Change My View? The Dynamics of Persuasion and Polarization in Online Discourse
Philosophical accounts of persuasion often assume that shared evidence and rational argumentation should lead to a convergence of views between peers, yet everyday discourse often suggests otherwise. In this study, we use large language models to analyze a corpus of debates on Reddit's r/ChangeMyView, where belief revision is publicly signaled. Large language models were asked, halfway through each discussion, to forecast whether such an acknowledgement would arise; their probabilistic estimates serve as a conversational baseline. Each reply was then coded, through a hybrid machine-assisted procedure, for ten familiar rhetorical strategies -- concession, empathy, logical challenge, credib...
| Authors | David Freeborn, Malihe Alikani, Anthony Sicilia |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 8 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 May 2026 |
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