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How can people be motivated to put the mental effort into understanding the other person's point of view? Participants are still volunteers, not workers, and that's unpleasant work.

Good point! I have no idea.

If someone specifically desires to shout into the void, I don't have any ideas on how to convince them otherwise. However, if they claim they want to actually convince other people to change their mind, maybe they'll both agree that this system will help frame the discussion.

After all, people already voluntarily put a lot of effort into heated Internet arguments already, I'm just hoping to nudge that energy in a productive direction.

If you have better ideas on how to motivate them, I'm all ears!

> Participants are still volunteers, not workers, and that's unpleasant work.

For some, learning why world works a certain way is an interesting, even captivating activity. For some others it's an unpleasant work.

This is a lot of words, but at the end of the day, people who believe in Q conspiracy bullshit are lost causes and their viewpoint or beliefs are simply not worth the time, effort, energy, or patience to understand because there is nothing to understand and nothing to emphasize with because it is all unsound bullshit.

It may be true that there are always two/both sides, but it’s definitely not true that both sides are equal, or both sides are worthwhile.

And for me, this is the core problem here with “breaking out of your bubble.” I DONT want to see outside my bubble because it’s just not worth the time. Now, I know this makes me sound like a closed minded bigot. I’d agree that was the case if the people outside of my “bubble” are arguing about sound things and not conspiracy bullshit, but they aren’t.

It’s a fact that 5G isn’t causing coronavirus, and I’m not going to leave my bubble to put up with your bullshit. It might as well be a fact that HRC did not run a pedophile pizza ring, and there is no point in me listening to that side because it’s completely nonsense.

Both sides are not equal. Both sides are not worth listening to.

One more edit: this website looks like a combination of r/changemyview and r/unpopularopinion. The former is full of trolls who have no intention of listening, and the latter which are people posting about positions they don’t agree with in a way to make themselves feel like a victim, all for internet karma.

Even if you disagree with a group, talking to them can still be a fascinating experience.

I learnt a lot talking to devote muslims, young earth creationists and race realists.

I’m not religious, but I do enjoy talking to Muslims and other religious people to learn their world views. Even though my personal beliefs are incompatible with their concept of a divine power.

But people who believe in flat earth theory, a 6000 year old planet, that one skin color is better than the others… I have much better things to do with my life than to even try to understand this level of crazy.

Edit: I fully see/understand the irony here, that I’m saying similar things as what people in those groups are saying about my beliefs. Maybe deep down, they really do believe that Obama and Clinton ran a pedophile pizza ring or that Biden flew to China to import SARS-CoV-2. And that’s the problem. They BELIEVE. There is no factual basis. It’s just what they believe because it reinforces their worldview. I don’t want to associate or interact with those types of people because nothing is based in reality.

They often see a factual basis.

For instance the young earth creations could go into a great deal of depth about various topics in archaelogy, geology and ancient texts. It wasn't a blind belief, they had been exposed to arguments/evidence that had reinforced their pre-existing beliefs.

The people believing in pizzagate and deliberate SARS importing are a tiny minority of the american right-wing voting population. Try talking to a more random sampling of them (a gaming Discord for instance), you'll be pleasantly surprised!

Back when Peak Oil was a big meme (2008) I got in a long debate with environmental doomers who believed the world was going to spiral into complete and total collapse and depopulation within a couple of years. I was probably the lone voice of optimism on this particular board and I carefully debated them over a long period of time and learned a lot about research, persuasion, arguing and rhetoric even when I was getting flamed like crazy on every other response.

When you say "they are wasting your time", it's that you just don't enjoy debating. You want everyone to tell you quickly you're right and move on to whatever you're actually interested in, like art appreciation or shopping for home decor at antique stores.

Debating with someone who actually wants to get to the truth of a matter is a real pleasure for me. It's also occasionally fun to deal with fallacious arguers by using their own fallacy against them. There are debates I don't have time for, but I don't get angry at people who even propose a debate. What can be annoying is when the mainstream has weighed in on something and they're wrong and armies of people come in to a debate half-way through and completely ignore all the argument so far and just try and push through with their version of the truth through a denial of service attack on the debate by them all repeating the same thing they heard on mass media.

I'm confused. In both Debubble and my vaguely sketched out proposal, you can't be forced into a debate with someone you have no interest talking to. You have to voluntarily start a conversation with them.

Surely there is at least someone in the world who, unlike your 3 examples of conspiracy theorists, you would consider a reasonable person, but who also disagrees with you about something important?

r/changemyview has the same problem I criticized Debubble for, which is not addressing the deeper problems that cause debates to be toxic. r/changemyview's only rules are basic no-trolling civility rules, whereas my proposed rules are MUCH stricter: during phase 1, you're literally not allowed to argue. Making arguments is banned, you're only allowed to ask and answer clarifying questions during phase 1.

In a discussion with someone who is reasonable but disagrees with you about something important, can you imagine a framework like that being helpful? How would you improve them?

(I also believe that, even if you couldn't possibly learn anything about 5G or coronavirus from someone who believes 5G causes coronavirus, you may be able to learn what causes someone to start believing such nonsense, and how we as a society can mitigate this kind of misinformation.)

The two major problems with this are "values" and "forward looking statements".

Coronavirus in particular has brought out a lot of the usual arguments about the value of human life versus economic value. But an even bigger problem is "if we do X, then Y" where the causality is anything less than perfectly individual and clear. Hence a lot of the global warming dispute.

A surprising amount of the most vicious arguments are power-relations driven and collapse to "my convenience or freedom is more important than your or someone else's life". You can't rationalise your way out of that one.

I think a global warming debate could be quite enlightening. I am not a climate scientist, so if I were to discuss global warming with someone else who wasn't a climate scientist, the questions I would be most curious about are: do they acknowledge that there's a scientific consensus? If they don't believe a consensus exists, that's a present-day, non-forward-looking fact that someone could be convinced of. If they believe they know better than the consensus, I'd at least be interested in learning why in more detail than just "they're irrational".

I don't believe for a second anyone would actually admit to believing that "my convenience is more important than the certain loss of your life". There are situations where I would agree my freedom is more important than your life, self-defense being the obvious example. Even if that's logically what they're saying and don't realize it, I believe that for the overwhelming majority of people, if delivered in the right context, in the right tone, by the right person, they could be lead to empathize and see why that's not right.

I may regret this, but the gold standard of intellectual coherent denialism is https://wattsupwiththat.com/ ; I see they're still obsessed with Michael Mann and the hockey stick.

> Are we using the same words to mean different things?

This is a big one when it comes to talking about "socialism".

Bernie Sanders's brand of socialism does not match the textbook definition of socialism. It's still capitalist, but with wealth distribution through government assistance programs and services. Yet when people on the right are criticizing socialism, they're usually criticizing the textbook definition.

It's basically summed up with this meme: https://i.imgur.com/tVB77jV.jpg

We can't debate socialism until we agree on what we mean by "socialism".

Let's say it does not match what many Americans think of when they hear "socialism". There's no such thing as a "textbook definition" of socialism.