I was never good at convincing other people, so I am not qualified to give advice about how to talk to other people. Speaking for myself, if I am told something with a friendly voice, I am more likely to consider it seriously than if someone screams at me. Even better, if I can voice my objections or ask additional questions, and receive a reasonable response. (Reasonable doesn’t mean “totally destroyed by a clever verbal argument”. Saying “yeah, that’s complicated, and I don’t actually have all the answers, but nevertheless here are a few things I want you to consider” works fine with me.) Sometimes it takes time to process.
Problem is, I don’t know how much this advice can be generalized. I don’t consider myself to be a typical person. I am already a nice guy who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, so if you show me how to make the world a better place, I am happy for the info. I also care about truth, so I will reject ideas that seem wrong to me. As far as I know (I am never sure about modeling other people), not all people are like this… and I don’t know what approach would work with them. What convices those who want to hurt others, or who don’t care about reality? Sorry, I have no idea. And if you want to solve racism, I am afraid that those are the people you need to convert, somehow. Perhaps some of them respond well to threats by force; but if you use such threats indiscriminately, then you risk accidentally making enemies of people like me.
I suppose a reasonable debate requires some filtering of participants for some baseline goodness and sanity. Then, I guess, provide lots of data, both in near mode (someone’s personal experience) and in far mode (statistics). Then, allow discussion. This, unless it somehow obviously backfires, I would already consider a small victory. People will remember something, which is better than most online interactions.
(Of course, this involves the risk that you were wrong about something, and people will point it out in the debate. In such hypothetical situation, are you open to feedback? If you are seen as dogmatic, smart people will realize that all evidence you have presented so far has been filtered by a dogmatic mind, and will devalue it accordingly.)
If you want an online debate, some anonymity would probably be helpful. If you want an offline debate, it definitely should not be related to anyone’s job.
I was never good at convincing other people, so I am not qualified to give advice about how to talk to other people. Speaking for myself, if I am told something with a friendly voice, I am more likely to consider it seriously than if someone screams at me. Even better, if I can voice my objections or ask additional questions, and receive a reasonable response. (Reasonable doesn’t mean “totally destroyed by a clever verbal argument”. Saying “yeah, that’s complicated, and I don’t actually have all the answers, but nevertheless here are a few things I want you to consider” works fine with me.) Sometimes it takes time to process.
Problem is, I don’t know how much this advice can be generalized. I don’t consider myself to be a typical person. I am already a nice guy who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, so if you show me how to make the world a better place, I am happy for the info. I also care about truth, so I will reject ideas that seem wrong to me. As far as I know (I am never sure about modeling other people), not all people are like this… and I don’t know what approach would work with them. What convices those who want to hurt others, or who don’t care about reality? Sorry, I have no idea. And if you want to solve racism, I am afraid that those are the people you need to convert, somehow. Perhaps some of them respond well to threats by force; but if you use such threats indiscriminately, then you risk accidentally making enemies of people like me.
I suppose a reasonable debate requires some filtering of participants for some baseline goodness and sanity. Then, I guess, provide lots of data, both in near mode (someone’s personal experience) and in far mode (statistics). Then, allow discussion. This, unless it somehow obviously backfires, I would already consider a small victory. People will remember something, which is better than most online interactions.
(Of course, this involves the risk that you were wrong about something, and people will point it out in the debate. In such hypothetical situation, are you open to feedback? If you are seen as dogmatic, smart people will realize that all evidence you have presented so far has been filtered by a dogmatic mind, and will devalue it accordingly.)
If you want an online debate, some anonymity would probably be helpful. If you want an offline debate, it definitely should not be related to anyone’s job.