feuervogel | (Reply)

That's true. Part of my strategy involves time, though: I try to plant a seed that may eventually lead the other person to change their mind. My experience has been that it's very rare for them to reverse course immediately, even if it doesn't take that long for them to come around after that discussion is over. (If nothing else, there are well-recognized forms of cognitive bias that make it very hard for people to change positions in the middle of a debate.)

And in fact, I saw what looked like a great example of that in the discussion on your earlier post:

thegreyghost was (as you say) digging in his(?) heels through all of the hard-hitting arguments and invective in that discussion. And then

leora made a calm and reasonable statement that her friend felt hurt by the casual use of "lame" and she explained some of the real effects of connecting broadly negative language to disabilities. And in the very next comment (http://akiko.livejournal.com/1081151.html?thread=3833407#t3834687),

thegreyghost finally said "I'm open to it". Personally, I call that a win, and I suspect that he'll wind up using "lame" less often as a result.

If my years of intense debate through the flame wars of Usenet taught me anything, it was that people essentially never respond well to harsh language, no matter how valid the reasons behind it. I became one of the most respected Tolkien scholars on the 'net not just by having knowledge, but by (usually) finding ways to communicate it well.