[Kitsune9tails]

Then what's it about? Why bother? What are you hoping to get out of such conversations if not to bring them around to reason and hopefully create a better society out of it?

It is my intent; it is not my expectation.

I disagree. This implies that the person is being intentionally dishonest. If that's the case, no amount of any persuasive techniques is going to do any good and thus the question is moot.

I have often been very strong in my beliefs for a long period of time. However, when shown that I was mistaken, I immediately and irrevocably let go of my previously flawed beliefs, and did not return to them as soon as my inquisitor went away.

I would be very surprised if a single instance of showing you that you were mistaken would cause you to let go of your beliefs, unless that belief were of something completely objective, like the final score of a football game. If the belief were of something to an extent subjective, like "Donald Trump is a good person", I would suspect your change of mind to require several instances of persuasion from multiple sources. I suppose it could be different if you have "deal breakers" (like 'no person who commits adultery is a good person' for example), but even then, you'd have to be convinced that the deal breaking activity took place, which might take more than one source.

What's within reason to you?

If a person is getting to you emotionally, to the point of abuse, it might be time to end/exit the conversation/location as rudely as is necessary. If the person can apparently talk for hours or interrupts everything you say, it might be time rudely enforce rules of conversation. If the person is being loud and/or vulgar, some rudeness might be needed to get their intention. But generally, when someone is being asinine, I find it effective to repeat my question in the exact same tone of voice until they answer it. The more you can act like you actually did not hear/see their distractive rant, the better it works.

Perhaps it causes them to see you as a dishonest person, who at first pretended to agree with them but is actually tricking them.

Or it could be that your sudden shift from ally to adversary causes them cognitive dissonance at which point they simply shut you off in their brain.

Maybe. Their opinion of me is none of my business.

If I am standing in front of someone face to face, I can't really understand how agreeing with them the first three times they speak is not going to make me any more or less of a person to them.

It's not the first three times they speak per se. It is making sure to state your agreement the first three times you honestly can, without stating your disagreement in between. You can disagree as much as you want, just know that it seems to reset the 'counter'. Give it a try for science!

I disagree. In fact the people I have found to be most reasonable are the people that have gotten absolutely demolished by someone or something at some point in their lives, and had to honestly re-evaluate their understandings of reality.

Maybe being nice does that for some people. I'm not ruling it out. I definitely think a good ass kicking helps a person get into "let's actually solve this" mode though.

Well yeah; people that have had their butts kicked and then reevaluated things usually no longer see you as an Enemy. They see you as People.

In my experience, 'a good ass kicking' is tough to pull off. Winning an argument and getting a person to actually reevaluate their position are two different things.

Being nice is just a different approach, and like anything else it will work better on some targets than others. It's an additional option, not a be all and end all.

How do your conversations with Trump supporters usually begin?