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.
I don’t think most of the people we are talking about are irrational.
They are arguing in bad faith.
It’s not that they are stupid, it’s that they’re stubborn.
And arguing against them actually poses risks because they will lie about what you said if they can use it to polish their lies.
I honestly wish I could upvote you more because this is exactly the problem.
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'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.
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.
tolerance is a contract, not a gift.
my fist is a gift to the faces of bigots
To avoid bigotry is really hard nower days. I don't like Israels genocide but don't think all Jews or even Israelis are monsters. I absolutely hate the Iranian politics of murdering women for getting raped and similar stuff, but I don't think war is the solution. And suddenly someone jumps out of the woodwork blaming you "for support of genocide".... am I the bigot? I don't know any more...
Thanks to you that apple is a Nazi now
/s just in case
Apple: I was a very far left leftist with strong values a d principles but then someone was rude to me on the internet and forced me to become a Nazi.
An open society that doesn't want the intolerant to undermine and topple it must be ready to defend itself - by reason and argument if possible, but these may fail because the intolerant reject reason itself. Force should be the last resort, but if all other means prove fruitless, it should be a resort still.
ThE mArKeTpLaCe Of IdEaS
I'm voting with my dollar and not listening to theirs.
Look, I am a big believer in attempting to educate other people and better the world around you by trying to change harmful or hateful outlooks, but I also realize that some people cannot be changed. Trying to engage these types of people in real life is just putting yourself in danger. Engaging them online is fine but there's a limit to how long you should spend having dialogue with someone who could probably argue their irrational viewpoints for weeks on end without stopping.
Yep.
My entire family is conservative. They eat up every drop of shit from the shit fountain. I can disprove anything they give me in about five seconds, and no matter how absolutely cratered their opinions are and decimated their egos in an argument, a week later, they'll start right back up again with some insane shit they heard online.
It's like trying to patch a dam made of mud.
I try to keep an open mind and engage in conversation when I can too. Tbh the fallacy I find to be the most irritating (and probably most common) is when the person already presupposes your entire argument and crafts straw men arguments against you. To me, that tells me they’re just unwilling/unable to listen to me and listen to my actual arguments. No use in debating someone who doesn’t even know what they’re debating against.
Having to keep saying “but that’s not what I said” every time I try and explain myself gets exhausting after awhile lol
"Their irrational viewpoints" because our viewpoints are all rational. Unfortunately, that's what everyone who's hard-line on their views and won't consider discussion with others seems to think.
The meme posted here comes off as super dumb to me, not only will we not listen to anyone else, we are so closed minded that we won't even listen to people who agree with us but also see where the other side is coming from.
Lemmy is a strong echochamber for leftists sadly, it was my hope that Lemmy would have a thoughtful userbase who recognises both sides are equally problematic for their extreme views and hard headedness.
Majority of it is bullshit anyway, biggest joke on earth is the political system, the world functions because of all the people who don't give a damn and get on with living their lives and being useful.
You are in a queer friendly community talking about "... recognize both sides are equally problematic for their extreme views ..." That is incorrect. The most leftists are not pushing or perpetrating the genocide (or removal, or subjugation) of my people (the queer, disabled, and other social minorities). I know from experience the same is not true of the right. Just like the OP and like many of the comments, I do not tolerate "both-sidesism" because it is not an equal scale. The right creates a platform built regressionist practices. I think some leftists are annoying, but at least they aren't trying to kill me.
But but my freeze peach!!1!21!
Woe, Tolerance Paradox be upon ye.
Is this centrism or is it just a bad faith argument from a bigot?
The person making the argument could just be naive too.
I could see myself 25 years ago making such a statement in completely good faith, trying to see both sides and all that. But I was naive to think that both sides were also arguing in good faith.
But to be fair, that naive messenger would still be repeating an argument that originated in bad faith.
Heck I still find myself thinking this on a subconscious level. I can't let go of the sense that we should be able to discuss things in good faith and make change through civil discourse.
I have to remind myself that history does not support my blind faith in the goodness of humanity like this.
Even people who have less than two seconds ago proven they are arguing in bad faith, my gut reaction is to give them another chance to come to the discussion properly.
It's like pathological naivety, and yes, it's just as harmful as the original bad faith argument when all it's doing is echoing the bad faith argument.
I have been booted from many communities for asking what I thought was a genuine question. And at first been left wondering why a community would ban someone for asking questions and trying to learn. I've experienced this my entire life and only recently began to understand that it's not some personal slight against my curiosity and ignorance. It's a necessary safety measure for that community.
I'm just an idiot, questioning an asshole, but from everyone else's perspective there's two dumb assholes over here.
Here in the states, even the most progressive Democrats are right of center compared to the industrialized world, and so those who are centrist are leftist by comparison, and those who are left wing are seen as radical, even when we talk about how the justice system, between its false conviction rate, law enforcement brutality or propensity for cruel (if usual) punishments, needs to be either massively overhauld, or disassembled and redesigned from the beginning.
But any state or society that decides it needs to cull the population for any reason has failed as a community, and therefore has failed as a state or a society.
Also centrists, like their conservative brethren, fail to recognize that the misery experienced by the bottom rung strata is extreme and heinous, and the neglect by institutions to act on it as if it were a crisis is heinous itself (and might compare to crimes against humanity). And this is what fuels radical direct action (even terrorism) from the left.
(Curiously, Osama Bin Laden said as much was what drove his own terror campaign, including the 9/11 attacks, though he was also pissed at George H. W. Bush's gulf war, what he thought he could resolve with his mujahideen army. But the Gulf War from the US position was less about Kuwait and more about securing oil for import to the US.)
(And yes, left-wing violence gets into tankie territory, what is a paradox of wanting to create a functional, peaceful public-serving society that isn't exploited from the top, and being unable to compute how to get there without breaking one's own principles. We radical leftists are not good at this yet.)
But the Gulf War from the US position was less about Kuwait and more about securing oil for import to the US.
I mean, that's one and the same. Saddam was responding to slant drilling from Kuwait into oil rich southern Iraqi oil fields. That's why he burned the Kuwait wells on his way out. It was retaliation for what he claimed was a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.
The Kuwaiti wells, and the slant drilled wells into Iraqi territory, were operated by American petroleum companies and their affiliates. And the US incursion into Iraq, with the intention of destroying the Iraqi offensive capacity, was about restoring the ability of Kuwaiti drillers to access Iraqi fields. 2003 made that redundant. But the initial Desert Storm was intended to prevent Saddam from threatening cross-border drilling operations into the future.
Tolerance paradox
Unfortunately, the solution to the paradox boils down to "Might Makes Right". The bounds of tolerance aren't set by a consensus, but by whomever has the Power to Yeet.
And while this game seems satisfying early on (Yeet the Nazis! Yeet the Tankies! Yeet the Radical Centrists!) you do get into a cycle of purity where you're yeeting anyone who questions whether the last guy who got yeeted deserved it.
That leaves us with the age-old Martin Niemöller verse:
"And then they came to Yeet me - and there was no one left to Yeet back on my behalf".
What is the appropriate degree of tolerance? How do you prevent it from expanding to include people who would dissolve the institution? How do you prevent it from collapsing into a state of cult-like obedience to authority? It's a balancing act and one that the individuals with the power to silence fringe communities rarely have an interest in performing.
I believe the answer lies in bureaucracy.
You're allowed to be intolerant but you gotta fill out just a bunch of paperwork to do so. And if someone to pay a fee, fill in several forms, submit to an ID chrck and wait 6 weeks just to get a literal N word pass, then yeet.
Society needs a yeeting tree.
The Yeeting Tree by Shel Silverstein. It would have had a better lesson.
Is this loss?
…of at least one apple, sure.
:.|:;No this is Bad Apple!!
I appreciate this, I really do, but you do have to be careful not to end up like certain leftist Reddit subs where I got banned for the heinous crime of suggesting that voting for Harris might produce better outcomes than voting for Trump. Some level of discussion that goes beyond what the majority (or, lbr, the mods) think has to be allowed or you just have an echo chamber.
Granted, that isn't what is happening in the comic. The apologist here is genuinely advocating tolerance of Nazis. This situation is appropriate.
In my experience, most self-identified centrists, at least in the US, are to the right of what anyone reasonable would actually consider center. And I don't mean that in an "um ackshually the Dems are center right" way either, I mean they're often just Conservatives who don't hate gays (but do hate trans people) or something.
Or conservatives who are queer and white
I think I got banned for replying "?" to someone saying NATO was bad because I'd literally never heard anyone say that. The context was about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. I'm glad I'm off Reddit and modlogs are public here.
I truly hate seeing people get banned for questioning a viewpoint. How weak are your opinions if you literally won't answer questions about them? Of course there are bad-faith rhetorical techniques that involve asking questions, but people wanting to learn should never be turned away.
Godot discord in a nutshell
So is anyone rational actually leaving Godot? I saw that Redot, last I checked they were 52 commits behind, and their only 4 commits were changing any references of "Godot" in the code to "Redot"
Personally I don't think it's wise to abandon Godot for a fork that will always lag behind and also just seems like a crude protest in retaliation. I think using Godot is fine as it is and unfortunately a con to the engine is we have to deal with silly politics from them being unfortunately in control of the Godot loudspeaker. I had to leave their discord because of the circlejerk they have going on was unbearable.
I wish we could just have a professional space.
They're not really centerists, they're just trying to stir the pot. Jon Stewart had a really good podcast on all this on the Weekly Show. I could only find a youtube video on my laptop, I think it's the full thing by the time.
The uncommitted/third party vote is what caused biden to drop out of the race. It could also very well cost the democrats the election.
When a minority group has outsized power due to circumstance, they should use it to affect the change they want.
The point isnt to make democrats lose its to put pressure on them to drop their worst positions, which happen to include genocide.
You can argue that you think it won't work, but its a prediction. Noone knows, which is why even among Muslims this debate has people on both sides.
None of what you said is how anything works in US government. Biden has some crazy takes on the war in Gaza, but it's rooted in them being our allies and something else that I have no idea about.
3rd party in a 2 party system just takes away votes from another person. You have to calculate who that's gong to be and assess the risk to the people and government.
When a single party is in charge of the both the house and senate and there are no assholes that can be bought off, that's the only time things can be changed.
The apple fell somewhere completely devoid of apple trees and scientists could not trace it back to the tree of origin.
The rational debate is so the on the fence people see the problems with the bigots rather than just the bigoted opinions/“proof”
It’s about stopping the lies from spreading not changing an individual opinion. You could hardly call yourself a leftist if you don’t understand that
Tolerance goes both ways motherfucker
Fuck sealions!
I tried, but it didn't go well for either of us.
Violence against fascists isn't an answer, its a question and the answer is always yes
When you debate the bigots in the "Free Market of Ideas", you basically say that these bigoted ideas are "Just as valid as any other"
This is why you don't see Temu shit on Target shelves, but in shady grey market apps.
This is such a braindead take. Humanity is networked. You can cut a link, but you can't disconnect someone from yourself unless you yeet them out of existence
Drive them into bigot echo chambers and someone has to deal with them thinking everyone is secretly as bigoted as them
Respond in kind - if they're rational, defeat them with reason. If they're a dumbfuck, quote then and mock how stupid their words are. If they're a troll, counter troll them
And when they feel bad for saying bad things, offer an olive branch. Highlight the path back to being a respectable person
You don't need to be equipped to do it all - I'm personally good at counter trolling and reaching out to those already verbally beaten down
We all have to live with these people - we all have a have a responsibility to do our part. Give them the social rejection they deserve when they say unacceptable things - people who don't learn from logic learn emotionally, so make them feel bad. It's ok to attack those attacking others unfairly - just always leave a path back to acceptance
Kill them or rehabilitate them - those are the only options that fix the problem
It's less about cutting them off as a person and more about banning them from a page, group, or platform. Like banning them from a Mastodon instance or Lemmy server.
That's my point - you're cutting them off from negative feedback in a very low risk setting. They still vote. They come to Thanksgiving. They work and shop around you. And most people don't quit social media after getting a ban - they find somewhere more hospitable. They go soothe each other by turning bigotry into a sense of belonging. Then, having normalized saying horrible things, it comes out elsewhere
The better outcome is that a healthy community circles around them and calls them an asshole, and hopefully a few people explain why they're being an asshole
Yes, feelings can be hurt, but this is a best case scenario even on that front - when someone says something terrible to you and the community leaps to your defense, it hurts a lot less. I'd go so far as to call it empowering
Some people need safe spaces, because they've been traumatized. Safe spaces should exist for people to heal - but they should be limited and small corners.
Humans need to mix. They naturally adjust to social norms - I think the last decade has shown us that bigots who hold their tongue are much better than ones convinced it's socially acceptable to say horrible things
Moderation has a place, but it should be dedicated only to keeping the community healthy - a healthy community is a community that can police itself. Spammers have no place in a healthy community, because they exploit the medium of communication. Doxing is generally the same. Continuous personal attackers eventually prove they deserve exile from the community. A community under attack from outsiders might need a more decisive hand to return to health
But a healthy community should have dissidents. Modern communities are just little shards of society as a whole - if you're not spreading social norms you're just an echo chamber. You have to spread that health outwards, because we're all connected at the end of the day - the people we ban don't go away, we deny them the pressure to rehabilitate when we decide to keep them out of our online platforms. They're still there in the real world
Is this kind of stupid rhetoric that sows the divide in US politics and it’s why places like Lemmy and Reddit are just echo chambers. Just saying people who have the opposite few are stupid and should be ignored does nothing to address their concerns and they still get a vote at the end of the day.
Ah yes, you are so correct. I should "address the concerns" of bigots that tell me I shouldn't have the right to exist, and that I'm going to rape fellow women in the bathroom. My mistake.
As someone who actively seeks out ideological conflict, I've learned that you simply cannot reason with fascists. Beyond the more general inability to reason people out of positions they didn't reason themselves into, fascism has no principles outside of winning and being the strongest. Truth is an inconvenience. Only rhetoric matters; spinning words into salient phrases that result in them appearing better than you. They will use tidbits of logic, but often in ways where they don't differ from their opponent.
US politics being divided right now is a good thing if you value any aspect of our system. Everyone from Cheney to Sanders agree with the liberal democratic framework that the US was founded on. Despite their wildly differing perspectives on what parts matter most, every president from FDR to Ronald Reagan was ideologically liberal. That held true for 200+ years, and then Trump was elected.
Trump, unlike Bush or Reagan, actually despises every element of liberalism. He hates not using power without the restraints of principles like freedom, democracy, or even free market capitalism. He actively undermined the interests of big business, which loves the status quo funneling wealth to them. However, the instability caused by economic woes fuels demands for change, which is easily co-opted by fascists who blame the other rather than the fat cats.
The end result is that Trumpism took control from the liberal conservatives that wanted business to win through the ballot box. He divided this country by rejecting all common ground politics, instead focusing on the raw mechanisms of power. He flip-flops positions because none of them actually matter beyond how they grant him power. He destroys the career of any Republican that have power of their own, replacing them with weaklings like Mike Johnson and JD Vance. Republicans are nothing without him now.
Trump supporters aren't necessarily stupid, as the smartest a human can be is not very smart, but they are beyond arguing with. If you can't accept that reality, join the Trump camp. He offers exactly the self delusion you want.
Yeah, thats all very much more likely than a large group of people just being sick of being forgotten and taken advantage of by democrats. It couldn't possibly be that there are legitimate grievances with that party.
How obtuse must you be to just assume the opposite position must be all insane people.
We're talking about bigots not people with different opinions.
You mistake conflict for confusion.
If someone's terminal values are opposed to yours you cannot convince them. Sometimes people change core opinions slowly, but almost always by interaction with people close to them (i.e. where they have conflicting drives to uphold or reject an opinion). Internet debate me bro shit is pointless and just poisons spaces.
this feels very ironic
Theres a few people who are arguing in bad faith whose sole intention is to stop people voting to boost the right wing.
If you check a lot of them, they're right wingers pretending temporarily to be left wing
I guarantee they're the same ones causing issues everywhere with everything from environmental policies to helping the lower class
And let's be blunt, they ignore absolutely everything except Israel because it's the only argument they have left.
And it's such a stupid hill to die on and to stop voting.
Because one candidate is causing a civil war, is a criminal, a rapist and is incredibly dangerous. He talks like a mob boss knowing the implications of his actions. One of them is stripping rights
Trump is advocating for Nazism within the US, and you have to understand it's a huge issue that is having world wide implications. His own people know he's dangerous.
That's why he's being ignored. They're often not centrist. They are simply a single issue voter who often lean towards the right wing actually (but don't want to say it)
