In the latest edition of "complicated communication misfires I want to pick at," remember that your knowledge isn't always common.
People form simple opinions about complex issues. The mind you may find yourself arguing with doesn't necessarily have ANY awareness of the complexities and nuances of the thing they're arguing about. They may very well be parroting talking points which were fed to them.
If you're arguing presuming they know the roots of a systemic problem, you could be wrong.
And consider what that looks like from the other side:
"Suddenly this person is bringing up outside issues to muddy the conversation! The people I watch on the news warned me about this. They won't stay on topic because they're disingenuous and they know it."
We have to listen to each other and engage with the individual things we are wrong about. We have to be very careful about labeling an entire person as "wrong." That presumes they cannot change or improve themselves: a very dangerous idea
"Suddenly this person is bringing up outside issues to muddy the conversation! The people I watch on the news warned me about this. They won't stay on topic because they're disingenuous and they know it."
I feel this with AI discourse on Mastodon. Virtually every anti-AI post that I see runs on emotion, and when I try to explain A) the physics of how new AI models are based on how our own brains work and B) Technology isn't evil, Capitalism is,
The emotional reaction from them to me is amplified tenfold. People are very unwilling to admit they are just fleshy computers and they hold that it's impossible for anything to surpass their own brains. And if they DO somehow concede that, the response is always of the form "the AI doesn't have a soul, therefore, I hate it."