Comment by jeremiem

I agree that conversation is generally not very productive as we often talk past each other.

I would recommend anyone that struggle to discuss divisive or controversial topics to learn and watch Street Epistemology [0], or Compassionate Epistemology [1]. It's comparable to a Socratic dialog.

The basic idea that I got out of it is to unwrap one, and only one, person's beliefs at the time, find their best reason for that belief and see if the reason holds if it was used to believe something else. Repeat with the next best if not. By hiding your opinion on a topic, it's a lot easier to explore someone else's as they shouldn't get defensive or combative.

There are a lot of videos of this kind of interview, my favorite channel: Cordial Curiosity[2].

[0] https://www.streetepistemology.com/ [1] https://compassionateepistemology.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/@CordialCuriosity