. Act as if conflict theory is a blind spot I have. Make my opponent explicitly state their C.T. positions.
frame as if I am wanting to learn.
explicitly state positions that are too inferentially-distant to be clocked as problematic.
The one time I experimented by not doing this, I got yelled at, so generally speaking I think these pointers work. I'd say I learned what not to do in that scenario.
This might not work for everyone. For example, wanting to learn can be a cancellable offense ("Just Asking Questions", "Go Educate Yourself"), but it helps if you're debating your friends, who think you're an ally. (I still haven't decided if I'm actually fooling anyone with my less-than-enthused attitude towards the Movement. I also haven't decided what's worse: I'm fooling people or it always has been about humiliation. Could I fool myself?)
More options
Context Copy link
I am much more harsh in real life, precisely because most people are less willing to start conflict in real life.
I will openly mock anyone asking me my pronouns by choosing something ridiculous. I say all the words you can't say on twitter. This is because I am more free to say what I want in real life than online nowadays. There is more value to me personally in openly slaughtering sacred leftist cows for catharsis and daring them to challenge me than the miniscule chance that I might change someone's mind in a debate. If someone wants to discuss something with me earnestly, then fine, but I won't pretend they have any valid points. There will be no charity. That should only exist here.
So my method of debating people is that I largely don't, and how hard I press my point is "to the hilt, and then twist some".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link