Your conversation with your neighbor has no meta-conversation going on.
Online discussions "between two people" merely mimic a conversation so the audience (of potentially thousands+ of people) can learn and be swayed.
Online conversations are inherently broadcast so the stakes are too high to acquiesce or make concessions for whomever's willing to actually take the bait and engage on "important" topics.
That's a good point. I guess I hadn't really thought about how performative discussions on public forums are. Maybe embracing that more deliberately somehow could produce a worthwhile difference?
Being able to bring the audience "in" on the broadcast nature of these (presumably authentic) conversations on X contentious topic would be an intriguing problem to solve. With AI coming more mainstream, an AI analysis of conversations might be where you could shine, including calling out astroturfing (like spam is detected today).
Online discussions "between two people" merely mimic a conversation so the audience (of potentially thousands+ of people) can learn and be swayed.
Online conversations are inherently broadcast so the stakes are too high to acquiesce or make concessions for whomever's willing to actually take the bait and engage on "important" topics.