A bit of wisdom from Dan Fincke on Facebook.
Stop saying it’s pointless to debate. People change their minds. They just change them slowly, over time, and often imperceptibly.
It’s true you know. People do change their minds. They do; we do; you do; I do.
We all know this when we think about it, right? We can easily think of things we’ve changed our minds about. We do it multiple times every day. If we learn something new and it sticks, we’ve changed our mind. Debates can include information as well as argument, so it would be very odd if all debates were pointless. Even stubborn people with bad Dunning-Kruger effect can learn something sometimes.
That’s another reason for not letting stalkers and harassers and name-callers take over your blog, by the way. It’s easier to be optimistic about debate when it’s a good debate than when it’s a festival of shit-flinging.