We need public examples, agreed. I think this under-sells the difficulty here.
In an argument or discourse worth having, a lot of the beliefs feeding in are going to be things that are:
A) Hard to state with precision, or that require the sum of a lot of different claims.
B) Involve beliefs or implications that risk getting a very negative reaction on the internet. There are a lot of important facts about the world you do not want to be seen endorsing in public, as much as we wish it were not so.
C) Involve claims that you do not have a social right to make.
D) Involve claims you can’t provide well-articulated evidence for, or can’t without running into some of A-C.
In my experience, advanced actually-changing-minds discussions are very hard to follow and very easy to misconstrue. They involve saying things that make sense in context to the particular person you’re talking to, but that often on the surface make absurd, immoral or taboo claims.
I still think trying to do this is Worth It. I would start by trying to think harder about what topics we can do this on in public, that dodge these problems while still being non-trivial enough to be worthwhile.
We need public examples, agreed. I think this under-sells the difficulty here.
In an argument or discourse worth having, a lot of the beliefs feeding in are going to be things that are:
A) Hard to state with precision, or that require the sum of a lot of different claims.
B) Involve beliefs or implications that risk getting a very negative reaction on the internet. There are a lot of important facts about the world you do not want to be seen endorsing in public, as much as we wish it were not so.
C) Involve claims that you do not have a social right to make.
D) Involve claims you can’t provide well-articulated evidence for, or can’t without running into some of A-C.
In my experience, advanced actually-changing-minds discussions are very hard to follow and very easy to misconstrue. They involve saying things that make sense in context to the particular person you’re talking to, but that often on the surface make absurd, immoral or taboo claims.
I still think trying to do this is Worth It. I would start by trying to think harder about what topics we can do this on in public, that dodge these problems while still being non-trivial enough to be worthwhile.