Internet debates normally end with all parties stubbornly holding to their own views, but I've been on the Internet long enough to see the exception to this rule from time to time, having changed the minds of a few people, and having my mind changed in turn.
I still find myself doing it from time to time, usually out of frustration, but I've known for a while now that once you Insult someone, or bruise their pride, it's game over. Nobody is going to want to concede to some arrogant fool who's only in it to put others down and elevate their sad, pathetic ego. Even exceptionally intelligent people think with their emotions and succumb to the irrationality of the human brain; we are all subject to this, and those of us who feel immune are probably even more suceptible. Put a person's pride on the line, and you're basically ensuring that they are more likely to fight tooth and nail to 'win', to move goal-posts and whatnot. If they feel like their reputation is on the line then 'losing' a debate or budging just an inch on one's stance becomes something that simply isn't an option to the other guy or gal; they will try to win with intellectually dishonest tactics, and probably won't even realize that they are doing it.
Acting like a jackass is also a good way to harm one's credibility in the minds of anyone capable of seeing one's behavior. Start a response to anything by laughing and retorting about how stupid someone is, and you'll instantly look like you don't have an actual rebuttal, and are compensating with generic smugness. Some people only have this within their bag of toys, posting with nothing but arrogant one-liners. Have any of you ever seen two 'talking heads' go at it, with one of the two 'combantants' making a huge show of rolling their eyes and wierd facial expressions meant to show contempt? When I see that, I automatically assume that it's someone trying to win the 'threatrics' of a debate through their poor acting skills, and I see forums posts such those that I previously described, as being the text equvilant of that. I didn't coin it, but I like the term, 'smugnorent'.
It's much easier to get someone to hear you out and consider your position if they consider you a friend, or at least, if there's mutual respect there. If the two participants value their relationship, then they are going to be less likely to hurl contemptous retorts and insidious insinuations. Conceding, even to some small aspect of an argument, may not feel like the end of the world if the other person isn't made to feel like they're going to be skewered to the wall once they admit that they might have been wrong about something.
I also think that a productive dialogue is normally unlikely if one comes to the table assuming that they can't be wrong, or that the other person can't be right about anything. I don't think the goal should just be to change the other person's mind, but to also to reavaluate one's own perspective and even to look for points of agreement. Too often people don't even listen to each other, which ends up in two having completely different conversations, or arguing against the same damned stance, just spoken in different words.
Text can be tricky, and the devil is in the details. We can't adequately express sarcasm without actually coming out and labeling something as sarcasm. The lack of body langauge, tone of voice, and facial expressions can make things difficult. Even when this is not the case, whether or not someone understands what is written entirely depends on the author's ability to convey an idea through text, and the reader's ability to properly comprehend what is being read. Two people can often draw opposing conclusions from the same text, and with the polarized, politically-centric nature of this forum, it's entirely possible that a single word could invoke a message that speaks to a reader's biases, even if it's nowhere close to the author's intent.
So far, I've talked about how one's behavior and how attention-to-detail can improve the chances of coming to some sort of agreement, however, one final idea that I want to throw out there is that I think that discussion forums like this could profit from a community as a whole reinforcing good behavior and condeming bad behavior. Most people care, at least to some degree, what others think, and if people are let loose with the facade of anonymity without any social reprocussions, they may be very well be far more tempted to indulge their darker, uglier tendencies.
