How we come across here isn't necessarily the whole story. In fact I suspect it very rarely is.

And I also think that it's pretty rare for anyone to actually change their minds on something they've really come to believe in just because they've been presented with "the facts". There are always other facts they can turn to.

And in fact more often than not arguments, especially heated arguments, strengthen people's commitments to the ideas they started with, even ideas that were initially tentative. That's the difference between an argument and a discussion that tries to explore different ways of seeing things.