People are weird.
Guy gets upset when I suggest that the world needs both those who'll state the truth boldly, and those who seek to change minds with a more "softly, softly" approach. (*)
Said guy complains how much time he's wasted on well-structured rebuttals that don't work.
Yes, that's the point. Logical rebuttals work poorly against illogical beliefs. That's why people use other approaches.
(*) More precisely, the approach to take is situational.
Hm~ I don't know of the exact conversation you've had, and you've summarized your opinion here very briefly, so what I say might be obvious/beside the point/unsurprising.
The non-argument-based methods usually give less (or even no) comparative advantage to true claims over false claims. The more trusted and popular they become in a given group of people, all else being equal that group would usually become worse at agreeing on true statements (and individuals in that group are likely to be worse at distinguishing truth from falsity individually).
Now, one might have different reactions to that. One of them is to never use non-argument-based methods, because if one uses them to argue for true things people trust conclusions provided via those methods more. Another similar one is to object to others doing that.
I don't think these approaches are obviously wrong (i.e. that the assumptions that would lead to them being sensible are self-contradictory or very obviously incompatible with how the world could look like with a different but stable culture). They might be (I'm not good at predicting what people do around forming beliefs) totally impractical, but that in itself is a nontrivial question.
@robryk Where does your opinion around what effective ways to change the minds of people with nonsense views come from?
Bear in mind that the "non-argument-based methods" don't do away with facts, they just use them differently.
One thing I perhaps didn't make clear: I think that nearly always convincing a person of one particular fact is ~unimportant compared to improving their likelihood of acquiring convictions that are true in the future.
@robryk Yeah, I think this is probably a big gap in our view points. If someone is out into conspiracy theories, I'd rather get rid of the conspiracy theory than start with improving critical thinking. To my mind, that can come later.