Introduction

This is an open source book about how to have better internet arguments. The central claim is that "no one wants to argue in good faith on social media" is a self-fulfilling myth. The reality is that people DO change their mind all the time because of what they read on the internet. Too many people with truth on their side aren't even trying because they believe this myth.

This is a collection of techniques to help you win any internet argument / convince anyone of anything. This is a bit of a dark art, but we're doing it 100% in the open, because when everyone understands these tools, the truth has a fighting chance of making it out there.

Structure

The book is split into two major parts, theory & case studies.

Theory talks about all the techniques in the abstract and why they work. Case Studies shows real world examples of of these techniques "in the wild" (on twitter). Each theory chapter links to the relevant case studies that demonstrate the theory.

Real scenarios often involve more than one piece of theory. It's helpful to flip back & forth between theory & case study to get a sense of common patterns in internet arguments.

The ideal case study is one in which a succesful prediction is made. We can retroactively analyze any internet argument to theorize what would have helped, but the gold standard is when you intervene & get a result. We collect both successful & failed interventions as data points to improve the theory.

Why this matters

What I hope you'll find as you embark on this journey is that this is about much more than arguing with strangers online. Internet arguments are a playground where you can test your understanding of any idea, gather information from any group of people on the planet, and perfect your communication skills.

If you can get a hostile internet stranger to change their mind, AND thank you for it, you can handle conflict with coworkers/friends/family.

The most valuable thing I've gotten out of it is a much clearer picture of society & politics. If you believe that we have solutions to the problems of the world, and we're not doing them because evil people on the other side don't want to make the world better, or that the other side is "brainwashed", you can confirm this for yourself.

Maybe the most valuable thing I found was that I changed my own mind on a lot of things by engaging in this good faith discussion. I thought I was on the side of truth until I realized the reason I was failing to convince people on things was because I was wrong. I hope this process will help you calibrate too.

The good news is that it's very hard to change people's opinion en-masse. It's very easy to explain to people the truth 1 on 1. We can all just start doing this and helping truth spread wherever we go.