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To me it just seems like everybody talking past each other, that this supposed silent majority of people passively observing and waiting to be convinced by the most reasonable argument simply doesn't exist, or barely does.

Your mileage may vary, but this has been my experience.

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How would you be able to tell whether the silent population is there or not? I can understand how this could be your “theory,” but not your “experience.”

My experience is nobody from the massive silent population has ever jumped in to introduce themselves and say they were convinced, and I've never met anyone in real life who says they use forums but don't post just to be convinced by arguments on the internet to choose one worldview or another. From that experience I developed the theory that they don't actually exist.

But anyway, debating the semantic difference between theory and experience seems to be missing the point.

Not trying to debate semantics. I was hoping you had some data that showed the proportion of lurkers or something. Or maybe some survey where people answered whether they’d been convinced by reading others’ debates online. I’ve personally sought out online debates to help make my own judgments (without commenting), so I’m curious whether that’s really so uncommon.

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