this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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One thing I've learned is you can't engage in a rational debate with an irrational person.
Yeah, you can plant seeds... But you won't win anything. And the seeds, you plant will be absorbed by others looking on mostly.
Maybe assuming you are the only one with reason in a conversation is the problem. You don't have to agree with someone to understand their point of view or reasoning.
Its definitely easier to ban or block if all you want is a circle jerk though.
I don't want a circle jerk, I just want to not see people tell me that facts that have been scientifically proven a million times are actually wrong because their old book said so (or at least they intepreted it that way) or cheerlead a genocide.
There is no debating with people that believe in mythology as real life. Who says there is a lake of fire I'll go to because I'm queer, who vote for someone their religion says is the anti-christ. Blocking is just avoiding stepping in shit.
One could spend the enegry to spin their own beliefs to demostrate their contradictions... but their cognitive dissonance will cause them to just dig deeper to maintain their world view... people have to have an open mind before any rational debates can be made.
For most of my life, I was pretty quiet about being an atheist, and literally all of my friends were Christian; *they assumed I was too, and it was easier to let them. Eventually I stopped caring who knew, and finally told a few of my friends that I’m atheist. In every case, the response was ‘you can’t be atheist – you’re too nice’.
A couple of them flat-out refused to believe I’m atheist, telling me that I’m actually Christian, I just don’t go to church or pray, and that’s okay. Utterly refusing to accept I don’t believe in their god, and trying to convince me of all the reasons I’m acktuaaly a believer, even if I don’t think I am. It’s been confusing and maddening. Some of these conversations have gone on for more than a decade.
Many people will straight-up refuse to see anything that doesn’t conform to their worldview, and there’s not a thing you can say to break through it.
e: *
Yup, you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into
I'm with you, but understanding someone's view sometimes means acknowledging that it is, in fact, irrational. There are reasons some give as to why they think that cis women need protection from trans women, but those reasons are either not rational since the vast majority of evidence is to the contrary, or they are founded on the extreme minority of evidence that confirms them (meaning the search for evidence was conducted irrationally).
If I try to understand someone's point of view, restate it to them in a way they accept, and present overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and their response is to say the evidence is irrelevant because it's possible some of it was biased, that's irrational.