I try to aim for "strong opinions, weakly held" - present a specific, actionable and strong position but be open to changing it if a better argument is made.
It's true that espousing nuanced opinions and making effective arguments are often at odds, but the fact is, reality is often nuanced. Glossing over that nuance to make your argument more effective is like searching where there's light. Sure, it's more persuasive, but if you are persuading toward an incorrect idea, what are you really accomplishing?
Of course as Asimov's Relativity of Wrong points out, not all wrongs are equal. It may be worthwhile to persuade someone of a not-very-wrong given limited resources. But this sort of compromise has problems of its own. A social justice movement that ignores the nuance of handling white men's needs is effective until it needs white men's cooperation but instead generates backlash (Trump). The devil is in the details.
In an argument about climate change with a denier I might say "Glaciers are shrinking" and until they bring up the the Tibetan glacier is growing I can be content with my intellectual honesty that all other glaciers are shrinking.
I agree with your notion of using details to garner supporters.
For example, the term "SJW". What is an SJW? I can tell you what it isn't. It is not racist, not misogynistic, etc. But what is it actually defined as?
I've never been a fan of post-structuralism, or any postmodern philosophical theory, but as of late I've been drawn to Jean Baudrillard. At the very least, our political landscape itself has become a simulacra of true political thought, as evidenced by groups defining themselves by the nihil or negation, i.e. there is no Universe where the statement "I am a bigot" can be made true.
> Since the mid-1980s, my mantra for this process is “strong opinions, weakly held.” Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the “strong opinion” part. Then –and this is the “weakly held” part– prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn’t fit, or indicators that pointing in an entirely different direction. Eventually your intuition will kick in and a new hypothesis will emerge out of the rubble, ready to be ruthlessly torn apart once again. You will be surprised by how quickly the sequence of faulty forecasts will deliver you to a useful result.
http://www.saffo.com/02008/07/26/strong-opinions-weakly-held...
A blog post [1] quoting a blog post [2] quoting a guy [3].
[1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/strong-opinions-weakly-held/
[2]: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/strong_opinio...