Comment by klabb3

You can’t talk politics without first overcoming tribalism, so I suggest you start there, since in the US that is sadly the state of things.

If you start by talking about which sports team is better you will also cause these reactions. But politics should not be sports. It’s harmless to support a sports team that makes bad choices. Politics has real impact on people’s lives. It’s important to have exit criteria for alignments and affiliations with groups, to the extent they’re necessary.

> What physical changes in the world do you expect afterwards?

Just like voting, it has no effect in the small. You discuss to form and exchange opinions and ideas that become part of the whole. The benefits are in the aggregates. Thus it’s important that it has some other incentive. Where I’m from it’s not very tribalist, so we get the pleasure from thinking and discussing problems even without having an expectation that it will change policy. That wouldn’t work in the US outside very specific groups that understand the rules of engagement and the point of the game. But the discussions themselves are similar in vibe to board games or puzzles, that it’s somewhat fun even though it’s entirely useless (in the small).