[Discussion] How do we argue?

A discussion of ways to engage and debate with those on the other side of major social arguments

Recently, I was listening to an episode of the excellent medical history podcast Sawbones on the history of mumps, as well as the development of the MMR vaccine. The hosts wrapped up with a plea to call out anti-vaxxers any time they speak up, to showcase their ignorant and dangerous ideas for what they are. At one point, Sydney McElroy pointed out that this was an issue in which providing equal consideration to both sides was a disastrous mistake. There's the truth (vaccines don't cause autism), and there's the lie (they do), and giving the lie consideration as an equal half of a debate legitimizes it in an extremely dangerous way. I agree with this wholeheartedly.

This also happens to be the way that I feel about a lot of issues. Anti-abortion activists, white nationalism, objectivism, "family values" organizations, climate change deniers, etc. are all peddling dangerous ideas that have zero basis in reality, and approaching those debates as, "Well, there are two sides, and we should consider each side equally," is not the right approach. But where does that leave us? How do I engage with someone who genuinely believes in something so anathema to reason?

I don't want the answer to be, "Just write them off. You'll never convince them, and there's no point in trying." First, there are way too many people who believe these dangerous ideas, and leaving them to fester in that toxicity leaves them free to inflict those ideas on their communities. Second, many of us have family members in that camp, or other people we're not willing to give up on. So how do I even begin having a conversation that leads in the right direction?

When a person produces an argument from ignorance, there is no debate to be had. In that discussion the educated carries a burden of proof while the ignorant has none.

I attempt to educate, but if they're not receptive I usually don't continue on the subject with that person. The only time I might is if there are others present who are interested in hearing verifiable facts.

This isn't writing someone off. It's acknowledging an irreconcilable difference and moving on with your relationship afterward.

And if they're your father? Nephew? Son?

Also, what long term effect does that have? If someone is an antivaxxer and has children, and you dismiss them as irreparable, they are still spreading the fiction, failing to vaccinate their children, and weakening herd immunity.

Real life ain’t the movies. You play the percentages and realize that so few will actually ever be convinced of the error of their ways and move on. I typically give people a few chances then write them off.

trichy wrote:

And if they're your father? Nephew? Son?

Also, what long term effect does that have? If someone is an antivaxxer and has children, and you dismiss them as irreparable, they are still spreading the fiction, failing to vaccinate their children, and weakening herd immunity.

After experiencing what I did, I rarely ever talked about toxic masculinity with my father. I'd call out behaviors and choices occasionally but wouldn't engage in a debate. Not engaging in debate doesn't mean relinquishing my ability to participate in a relationship such that it is and learn from it. It also doesn't keep me from talking to others who are receptive.

The long term effect was I didn't have to deal with my father's toxicity as much, and bonds with the rest of my family were stronger as we learned a lot from our experiences with him. In the weeks before he passed, he had regrets but pretty much never changed his tune overall (as was evidenced in his will). It was not anyone's job to change him. We dealt with the damage together and continue to learn from it.

You could lie to them, get them thinking you agree with them. Then later drop the bombshell that you've just discovered the whole Anti-Vax movement was a conspiracy of the Bull Moose party to dilute the genes of the true descendants of Xenu or whatever, and you're devastated but dang once you look at the evidence of pot holes that aren't perfectly round and how leaves aren't the same color they were when we were kids it starts making sense.

This is a perpetually difficult topic, and for me, a lot turns on the person making the arguments. People cling to “beliefs”* that make them feel comfortable, and sometimes when they argue you can tell they just want to make their points and get in a dig at the other side. Or, they’re “just asking questions” but you realize, the more you listen to them, that this is just posturing which allows them to disclaim responsibility for the gross thing they don’t quite want to defend. I find that arguing with people in these camps doesn’t change anything — they’re not receptive — so I try not to engage.

But where people are more open minded — maybe they’ve heard something wrong, but don’t have the knowledge to rebut it, or maybe you have a good enough relationship that you can push a little harder and get through to them — I do try to engage a bit more. I would tend to try not to blame or castigate the person, unless I think they’re being disingenuous and need to hear it. Otherwise, I think it can get the person defensive and be counterproductive.

It’s a good question, though, and one I’ve been struggling with a bit over the last year.

trichy wrote:

How do I engage with someone who genuinely believes in something so anathema to reason?

That's the key. You don't. You can't. There's no engagement there.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
trichy wrote:

How do I engage with someone who genuinely believes in something so anathema to reason?

That's the key. You don't. You can't. There's no engagement there.

So we just shrug our shoulders, and accept that they will continue spreading their toxic message? To their children, to those impressionable people who spend time with them?

No. But we must also recognize that people have to want to change. They need to recognize there is a problem and then want to act on that problem.

If a person is unwilling or unable to change, there is little that can be done to force successful, positive change.

trichy wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
trichy wrote:

How do I engage with someone who genuinely believes in something so anathema to reason?

That's the key. You don't. You can't. There's no engagement there.

So we just shrug our shoulders, and accept that they will continue spreading their toxic message? To their children, to those impressionable people who spend time with them?

Yes. Then we're prepared to deal with their choices and the effects of their choices free of the delusion that they're going to change. If they do, bonus. If not, those kids and impressionable people are going to need us more than the ignorant person does.

Here's an example from my life. My sister's ex-husband is a vile human being. After hearing one too many of his rants about immigrants stealing jobs, white genocide, and the gay agenda, I decided I was done. I stopped hanging out while he was around, unfriended him on social media, and refused to engage in any way during holidays. I celebrated when they split up. But shortly after then, we discovered that my nephew, a brilliant, kind, and genuinely decent young man had spent so much time marinating in that filth when his dad was around that he had become an alt-right MAGA obsessive, a fact we discovered when he got suspended from school for posting some hateful stuff on Snapchat. We've spent the last four years very slowly working to wipe that crap from his skull, and have made some progress.

During this time, he made a few things clear. I wasn't the only person to distance themselves from his dad. One by one, people stopped coming over, and the end result was that all my nephew was hearing was this horrible neocon garbage. His dad took people no longer engaging as a tacit surrender to his argument, and crowed about those victories. In addition, my decision to step back from the father meant that I was rarely spending time with my nephew, and couldn't see this change.

My nephew should have been expelled for that stunt he pulled. He's old enough to take responsibility for his actions. But the seeds of that behavior were planted a long, long time ago. And I have to wonder: If I'd decided to stand up to his father, calling him out every time some hateful garbage came out of his mouth, would my nephew had seen things differently?

Calling someone out isn't engaging in debate. Also, discontinuing certain aspects of your relationship with a toxic person doesn't mean doing the same with their children, spouse, and others. My son's former girlfriend has awful parents who are homophobic, transphobic, anti-vax, and conspiracy theorists. We maintain contact with her as a lifeline until she's able to go off to college.

If you can, say something so any observers don't take your silence as agreement. In your situation, being around your nephew may have been more important. The point is that you can't get through to the deplorables. It's the people around them to be concerned about.

I worked with children and adolescents for nearly 10 years.

And the best answer I can give you is that it depends.

Depending on how your nephew views his relationship with his dad, intervening might have only pushed him closer and radicalized him further.

Persecutory and/or delusional beliefs propagated by an adult caregiver can be very difficult to root out in teens and young adults.

His actions at school are providing potential avenues for intervention and support from professionals if he chooses to take them.

trichy wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
trichy wrote:

How do I engage with someone who genuinely believes in something so anathema to reason?

That's the key. You don't. You can't. There's no engagement there.

So we just shrug our shoulders, and accept that they will continue spreading their toxic message?

Yes.

trichy wrote:

To their children, to those impressionable people who spend time with them?

LouZiffer wrote:

discontinuing certain aspects of your relationship with a toxic person doesn't mean doing the same with their children, spouse, and others.

It's not easy, and it's not simple, and it sucks.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
trichy wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
trichy wrote:

How do I engage with someone who genuinely believes in something so anathema to reason?

That's the key. You don't. You can't. There's no engagement there.

So we just shrug our shoulders, and accept that they will continue spreading their toxic message?

Yes.

trichy wrote:

To their children, to those impressionable people who spend time with them?

LouZiffer wrote:

discontinuing certain aspects of your relationship with a toxic person doesn't mean doing the same with their children, spouse, and others.

It's not easy, and it's not simple, and it sucks.

The older I get, the more I find myself having to contort to work around stuff like that. Kaycee and I are going to open a new chapter of Rose Dynasty up in Gainesville to support trans kids up there - many of whom do not receive any kind of support from their own families. These are strangers to us, and every one is going to have unique challenges.

If it’s some stranger or acquaintance, I recommend stating your point and then not engaging in back and forth. It’s not worth the time.

If it’s a coworker, focus on professionalism. So you’re a climate change denier? Doesn’t matter - we have a sustainability initiative coming from the top bosses. FWIW this also applies to a former super liberal coworker who was constantly railing against scum white males. (No this wasn’t a #notallmen situation - she hated at least 90 percent of the male population). Doesn’t matter - save those comments for after work and treat all your coworkers with respect.

If it’s a family member or close friend, things get tricky. Is the other person basically good but flawed? Keep working with them. Also recognize that sometimes these people do a lot of good in other areas. My Dad treats individual Black people with respect and as a coach has helped a lot of at risk youth. He even donated thousands to youth programs. IMHO that outweighs his rants about Black Lives Matter being a communist plot to murder all Whites. Same thing with many of my Church friends who are stanchly pro life but also support charities that help new single moms get on their feet. A lot of these folks are also anti war and anti death penalty.

Finally, try to put yourself in their situation as there is someone out there who feels YOU are not doing enough for a cause. I think most of us would feel locking up anti vaxers and forcing their kids to be put up for adoption is extreme, but some people feel that way. Vegans living off the grid would probably judge most of the people on this forum harshly. After all, we like games which to them is one of the worst wastes of resources. None of us would like to be called child murderers or Earth destroyers for not sharing those views, so recognize most conservatives don’t like to be written off as Nazis, woman haters, etc.

jdzappa wrote:

If it’s a family member or close friend, things get tricky. Is the other person basically good but flawed? Keep working with them. Also recognize that sometimes these people do a lot of good in other areas. My Dad treats individual Black people with respect and as a coach has helped a lot of at risk youth. He even donated thousands to youth programs. IMHO that outweighs his rants about Black Lives Matter being a communist plot to murder all Whites. Same thing with many of my Church friends who are stanchly pro life but also support charities that help new single moms get on their feet. A lot of these folks are also anti war and anti death penalty.

I think this totally hits the nail on the head for me. If dealing with someone else who has different views that I think are terrible, but they're trying to do good and come to those views from (at least partly) a place of good faith, I'd try to keep dialogue open, and see if maybe I could get them to open their mind, a little at a time. And also would be willing to listen to why they think what they think. People generally can tell when we're only feigning interest, after all.

trichy wrote:

My nephew should have been expelled for that stunt he pulled. He's old enough to take responsibility for his actions. But the seeds of that behavior were planted a long, long time ago. And I have to wonder: If I'd decided to stand up to his father, calling him out every time some hateful garbage came out of his mouth, would my nephew had seen things differently?

Just like Reaper81 wrote, calling out or standing up to his dad easily could have made it worse; maybe it would have led to a situation where your nephew wouldn't have been comfortable coming to you after he got suspended, because you were one of his dad's enemies, before. It sounds like you're doing really well by him now.

The internet slowly creeps towards becoming the "all thing" [-geek] and, in step, the micro and macro can at times appear.. flattened. Swaying the problematic world view of "wrong people" may well be insurmountable, but I'd like to believe that swaying individuals, on a per individual basis, hasn't somehow magically been squelched. Maybe just some new ~rules in the mix.

trichy wrote:

So we just shrug our shoulders, and accept that they will continue spreading their toxic message? To their children, to those impressionable people who spend time with them?

Yes, you do. There's 7 billion people in the world and except for a precious few, none of those people are my responsibility. I have no skin in the their game. They can continue to be misguided, wrong or stupid, and it's no skin off my nose.

Frankly, the scale of the problem is so large that any efforts I did make, even if they were unilaterally successful, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

In the case of your nephew, father, cousin, then sure, that's a trickier issue to navigate. Random white supremacist on reddit? Walk away, man. To use a cliche, "he ain't worth it".

I learned long ago that you can't change people and you can't bear the responsibility of that change. People are who they want to be and there is literally nothing anyone can do to change that. Just like you can't fix an addict they need to fix themselves.. you can't fix someone who is descended into Alt-Right Madness.. they need to fix themselves.

At best you can lay an environment of trust and positive atmosphere but ultimately it is 100% on them to take it and run.

'eh.. Coming from the perspective of safeguarding mental health and ballpark, then "ignore them" and "no skin in their game" is, effectively, an object truth. On the other, if you believe a large swathe of the populace are neo-goose stepping then I can't see how that isn't heading towards a no skin left on anyone's nose (outside of said goose steppers coming out on top) situation. [way later edit clarification: in the sense of ignoring them and therefore the problem]

If we're literally contemplating the transformative act of snapping our fingers and "changing someone", then that's a loaded line of thought that won't go anywhere either. I'd like to snap my fingers at my garbage can and make it 'not trash' but, yeah, the process isn't that clear cut.

Note that the preceding is, largely, a jumble of semantics countering semantics and I strongly suspect the core of trichy's contemplation centers on his interpersonal and family relationship, as he's seemingly laid out, and less on a literal wellspring of sympathy for, or a desire to save, Joe Scumbag. The path that the dominos can be pushed back is, again: -- seemingly to me, important.

Whose to say that if the situation hadn't been altered for trichy's nephew, earlier, that he, in turn, would not have had a positive impact on others? Sure, even the best of the best aren't going to change the world but there's a societal ~compounding interest dynamic at work. The danger is that sh*t can work the wrong direction too. It sounds as if trichy is pushing the ball in a better direction for his newphew. Seems a sad thing to me if said nephew was, instead and perhaps, pulling his friends\circle down the well with him at dead-weight drop speeds.

edit/add: to be clear, trichy wouldn't be 'on the hook' if he was entirely hands off, but perhaps doing good by his nephew enables his nephew to positively impact someone trichy would never realistically have the ability to connect with directly.

Jonman wrote:

Frankly, the scale of the problem is so large that any efforts I did make, even if they were unilaterally successful, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

It's like litter. If everybody does a little bit, things get a lot better. If nobody does anything because they can't do everything, things just get worse.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Frankly, the scale of the problem is so large that any efforts I did make, even if they were unilaterally successful, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

It's like litter. If everybody does a little bit, things get a lot better. If nobody does anything because they can't do everything, things just get worse.

Yeah, it's like litter. Yelling at people who drop litter is not an effective way to make them stop.

Jonman wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Frankly, the scale of the problem is so large that any efforts I did make, even if they were unilaterally successful, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

It's like litter. If everybody does a little bit, things get a lot better. If nobody does anything because they can't do everything, things just get worse.

Yeah, it's like litter. Yelling at people who drop litter is not an effective way to make them stop.

Sure, unless it's people that don't know any better and providing some guidance and an example would help them stop littering. (read: adults are largely lost causes, but kids are not)

Humans are more nuanced than that. Yelling probably won't work, might even motivate them to litter more.

Saying nothing with a facial expression that clearly gets across you think they don't belong? Better odds. Most people don't like to think they're stepping outside of the herd. It's a lever that gets used often enough for bad ends, might as well use it for good occasionally.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Sure, unless it's people that don't know any better and providing some guidance and an example would help them stop littering. (read: adults are largely lost causes, but kids are not)

And yet, my point stands. Me running around Seattle yelling at litterers is not going to have a material effect on the amount of litter here.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Saying nothing with a facial expression that clearly gets across you think they don't belong? Better odds. Most people don't like to think they're stepping outside of the herd. It's a lever that gets used often enough for bad ends, might as well use it for good occasionally.

+1

One thing I've found is that with friends, if you dig into this stuff, you might find it's the tip of the iceberg. I have a friend who I've known since childhood. He and I engaged on climate change a decade or so ago, and I found out that in spite of being a successful plasma physicist, his political beliefs have led him to be a climate change denier. "Oh, and what we do see of it, is all natural - you can't possibly show me evidence to the countrary!" The problem is that over time, he went Tea Party crazy, posting stuff to Facebook that noxiously attacked "liberals" in the worst ways, and backing it up verbally when people confronted him with it. And of course, he lost a lot of FB friends, and eventually even RL friends. I tried to explain to him a number of times how offensive it was to me, as a liberal, that the stuff he was posting was cruel, and personal, attacks on probably half of his friends.

He told me that he thought that I knew that he didn't mean "his liberal *friends*", because he respected *us*, but rather liberals out there, somewhere, gnashing their teeth at men, wanting to take away guns and freedoms, and so forth. He literally could not understand why anyone would take this stuff personally.

Then he told me that he felt justified posting this trash because he felt personally attacked by the extreme liberal stuff he was seeing on FB and Fox and Breitbart and Limbaugh and all those sites.

I tried to tell him that liberals can feel the same way, and he's pissing off friends the same way he's pissed off, but he literally denied that was possible; in his mind, he was justified taking stuff personally, but his liberal friends weren't.

Sigh.

He finally left FB after being overwhelmingly rejected and dropped by his friends, including some at work. He shifted to a more politically conservative church, and his wife left him; his frustration with the world bled out to her, I guess (although her choice was... strange, even though in retrospect it was clear she was thinking about it for years). He's now deep inside his bunker life, having doubled down again and again on the persecution stuff. We never talk anymore.

Sometimes, if you want to preserve the relationship, it's better to just shut up and ignore it. JDZappa has it right.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Humans are more nuanced than that. Yelling probably won't work, might even motivate them to litter more.

Saying nothing with a facial expression that clearly gets across you think they don't belong? Better odds. Most people don't like to think they're stepping outside of the herd. It's a lever that gets used often enough for bad ends, might as well use it for good occasionally.

The sliver of me that's still a bright-eyed optimist leans that direction. Plus, practical money constraints. You can't feed more than two or three idiots through the 'ole wood chipper before it jams up and you're stuck burying a much bulkier item.