[mdifrgechd]

Yes, your point applies to many modern discussions and an often used rhetorical device I see is to jump away from the "should we do this" discussions and into the "does this work discussion" (to paraphrase jurassic park a bit). Common examples that won't make me popular are climate change, current anti-covid measures, and not eating meat. People get hung up on technicalities about whether ice cores show evidence of some climate relationship, or whether staying home reduces disease transmission, and pretend that those facts automatically lead to a conclusion about how we should behave, while bypassing the discussion about the kind of world we want to live in. I hypothesize that people feel on firmer ground when they shift their ideological arguments into facts about causality, instead of head on discussing why they value a certain kind of society.