No worries dude , saw your post about your family member . sorry for your loss , brother . Sincerely hope all is well my friend . <| sep |> I ' d like to see what would have happened if you posited questions of a more introspective nature . I want to see if we can plant a seed of doubt . It depends on how you posted . You can ' t underestimate their collective intelligence . Their individual intelligence may or may not be great but something about the voteless and anonymous discussion format has a very shrewd impact . So if you tried to subtly subvert them you ' d probably get called out . If you were honest about your position , well . it ' d be a question of who breaks first , you or them . If I had to say why this hasn ' t happened yet and why pol remains the way it is , I ' d say it ' s because the kinds of people who go to pol to change its mind are almost invariably the kinds of people who ' d get offended by the discussion taking place . If you wanted to change pol ' s mind you would need a large number of people willing to argue with pol but capable of doing it without getting angry . Given the tenor of political discussion elsewhere on the internet I honestly don ' t think that many people in a coordinated group exist . So that ' s where we ' re at . At present I ' m choosing to smile wryly at it all but I ' m getting less bemused and more concerned as the divisiveness continues to climb . S