I have found, when talking to people of a different ideological persuasion, that much more progress can be had by asking questions than by posing arguments. I am highly confident that making arguments is a waste of time from the point of view of persuasion, so the bar isn’t high, but questions work pretty well for these reasons:
Non-hostile: all arguments are attacks, but all questions are not. People interpret a respectfully posed question favorably by default.
Information: when they answer the question you get valuable information, especially in terms of context. The further you are away ideologically, the more this helps.
Articulation: the pitch is to get them to stumble on the argument you like from inside their view.
Now this is never going to result in a sudden conversion, but it is very good at provoking an appropriate amount of uncertainty and thereby at least weakening their commitment to the “wrong” position.
I have found, when talking to people of a different ideological persuasion, that much more progress can be had by asking questions than by posing arguments. I am highly confident that making arguments is a waste of time from the point of view of persuasion, so the bar isn’t high, but questions work pretty well for these reasons:
Non-hostile: all arguments are attacks, but all questions are not. People interpret a respectfully posed question favorably by default.
Information: when they answer the question you get valuable information, especially in terms of context. The further you are away ideologically, the more this helps.
Articulation: the pitch is to get them to stumble on the argument you like from inside their view.
Now this is never going to result in a sudden conversion, but it is very good at provoking an appropriate amount of uncertainty and thereby at least weakening their commitment to the “wrong” position.