@surreality said in Social Conflict via Stats:
Has anybody truly changed their minds about it?
Over time, Wora/Swofa/Wora/Soapbox and discussions with people I know has changed my mind on quite a lot. Most people may treat these forums like a donkey show, but without positive feedback we don't know how many people have acted and tested changes.
That's where this forum falls flat. It's easy to state your opinion, but after a point that opinion needs tested or it exists in a vacuum (your own head). Worse, sometimes these forums reenforce the "my beliefs or nothing" mentality that a lot of Americans share. Not a fault of these forums, but of the people on them.
Disbelieving that anyone could possibly come to a different conclusion through discussion is, IMO, a small part of reenforcing this.
Or in Surreality Terms: It depends.
It depends on how you take it. I know this is way off topic, but the assertion that things are impossible because "nobody has ever changed their mind because of Wora" is a false one.
Where I'm coding today, there was an absolutely gorgeous young woman sitting nearby. If she started talking to me I would have had to fight not to start drooling until that moment where she said she smoked, or acted like a snob. Doors would have closed. I would've still been interested, but it's my own standards that make me more or less accepting of someone. I would be fighting my own standards.
Someone who is good at manipulation could mess with these without my known consent, or basically tricking me into messing with these standards. "Loudly and in public" triggers a lot of people's unwillingness or triggers other fears and concerns that make the manipulation harder.
In other words, context matters.
In physical conflict, we all share the same basic context: One human body is vaguely like another. Without a system to decide how one human psyche is pretty much like another, coming up with a social conflict system that we can agree on will be not be a debate, but an endless chamber of Rapid Development.
(note: by "agree" I mean "more or less accept as a workable system")