Everyone thinks it’s the other person that needs to change their mind when presented with the new information. Both sides feel like they are right and the other side is stupid for not understanding.
Comment on Master baiter
uphillbothways@kbin.social 8 months ago
Seems like debate and people changing their minds when presented with new information is something that died around 9/11, if it ever even existed. Even the most mild vocal disagreement just further entrenches people in their feelings.
bob_wiley@lemmy.world 8 months ago
GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de 8 months ago
It happens, it just never comes to a satisfying synthesis. I changed my opinion a few times after one of those big 25 reply arguments, though I never admitted to it in the moment.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s always been a thing to not really want to admit you’re wrong. Half of debate is just realizing you’re not ever going to change your opponent’s mind real-time. Ego gets in the way way too hard, particularly on a public platform. Debating on a public platform is more to try to convince people in the audience that are more moderate.
Sometimes, your good argument can also actually change the other person’s mind, even slightly, but you’ll probably never SEE it. That doesn’t mean it’s pointless, just that if you’re expecting to get something out of the act of debating, it has to be something other than changing your oppo mind.
Chetzemoka@startrek.website 8 months ago
As an old person, can confirm it never existed. People have always been like this.
VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 8 months ago
As a junior middle aged (40yo) person, I can confirm with the caveat that the number of things that are considered common sense rather than completely subjective matters of opinion has change a shitload since the turn of the millennium l, with 9/11 being one of the major catalysts.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, outlandish conspiracy theories were rightly considered fringe lunacy and being a nazi or any other kind of fascist was a shameful thing that you had to hide to be accepted, not a resurgent movement across most North America and Europe.
Just to name two of the worst examples of thousands of ways that discourse has worsened since the “good old days” when other things were much worse.
Chetzemoka@startrek.website 8 months ago
I think the only thing that really changed is the internet removed the gatekeeping role of centralized information sources. When you were a kid, was CNN still the end-all-be-all oracle and arbiter of concrete truth? In my mom’s generation, it was Walter Cronkite, of course. And if you were one of those people who got your information from Coast to Coast AM or other AM radio shows, you were considered a weirdo because if any of that stuff was really true, then Ted Koppel would have reported on it.
But also, looking back now, how fucking bizarre was it that they televised the invasion of Iraq twice? That’s some serious colonial behavior and I had no idea at the time. Now I can see it for what it was.
But also, I really wish we had had one centralized authority to give us information and advice about how to handle Covid. So I think there’s good and bad things about the change.