Being a believer in X inherently means, for a rationalist, that you think there are no good arguments against X. So this should be impossible, except by deliberately including arguments that are, to the best of your knowledge, flawed. I might be able to imitate a homeopath, but I can't imitate a rational, educated, homeopath, because if I thought there was such a thing I would be a homeopath.

Yes, a lot of people extoll the virtues of doing this. But a lot of people aren't rational, and don't believe X on the basis of arguments in the first place. If so, then producing good arguments against X are logically possible, and may even be helpful.

(There's another possibility: where you are weighing things and the other side weighs them differently from you. But that's technically just a subcase--you still think the other side's weights are incorrect--and I still couldn't use it to imitate a creationist or flat-earther.)

Right, except Is there a section in the code that says the parties agree to have no legal recourse? Because if not, I can still appeal to a judge. The simple fact is that in the legal eyes of the law, the code is not a contract, it is perhaps at best a vehicle to complete a contract. You cannot simply set up a new legal agreement and just say "And you don't have any legal recourse".

Just to clear some things up:

• In some contexts, 'smart contract' is a misnomer: it's just a computer program that resembles a legal contract but does not interact with the government in any way. It just moves money according to agreed-upon rules. I don't think it's common to use both a legal contract and a 'smart contract' to enforce the same agreement.

• In the specific case of the project known as 'TheDAO', the terms of service does indeed waive all legal rights and says that whatever the computer program says supersedes all human-world stuff. (https://daohub.org/explainer.html)

• All of this stuff is so experimental that there's an exception to everything at this point.

True, and there were a number of Greeks commenting on how unusual this was.

I said I think other friends brought it up, but I'm not certain. What I meant is that while the chance of my talking them out of it, or at least talking them into some kinda moderation, is low, when the stakes are high even low probabilities are non-trivial in terms of expected value.

Why are you skeptical that political disagreements can break friendships? It can be worse - sometimes people get beaten up for supporting the wrong party.

Whether it's true in that case or not, it frequently happens that someone will start to act like they disagree with you about everything, because they happen to disagree about a few issues. And that definitely can cause them to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do, just because you suggest that doing them is a bad idea.

your third point is a special case of your second one.

I feel strongly that there is a qualitative difference between fence-building and compulsion, especially if the fenced area is small.

Your first suggestion seems like fence-building in different domains (social, financial, etc).

I know anecdotes are not a statistically significant form of argument, but perhaps they do convey emotional ramifications. With that in mind, I'd like to share a rather extreme anecdote explaining one aspect of what is wrong with political discourse where the people making the arguments are attacked, rather than the arguments themselves.

Years ago, I knew this girl - lets call her Alice. We were very good friends, but that changed. I don't know why for certain - I cannot read minds - but I think it started when I disagreed with one of her feminist opinions. I didn't say anything particularly offensive, I didn't say all feminists are 300 pound whales (which is not true) nor did I say that women should not be allowed to vote. She said that in the US, the only legal way for a woman to defend herself against rape was by sticking her fingers up her assailants nose, with the implication that the US legal system does not care whether women get raped. I disagreed, saying that there are reasons why Americans have so many guns, and the biggest one is self defence. I said that lethal force is allowed to defend against much lesser crimes such as trespass, at least in some states, and that I couldn't imagine that any US state would have such strong restrictions on self-defence.

There were a few similar cases where I disagreed with her arguments for clear logical reasons, never attacking her or anyone else. And I think this flipped a switch in her brain, from friend to enemy, because from then on whenever I opened my mouth she would ridicule me.

We still hung out, but only because we were in the same circle of friends. One day, I said "You know this new drug you guys are doing? I've looked it up, and wikipedia says its more addictive than heroin." Alice looked at me as if I was something she'd stepped in. "Don't be ridiculous" she sneered. I shrugged and wandered off.

I didn't hear from them for a few months, for various reasons, not least that I wanted some distance from her and from drugs. The next time I heard from them, it was a phone call explaining that Alice's boyfriend - a really nice guy who I had known for years - had fatally overdosed on the drug I had tried to warn them about, and that one of my other friends was probably going to prison for supply or even manslaughter.

In situations such as this, it is some comfort to know that at least I tried to help. I did what I could, but if people ridicule me I cannot force them to take me seriously. In my head it was the saddest 'I told you so' ever, although I obviously did not mention this to anyone else.

It would be an exaggeration to say that if Alice hadn't shouted me down then this guy would still be alive. I'm not great at convincing people of things at the best of times, and I think other friends of mine had tried to warn about the dangers too. But I think the probability (that if Alice hadn't shouted me down then this guy would still be alive) is nontrivial.

Perhaps I should have shouted Alice down, told her to stop being a &^%$%$$. But I've always tried to follow the advice that the best way to deal with conflict is to calmly walk away, if possible.

Maybe its crass to make a political point of this, but if there is a point, then point I am trying to make is that when people criticise social justice warfare it might not be because we hate 'justice' or because we are evil cis white men (tm), but its the warfare we object to, because a group of people at war with themselves over ideology is so much weaker in every way. Is it so much to ask that arguments are debated, rather then by ridiculing, censoring, silencing the people who make the arguments?

So I'd like to say that regardless of whether you are a progressive or conservative, communist or an-cap or neoreactionary, I will engage with your arguments rather than trying to attack you, and even if I disagree with your politics I will take non-political arguments seriously. I hope you do so too.

Why doesn't Christianity hinge on their being talking snakes? The snake is part of their origin story, a core element in their belief system. Without it, what happens to original sin? And you will also have to question if not everything else in the bible is also just stories. If it's not the revealed truth of God, why should any of the other stories be real - such as the ones about how Jesus was god's son?

And, if I am wrong in that Christianity doesn't need that particular story to be true, then there is still a weaker form of the argument. Namely that a large percentage of christians believe in this story, and two hundred years ago I'd guess almost every christian believed in it, but you cannot find any leading evolutionist who claims that monkeys gave birth to humans.

Not necessarily - See Hilbert's Paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel