Mark, I don’t think this method would work at all. /s
A study says that’s the best way to get someone to “soften their views” and get them to realize that they don’t have a good “understanding of the issues.”
That’s the technique I use, except I skip a few of the steps. I just usually go right to the one where I tell them that they’re idiots. ;->
This seems more like a way to identify a shallowly held opinion* than a way to change an opinion.
 * - everyone loves this /s
If your or the other person’s goal in an argument is to “win,” you’re already wasting your time. Very few people look for new facts and change their opinions accordingly. If you’re looking to “win,” then argument is war, reasons and principles are soldiers, and anything you say that the other person disagrees with will be taken as an attack to deflect rather than information to reflect upon. And like or not, whether you want it or not, if you are in the frame of mind of “winning” then the same is true for you, and you will miss interesting things the other person is saying.
" … I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as “certainly”, “undoubtedly”, etc. I adopted instead of them “I conceive”, “I apprehend”, or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so; or “so it appears to me at present”.
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. … "
– Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (A man who never used the Internet)
I just call them names and insult them. That usually works.
What if the other person asks me to do the same for my point…?
Odd that his famous catchphrase was, “UNACCEPTABLE!!!”. Or am I confusing him with lemongrab…
Is this the best way to win an argument? How about you describe for me, step by step, from start to finish, the causal path from this practice to the effect of changing someone’s opinion that it is supposed to have.
Perhaps once you’ve tried that, you may realize that you don’t have a good understanding of the issues.
/recursion
So all arguments can be settled in Lisp? Or is that how they start…
I dunno… I’m not sure I agree. Explain to me how this will change someone’s opinion. Preferably step by step…
Then they’d be cheating.
That dependth.
I’m sure that is the first time that joke has been used. Or the last. Or it is non deterministic.
Okay, I am doing this to myself, not anyone else. 
(Cough) perl
I think that there is a great deal to be said for the argument that the best way to change people’s opinions is with this sort of approach.
I also think that most people know that this is the best way to change people’s opinions.
So why do people persist in using ineffective methods to change other people’s opinions? This contradiction is resolved if we assume that changing the other person’s opinion isn’t actually the goal of most internet arguers. Their goal is actually to play up to their own sense of self righteousness, bolster their own opinions against the “threat” of being wrong, and to play up to people who agree with them as the most vociferous in the defence of their “side”, while the truth or falsehood of either position can go hang.
Application of this theory to the boing boing commentariat is left as an exercise for the reader.
