I appreciate your frankness.

Yeah, I don’t see a point of disagreement on science, or math

The question that I left too implicit in my initial phrasing was “Why is that so?”

Let me tell you my personal belief, and perhaps you can tell me if you think it makes sense: I think the reason is that we all acknowledge that truth exists in these fields, both empirical and logical, depending on which field. The reason that it wouldn’t be helpful to just sit around with the same disagreements indefinitely is that we recognize that at least some people in that context are wrong, are advocating for something that hampers our ability to understand the world and productively act on it. Of course, it’s also possible that everyone is wrong, but that still presents the need to find what is right and reach a consensus on the topic.

So it stands to reason that when there is truth and falsity to something, sitting around in disagreement is counterproductive, even if openness to challenge is critical and some marginal amount of disagreement is going to exist anyway. This raises an important question: Where is there truth, and where is there not truth?

I guess it’s more on political/moral views.

Could it be, and please correct me if I misunderstand you, that the reason you believe this is that you don’t believe there is truth in these topics?

If so, I agree with you that there is no truth in morality. Morality is fundamentally an arbitrary thing because it is based on personal values. On that account, I also don’t see why a diversity of moral opinions is really that helpful. Does it really make society better for one group to think the other is doing evil, and the reverse? There’s no basis for saying who is right or wrong and morality itself only exists socially and psychologically, so what benefit do we get from this?

However, in terms of political views, there is a very important to make a distinction between two things: Political values and political-economic analysis of what systems produce what results. Political values are basically a genre of moral value, and so everything that I said about morality before applies here. Political-economic analysis is not that, it is making empirical claims about what concretely happens in the world. Therefore, if we agree on us existing in a materialist universe (as I assume we do if you value scientific consensus), then it stands to reason that there is truth on this subject, and therefore that people can be correct or incorrect, even if these are immensely complicated questions and there are many answers we don’t have (which is also true of fields like physics).

On this basis, it is vital that we have the ability to challenge existing theories, but it is detrimental to sit around in perpetual, fragmented disagreement on empirical facts.

This is very important for practical political discussions, because people are going to value what they value and can arbitrarily choose such a thing, but we cannot make progress in any direction unless we work toward an understanding of the truth in terms of what systems produce what material results.

I don’t see anyone past a line, or not worth changing their mind on. . . . To me, even the worst people are worth saving, and if I can’t do it, I’d rather learn from someone who can.

Sure, and I would say that if we had no concern about resource scarcity, then working very hard to deprogram flat-earthers would also be a good thing. As you might have guessed from my statement about morality, I don’t think it’s useful to think of others as “bad people” who have sinned so greatly that they cannot be redeemed. I think there are better and worse uses of an individual’s and an organization’s time, but that has nothing to do with people being morally unworthy or theoretically unsalvageable.

But interestingly, this points again toward consensus-building, does it not?

One of, if not the favorite movie of mine is American History X, and that Ted Talk where a black guy befriends a Grand Wizared of the KKK

I really don’t like AHX personally, because while it paints a very authentic picture of a particular type of fascist (I knew someone exactly like that), it doesn’t have almost anything to say about how to make someone not be a fascist. Like, he befriends a black dude and reads some books that we only see the titles of. Really? We don’t see almost any of why he recovers, which to me makes the film mostly unhelpful, especially since the film is full of fascist bile that the movie certainly doesn’t endorse but also doesn’t refute. So in the end, we have a bunch of arguments for fascism and virtually none against.

Regarding the Ted Talk, does the Grand Wizard change his ways? If not, I don’t see how it’s very helpful. Like, running a white supremacist organization that is actively working to destroy people’s lives isn’t really helped by the guy in charge personally having a black friend. Wouldn’t it just be normalizing being an ethnonationalist? Something that I’m sure we can agree we would be better off with none of.

Now with all that in mind, I think this post itself isn’t in good faith and it’s not actually someone’s opinion, but someone’s job.

That’s interesting. I personally think this person just has a hyperfixation and that’s why they’re so dedicated. I can’t claim to know or really have evidence, though I really think a fed would use rhetoric that is more clever than the slop they produce (especially by slipping in wedge issues). I’m definitely not saying your belief is unjustified, though.