Alien Instructions, video 2: Addressing polarisation in our debates

By Douglas “Jalnor” Carr

Published 15th February, 2025

Greetings, Earthlings. We live in an increasingly polarised world. This means that the distance between opposing viewpoints is getting wider and more charged. Political persuasions are, more and more, in direct opposition and labelling each other as evil. While, here and there, those labels might be accurate, they're mostly a product of our emotional biases. Let's explore how to overcome this – welcome to Alien Instructions.

Between the agents of division – like neo-Nazis, the Kremlin and hardline conservatives – and those that allow those agents to act unchecked – like Facebook, Twitter and most of the mainstream media – most of us have lost friendships or even a family relationship over a difference in ideology. I've had to Facebook block a relative whose responses to anything I said that was remotely political were among the most toxic elements of my life, for some six or seven years. The serenity of no longer facing that vitriol is overshadowed by the knowledge that I've lost this person who was a big part of my early childhood and middle teens. I actually still have a screenshot of what I posted shortly before I blocked him, in case I ever forget, but that hasn't happened in the intervening decade.

The trouble is that, sadly, the agents of division can be all of us. Division isn't just caused just by one person hearing a lie and another hearing either the truth or a different lie. It's caused by our refusal to listen to each other and to act from kindness. It's in part our own innate tendency to feel attacked when a core belief is attacked. Or even doubted in passing by someone who didn't even speak to you, if you're insecure about it, like certain religious groups... and, in my recent experience, a lot of meat eaters. Then to respond to this feeling by going on the attack.

I'm not saying we're all equally to blame – in my own instance, I wasn't blameless, but I did try to be patient and open-minded when presented with arguments. I did try to straighten out when he wildly misread what I said. Occasionally, my replies were snarky, even hostile, which felt justified because I was facing ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments delivered in a hostile tone with a big helping of bigotry on top. Maybe if I'd been able to keep the kind and caring demeanour that I'd like to act with all the time, he might have stopped attacking long enough to listen once in a while. But definitely a large part of the blame lay in his tendency to go straight to the attack for what he thought I was saying, which usually bore only a loose resemblance to what I was actually saying.

And that, right there... that is a common tendency among humans. To see something – and see it not as it is, but as you are. To react, emotionally, without first analysing. Then, when called out, to double down if you can or attack the person if you can't. Then to go silent when your argument is sufficiently obliterated with facts and cited sources, only to repeat a few days later with added anger.

That's how it would go with this relative. I would post on Facebook with an idea to improve the country or the world, or a critical observation about how something worked. He would see it and immediately put on a frankly-ridiculous interpretation that made him angry, or feel that it was right and proper for the world to be so unfair to certain kinds of people because they deserved it. He immediately failed to act with kindness. He became a troll. Each debate started more polarised than the last and became more confrontational. I've since blocked another long-term friend for a similar pattern of escalation and a third person was getting a bit much for me in the run-up to the last UK election, but thankfully calmed down after it. We'll see how it goes this election...

Actually, since I originally wrote this video, I've had another experience that's even more worrying. Someone to whom I was once kind of a surrogate big brother commented on one of my political posts, that was about protecting a much-maligned minority, by levelling some classic bigotry-based accusations at that minority. I tried to politely explain that this was a common baseless accusation perpetuated by hatemongers, but he persisted, so I – quite reasonably, I thought – asked if I could examine his source for this extraordinary accusation.

His response was four days of silence followed by levelling the same accusation at me – an accusation that he should absolutely have known was false.

The agents of hate and division have gotten so good in recent years at radicalising innocent people, even turning them against their closest associates. It's sad and frightening and I don't... currently ...have a solution to that, other than spotting that radicalisation very early on and trying to stop it.

So if someone you care about expresses an opinion that seems even slightly like it might have come from any of the common agents of division, it's absolutely time to sit them down for a serious talk about those agents and how they radicalise people to their baseless hate.

This division harms all of us and it can only end either when humans end, or when humans stop fighting each other. So here are a few simple directives to help improve your life and improve how you feel after you encounter someone with whom you fundamentally disagree.

1: Assume they mean well

All too often, when I see or hear something stated that is philosophically opposed to my position, what I see or hear is bigotry, stupidity or outright evil. Sometimes all three. And yes, there are a lot of bigots on Earth, but most of them wouldn't consider themselves bigoted. To them, their position is a logical one based on the information that they have learned – which, frankly, is often falsified or exaggerated specifically to promote that philosophy. Generally, if someone disagrees with you, no matter how extreme their reaction to the disagreement, they believe that their philosophy is correct and would benefit humanity. They think you are the villain and you do not want to confirm that belief by attacking them. If for no other reason than the fact they can use the screenshots to recruit others to their position, with cliche captions like “so much for the tolerant left.”

2: Respond with kindness

Don't respond with an attack. If you walked into a room – where you're not an intruder – and a cat or dog backed themself into a corner and hissed, growled or barked at you, you wouldn't start shouting at them. At least, if you're a half reasonable person, that is. You'd recognise that they probably feel threatened, whether because something they remember makes them wrongly think you intend them harm, or they just don't understand your motivations. Human reactions aren't all that different most of the time. Yes, humans are capable of high level thinking, but most reactions are still instinct. When those instincts advise confrontation, someone has to break the chain of escalation. If they attack a position similar to what you said but that sounds ridiculous when they say it, don't counterattack. Instead, try saying something along the lines of, “I'm sorry, it looks like I might have been unclear about what I meant – which is...”

That won't generally kill the argument, but it might help get it on a decent track. Or they might just carry on with their flawed argument. You could also politely point out what they did, but more on that later.

If they go straight to insults, apologise for upsetting them – not least because it's not the response they expect. Initially, that will make them angrier than a counterattack, but it gives you a platform to work from. Follow it up by saying that you're happy to have a reasonable discussion about it once they're less upset. Again, you can also politely point out what they did, I'll cover it in point four.

To anyone who wanders in on the conversation months down the line with no existing opinion on the topic, they look like the asshole, not you. Score one for your recruitment.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

3: If you have to shoot something down, at least paint hearts on the bullet

Suppose, in a debate, the other person says something you know to be untrue. You'll get a lot further with “I respect that you believe that, but...” and some verifiable evidence than you will with “dude, bullshit.”

If you can prove them wrong, don't just go “wrong.” Don't just paste a link that backs up your position, because they won't click it. Instead, explain that independent research has found something that contradicts their position – briefly outline the findings in language appropriate to them and present the evidence... and then suggest that they look online for other independent sources. On the other hand, if they're making an accusation, like “these people do this thing,” or “this person said this thing,” the burden of proof is on the accuser. Ask to examine their source, it's usually sketchy as frell.

If someone offers you evidence from a questionable source, explain to them why the source is dubious – maybe even use the search engine of your choice to find out what other people are saying about that source. As a general rule, if the author is anonymous or there's no-one on the rest of the internet talking about the author or publication, it's probably someone with a vested interest in making people believe something other than reality. If they write under a pseudonym, it means they're concerned about reprisals – either lawsuits or Nazi violence, depending which way they slant, so you need to look deeper. If the publication claims to be journalistic, the author of the piece should have written something else at some point in history – an actual journalist will have written a thesis while they were studying and, if they passed, it was probably good enough to publish even in their blog. If the article you've been offered seems to be literally the first thing they've ever written on the internet, they're probably not reliable and it's probably not their real name. Explain that if you have to.

Occasionally, the source might be the mainstream media. Sadly, that's not always reliable. In these instances, if the media is either saying “these people say this thing” but not directly quoting any of them in context, or claiming that unnamed sources have told them something, then unless the claim is that someone very powerful is guilty of big crimes, in which case being an unnamed source is totally reasonable, the claim should be treated as probably false.

4: Recognise and address bad argument

I mentioned bad argument strategies in point number two. If you're arguing with someone, you should be politely attacking their claims with which you disagree, preferably by providing evidence for a counterclaim. If you instead attack the person, that's called an ad hominem attack – and it's bad. If you do it, you've probably already lost the argument. If they use it... well, I covered that in point two.

On the other hand, if you have to twist their claim to shoot it down... that's called a straw man argument. Essentially, that's where someone reframes a statement they can't attack into a similar one that they can attack. Again, if you do this in an argument, you've probably already lost the argument. If they do it, I covered that in point two as well.

There are dozens more bad argument strategies, but those are two of the most common. Hit up your search engine of choice to find out about the others and what to do about them... and maybe I'll do a video about those in the future. Actually, write in the comments about one bad argument strategy you'd like to see me sort out for you.

But definitely the top thing you should probably be doing with almost any bad argument strategy is telling them what they just did and why you're not going to allow it.

5: Listen to them

If the other person is actually presenting any sort of counterpoints instead of just attacking you, consider those counterpoints. Maybe you've heard them before, maybe you've heard them so often that you're sick of shooting them down – you are allowed to explain, in a way that isn't unkind, that you see this claim all the time and here is a link to a reliable explanation of why it's wrong... or, at the very least, here is the term you could put into a search engine to find out why it's wrong.

If they make a claim that you can't accurately shoot down, consider that they might be right. Even if you're definitely the good guy in the conversation, even if they're interpreting through a wildly skewed lens, they might have some grain of truth that you should know. If you assume that they know nothing that's true, you've failed to act from kindness. Besides, if you know what cherry-picked truths they're using in pursuit of a larger falsehood, you can be ready for those truths next time with the rest of the truth.

It's also possible that you are actually wrong. I've been there. My views on various controversial topics basically span on a penny at different times in my twenties because I was exposed to information that had been kept just out of sight behind a wall of other people's often-repeated mistaken beliefs. It hurt to think I'd been so wrong for so long. It was embarrassing, especially as someone who advertises that he's “allergic to wrongness.” Large parts of my psyche fought to deny the truths that I was seeing. But as someone who was dedicated to improvement and to finding the truth, I couldn't look at myself in the mirror every morning knowing that I was ignoring inconvenient information. Knowing that things I believed were disproved by countless verifiable facts. So I had to swallow that bitter pill.

Plus, when two opposing sides in a political argument are painting each other as the villains and you're cheering on one side against the other, you have to consider the possibility that they're both villains. If it turns out that the one you dislike, although actually a villain, is the lesser villain, that can be a hard pill to swallow. But swallow it you must, or the polarisation will only continue.

6: Don't ridicule

I know, it's tempting to make jokes about fake news, or laugh down the random that thinks viruses are a hoax, or pull out any of the hilarious jokes you've recently seen made at these people's expense. But turn that round – when the TERFs are asking if you identify as an idiot or a dementor, you're not sitting there going, “that's an eloquent point, I'll listen to your argument.” You're getting angrier and looking for a new way to defend yourself from these vile bigots who attacked you. You wouldn't suddenly be open to their flawed logic, why would it work on them? Plus when someone else sees the conversation later, the one doing the ridiculing is most likely going to look like the asshole. You want that to be you?

Finally, remember above all that, if you're arguing with someone who thinks you're evil, it doesn't matter how right you are. It doesn't matter how sick that burn is. As I've maintained for years, arguing on the internet is like pushing the button in a nuclear war. You might vapourise millions of enemy combatants; you might see your enemy go dark under your assault. But, in the end, everyone loses and history will look on you as one of the villains. The people you attack will only learn that they were right. If you want to deradicalise someone from any extreme philosophy, you have to first convince them that you are not an extremist – that you're a fundamentally decent human being who thinks differently than they do. Then one or both of you can learn something meaningful.

If you learned something meaningful from this video, I'd appreciate a like, comment, subscribe or share. If you'd like to learn more meaningful things, you could sponsor me on Patreon to support the creation of more videos. Peace and long life.

This article was originally a YouTube video from 20th June, 2024 here.