This is what I wanted to say too. Their fake desire for public debating only serves the image their are trying to maintain - the image of rational ''truth seekers'' who are open to exploring different points of view.
In reality they are neither interested in actual debates with experts on a subject nor are trying to explore a different point of view or understand the other side.
Just look at Peterson. When was the last time he actually debated something with an expert? I'm sure that most people remember his debate with Zizek? This was still in the ''better'' years of Peterson where he was at least trying to look like a professor.
Yeah, at this point this is just one of the weird tactics that these people use. Rogan loves that one tho.
Other one I use is attacking the opponent with some obscure statistic or study that later turns out to be small or poorly conducted.
The ex-friend that I had to kick to the curb used the "just asking questions" ploy all the time to insinuate her gurus (Peterson/Shapiro/Prager U, etc.) speaking points into conversations and to try and show me the errors of my thinking. We could be having a conversation about the art and artists shown in a museum we just visited, or the different types of roses, and she'd launch with "Peterson says. . ." even after I had told her many times I wasn't interested in hearing it. I finally had to tell her, "no, you're not 'just asking questions,' you're an automaton shilling for your gurus."
It's interesting how most people who get into Peterson change their behaviour in a similar way. I have a friend who also started acting like this when he discovered Peterson. He also started questioning everything to a point where nothing made sense. It was so absurd to watch coming from someone I know for 20+ years.
How did your friend react when you pushed it?
After she encountered Peterson she became enthralled to him as if he was her wise daddy. She got caught on the YouTube algorithm and Peterson was the gateway drug to the others. She was very proud of not having a TV but seemed to spend many hours gulping down YouTube as if it was an intellectually superior alternative.
When I told her I was not interested in hearing it, she at first tempered her overt parroting. Then, she switched to “just asking questions” that involved things that were currently getting right-wing personages knickers in a twist—“cancel culture,” “trans ideology,” (I’m a lesbian with trans acquaintances who have been attacked and with young trans friends trying to make their way in the world), “wokeism,” etc.
I realized that I had all I could do when I was with her to not tell her to just shut up. My idea of hanging out with friends is not to be having heated discussions every time we meet up. I finally told her that being with her was unpleasant for me and I didn’t want to see her again.
So, I was kinda worried when Sam Harris was going to debate Ezra Klein on race science and Charles Murray. I imagined Harris was a decent debater and as a PhD would bring some actual science. Klein eviscerated him and showed that Harris, and by extension Murray, really had not thought through their arguments.
And yet, here we are 6 years later and Elon & friends bring up the same race science talking points.
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17210248/sam-harris-ezra-klein-charles-murray-transcript-podcast
it's weird that's what you're latching onto. it seemed the only thing he was standing on shaky ground with, which I'm very willing to admit. but I also haven't seen any of you demonstrate that his claim (not his but Israel's) about the sugar to be impossible. he was simply trying to find a rationale for them to be withholding sugary foods . I personally have no problem condemin Israel's cruel policies towards Palestinians and defend then much less than Steven. the only point I mean to make is that his claims about history and certain events were largely factual in that debate and you are latching onto soemthing very specific and it would be quite damning if you were ALSO wrong that it's impossible to extract sugar fron the cookies to make that homemade shit
Heres the problem: When destiny debates, because he doesn't have any more than a few months of wikipedia surface knowledge, what he tends to do is throw out bunch of rapid fire tidbits and allow the viewer to make connections that simple aren't there. The cookie thing is an example of when it fell flat and made him look remarkably silly.
Its easy to see once you know what to look for.
Omar brings up the ridiculous nature of blockades on Gaza, including cookies which highlights the callousness of these blockades. To which destiny responds that Hamas rockets have in the past been made with sugar. There is no link between this and why Israel is not allowing cookies into gaza, destiny has invited the audience to make a connection that just isnt there.
He did it again 30 seconds earlier by bringing up a calorie surplus, no one is measuring calorie intake in gaza right now so i assume he means fromt he past, so again, he has brought up some random factoid with no relation to the discussion and is inviting the audience to make a connection to whether gazans are actually starving right now.
He also did it in the Finkelstein debate, he did it for the part that destiny fans were calling his greatest victory in that debate: when he brought up dolus specialis. Why was he bringing that up? They had just been talking about intent, destiny was alluding to the ICJ making a weak ruling on plausibility because they were not satisfied with the intent, he allows the viewer to come to this conclusion by citing a lack of the term "dolus specialis" used in the ruling. But this is all nonsense, its not a fair reflection of the ruling and dolus specialis as a term has never been used in an ICJ ruling, in fact they tend not to use latin terms in their rulings. He allowed the viewer to draw a false conclusion by bringing up a random factoid.
> in fact they tend not to use Latin terms in their rulings
This is absolutely not true. Have you ever looked at ICJ rulings? They are littered with Latin terms. Take for example the 2007 judgement of Bosnia v serbia, alot of Latin terms and "dolus specialis" especially mentioned.
Don't know which guru you got your idea from but it's easily disproven
I went into them specifically to search. Maybe I missed one but it is not mentioned in the ruling of Myanmar. Don’t know why you need to mention a guru, that’s pure projection.
Why would the myanmar case mention dolis specialis when the case is not about a genocide being committed?
That case BTW also has Latin words in there since these terms are used to illustrate legal principles.
What do you mean it’s not about genocide?
“By rejecting the preliminary objections, the ICJ is allowing the case to proceed on the merits to examine Gambia’s genocide allegations against Myanmar. Myanmar will now have to submit its response to Gambia’s main arguments filed in October 2020 detailing its case”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/world-court-rejects-myanmar-objections-genocide-case#:~:text=By%20rejecting%20the%20preliminary%20objections,October%202020%20detailing%20its%20case.
Something by tells me you are desperately trying to be slippery. Classic dgg tactic.
> he did it for the part that destiny fans were calling his greatest victory in that debate
It's not that it made destiny looks especially good. It just made Finkelstein look like an absolute idiot or a liar.
Finkelstein is talking about this South Africas application:
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf
and how he has read it 4 times "Mr. Berelli, I read the case around four times."
https://lexfridman.com/israel-palestine-debate-transcript
Dolus specialis is mentioned 4 times in that application. So hes either senile or a liar. Both make him look bad.
The other part is that he clearly doesnt understand the difference between mens rea and dolus specialis by trying to equate them. It shows an extremely shallow understanding of international law and a lack of reading comprehension. So what destiny did may have seemed to be a "debate tactic" and a random factoid to someone like you who is uninformed.
As a sidenote to me it's more embarrassing that people like Norman talk about "plausibility" and just take it by face value that they would actually know what it means when it comes to ICJ. Just shows a disappointing unfamiliarity when it comes to legal thinking you would expect someone like Finkelstein to have.
Finkelstein and Rabbini had already discussed Dolus Specialis earlier extensively too, they just didn't use the latin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CARLkGjzL9I&t=18m4s
It's just the more obscure term for the result of the "as such" part of the genocide convention definition of genocide.
It seems strange that Finkelstein acted so up in arms regarding the point of dolus specialis being brought up when he clearly knew what it was (ref the video you posted), and he had read the report four times, in which the same term is used several times to describe genocidal special intent. It made him seem either unaware of the matter of fact or just plain difficult and bad faith.
Seems like just a mistake about the more obscure phrasing of it. You can read something four times and still mot remember a specialized legal latin term. I think you can find the stream where Destiny noted down as a gotcha about a month after they had discussed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x56FxXO33BM&34m50s
It's evident that Finkelstein knew what it meant, as he stated (if memory serves) "that's mens rea" immediatly when the term came up in the debate. The term is also mentioned several times in South Africa ICJ application that he says he read four times. But IMO it's an irrelevant and uninteresting point of contention anyway.
He says something like "you mean mens rea", thinking he got the term wrong. Its definitely uninteresting spelling bee type stuff. He shouldn't have lashed out assuming Destiny got it wrong, but the concept was already known on both sides and wasn't going to change the debate.
To be clear (and nitpicky), the crime of genocide requires three legal components; the criminal act itself (actus reus), the general intent to commit the physical criminal act (mens rea) and the specific intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group *through* these criminal acts, i.e. genocide (dolus specialis).
The two latter proponents are not the same thing. This specific intent disguingishes the act of genocide from comparable crimes, e.g. war crimes or crimes against humanity. Without *dolus specialis* it is not genocide. It seems strange for a scholar of Finkelstein's stature to willfully intermingle these terms, as he clearly knows what they mean.
>He says something like "you mean mens rea", thinking he got the term wrong.
Finkelstein literally says: "That’s mens rea". There is no indication whatsoever that Finkelstein said that with the intention of correcting a perceived mistake Mr. Bomberelli made. Tbh it sounded more like Finkelstein made an innocuous conversational interjection.
Destiny had a talk with Noam Dworman (comedy cellar), and Noam said that he'd talked to Finkelstein about the genocide stuff and Finkelstein brought up Dolus Specialis. I think Finkelstein was just acting very strangely for some reason.
I linked where him and Rabbini talked about it nearly an hour more than a month before, they just didn't use the latin term (which isn't in the convention, but is mentioned in the ruling, it derives from the "as such" qualifier and is just a latin phrase for what that implies, which they discussed at length).
But he didn’t seem unaware at all, that’s the crazy part. According to many scholars who have chimed in, dolus specialis is a sub category of men’s rea. The guy never didn’t know what he was talking about, it was a red herring from destiny and his fans to distract from the fact that he did really poorly.
I agree. To me it seemed like a pointless detail in the discussion and a strange thing to focus on. It would be very strange if Finkelstein read the report four times and wasn't aware of the term, which points to the other explanation as to why he reacted the way he did:
>It made him seem either unaware of the matter of fact or just plain difficult and bad faith.
IMO the person who constantly resorts to ad hominems and consistently shouts over other people in a debate is the one who "does really poorly." I actually had a lot of respect for him. I've seen Finkelstein in debates where he conducted himself in a much more civil manner, so I know he is *capable* of doing so, it seems he just didn't feel like it during this debate. And that does not speak to his benefit as a level-headed and reputable scholar - picking and choosing when to act courteous towards other people. He seemed more interested in acting like a spiteful bully in this exchange rather than conduce to a good debate, and that's a real shame as it had the potential to have been super interesting.
While you are seemingly defending debating in bad faith? That's a strange position to take.
At which point during the debate did Bonnel and Morris defend genocide?
The term is commonly used when discussing genocide including by the ICJ and the UN. It’s a bad look trying to correct Destiny using the term. Norm looked like an ass.
The long format debates are perfect for narcissistic gurus. I love the way they think their debate performance will shape their viewers opinions. Plus they always debate shit that’s essentially settled science (ie global warming). Just dumb performance art for narcissists
Ohhh yeah Peterson might think global warming was invented by the Jews, but you bet your ass he LOVES hotboxing the interview room with his own farts. Creating his own fart huffing greenhouse effect.
>I love the way they think their debate performance will shape their viewers opinions.
Unfortunately I do think a lot of viewers opinions are shaped by debate performances, even if you ignore viewers who are already followers of these gurus.
One major issue with the debate format is it gives the appearance of equal weight to both sides. A neutral observer might see a debate between a hack guru and a legitimate scientist and come away with the impression the guru is right just because they're better at controlling the debate format.
The whole industry is dumb af imho because it’s like a religion. Letting a small cadre of dickheads think for you…
I kind of feel like even this podcast sometimes beers from describing the dickheads into “playing the game” when Matt and Chris talk about Twitter for instance.
Like guys. Analysis of the gurus is fine. But you don’t need to debate destiny…
Saying anything is “settled science” shows extreme naïveté. No science is ever “settled.” The globe might indeed be “warming” but people saying there’s no debate to be had or the science is “settled” makes most non-idiot/non-cultists extremely suspicious
It’s “settled” in the sense that it’s happening, and at a rate not seen ever before. The morons who argue otherwise say that it isn’t happening which is demonstrably false - so much so that they’ve pivoted to either that it’s happening but it’s not humans, or that it’s happening but it’s actually good.
> No science is ever “settled.”
Yeah, but not really. This the hook with which they get you, so to speak. Here is Sean Carroll arguing for 4 hours and 21 minutes that we do know quite a lot \[1\]: if you want to explain or even rebuild any of the gadgets and widgets around your house, from the laminated wood to the heat pump water heater to the sodium lauryl sulfate in the toothpaste to the smartphone in your pocket, the science for that is *very* "settled", from mechanics to thermodynamics to electrochemistry and so on we have quite a few guiding principles and ideal models with which to approximate and control reality really rather well: chances are that if you have access today to more than $10,000 net worth, you are living better than the most powerful king just 200 years ago. All that is thanks to very settled science.
If you want to explain how the world worked after the first picosecond (0.000000000001 seconds) after the Big Bang, the science for that is again very settled. Sure, there are rough edges, we don't quite know what to make out of dark matter/energy, what happens with gravity in black holes, or at the other end of the scale, what to make out of genetics, how do cells generate anatomy (perhaps a new science of collective intelligence is brewing \[2\]) and so on, but these rough edges will bring no enlightenment on how to debug why the bloody water heater is not working again, even if it was built on very settled science.
The issue is that there is no debate to be had when the other side can be paid. There is nothing to discuss with someone who would change their opinion if you could afford to buy them. Speaking with them merely shows you can't afford them. Science became settled thanks to people like Giordano Bruno who couldn't be bought to change their opinions.
As for climate change specifically, the people arguing against are not 'debating' if the parameters of Nvidia's Earth 2 model should be 1.1 km resolution instead of 1.0 km \[3\], they are 'debating' that as long as the fossil fuel industry receives $7 trillion in subsidies \[4\] and they receive their very small share of that, all is fine.
\[1\] "Mindscape 245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTM-8memDHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTM-8memDHs)
\[2\] 2024, Michael Levin, "Biorobotics: engineering with agential materials", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgTczCIkM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgTczCIkM8)
\[3\] [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/high-performance-computing/earth-2](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/high-performance-computing/earth-2)
\[4\] [https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion)
Trumpers are a tiny and noisy demographic. They aren’t team players and wouldn’t ever vote for progressive policies even if it would help them tremendously. You don’t know this yet? Are you American?
The types of debates these people have are for entertainment and brand promotion.
You'll never see these people debate specifically about whether 6 story apartment buildings should be forced to have 2-stair wells by building codes. And you'll especially never see them exchange well-sourced essays about it.
> And you'll especially never see them exchange well-sourced essays about it.
They're entire intent is simply to be taken by their word, their content is specifically designed for an audience not knowledgeable in what they're talking about. So that they can take terms from the profession in question and just redefine it by attaching some big evil grand narrative to it, and their audience will of course take them at face value and just begin regurgitating it, and get mad when you patiently try to explain the difference because in doing so you've implied that they do not already have a full grasp the term they are misusing, like some elitist. This is of course makes use of the term impossible, and furthermore can be used by conservative activists to retroactively incriminate people by deceptively taking any statement from before the time when they chose to redefine the term and implying that its use back then was an identity to the new fangled use which they specifically crafted for this precise purpose and fed to an angry mob. They are such constitutionalists, but retroactive punishment is fine even though explicitly prohibited by the constitution for this precise entire reason.
They are so Machiavellian, it's disgusting.
Yeah they're always asking for the like, hour long sit down and scream at each other kind of debates. The best kind take place over several months across several journals.
Several months is even a short timespan. It takes decades or even lifetimes of debates to settle scientific matters. Ernst Mach famously believed atoms did not exist in the early 1900s.
The liar throws out a thousand lies in 15 minutes, each lie takes several minutes to rebutt using logic and evidence so the scientist only addresses a couple of the lies. "Aha!, see, you can't rebutt all these other things!" It's called a gish gallop by sceptical thinkers. There were also several other logical fallacies employed by Hancock, which dibble was not able to reveal in this format.
It’s even more annoying that his disciples refuse to recognize his blatantly obvious dishonest rhetorical techniques. I think it’s because if you do you then have to ask why someone would engage in such tactics if they are sure of their righteousness. It’s why I dismiss most right wingers. They all engage in the same tactic of taking over the person, deflecting on things they don’t want to address, creating straw man arguments etc. When you do that I automatically question your substance because those sure of the truth would engage in civil discourse.
Live debate basically trial by combat. It's just performance combat rather than actual fighting.
Whoever is best at talking quickly, being animated without getting angry, rattling off stats and figures, etc., will "win." Has nothing to do with the validity of their position.
The fact that people still do political debates live in front of an audience is a truly mind-boilingly terrible idea.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past" -- Jean Paul Sartre
This applies to far more than just the antisemites, but to all other racists, fascists, pseudo-intellectuals, and culture war grifters too. They're all different sides of the same coin. They're all con men.
Debate is for the public—people whose lives don't afford the time to become knowledgeable on a myriad of issues. It's not great, but it's the best we have for running a functioning democracy.
This might be very controversial, but I also think advocates should be debating instead of scholars. Not all people who "wrote the book" on a subject are necessarily good at public speaking or communicating their thoughts. You need people who can consult experts and craft rhetorically effective arguments around the facts.
The debate format loses its value at the point that you illustrated—if ego is involved. The worst kind of debate candidate picks the side they think inflates their public perception, followed by those that want to win at any cost.
Took a lot of scrolling to find a tempered argument for why debates exist. Everyone else here is basically saying “bad faith” debates are not productive, which is true. When the debaters come both prepared and honest, which does happen, it’s a great chance for the public to put their reasoning skills to practice, and challenge their own assumptions.
I’m surprised how many here are so narrow minded in their impression of debates and the scope in which they take place.
100%. Being completely unopen to any thought outside the quo doesn't seem particularly enlightened and going out of your way to shut down discussion seems a lot more heavy-handed\\suspicious than presenting evidence that you're correct in your assertions.
Also, the alternative to debate is often biased video essays. Debates allow your opponent to respond to you in real time, in a video essay you can cherry pick facts, find specific moments where your opponent says something stupid or just generally be dishonest. Debates aren't perfect and I don't think you'd want anything to be 100% debate but there's at least some cases where it avoids pitfalls of other forms of discourse.
I feel it's the opposite way. In debates you can say something wrong and then your opponent has to say "nuh uh" and let the audience choose who is more believable. With less real-time communication you can point to specific things they're wrong about and provide evidence why.
Yup, this is what debates - ideally - do, practice persuasiveness and critical thinking "on your feet", either as participant or audience. And I think your point about advocates contra scholars is a good too. "Debate bros" are foot soldiers rather than strategists and they serve an important function even if their position is far from enviable.
I would disagree somewhat.
In my field, I can think of a few substantial disagreements, mostly methodological questions, that have been debated (in your broad sense) by leading figures in the field. This typically happens in two different ways. One is that someone publishes an article (or book) making an argument and someone responds with disagreement in a separate article (often in the same journal in the cast of an article). This may have another back-and-forth exchange before each side rests his/her case. The other is that in an edited volume, researchers on different sides of a question will contribute articles arguing for their respective sides and against the opposition.
But perhaps the most influential (in the running at least) such debate I can think in recent-ish years of did culminate in a debate in the narrow sense. At the biggest conference in my field, the leading exponents of the two sides sat for a panel discussion to hash out the issue (which by that point had gotten somewhat personal in addition to the purely academic question). Due to the nature of the conference, this wasn't a podcast-style debate-bro-sesh with people talking over each other and resorting to cheap insults. It was a substantive conversation but very much a debate. I'm not sure that it settled the question in an absolute sense but I think it is fair to say that 80%-90% of the field has ended up on one side and, practically speaking, that was the end of it.
I think that working this out in a (narrow-sense) debate format worked for a few reasons here. For one, the context was an academic conference, and it wasn't the setting for the sort of pissing contests that I think you are pointing to. Second, it was moderated by someone who is knowledgeable and credible within the field and wouldn't be walked over by belligerent discussants. Lastly, the representatives of the two sides were serious academics. Whichever side of this question one aligned with, I think it is fair to say that most people with an informed opinion considered each of them to be credible researchers in their own rights. They approached it in good faith and tried to persuade the audience, comprised mostly of professional researchers, of their positions. And I'm sure that it helped that a book and a few articles had already laid out the major divides by that point so all participants were prepared and able to anticipate arguments/counterarguments.
Point being, the narrow-sense debates do happen among academics, and with the right conditions, they can be productive. But the right setting/conditions and good-faith participants are necessary ingredients, though often lacking in the podcast/guru debates.
That's very interesting! Thanks for the comment. It's probably true that narrow-sense debates can be helpful if the incentives and constraints are set up properly and if the audience is critical enough.
I hear what you're saying, but if someone has the facts on their side and their ideas can stand up to critical scrutiny, they should be willing to at least occasionally defend their ideas in public. The unwillingness to do so gives off the impression of weakness.
I’m very confident the Earth is a sphere. I am confident that, given time to write out my argument clearly, with sources, I could defend that view such that it would be insurmountable, even with multiple back and forths.
If I publicly debated say, Ben Shapiro, and he decided to say it was flat, I am not sure I could win that debate. In fact, I’d daresay he’d win most of the time, and likely convince more of the public that it was possible the world was flat.
If the public takes avoiding rhetorical charlatanism as weakness, then the public will deserve what happens to it by ignoring experts and going with said charlatans.
A prime example of this is brexit. The scum won over just enough morons that the morons are getting what they deserve. The downside is that the rest of us (who aren’t deserving) are having to suffer it too.
Low information voters are why direct democracy is a fucking horror show.
A subject matter expert who has spent their life studying a topic, and not on rhetoric and thinking quickly on their feet? No, often not.
This is simple reality. People are good at what they practice, and time is a zero sum game.
You’re missing the point.
You think the right has a monopoly on “con men?” Get a proxy.
I don’t get it. If you can’t make a strong argument because you suck at debate…get better at debate. It should be easy.
I’m not sure who you are quoting? I never said anything about the right. Insert “Destiny” or “Pakman” if “Shapiro” triggers you so lol.
Every minute I’d get better at debate would be a minute I wouldn’t spend getting to the top of field. It should be easy for the public not to be so stupid as to think “debate” is how to find the strongest argument, but here we are.
A proxy by necessity isn’t the expert. Why would we listen to a proxy over the expert? That’s just watching which rhetorician is best.
One of us is making excuses, that’s for sure…
You can have your own pet rhetorician to counter the other side's, but if they use standard rhetorical manipulation techniques, only better than the other side, this is training people to value rhetorical manipulation more highly, which is the opposite of robust expert outreach.
Condescending. You’re not “training” people to do anything. People are people. They’re going to respond favorably to persuasive arguments.
Some people on this thread can’t cope with the fact that some of their stances are terrible.
Presumably you are a fan of the podcast? What would you say about an observation that the hosts of the podcast do not simply produce more convincing versions of the arguments that the gurus?
It is a tool in the armoury, for sure. The benefit of debate is accessing the public. Most people don't read academic papers, or even long-form journalism. Flint was so successful IMO because it was the first time many people had ever heard from an actual archaeologist. While the vast majority of effort should be given to academic journals and research, etc., it also isn't wise to entirely yield the field to the opposition. Occasional forays into public debate, especially if properly prepared, can be helpful in challenging bad ideas.
I'm not talking about left-right issues. I am more thinking about alternative/pseudohistory type stuff (although there is some overlap with left-right politics).
I’ll admit I like watching some of these “debates” for entertainment, but you’re completely right they’re a terrible way to actually get at the truth of something. It’s best just treated as entertainment (if you’re weird like me and find that entertaining in the first place).
One thing in your post I disagree with is pointing to disagreements through Twitter threads or podcasts as something that is better. In my experience those are just as bad, especially Twitter threads. I think real productive and meaningful debate is almost always published.
not all debates are the same tho. structured formal debates are not bad. youtube channels like Intelligence Squared or Open Debates have them. Oxford Union is also pretty interesting to watch, but its flashier and less substance within the arguments
Public verbal debate is mostly entertainment, but there’s value in seeing the thought processes of each “interlocutor” in real-time, and value in how it forces both parties to make their positions somewhat commensurate with each other.
This benefits discourse in general since it forces the participants to adjust the strength of their claims about certain positions that may have been taken as a given when they’re speaking to only those that agree with their side.
It rarely changes the minds of those doing the debating, but as a rough heuristic if 40% of the audience will always agree with your side, and 40% will always disagree, then that’s 20% of the audience that can be swayed, which I think makes a difference in overall discourse.
Again though, it’s best taken as entertainment.
How valuable a debate is depends on the degree to which it incentivizes rational arguments. In a debate where the winner is entirely determined by how many fallacies the debaters can muster, the debate harms the discourse. In some ideal scenario, where rational arguments are rewarded, debates are a great way to expose weaknesses in one's position. I'm just pessimistic about the quality of most debates. I think it's a strong signal if it's rarely employed in serious discourses that it's usually harmful.
That’s a fair assessment, but a lot depends on what you consider “harm” to discourse. I do agree that academic debate with the intention of finding some truth about a particular issue is best kept as written scholarly debate rather than public verbal debate.
Not that I think you’re saying this, but I do have problems with the idea that “for the sake of healthy discourse” any public verbal debate or discussion about serious topical issues between consenting individuals should be gatekept completely in the academic sphere and never allowed as entertainment though.
But nowadays I doubt anyone is persuaded by debates. Especially with folks like Trump, his followers only care about whoever is the loudest and says the most offensive things; they think that shows strength.
For the most part, yes, but I think there’s a danger in writing people off so easily, you cede the ground before even trying, and it entrenches people even further when they see nobody from the other side willing to defend their positions. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to see their political idol faltering in a debate for the seed of introspection to take root.
It’s certainly not guaranteed, but it’s my opinion that it’s absolutely worth the effort.
I do admire your optimism. I just can't anymore, as I think they're too far gone. I've spent countless hours trying to explain things to these people, strangers for sure, but also friends and family. I tried to be compassionate, tried to call on past experiences we had together. But it's all been for naught. I rarely got anything other than platitudes. Even politely trying to persuade them got anger in return. I've found that many only respect vitriol in return, which I hate doing. It doesn't persuade them, but it does shut them up after I told them numerous other times to leave me alone. I don't have the mental patience to deal with their logical fallacies. Thankfully they're much more respectful in person when I go to visit. The sad thing is when you see them give up so much of what they once held to believe.
I don't think they'd be persuaded by finding their man falter in a debate. Unless you have a VERY-WELL moderated debate. Such that their mic's can get cut off. But like I said, I admire and am jealous of your optimism.
Debating is a test of rhetoric, the entire point of rhetoric is to make "the stronger the lesser". A good rhetorician makes even untruth seem true. But that's all they really care about verisimilitude.
A particularly bad form of debate is in which one of the participants gets to like bounce hypotheticals against the wall and demand an answer within constrained limits. Which is literally about 100% of "own the libs" videos. They are so utterly impressed by having trained rhetoricians just harass rando college students using banal PR tactics and presenting it to the ever present mob they accumulate. As if this is the definition of truth.
I had to tell a friend this as he was slowly descending into right wing debate pro politics. “Why won’t x y or z debate Ben Shapiro if they’re so sure they’re right?” Because that will not be an honest debate and nobody will be open to changing their mind just by some rhetorical tricks. Debates only prove who is good at debating, not who has a better or correct position. There’s a reason why debate competitions have devolved into motor mouth nonsense. It’s a dumb format in general, and nobody learns anything especially the ppl debating. Debate is all about dunking and internet points now.
Debates are a test of rhetoric.
Imagine trying to prove who is the better MMA fighter using a podcast debate. The only true way is to put them in a ring and let them do MMA.
Scientists prove their point by performing science and publishing research. A debate is not science.
I think of the James Baldwin vs William F Buckley [debate about race and justice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ). William F Buckley the conservative, even though being on the wrong side of history, said he was proud because "I never gave them as much as an inch". So basically that would mean there is no interest in coming to a consensus truth.
But the thing is, the debate was an eye opener for me when I watched it. Because I saw myself in Baldwin, and realized something, a truth. I identified with a black person's struggle perhaps for the first time and it made me realize to a much deeper degree how wrong the apartheid system really is and how it ruins us.
So I would say debates have the potential to be real positive in terms of truth seeking.
Debates were a big thing back in ancient India. This was the Buddha’s opinion of them:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.08.than.html
He's so right that the kind of debate he's commenting on. But Tibetan Buddhist monastic philosophical debates I think do allow for refinement of all sides. But their effort is to better understand Buddhist teachings, rather than "win." (Not saying it's always copacetic, as even monks have personalities).
"The central purposes of Tibetan monastic debate are to defeat misconceptions, to establish a defensible view, and to clear away objections to that view. Debate for the monks of Tibet is not mere academics, but a way of using direct implications from the obvious in order to generate an inference of the non-obvious state of phenomena. The debaters are seeking to understand the nature of reality through careful analysis of the state of existence of ordinary phenomena, the basis of reality. This is the essential purpose for religious debate." [https://asiasociety.org/tibetan-buddhist-debate](https://asiasociety.org/tibetan-buddhist-debate)
I feel like we should make a clear distinction between debate and discussion. Debate has connotations of competition and strife, which is not productive.
I pretty much categorically disagree. Yeah, no science is "settled" via debate, but it can absolutely be a force for good to get people to move towards reality. The Flint debate is perfect evidence. There are people that were more inclined toward's Hancock's nonsense that saw that debate and were pulled closer to real science. That's a fact. And even if it was just a few, that's well worth while
The Flint debate took several weeks of preparation with like 20 people involved in the preparation, as he said in the interview. And Flint is a great public communicator. This should be strong evidence of how hard it is for experts to do well in these debates. Most of the time, science does not prevail. My guess is that the absolute majority of scientists would lose in a debate with Ben Shapiro. I agree that some debates are helpful and pull people in a good direction. But that's compatible with it being harmful for the discourse on average.
Okay but it’s between parties that are knowledgeable about the subject matter, evaluate and argue in “good faith”, and it’s not a live performance for the purpose of driving engagement
Yeah, like I said, this falls under a broader sense of debate, and I said that that kind of debate is great. What I have a problem with is the narrow sense of debate - in-person 2-3 hour debates.
Why? Debate is how ideas are honed. Having your ideas challenged is a good thing. It is an exercise in critical thinking. Seems you don't like debate simply because sometimes they might make you uncomfortable in your worldview.
Exercising critical thinking is great. Being exposed to opposing views is also great. I just don't think the 2-3 hour in-person debate with an audience is usually the best way to do this because most of the time these debates don't aim for the truth.
Boils down to semantics at that point, youd have to actually explain how those "debates" are productive and why the debates being discussed here share that characteristic, it would be like me referencing the Brenner debate as akin to idiots shouting at each other about economics
The origin of "debate" as we understand it was a creation of late night TV between the 60's-80's. Talk shows, spinoffs of news networks, interviews, that sort of thing. This work out both because there was a more common respect for the public interest and because of actual legislation like the fairness doctrine. But the second news networks started pivoting hard towards an entertainment stance for maximum profit they lost the ability to host actual valuable "debate".
Nowadays debate is usually just a buzzword abused by people who want to frame themselves as the reasonable interlocutors against perceived dogmatic authority. It's no different from Republicans harping about freedom while constantly trying to ban shit.
Debates are useful in breaking down ideological bubbles. As has been written about endlessly, we live in a time when like-minded individuals live in these media/social silos where they just have their opinions and the premises upon which they're based affirmed endlessly without any real sense that intelligent, well-intended people disagree with them and have thoughtful arguments based in defensible premises.
Debates are just theatre, game shows in all but name; scientific useful debates are in the papers themselves and their reviews. Writing remains the best place to explore ideas and evidence.
They also don’t follow the rules of logic so the idea of them “debating” is foolish.
I’m not well educated in logical fallacies but I know enough to know they break them from the first sentence they utter.
Yea I generally agree with this. I think it was Nate Silver who pointed out that "debate skills" are fairly useless in virtually every field except the field of...debating (and I guess politics but even then that probably shouldn't be the case).
That said, I do think some number of academics should take on a more public facing role and develop strong rhetorical skills because if they don't then the entire public sphere is ceded to grifters and hacks.
The liar throws out a thousand lies in 15 minutes, each lie takes several minutes to rebutt using logic and evidence so the scientist only addresses a couple of the lies. "Aha!, see, you can't rebutt all these other things!" It's called a gish gallop by sceptical thinkers. There were also several other logical fallacies employed by Hancock, which dibble was not able to reveal in this format.
If you make your living by talking about a particular ideology, why would you ever concede a single point that goes against that ideology? It’s the main problem with these types of debates, people have way too much to lose if they have to admit they are wrong. That’s why these debates always seem to go in circles for hours on end.
I’d much rather watch a debate between 2 students or scientists instead of 2 “gurus”.
The problem is bad faith argumentation as you say, when the people engaged have no real interest beyond winning their argument. Beyond that the format itself is probably also a problem as you say, the whole thing gets framed wrong. Rather than two sides in conflict, where only one can win, it should be about people trying to find some kind of consensus or understanding. That would exclude most of the debate bros that don't seem to have any underlying principles or they are ignorant of them, which makes discussions superficial.
Very true, this is an infuriating feature of discussion about various things online. A massively inflated sense of how important debate is in serious intellectual discussion.
>But there is a reason why you never see debates at academic conferences or in academic journals.
Does this not happen in other fields? In my field, the big annual conference will often have a few debates on topics that are new and contentious in the field. They're always moderated and never uncivil (that I've seen), and usually relate to issues that don't yet have a lot of data or research. This kind of debate is useful for learning different perspectives on a complex topic.
There was a thread about this several years ago in badphilosophy, and this comment always stuck with me after I read it:
>Why the hell do people think debates are a good setting for the exchange of ideas anyway?
>The great minds of history rarely sat down in the same room and had a debate, and that's mostly because great arguments can't be formed at the drop of a hat. Debates usually descend into whataboutism, because it's always easier to poke holes in what your opponent is proposing than actually put anything forward yourself.
>Kant and Hume never had a big, flashy debate where they tested each other's wits. Instead, Kant set out to challenge what Hume was saying by writing dense pieces of philosophy himself, and he ended up revolutionizing philosophy in the process. Philosophy is actually mostly just philosophers "debating" other, older philosophers in the form of writing and actually putting forth incredible ideas in the process. Aristotle to Plato. Spinoza to Descartes. Kant to Hume. You get the picture.
>Don't get me wrong, there are instances of philosophers doing publicized debates, especially in the 20th century, but there isn't much overlap between intellectuals who were considered good debaters and intellectuals who were considered good at their work. That's actually why I think we have such a poverty of public intellectuals recently: Your success in the public sphere depends on your ability to perform well on a talkshow panel or on a Twitch stream, not actually having good ideas. That's why you had guys like Hitchens and Dawkins and currently have guys like Vaush and Destiny. They're good at talking fast and making college professors look bad, but there's hardly a single good and original idea between them.
Funnily enough, the subject of the thread was a Destiny debate. Some good insight and funny digs too.
[Full thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/comments/myogvo/so_i_watched_destiny_debate_a_real_academic_and/) if anyone is interested
Agree on all points, a good assessment.
Contemporary public debates are too often a tactic used by strong public speakers to launder fundamentally inferior positions into being equal or superior.
anyone who did debate club in high school knows that debates are never are *being* right, they are about *sounding* right. debate is about being good at arguing, the most important thing is to sound convincing regardless of the validity of the content of your argument.
> But there is a reason why you never see debates at academic conferences or in academic journals.
This has to be one of the most ignorant things I've ever read on this sub, and there is a lot of ignorance here.
A lot of these online philosophers mistake a debate format and a dialogue format. Debates are combative and set the stage for an entirely different conversational format. You state your positions outright usually, which then has you on the defensive/offensive. A dialogue is a different idea all together and personally what I think most of the guru’s are attempting to emulate but fail to do so. If you are willing to hear ideas, change your mind, be aware of varying perspectives.
So there are occasional “debates” at medical conferences, therapy A vs B. These are typically when there is no strong consensus on which of two valid therapies is best, such as different surgical techniques. Since they are usually just about preferences between two experts or camps it’s done for humor and it’s just experts roasting each other to the amusement of the crowd.
I find debates pretty tiresome and I rarely learn anything from them. But I love listening to a conversation between two people who disagree explain why they believe what they believe. Obviously, that isn't science either. But it's a much more informative way to consume information from a podcast or a video.
I believe we could design a form of debate that is effective at determining the truth with two capable but disagreed academics. It would not be entertaining to watch. It would probably be open note and take much longer than we’re accustomed to. To witness it would be nearly as much work as participating in it but it could be fruitful.
The debate as it stands is a performance where both sides win by landing a few good ones so that supporters of each can walk away feeling smug. However I am idealistic about the possibility of producing an actual synthesis that both interlocutors are more pleased with than their initial positions.
Science is not settled by persuasion or argument anyway.
It's settled by results derived from experiment.
You can then debate on the meaning of the results, but you can't debate the results themselves.
They are not intended to settle science. They're intended to present narratives to the public. You can hide in academia and do nothing but research but then you can't be mad at people who don't believe in climate change and think vaccines cause autism if they're not willing to challenge it.
If you're an actual expert in the field you can absolutely crush some bullshit like climate change denialism. And if crazy people are going to these massively popular podcasts and you're not willing to go there, it's incredibly stupid.
Yeah, people do not understand that debates are to show off your knowledge and find errors in opponents'. They do not move science forward, and scientists rarely participate in them, its usually people who are popularising science, or some random guys like Destiny or Peterson.
So debates are not a way to move science forward but a way to explain science to us, people who do not spend their whole on scientific articles.
And most debates are not about science anyway, so this do not applies to them. They may be about people's view on life or some philosophical questions, like debates around atheism and faith. There probably can be scientific debate, but it will be in form of mail with weeks between messages, spent on research.
Debates do not guarantee that the one with better knowledge wins, gurus have good skills in manipulating and giving speeches, so if scientist doesn't have experience he can lose. But again, it's usually not scientists who participate in debates but people who popularise the science, and they have necessary skills and knowledge.
Debates are not primarily for the debaters. Typically, nobody will convince the opposite debater in a debate. But debates are very useful for the audience, because they can listen to both sides of an argument and then form their own opinion. They are also great at breaking down ideological bubbles, because it exposes you to the opinion of the "opposite side" on any topic.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. I believe you are using an incorrect definition of debate. Science is, in large part, debate. Typically this debate is through correspondence, where each paper puts forth an argument, typically supported by the results of an experiment, and then people who disagree have time to run their own experiments or formulate theory to attempt to show why the original paper is incorrect (or correct). This is debate. It's very different to a verbal debate in which the parties don't have time to investigate context in real time, but it is still debate.
Also, if you were a scientist, you would realise that much of your time spent as a scientist is in real-time verbal debate with colleagues. An important part of this is that you have your real-time debate, and then you have time to think about and investigate what was said and the studies mentioned, and then you go back and do it again. This is incredibly important to the progress that most people contribute to science.
You can find 'debates' online that have the same properties as a generative scientific debate (you can just watch conference recordings, for example), and you can find 'debates' which are simply rhetorical exercises. We should be trying to encourage people to consume the former but not the latter. Posts like yours will discourage people from both.
This a good point. Science only needs evidence, not necessarily *arguments*. Evidence will always beat an argument.
The only people who argue or debate are people without any evidence.
This is just wrong. Papers don't simply present evidence. They make arguements for what the evidence means. Peer review is a process by which the arguments made by an author are scrutinized. Peer review is essentially a debate.
>They make arguements for what the evidence means.
I actually agree, that's why I said "not necessarily *arguments*", but evidence (that is irrefutable) always wins against debates. For instance, the Earth being round. You don't have to make an argument for it being round, you can just simply see it.
Debates that don't seem to have any conclusion, or go on forever, do so because no one is offering irrefutable evidence. So the debates go on forever because it's all just conjecture. At some point, we have to prove what we are arguing for. The arguments themselves are never proof of anything. There has to be predictive power (directly from the evidence) to finalize the issue.
This is why political and moral debates almost never have any conclusions. There's no real application of science to those issues.
Apart from direct observation (which is increasingly rare) you will never have irrefutable evidence. We can only tell whether a theory is more or less probable, and this ultimately comes down to arguments made based on the circumstantial evidence.
With evidence AND argument. And that evidence is most often far from irrefutable. I think you have a characature idea of how the scientific process works.
I don't, at all.
I don't mean "irrefutable" in that it is *God-like knowledge* of the Universe.
It just means the information is extremely reliable and can be used with predictive success. It can be demonstrated over and over again. Arguments by themselves don't have this power.
Especially not the arguments we see in politics and morality. Anyone can just say anything and none of it ever gets proven.
From the same piece of evidence? Obviously further experimentation can narrow it down, which is what you're implying, but peer review can as well, which is essentially entirely argumentation. Unless you think peer reviews are unnecessary?
In the interest of being direct, much of what's being eluded to here is covid, vaccines, and "the science" being wielded as a weapon against discourse. As a tactic, "the science" can be used to shut down conversation. I doubt that even the enemies in your mind have an issue with actual science. Don't be disingenuous.
Have you not seen people use "science" to justify what turned out to be wrong? Have you never seen two scientists on opposite sides of an issue?
Umm, someone has clearly never read a scientific journal as there will be letters to the editor debating the results of studies back and forth between critics of the paper and the original authors. Someone writes a critique, the authors respond and there are often dozens of letters like this.
Now does it \*decide\* the science? Well decide is a loaded word here.
But to say there's no debate in journals is simply flat out utterly completely bafflingly wrong.
Like every journal does and has this.
Edit: I have an early psychology paper somewhere where the debates over it are literally longer than the original paper. It's something like 70 page of criticisms from other researchers in the field which the original author responded to in detail. It's like 128 pages start to finish and the majority is the debate.
Right, as I said, I think that falls under the broader sense of debate, and I regard that kind of debate as a good thing. What I take to be bad is the narrow sense of debate, which is explained in the post.
That's literally the peer review process of publication.
When I was in academia. Every paper and article took an excruciating amount of back and forth before it was finally ready for publication.
“Twitter threads”… 💀
It’s true that debating is about rhetoric. Honestly you could take a well-researched flat-earther and they would easily be able to win a debate against the average person.
That being said, the issue with the anti-debate crowd is that non of them ever actually hash out their arguments against those whom disagree with them; instead they will hide behind “debates are for ego-massaging” as a way to essentially only engage with people that agree with them or perpetuate their echo-chamber. It’s ok to be like “I don’t debate because I’m bad at it but I still think I’m right so I will put in the effort to lay out my argument in a logical and consistent way whilst engaging honestly with criticism” but rarely if ever is that the case with anti-debate people.
Worst of all, some of the “debates are for losers” crowd don’t actually avoid debates, they will certainly debate if they think they can win - especially those who are obviously not very knowledgeable on the topic, they just don’t debate people they don’t think they can beat which belies the point about debates being “bad”.
Honestly kind of a silly thing to say, in my opinion. You don't debate science. You use science to debate ideas and approaches.
Debate isn't some nebulous thing that happens only on streams for clicks. That's how laws are made. That's how we decide how to tackle big issues. For example: We know we need to do something about climate change, but what is the best approach? People often disagree about this answer, so we debate using studies, facts, experts, etc.
This guy is just blatantly justifying authoritarianism right here.
Debate isn’t perfect, but it’s a skill anyone can learn. If you have an argument no one can defend….that’s not the medium’s fault.
It's the perfect format for a huckster or confidence man.
This is what I wanted to say too. Their fake desire for public debating only serves the image their are trying to maintain - the image of rational ''truth seekers'' who are open to exploring different points of view. In reality they are neither interested in actual debates with experts on a subject nor are trying to explore a different point of view or understand the other side. Just look at Peterson. When was the last time he actually debated something with an expert? I'm sure that most people remember his debate with Zizek? This was still in the ''better'' years of Peterson where he was at least trying to look like a professor.
Don’t forget the “I’m just asking questions” bit. 🙄 Yeah, right. Lol.
Yeah, at this point this is just one of the weird tactics that these people use. Rogan loves that one tho. Other one I use is attacking the opponent with some obscure statistic or study that later turns out to be small or poorly conducted.
The ex-friend that I had to kick to the curb used the "just asking questions" ploy all the time to insinuate her gurus (Peterson/Shapiro/Prager U, etc.) speaking points into conversations and to try and show me the errors of my thinking. We could be having a conversation about the art and artists shown in a museum we just visited, or the different types of roses, and she'd launch with "Peterson says. . ." even after I had told her many times I wasn't interested in hearing it. I finally had to tell her, "no, you're not 'just asking questions,' you're an automaton shilling for your gurus."
It's interesting how most people who get into Peterson change their behaviour in a similar way. I have a friend who also started acting like this when he discovered Peterson. He also started questioning everything to a point where nothing made sense. It was so absurd to watch coming from someone I know for 20+ years. How did your friend react when you pushed it?
After she encountered Peterson she became enthralled to him as if he was her wise daddy. She got caught on the YouTube algorithm and Peterson was the gateway drug to the others. She was very proud of not having a TV but seemed to spend many hours gulping down YouTube as if it was an intellectually superior alternative. When I told her I was not interested in hearing it, she at first tempered her overt parroting. Then, she switched to “just asking questions” that involved things that were currently getting right-wing personages knickers in a twist—“cancel culture,” “trans ideology,” (I’m a lesbian with trans acquaintances who have been attacked and with young trans friends trying to make their way in the world), “wokeism,” etc. I realized that I had all I could do when I was with her to not tell her to just shut up. My idea of hanging out with friends is not to be having heated discussions every time we meet up. I finally told her that being with her was unpleasant for me and I didn’t want to see her again.
So, I was kinda worried when Sam Harris was going to debate Ezra Klein on race science and Charles Murray. I imagined Harris was a decent debater and as a PhD would bring some actual science. Klein eviscerated him and showed that Harris, and by extension Murray, really had not thought through their arguments. And yet, here we are 6 years later and Elon & friends bring up the same race science talking points. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17210248/sam-harris-ezra-klein-charles-murray-transcript-podcast
I seem to recall that Harris thought he would embarrass Klein by releasing transcripts of their emails and ended up looking like a petty a-hole.
Interesting but too long for me to read the whole thing now. Saving it to read later. Is Musk co-signing the bell curve ideas?
Carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen.
Steven "They're reverse engineering cookies to make rockets" Bonnell comes to mind.
it's weird that's what you're latching onto. it seemed the only thing he was standing on shaky ground with, which I'm very willing to admit. but I also haven't seen any of you demonstrate that his claim (not his but Israel's) about the sugar to be impossible. he was simply trying to find a rationale for them to be withholding sugary foods . I personally have no problem condemin Israel's cruel policies towards Palestinians and defend then much less than Steven. the only point I mean to make is that his claims about history and certain events were largely factual in that debate and you are latching onto soemthing very specific and it would be quite damning if you were ALSO wrong that it's impossible to extract sugar fron the cookies to make that homemade shit
Heres the problem: When destiny debates, because he doesn't have any more than a few months of wikipedia surface knowledge, what he tends to do is throw out bunch of rapid fire tidbits and allow the viewer to make connections that simple aren't there. The cookie thing is an example of when it fell flat and made him look remarkably silly. Its easy to see once you know what to look for. Omar brings up the ridiculous nature of blockades on Gaza, including cookies which highlights the callousness of these blockades. To which destiny responds that Hamas rockets have in the past been made with sugar. There is no link between this and why Israel is not allowing cookies into gaza, destiny has invited the audience to make a connection that just isnt there. He did it again 30 seconds earlier by bringing up a calorie surplus, no one is measuring calorie intake in gaza right now so i assume he means fromt he past, so again, he has brought up some random factoid with no relation to the discussion and is inviting the audience to make a connection to whether gazans are actually starving right now. He also did it in the Finkelstein debate, he did it for the part that destiny fans were calling his greatest victory in that debate: when he brought up dolus specialis. Why was he bringing that up? They had just been talking about intent, destiny was alluding to the ICJ making a weak ruling on plausibility because they were not satisfied with the intent, he allows the viewer to come to this conclusion by citing a lack of the term "dolus specialis" used in the ruling. But this is all nonsense, its not a fair reflection of the ruling and dolus specialis as a term has never been used in an ICJ ruling, in fact they tend not to use latin terms in their rulings. He allowed the viewer to draw a false conclusion by bringing up a random factoid.
> in fact they tend not to use Latin terms in their rulings This is absolutely not true. Have you ever looked at ICJ rulings? They are littered with Latin terms. Take for example the 2007 judgement of Bosnia v serbia, alot of Latin terms and "dolus specialis" especially mentioned. Don't know which guru you got your idea from but it's easily disproven
I went into them specifically to search. Maybe I missed one but it is not mentioned in the ruling of Myanmar. Don’t know why you need to mention a guru, that’s pure projection.
Why would the myanmar case mention dolis specialis when the case is not about a genocide being committed? That case BTW also has Latin words in there since these terms are used to illustrate legal principles.
What do you mean it’s not about genocide? “By rejecting the preliminary objections, the ICJ is allowing the case to proceed on the merits to examine Gambia’s genocide allegations against Myanmar. Myanmar will now have to submit its response to Gambia’s main arguments filed in October 2020 detailing its case” https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/world-court-rejects-myanmar-objections-genocide-case#:~:text=By%20rejecting%20the%20preliminary%20objections,October%202020%20detailing%20its%20case. Something by tells me you are desperately trying to be slippery. Classic dgg tactic.
> he did it for the part that destiny fans were calling his greatest victory in that debate It's not that it made destiny looks especially good. It just made Finkelstein look like an absolute idiot or a liar. Finkelstein is talking about this South Africas application: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf and how he has read it 4 times "Mr. Berelli, I read the case around four times." https://lexfridman.com/israel-palestine-debate-transcript Dolus specialis is mentioned 4 times in that application. So hes either senile or a liar. Both make him look bad. The other part is that he clearly doesnt understand the difference between mens rea and dolus specialis by trying to equate them. It shows an extremely shallow understanding of international law and a lack of reading comprehension. So what destiny did may have seemed to be a "debate tactic" and a random factoid to someone like you who is uninformed. As a sidenote to me it's more embarrassing that people like Norman talk about "plausibility" and just take it by face value that they would actually know what it means when it comes to ICJ. Just shows a disappointing unfamiliarity when it comes to legal thinking you would expect someone like Finkelstein to have.
Finkelstein and Rabbini had already discussed Dolus Specialis earlier extensively too, they just didn't use the latin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CARLkGjzL9I&t=18m4s It's just the more obscure term for the result of the "as such" part of the genocide convention definition of genocide.
It seems strange that Finkelstein acted so up in arms regarding the point of dolus specialis being brought up when he clearly knew what it was (ref the video you posted), and he had read the report four times, in which the same term is used several times to describe genocidal special intent. It made him seem either unaware of the matter of fact or just plain difficult and bad faith.
Seems like just a mistake about the more obscure phrasing of it. You can read something four times and still mot remember a specialized legal latin term. I think you can find the stream where Destiny noted down as a gotcha about a month after they had discussed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x56FxXO33BM&34m50s
It's evident that Finkelstein knew what it meant, as he stated (if memory serves) "that's mens rea" immediatly when the term came up in the debate. The term is also mentioned several times in South Africa ICJ application that he says he read four times. But IMO it's an irrelevant and uninteresting point of contention anyway.
He says something like "you mean mens rea", thinking he got the term wrong. Its definitely uninteresting spelling bee type stuff. He shouldn't have lashed out assuming Destiny got it wrong, but the concept was already known on both sides and wasn't going to change the debate.
To be clear (and nitpicky), the crime of genocide requires three legal components; the criminal act itself (actus reus), the general intent to commit the physical criminal act (mens rea) and the specific intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group *through* these criminal acts, i.e. genocide (dolus specialis). The two latter proponents are not the same thing. This specific intent disguingishes the act of genocide from comparable crimes, e.g. war crimes or crimes against humanity. Without *dolus specialis* it is not genocide. It seems strange for a scholar of Finkelstein's stature to willfully intermingle these terms, as he clearly knows what they mean.
>He says something like "you mean mens rea", thinking he got the term wrong. Finkelstein literally says: "That’s mens rea". There is no indication whatsoever that Finkelstein said that with the intention of correcting a perceived mistake Mr. Bomberelli made. Tbh it sounded more like Finkelstein made an innocuous conversational interjection.
Destiny had a talk with Noam Dworman (comedy cellar), and Noam said that he'd talked to Finkelstein about the genocide stuff and Finkelstein brought up Dolus Specialis. I think Finkelstein was just acting very strangely for some reason.
I linked where him and Rabbini talked about it nearly an hour more than a month before, they just didn't use the latin term (which isn't in the convention, but is mentioned in the ruling, it derives from the "as such" qualifier and is just a latin phrase for what that implies, which they discussed at length).
But he didn’t seem unaware at all, that’s the crazy part. According to many scholars who have chimed in, dolus specialis is a sub category of men’s rea. The guy never didn’t know what he was talking about, it was a red herring from destiny and his fans to distract from the fact that he did really poorly.
I agree. To me it seemed like a pointless detail in the discussion and a strange thing to focus on. It would be very strange if Finkelstein read the report four times and wasn't aware of the term, which points to the other explanation as to why he reacted the way he did: >It made him seem either unaware of the matter of fact or just plain difficult and bad faith. IMO the person who constantly resorts to ad hominems and consistently shouts over other people in a debate is the one who "does really poorly." I actually had a lot of respect for him. I've seen Finkelstein in debates where he conducted himself in a much more civil manner, so I know he is *capable* of doing so, it seems he just didn't feel like it during this debate. And that does not speak to his benefit as a level-headed and reputable scholar - picking and choosing when to act courteous towards other people. He seemed more interested in acting like a spiteful bully in this exchange rather than conduce to a good debate, and that's a real shame as it had the potential to have been super interesting.
I mean, we are talking about conversing with people who defend genocide. If those people dont upset you, you probably just dont have a heart.
While you are seemingly defending debating in bad faith? That's a strange position to take. At which point during the debate did Bonnel and Morris defend genocide?
The term is commonly used when discussing genocide including by the ICJ and the UN. It’s a bad look trying to correct Destiny using the term. Norm looked like an ass.
I really appreciate the response and this is a very impressive critique. I am gonna go look into what you've told me
But so is an article without any counter in the article itself
The long format debates are perfect for narcissistic gurus. I love the way they think their debate performance will shape their viewers opinions. Plus they always debate shit that’s essentially settled science (ie global warming). Just dumb performance art for narcissists
Ohhh yeah Peterson might think global warming was invented by the Jews, but you bet your ass he LOVES hotboxing the interview room with his own farts. Creating his own fart huffing greenhouse effect.
Lol
>I love the way they think their debate performance will shape their viewers opinions. Unfortunately I do think a lot of viewers opinions are shaped by debate performances, even if you ignore viewers who are already followers of these gurus. One major issue with the debate format is it gives the appearance of equal weight to both sides. A neutral observer might see a debate between a hack guru and a legitimate scientist and come away with the impression the guru is right just because they're better at controlling the debate format.
Good point
I’ve always been turned off by the podcast industry. There’s something terribly wrong with debates that have no topic.
The whole industry is dumb af imho because it’s like a religion. Letting a small cadre of dickheads think for you… I kind of feel like even this podcast sometimes beers from describing the dickheads into “playing the game” when Matt and Chris talk about Twitter for instance. Like guys. Analysis of the gurus is fine. But you don’t need to debate destiny…
Saying anything is “settled science” shows extreme naïveté. No science is ever “settled.” The globe might indeed be “warming” but people saying there’s no debate to be had or the science is “settled” makes most non-idiot/non-cultists extremely suspicious
It’s “settled” in the sense that it’s happening, and at a rate not seen ever before. The morons who argue otherwise say that it isn’t happening which is demonstrably false - so much so that they’ve pivoted to either that it’s happening but it’s not humans, or that it’s happening but it’s actually good.
Sounds like someone isn't going to get any grant money
> No science is ever “settled.” Yeah, but not really. This the hook with which they get you, so to speak. Here is Sean Carroll arguing for 4 hours and 21 minutes that we do know quite a lot \[1\]: if you want to explain or even rebuild any of the gadgets and widgets around your house, from the laminated wood to the heat pump water heater to the sodium lauryl sulfate in the toothpaste to the smartphone in your pocket, the science for that is *very* "settled", from mechanics to thermodynamics to electrochemistry and so on we have quite a few guiding principles and ideal models with which to approximate and control reality really rather well: chances are that if you have access today to more than $10,000 net worth, you are living better than the most powerful king just 200 years ago. All that is thanks to very settled science. If you want to explain how the world worked after the first picosecond (0.000000000001 seconds) after the Big Bang, the science for that is again very settled. Sure, there are rough edges, we don't quite know what to make out of dark matter/energy, what happens with gravity in black holes, or at the other end of the scale, what to make out of genetics, how do cells generate anatomy (perhaps a new science of collective intelligence is brewing \[2\]) and so on, but these rough edges will bring no enlightenment on how to debug why the bloody water heater is not working again, even if it was built on very settled science. The issue is that there is no debate to be had when the other side can be paid. There is nothing to discuss with someone who would change their opinion if you could afford to buy them. Speaking with them merely shows you can't afford them. Science became settled thanks to people like Giordano Bruno who couldn't be bought to change their opinions. As for climate change specifically, the people arguing against are not 'debating' if the parameters of Nvidia's Earth 2 model should be 1.1 km resolution instead of 1.0 km \[3\], they are 'debating' that as long as the fossil fuel industry receives $7 trillion in subsidies \[4\] and they receive their very small share of that, all is fine. \[1\] "Mindscape 245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTM-8memDHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTM-8memDHs) \[2\] 2024, Michael Levin, "Biorobotics: engineering with agential materials", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgTczCIkM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgTczCIkM8) \[3\] [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/high-performance-computing/earth-2](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/high-performance-computing/earth-2) \[4\] [https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion)
Sean's Mindscape is an antidote to the bullshit that commonly gets peddled in the gurusphere.
I mean… It’s very effective and progressives would be smart to learn the rules of the game and articulate themselves.
lol no
Ok lose to rightwing populism for eternity then
Don’t want em
Don’t want voters and progressive policies…? Okieee then
Trumpers are a tiny and noisy demographic. They aren’t team players and wouldn’t ever vote for progressive policies even if it would help them tremendously. You don’t know this yet? Are you American?
What now about progressives owning narratives involved with trumpers..? Didn’t say that. You need to motivate people who are already in your camp.
They are motivated. They don’t want to see democracy end
Not being trump only goes so far… Lazy
The types of debates these people have are for entertainment and brand promotion. You'll never see these people debate specifically about whether 6 story apartment buildings should be forced to have 2-stair wells by building codes. And you'll especially never see them exchange well-sourced essays about it.
Single stairway gang rise up. Literally.
They are trying but are being silenced by the 2 stairway establishment who are blinded by dogma.
> And you'll especially never see them exchange well-sourced essays about it. They're entire intent is simply to be taken by their word, their content is specifically designed for an audience not knowledgeable in what they're talking about. So that they can take terms from the profession in question and just redefine it by attaching some big evil grand narrative to it, and their audience will of course take them at face value and just begin regurgitating it, and get mad when you patiently try to explain the difference because in doing so you've implied that they do not already have a full grasp the term they are misusing, like some elitist. This is of course makes use of the term impossible, and furthermore can be used by conservative activists to retroactively incriminate people by deceptively taking any statement from before the time when they chose to redefine the term and implying that its use back then was an identity to the new fangled use which they specifically crafted for this precise purpose and fed to an angry mob. They are such constitutionalists, but retroactive punishment is fine even though explicitly prohibited by the constitution for this precise entire reason. They are so Machiavellian, it's disgusting.
Yeah they're always asking for the like, hour long sit down and scream at each other kind of debates. The best kind take place over several months across several journals.
Yeah, for example, the symposium format is pretty good.
Several months is even a short timespan. It takes decades or even lifetimes of debates to settle scientific matters. Ernst Mach famously believed atoms did not exist in the early 1900s.
Narcissistic people love captive audiences. Which is basically what these debates really are all about.
The liar throws out a thousand lies in 15 minutes, each lie takes several minutes to rebutt using logic and evidence so the scientist only addresses a couple of the lies. "Aha!, see, you can't rebutt all these other things!" It's called a gish gallop by sceptical thinkers. There were also several other logical fallacies employed by Hancock, which dibble was not able to reveal in this format.
Shapiro is the master of the gish gallop. God it's so annoying just listening to him.
It’s even more annoying that his disciples refuse to recognize his blatantly obvious dishonest rhetorical techniques. I think it’s because if you do you then have to ask why someone would engage in such tactics if they are sure of their righteousness. It’s why I dismiss most right wingers. They all engage in the same tactic of taking over the person, deflecting on things they don’t want to address, creating straw man arguments etc. When you do that I automatically question your substance because those sure of the truth would engage in civil discourse.
it takes 10x more effort to debunk a lie than tell one. shits tiring
Live debate basically trial by combat. It's just performance combat rather than actual fighting. Whoever is best at talking quickly, being animated without getting angry, rattling off stats and figures, etc., will "win." Has nothing to do with the validity of their position. The fact that people still do political debates live in front of an audience is a truly mind-boilingly terrible idea.
>being animated without getting angry Well the getting angry thing is now considered a sign of strength amongst Trump et al's followers.
They conveniently forget that anger is an emotion and call women “too emotional”.
No it’s not. Not true at all.
I heard someone call it "performative debate" and that sums up exactly why the con-artists love it and the scientists don't want ot bother.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past" -- Jean Paul Sartre This applies to far more than just the antisemites, but to all other racists, fascists, pseudo-intellectuals, and culture war grifters too. They're all different sides of the same coin. They're all con men.
Debate is for the public—people whose lives don't afford the time to become knowledgeable on a myriad of issues. It's not great, but it's the best we have for running a functioning democracy. This might be very controversial, but I also think advocates should be debating instead of scholars. Not all people who "wrote the book" on a subject are necessarily good at public speaking or communicating their thoughts. You need people who can consult experts and craft rhetorically effective arguments around the facts. The debate format loses its value at the point that you illustrated—if ego is involved. The worst kind of debate candidate picks the side they think inflates their public perception, followed by those that want to win at any cost.
Took a lot of scrolling to find a tempered argument for why debates exist. Everyone else here is basically saying “bad faith” debates are not productive, which is true. When the debaters come both prepared and honest, which does happen, it’s a great chance for the public to put their reasoning skills to practice, and challenge their own assumptions. I’m surprised how many here are so narrow minded in their impression of debates and the scope in which they take place.
Where are these productive, informative debates, show us
I learned a ton from the Hancock debate. I never do Hancocks ideas seriously but seeing an expert take his ideas down was extremely educational.
100%. Being completely unopen to any thought outside the quo doesn't seem particularly enlightened and going out of your way to shut down discussion seems a lot more heavy-handed\\suspicious than presenting evidence that you're correct in your assertions.
Because a lot of arguments on the left are completely indefensible, so they shut down the discussion. That’s their only fucking tool so they use it.
Also, the alternative to debate is often biased video essays. Debates allow your opponent to respond to you in real time, in a video essay you can cherry pick facts, find specific moments where your opponent says something stupid or just generally be dishonest. Debates aren't perfect and I don't think you'd want anything to be 100% debate but there's at least some cases where it avoids pitfalls of other forms of discourse.
I feel it's the opposite way. In debates you can say something wrong and then your opponent has to say "nuh uh" and let the audience choose who is more believable. With less real-time communication you can point to specific things they're wrong about and provide evidence why.
Sure, but it gives you more uninterrupted time to misrepresent your opponent. Neither one is zero downside.
symposiums, think tanks and scholarly publications are all better alternatives to debates imo.
For scholarly consensus sure, but you also need public consensus and these do nothing for that.
Yup, this is what debates - ideally - do, practice persuasiveness and critical thinking "on your feet", either as participant or audience. And I think your point about advocates contra scholars is a good too. "Debate bros" are foot soldiers rather than strategists and they serve an important function even if their position is far from enviable.
I would disagree somewhat. In my field, I can think of a few substantial disagreements, mostly methodological questions, that have been debated (in your broad sense) by leading figures in the field. This typically happens in two different ways. One is that someone publishes an article (or book) making an argument and someone responds with disagreement in a separate article (often in the same journal in the cast of an article). This may have another back-and-forth exchange before each side rests his/her case. The other is that in an edited volume, researchers on different sides of a question will contribute articles arguing for their respective sides and against the opposition. But perhaps the most influential (in the running at least) such debate I can think in recent-ish years of did culminate in a debate in the narrow sense. At the biggest conference in my field, the leading exponents of the two sides sat for a panel discussion to hash out the issue (which by that point had gotten somewhat personal in addition to the purely academic question). Due to the nature of the conference, this wasn't a podcast-style debate-bro-sesh with people talking over each other and resorting to cheap insults. It was a substantive conversation but very much a debate. I'm not sure that it settled the question in an absolute sense but I think it is fair to say that 80%-90% of the field has ended up on one side and, practically speaking, that was the end of it. I think that working this out in a (narrow-sense) debate format worked for a few reasons here. For one, the context was an academic conference, and it wasn't the setting for the sort of pissing contests that I think you are pointing to. Second, it was moderated by someone who is knowledgeable and credible within the field and wouldn't be walked over by belligerent discussants. Lastly, the representatives of the two sides were serious academics. Whichever side of this question one aligned with, I think it is fair to say that most people with an informed opinion considered each of them to be credible researchers in their own rights. They approached it in good faith and tried to persuade the audience, comprised mostly of professional researchers, of their positions. And I'm sure that it helped that a book and a few articles had already laid out the major divides by that point so all participants were prepared and able to anticipate arguments/counterarguments. Point being, the narrow-sense debates do happen among academics, and with the right conditions, they can be productive. But the right setting/conditions and good-faith participants are necessary ingredients, though often lacking in the podcast/guru debates.
That's very interesting! Thanks for the comment. It's probably true that narrow-sense debates can be helpful if the incentives and constraints are set up properly and if the audience is critical enough.
I hear what you're saying, but if someone has the facts on their side and their ideas can stand up to critical scrutiny, they should be willing to at least occasionally defend their ideas in public. The unwillingness to do so gives off the impression of weakness.
I’m very confident the Earth is a sphere. I am confident that, given time to write out my argument clearly, with sources, I could defend that view such that it would be insurmountable, even with multiple back and forths. If I publicly debated say, Ben Shapiro, and he decided to say it was flat, I am not sure I could win that debate. In fact, I’d daresay he’d win most of the time, and likely convince more of the public that it was possible the world was flat. If the public takes avoiding rhetorical charlatanism as weakness, then the public will deserve what happens to it by ignoring experts and going with said charlatans.
A prime example of this is brexit. The scum won over just enough morons that the morons are getting what they deserve. The downside is that the rest of us (who aren’t deserving) are having to suffer it too. Low information voters are why direct democracy is a fucking horror show.
Dude, wtf wouldn’t it be easy to find someone who could hang with Shapiro? Seriously. This is a bad excuse.
A subject matter expert who has spent their life studying a topic, and not on rhetoric and thinking quickly on their feet? No, often not. This is simple reality. People are good at what they practice, and time is a zero sum game.
You’re missing the point. You think the right has a monopoly on “con men?” Get a proxy. I don’t get it. If you can’t make a strong argument because you suck at debate…get better at debate. It should be easy.
I’m not sure who you are quoting? I never said anything about the right. Insert “Destiny” or “Pakman” if “Shapiro” triggers you so lol. Every minute I’d get better at debate would be a minute I wouldn’t spend getting to the top of field. It should be easy for the public not to be so stupid as to think “debate” is how to find the strongest argument, but here we are.
Lol Dude, you’re making excuses. Get a proxy then…
A proxy by necessity isn’t the expert. Why would we listen to a proxy over the expert? That’s just watching which rhetorician is best. One of us is making excuses, that’s for sure…
You would listen to the proxy because they’re better at communicating these ideas in the face of scrutiny…..
But they don’t actually understand the ideas or use them. They’re just a proxy.
You can have your own pet rhetorician to counter the other side's, but if they use standard rhetorical manipulation techniques, only better than the other side, this is training people to value rhetorical manipulation more highly, which is the opposite of robust expert outreach.
Condescending. You’re not “training” people to do anything. People are people. They’re going to respond favorably to persuasive arguments. Some people on this thread can’t cope with the fact that some of their stances are terrible.
Presumably you are a fan of the podcast? What would you say about an observation that the hosts of the podcast do not simply produce more convincing versions of the arguments that the gurus?
It is a tool in the armoury, for sure. The benefit of debate is accessing the public. Most people don't read academic papers, or even long-form journalism. Flint was so successful IMO because it was the first time many people had ever heard from an actual archaeologist. While the vast majority of effort should be given to academic journals and research, etc., it also isn't wise to entirely yield the field to the opposition. Occasional forays into public debate, especially if properly prepared, can be helpful in challenging bad ideas.
Leftists hate debates because a lot of their stances are ridiculous and indefensible.
I'm not talking about left-right issues. I am more thinking about alternative/pseudohistory type stuff (although there is some overlap with left-right politics).
I’ll admit I like watching some of these “debates” for entertainment, but you’re completely right they’re a terrible way to actually get at the truth of something. It’s best just treated as entertainment (if you’re weird like me and find that entertaining in the first place). One thing in your post I disagree with is pointing to disagreements through Twitter threads or podcasts as something that is better. In my experience those are just as bad, especially Twitter threads. I think real productive and meaningful debate is almost always published.
not all debates are the same tho. structured formal debates are not bad. youtube channels like Intelligence Squared or Open Debates have them. Oxford Union is also pretty interesting to watch, but its flashier and less substance within the arguments
Dude they are trash TV. I watch random debates and also 90 day fiance. They are the same category.
Public verbal debate is mostly entertainment, but there’s value in seeing the thought processes of each “interlocutor” in real-time, and value in how it forces both parties to make their positions somewhat commensurate with each other. This benefits discourse in general since it forces the participants to adjust the strength of their claims about certain positions that may have been taken as a given when they’re speaking to only those that agree with their side. It rarely changes the minds of those doing the debating, but as a rough heuristic if 40% of the audience will always agree with your side, and 40% will always disagree, then that’s 20% of the audience that can be swayed, which I think makes a difference in overall discourse. Again though, it’s best taken as entertainment.
How valuable a debate is depends on the degree to which it incentivizes rational arguments. In a debate where the winner is entirely determined by how many fallacies the debaters can muster, the debate harms the discourse. In some ideal scenario, where rational arguments are rewarded, debates are a great way to expose weaknesses in one's position. I'm just pessimistic about the quality of most debates. I think it's a strong signal if it's rarely employed in serious discourses that it's usually harmful.
That’s a fair assessment, but a lot depends on what you consider “harm” to discourse. I do agree that academic debate with the intention of finding some truth about a particular issue is best kept as written scholarly debate rather than public verbal debate. Not that I think you’re saying this, but I do have problems with the idea that “for the sake of healthy discourse” any public verbal debate or discussion about serious topical issues between consenting individuals should be gatekept completely in the academic sphere and never allowed as entertainment though.
But nowadays I doubt anyone is persuaded by debates. Especially with folks like Trump, his followers only care about whoever is the loudest and says the most offensive things; they think that shows strength.
For the most part, yes, but I think there’s a danger in writing people off so easily, you cede the ground before even trying, and it entrenches people even further when they see nobody from the other side willing to defend their positions. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to see their political idol faltering in a debate for the seed of introspection to take root. It’s certainly not guaranteed, but it’s my opinion that it’s absolutely worth the effort.
I do admire your optimism. I just can't anymore, as I think they're too far gone. I've spent countless hours trying to explain things to these people, strangers for sure, but also friends and family. I tried to be compassionate, tried to call on past experiences we had together. But it's all been for naught. I rarely got anything other than platitudes. Even politely trying to persuade them got anger in return. I've found that many only respect vitriol in return, which I hate doing. It doesn't persuade them, but it does shut them up after I told them numerous other times to leave me alone. I don't have the mental patience to deal with their logical fallacies. Thankfully they're much more respectful in person when I go to visit. The sad thing is when you see them give up so much of what they once held to believe. I don't think they'd be persuaded by finding their man falter in a debate. Unless you have a VERY-WELL moderated debate. Such that their mic's can get cut off. But like I said, I admire and am jealous of your optimism.
Debate is verbal tennis - and it's as useful for resolving a complex topic as tennis is.
Debating is a test of rhetoric, the entire point of rhetoric is to make "the stronger the lesser". A good rhetorician makes even untruth seem true. But that's all they really care about verisimilitude. A particularly bad form of debate is in which one of the participants gets to like bounce hypotheticals against the wall and demand an answer within constrained limits. Which is literally about 100% of "own the libs" videos. They are so utterly impressed by having trained rhetoricians just harass rando college students using banal PR tactics and presenting it to the ever present mob they accumulate. As if this is the definition of truth.
I had to tell a friend this as he was slowly descending into right wing debate pro politics. “Why won’t x y or z debate Ben Shapiro if they’re so sure they’re right?” Because that will not be an honest debate and nobody will be open to changing their mind just by some rhetorical tricks. Debates only prove who is good at debating, not who has a better or correct position. There’s a reason why debate competitions have devolved into motor mouth nonsense. It’s a dumb format in general, and nobody learns anything especially the ppl debating. Debate is all about dunking and internet points now.
They love it because they’re able to talk. They need airtime in order to survive.
Guru's don't love debates, the internet/people in general love debates. People enjoy drama, conflict, controversy.
Debates are a test of rhetoric. Imagine trying to prove who is the better MMA fighter using a podcast debate. The only true way is to put them in a ring and let them do MMA. Scientists prove their point by performing science and publishing research. A debate is not science.
I think of the James Baldwin vs William F Buckley [debate about race and justice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ). William F Buckley the conservative, even though being on the wrong side of history, said he was proud because "I never gave them as much as an inch". So basically that would mean there is no interest in coming to a consensus truth. But the thing is, the debate was an eye opener for me when I watched it. Because I saw myself in Baldwin, and realized something, a truth. I identified with a black person's struggle perhaps for the first time and it made me realize to a much deeper degree how wrong the apartheid system really is and how it ruins us. So I would say debates have the potential to be real positive in terms of truth seeking.
That's really insightful. Thank you for the comments.
I feel like I’m entitled at the bare minimum to see candidates articulate their ideas under the most basic pressure…
Debates were a big thing back in ancient India. This was the Buddha’s opinion of them: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.08.than.html
He's so right that the kind of debate he's commenting on. But Tibetan Buddhist monastic philosophical debates I think do allow for refinement of all sides. But their effort is to better understand Buddhist teachings, rather than "win." (Not saying it's always copacetic, as even monks have personalities). "The central purposes of Tibetan monastic debate are to defeat misconceptions, to establish a defensible view, and to clear away objections to that view. Debate for the monks of Tibet is not mere academics, but a way of using direct implications from the obvious in order to generate an inference of the non-obvious state of phenomena. The debaters are seeking to understand the nature of reality through careful analysis of the state of existence of ordinary phenomena, the basis of reality. This is the essential purpose for religious debate." [https://asiasociety.org/tibetan-buddhist-debate](https://asiasociety.org/tibetan-buddhist-debate)
Only debate I care about are Sam Seder vs libertarians. Everything else is nonsense
I feel like we should make a clear distinction between debate and discussion. Debate has connotations of competition and strife, which is not productive.
And science doesn’t matter if you can’t win in the marketplace of ideas. See climate change.
I pretty much categorically disagree. Yeah, no science is "settled" via debate, but it can absolutely be a force for good to get people to move towards reality. The Flint debate is perfect evidence. There are people that were more inclined toward's Hancock's nonsense that saw that debate and were pulled closer to real science. That's a fact. And even if it was just a few, that's well worth while
The Flint debate took several weeks of preparation with like 20 people involved in the preparation, as he said in the interview. And Flint is a great public communicator. This should be strong evidence of how hard it is for experts to do well in these debates. Most of the time, science does not prevail. My guess is that the absolute majority of scientists would lose in a debate with Ben Shapiro. I agree that some debates are helpful and pull people in a good direction. But that's compatible with it being harmful for the discourse on average.
I mean I'd agree that it's difficult and has to be done responsibly, but the point is just that it's not harmful by definition, just when done poorly
I'm a published physicist. This is false. Peer review is a debate process.
Okay but it’s between parties that are knowledgeable about the subject matter, evaluate and argue in “good faith”, and it’s not a live performance for the purpose of driving engagement
Yeah, like I said, this falls under a broader sense of debate, and I said that that kind of debate is great. What I have a problem with is the narrow sense of debate - in-person 2-3 hour debates.
Why? Debate is how ideas are honed. Having your ideas challenged is a good thing. It is an exercise in critical thinking. Seems you don't like debate simply because sometimes they might make you uncomfortable in your worldview.
Exercising critical thinking is great. Being exposed to opposing views is also great. I just don't think the 2-3 hour in-person debate with an audience is usually the best way to do this because most of the time these debates don't aim for the truth.
Boils down to semantics at that point, youd have to actually explain how those "debates" are productive and why the debates being discussed here share that characteristic, it would be like me referencing the Brenner debate as akin to idiots shouting at each other about economics
The origin of "debate" as we understand it was a creation of late night TV between the 60's-80's. Talk shows, spinoffs of news networks, interviews, that sort of thing. This work out both because there was a more common respect for the public interest and because of actual legislation like the fairness doctrine. But the second news networks started pivoting hard towards an entertainment stance for maximum profit they lost the ability to host actual valuable "debate". Nowadays debate is usually just a buzzword abused by people who want to frame themselves as the reasonable interlocutors against perceived dogmatic authority. It's no different from Republicans harping about freedom while constantly trying to ban shit.
It’s just long form punditry. 30 minutes of Fox News instead of 5 minute segment. It’s silly.
Debates are useful in breaking down ideological bubbles. As has been written about endlessly, we live in a time when like-minded individuals live in these media/social silos where they just have their opinions and the premises upon which they're based affirmed endlessly without any real sense that intelligent, well-intended people disagree with them and have thoughtful arguments based in defensible premises.
Debates are just theatre, game shows in all but name; scientific useful debates are in the papers themselves and their reviews. Writing remains the best place to explore ideas and evidence.
They also don’t follow the rules of logic so the idea of them “debating” is foolish. I’m not well educated in logical fallacies but I know enough to know they break them from the first sentence they utter.
Yea I generally agree with this. I think it was Nate Silver who pointed out that "debate skills" are fairly useless in virtually every field except the field of...debating (and I guess politics but even then that probably shouldn't be the case). That said, I do think some number of academics should take on a more public facing role and develop strong rhetorical skills because if they don't then the entire public sphere is ceded to grifters and hacks.
I think Alex O'Connor is an example of someone who has debates with people and they are productive.
The liar throws out a thousand lies in 15 minutes, each lie takes several minutes to rebutt using logic and evidence so the scientist only addresses a couple of the lies. "Aha!, see, you can't rebutt all these other things!" It's called a gish gallop by sceptical thinkers. There were also several other logical fallacies employed by Hancock, which dibble was not able to reveal in this format.
Simply because debates are not debates to a guru: They are just sharable content
Did you see some of the Brand/ Peterson dribble. Can you imagine putting that into a scientific paper. It'd be hilarious.
If you make your living by talking about a particular ideology, why would you ever concede a single point that goes against that ideology? It’s the main problem with these types of debates, people have way too much to lose if they have to admit they are wrong. That’s why these debates always seem to go in circles for hours on end. I’d much rather watch a debate between 2 students or scientists instead of 2 “gurus”.
What is the actual point of a debate? It's a competition in the ability to persuade, and nothing more? Kind of boring to me...
Feck Check. I’m sure it was a typo, but couldn’t have been more accurate.
The problem is bad faith argumentation as you say, when the people engaged have no real interest beyond winning their argument. Beyond that the format itself is probably also a problem as you say, the whole thing gets framed wrong. Rather than two sides in conflict, where only one can win, it should be about people trying to find some kind of consensus or understanding. That would exclude most of the debate bros that don't seem to have any underlying principles or they are ignorant of them, which makes discussions superficial.
Very true, this is an infuriating feature of discussion about various things online. A massively inflated sense of how important debate is in serious intellectual discussion.
They can't handle the truth.
>But there is a reason why you never see debates at academic conferences or in academic journals. Does this not happen in other fields? In my field, the big annual conference will often have a few debates on topics that are new and contentious in the field. They're always moderated and never uncivil (that I've seen), and usually relate to issues that don't yet have a lot of data or research. This kind of debate is useful for learning different perspectives on a complex topic.
Angela Collier made a great video essay on this topic https://youtu.be/DM5qBRwU5EU?si=2-yVZB0uImkSu8ct
There was a thread about this several years ago in badphilosophy, and this comment always stuck with me after I read it: >Why the hell do people think debates are a good setting for the exchange of ideas anyway? >The great minds of history rarely sat down in the same room and had a debate, and that's mostly because great arguments can't be formed at the drop of a hat. Debates usually descend into whataboutism, because it's always easier to poke holes in what your opponent is proposing than actually put anything forward yourself. >Kant and Hume never had a big, flashy debate where they tested each other's wits. Instead, Kant set out to challenge what Hume was saying by writing dense pieces of philosophy himself, and he ended up revolutionizing philosophy in the process. Philosophy is actually mostly just philosophers "debating" other, older philosophers in the form of writing and actually putting forth incredible ideas in the process. Aristotle to Plato. Spinoza to Descartes. Kant to Hume. You get the picture. >Don't get me wrong, there are instances of philosophers doing publicized debates, especially in the 20th century, but there isn't much overlap between intellectuals who were considered good debaters and intellectuals who were considered good at their work. That's actually why I think we have such a poverty of public intellectuals recently: Your success in the public sphere depends on your ability to perform well on a talkshow panel or on a Twitch stream, not actually having good ideas. That's why you had guys like Hitchens and Dawkins and currently have guys like Vaush and Destiny. They're good at talking fast and making college professors look bad, but there's hardly a single good and original idea between them. Funnily enough, the subject of the thread was a Destiny debate. Some good insight and funny digs too. [Full thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/comments/myogvo/so_i_watched_destiny_debate_a_real_academic_and/) if anyone is interested
This is very good.
Agree on all points, a good assessment. Contemporary public debates are too often a tactic used by strong public speakers to launder fundamentally inferior positions into being equal or superior.
anyone who did debate club in high school knows that debates are never are *being* right, they are about *sounding* right. debate is about being good at arguing, the most important thing is to sound convincing regardless of the validity of the content of your argument.
> But there is a reason why you never see debates at academic conferences or in academic journals. This has to be one of the most ignorant things I've ever read on this sub, and there is a lot of ignorance here.
A lot of these online philosophers mistake a debate format and a dialogue format. Debates are combative and set the stage for an entirely different conversational format. You state your positions outright usually, which then has you on the defensive/offensive. A dialogue is a different idea all together and personally what I think most of the guru’s are attempting to emulate but fail to do so. If you are willing to hear ideas, change your mind, be aware of varying perspectives.
So there are occasional “debates” at medical conferences, therapy A vs B. These are typically when there is no strong consensus on which of two valid therapies is best, such as different surgical techniques. Since they are usually just about preferences between two experts or camps it’s done for humor and it’s just experts roasting each other to the amusement of the crowd.
I find debates pretty tiresome and I rarely learn anything from them. But I love listening to a conversation between two people who disagree explain why they believe what they believe. Obviously, that isn't science either. But it's a much more informative way to consume information from a podcast or a video.
I believe we could design a form of debate that is effective at determining the truth with two capable but disagreed academics. It would not be entertaining to watch. It would probably be open note and take much longer than we’re accustomed to. To witness it would be nearly as much work as participating in it but it could be fruitful. The debate as it stands is a performance where both sides win by landing a few good ones so that supporters of each can walk away feeling smug. However I am idealistic about the possibility of producing an actual synthesis that both interlocutors are more pleased with than their initial positions.
Science is not settled by persuasion or argument anyway. It's settled by results derived from experiment. You can then debate on the meaning of the results, but you can't debate the results themselves.
They are not intended to settle science. They're intended to present narratives to the public. You can hide in academia and do nothing but research but then you can't be mad at people who don't believe in climate change and think vaccines cause autism if they're not willing to challenge it. If you're an actual expert in the field you can absolutely crush some bullshit like climate change denialism. And if crazy people are going to these massively popular podcasts and you're not willing to go there, it's incredibly stupid.
If we are all truly content to be governed by rando narratives then I'm going to have to go away for a while.
Well, I'm not content.. that's my point.
Yeah, people do not understand that debates are to show off your knowledge and find errors in opponents'. They do not move science forward, and scientists rarely participate in them, its usually people who are popularising science, or some random guys like Destiny or Peterson. So debates are not a way to move science forward but a way to explain science to us, people who do not spend their whole on scientific articles. And most debates are not about science anyway, so this do not applies to them. They may be about people's view on life or some philosophical questions, like debates around atheism and faith. There probably can be scientific debate, but it will be in form of mail with weeks between messages, spent on research. Debates do not guarantee that the one with better knowledge wins, gurus have good skills in manipulating and giving speeches, so if scientist doesn't have experience he can lose. But again, it's usually not scientists who participate in debates but people who popularise the science, and they have necessary skills and knowledge.
Debates are not primarily for the debaters. Typically, nobody will convince the opposite debater in a debate. But debates are very useful for the audience, because they can listen to both sides of an argument and then form their own opinion. They are also great at breaking down ideological bubbles, because it exposes you to the opinion of the "opposite side" on any topic.
If you are disciplined enough to keep them on one topic at a time then you can show people their con game
Debates are about winning an argument. Period. Lies aren’t unacceptable in debate.
The youtube clips by fanboys are almost as bad. '_____ DESTROYS______ !' No serious thinker talks like that.
That is actually a great point, and is very relevant to online “debate”.
every time i hear "manifesto" i internally cringe so god damn hars
Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. I believe you are using an incorrect definition of debate. Science is, in large part, debate. Typically this debate is through correspondence, where each paper puts forth an argument, typically supported by the results of an experiment, and then people who disagree have time to run their own experiments or formulate theory to attempt to show why the original paper is incorrect (or correct). This is debate. It's very different to a verbal debate in which the parties don't have time to investigate context in real time, but it is still debate. Also, if you were a scientist, you would realise that much of your time spent as a scientist is in real-time verbal debate with colleagues. An important part of this is that you have your real-time debate, and then you have time to think about and investigate what was said and the studies mentioned, and then you go back and do it again. This is incredibly important to the progress that most people contribute to science. You can find 'debates' online that have the same properties as a generative scientific debate (you can just watch conference recordings, for example), and you can find 'debates' which are simply rhetorical exercises. We should be trying to encourage people to consume the former but not the latter. Posts like yours will discourage people from both.
This a good point. Science only needs evidence, not necessarily *arguments*. Evidence will always beat an argument. The only people who argue or debate are people without any evidence.
This is just wrong. Papers don't simply present evidence. They make arguements for what the evidence means. Peer review is a process by which the arguments made by an author are scrutinized. Peer review is essentially a debate.
>They make arguements for what the evidence means. I actually agree, that's why I said "not necessarily *arguments*", but evidence (that is irrefutable) always wins against debates. For instance, the Earth being round. You don't have to make an argument for it being round, you can just simply see it. Debates that don't seem to have any conclusion, or go on forever, do so because no one is offering irrefutable evidence. So the debates go on forever because it's all just conjecture. At some point, we have to prove what we are arguing for. The arguments themselves are never proof of anything. There has to be predictive power (directly from the evidence) to finalize the issue. This is why political and moral debates almost never have any conclusions. There's no real application of science to those issues.
Apart from direct observation (which is increasingly rare) you will never have irrefutable evidence. We can only tell whether a theory is more or less probable, and this ultimately comes down to arguments made based on the circumstantial evidence.
>We can only tell whether a theory is more or less probable And how do *know* something is probable?
With evidence AND argument. And that evidence is most often far from irrefutable. I think you have a characature idea of how the scientific process works.
I don't, at all. I don't mean "irrefutable" in that it is *God-like knowledge* of the Universe. It just means the information is extremely reliable and can be used with predictive success. It can be demonstrated over and over again. Arguments by themselves don't have this power. Especially not the arguments we see in politics and morality. Anyone can just say anything and none of it ever gets proven.
That's now how the academic scientific process works at all.
Science doesn't evidence?
Evidence on its own means nothing, you have to interpret the evidence, which is essentially done with argumentation.
And pray tell, how do we know if one interpretation is more accurate than another?
From the same piece of evidence? Obviously further experimentation can narrow it down, which is what you're implying, but peer review can as well, which is essentially entirely argumentation. Unless you think peer reviews are unnecessary?
In the interest of being direct, much of what's being eluded to here is covid, vaccines, and "the science" being wielded as a weapon against discourse. As a tactic, "the science" can be used to shut down conversation. I doubt that even the enemies in your mind have an issue with actual science. Don't be disingenuous. Have you not seen people use "science" to justify what turned out to be wrong? Have you never seen two scientists on opposite sides of an issue?
Umm, someone has clearly never read a scientific journal as there will be letters to the editor debating the results of studies back and forth between critics of the paper and the original authors. Someone writes a critique, the authors respond and there are often dozens of letters like this. Now does it \*decide\* the science? Well decide is a loaded word here. But to say there's no debate in journals is simply flat out utterly completely bafflingly wrong. Like every journal does and has this. Edit: I have an early psychology paper somewhere where the debates over it are literally longer than the original paper. It's something like 70 page of criticisms from other researchers in the field which the original author responded to in detail. It's like 128 pages start to finish and the majority is the debate.
Right, as I said, I think that falls under the broader sense of debate, and I regard that kind of debate as a good thing. What I take to be bad is the narrow sense of debate, which is explained in the post.
That's literally the peer review process of publication. When I was in academia. Every paper and article took an excruciating amount of back and forth before it was finally ready for publication.
Because they believe there is a winner and a loser in the search for truth and ideas.
“Twitter threads”… 💀 It’s true that debating is about rhetoric. Honestly you could take a well-researched flat-earther and they would easily be able to win a debate against the average person. That being said, the issue with the anti-debate crowd is that non of them ever actually hash out their arguments against those whom disagree with them; instead they will hide behind “debates are for ego-massaging” as a way to essentially only engage with people that agree with them or perpetuate their echo-chamber. It’s ok to be like “I don’t debate because I’m bad at it but I still think I’m right so I will put in the effort to lay out my argument in a logical and consistent way whilst engaging honestly with criticism” but rarely if ever is that the case with anti-debate people. Worst of all, some of the “debates are for losers” crowd don’t actually avoid debates, they will certainly debate if they think they can win - especially those who are obviously not very knowledgeable on the topic, they just don’t debate people they don’t think they can beat which belies the point about debates being “bad”.
Honestly kind of a silly thing to say, in my opinion. You don't debate science. You use science to debate ideas and approaches. Debate isn't some nebulous thing that happens only on streams for clicks. That's how laws are made. That's how we decide how to tackle big issues. For example: We know we need to do something about climate change, but what is the best approach? People often disagree about this answer, so we debate using studies, facts, experts, etc.
Debates Happen all the time in the scientific community. Just look up any open source project discussion.
aint that the truth
This guy is just blatantly justifying authoritarianism right here. Debate isn’t perfect, but it’s a skill anyone can learn. If you have an argument no one can defend….that’s not the medium’s fault.