Agreeing to disagree is the death knell of our social system
joanwestenberg.medium.com
joanwestenberg.medium.com
The article culminates with: "We need a new kind of healthy relationship with disagreement, one in which we’re better equipped to challenge and defend our ideas and be challenged and defended by others. We must be better equipped to form thoughtful opinions and engage in critical thinking."
This is so general as to be almost a feel-good affirmation. Sure, we need to be smarter. I'm not sure anyone would disagree. What does this boil down to in practice? Better quality education? Free education to get it more widespread? Promoting courses on reasoning and logic? Reducing air pollution so people can think clearer? My generation grew up on empty generalizations like "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" and I'm not sure they materially helped us, so I think concrete ideas would be more helpful.
Their proposal is not about education, but about refusing to back down even when it would be easier to declare a truce and a draw.
That is much harder. Simply refusing to give in does not give you a route to convincing people. People with misinformation are at least as certain of their position as better informed people, and often more so. This is a call to fight an often unwinnable fight in the hope that the truth will win out eventually just because it is the truth.
I myself am not that brave and much more pessimistic. But I want to believe that the fight is worth participating in even if it loses. I used to believe it and I wish I still could.
To pick a recent example, "agreeing to disagree" about KiwiFarms resulted in the harassment of a woman who could literally have died in a swatting. Many people here will object bitterly to what I just said, and nothing I say will convince them. But it may well be worth it to be seen to say it, just so that people know that it's something I not just believe, but will risk the wrath of Internet commenters. It still won't do any good and may even make things worse, but it would be lazy and unethical to simply fall back on that while a human being suffers.