Snargorf

I've actually found it works a lot better if both people just allow the contentious statements. Just let each person say, "Oh that's ridiculous because..." and the other replies with "You're totally missing this point..." Even if people raise their voice or scoff, it's fine. The key is to just keep going.

If you go on long enough, the points do start sinking in.

Too many people assume that acrimony means that the discussion must end immediately. But that's not true at all. It's exceptionally hard, sometimes, to meet clashing beliefs with entirely soft voices and polite manners. You don't have to suppress everything you want to say. You can let it out. So can the other person. It's good. (Obviously it shouldn't raise to a degree where people are screaming continuously or acting violent).

Maturity doesn't just mean always speaking softly. It can also mean being able to make and reject points forcefully, and not wilt like a delicate flower if the other person does the same.

The real key is that people need to not be so delicate. Accept the natural difficulties of clashing belief systems. Just stick in there, let the acrimony happen, don't give up. Eventually - 10 or 20 or 30 minutes later - you'll get to something meaningful simply because there's no way to talk that long without both people having a lot of time to make real points.

It's pretty trivial to apply these signals to nearly any collectivist social movement.

1. Action for action's sake - Black Lives Matter protests to block highways.

2. Exploit the fear of difference - Those horrible racist uneducated people are nothing like us, we can't let them take the country! This is basic tribalism and it applies to every major social movement.

3. Rewritten: "To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Anti-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be good, moral egalitarians. This is the origin of anti-fascism."

Here I've applied them to Western progressivism, but if you deny the basic assumptions of any collectivist social movement you could apply them. Scientology, communism, socialism, fascism. Switch a few unimportant words and there you are with the same meaningless parallels.

The human mind is a great pattern matching machine but has a problem with false positives.

EDIT: It's important to remember when comparing Trump to old fascists that the people who defeated those fascists enacted Trump's policies. For example, in 1945, immigration policy in all western countries was effectively, "whites only".

So if you're gonna notice parallels between Trump and Hitler, you have to notice even closer parallels between Trump and the people who defeated Hitler. You should also notice the differences: Trump is an isolationist who wants to start wars less than Hillary - a lot like pre-WW2 America.

Wait wait. So:

1. White people commit racism and violence against blacks

causes

2. White people flee to the suburbs

causes

3. Urban centers to deteriorate.

Let's examine:

1->2 So white people were fleeing... their own violence against blacks?

2->3 So when those violent people left, this cause the areas to get... worse?

Apparently you believe white people being present is a problem, and white people leaving is a problem. Their presence hurts blacks, and when they leave it hurts blacks too. So literally everything is the fault of white people, whether they're coming or going, here or there.

Even more surreal - these blacks voluntarily moved towards the whites. Then the whites moved to escape the blacks. And the bad guys here are... the whites! The ones who blacks want to live around, and who are trying to flee them.

It really is remarkable the rationalizations a mind is capable of.

>If women are disadvantaged

Except they're not. In fact, in tech, they're advantaged. Female names on resumes get more callback than male names. This has been studied.

The reason there are fewer of them is because fewer of them are interested.