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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?
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.
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