If the current system (as I understand it) is kept, then the conversation wouldn't take place at all. But if your solution is used, how can you follow a half-sensored discussion without lifting the mute?

You can't. He's a user with at least 1K users. If he censors you, you're done for. Short of "apologizing" for having a different view than his, there's nobody anywhere on this site who would see what you said. His goal, apparently (stated in another thread) is to make anybody less than half his account's age, feel very fucking unwelcome here. Killing the idea the site was built on (a place for thoughtful discussion).

Edit: Cleaned up this comment some. Turning this into a wall of text.

Let's turn that "Have you tried apologizing?" sentence into a hyperlink. And when the user clicks on it, they see a list of 'follows' that the muter and mutee have in common - 'mutual friends' if you will that could intercede on your behalf.

Funny thing is, if he muted me, there would be no way in fuck I'd be able to "apologize", considering I think we don't have any mutual followers / friends. A true power user if I ever saw one.

You know what? CashewGuy just said it best in a lower part of the thread (and I'm going to badge it when I can just on this) -

I don't care if people mute me, that's fine. I care that people can remove my ability to talk to others. That, to me, is a problem. No one should have the ability to stop me from talking to someone else. Sure, I could go start another post. But that's a band-aid, not a solution. I'm much more in favor of the several proposals of "mute as comment ignore" where the muter simply doesn't see the comment anymore, but doesn't remove that person's ability to communicate and have discourse.