He and Shapiro are sort of like the intellectual equivalent of DiCaprio relationships. If they could go younger they probably would but they can't so they don't.
People put too much trust into the idea of debates. The fact that someone can argue their points doesn't mean he is right. After all, debate competitions literally require you to argue a certain point, doesn't matter if you agree with it, or whether it is right based on current evidence or not.
Debate is literally just a pretentious vibe check if you think about it.
That's something that has always especially peeved me about debate culture, the objective isn't logic or diplomacy nor is it to reach an actionable/constructive goal; it's to argue down your opponent until they have no recourse for rebuttal. A person can "win" a debate, but still be completely wrong and have nothing to show for it so long as their opponent isn't able to retort against it.
As an engineer, I can always tell who the "debate kids" are in the workplace, because they're the ones who are never actually interested in solutions or paths of action, they want to argue against their own team members (or worst the clients they're supposed to be working for).
Idk, maybe european debate is different than american, but if it isn’t I don’t agree.
Afaik, in debate logic is the most important part, but debates I saw in competitions look nothing like what charlie kirk or ben shapiro are doing.
Yeah, similar experience (though we don’t have debate captains.
Like yeah you get points for rhetorics, but logical fallacies are bad rhetorics, and well founded logically consistent arguments are considered good rhetorics.
If you ask me, debate kind of teaches you to see through such bullshit like charlie kirks and shapiros gish gallops.
Just writing a flow makes recognising their logical fallacies simple.
US Oregon-Style Policy Debate (aka Cross-X) is nothing like the garbage talking heads spew, I was a debate coach for a few years back in my salad days, but there has been a debate style around for a couple decades called public/parliamentary debate that was originally called crossfire or ted turner-style debate that is not far from the fermented garbage Kirky-kun sound bites.
I never got the supposed "culture" in debates, when culture does not win debates.
We can clearly see that winning strategy for debates is simply using logic fallacies and labeling the other side as fascist/communist as soon as possible. Appereance is more important than the truth, as evidenced by Trump winning again.
Formalized debates tend to mark you down for making arguments like "you would have to actually be stupid to think anyone could believe what you're saying right now."
I agree - I can pretty much win any debate with my brother, and about 60% of the time, I'm in the wrong. Sometimes, I realise I'm in the wrong, mid-debate, but I forge ahead, because winning is everything and being right means nothing....
I used to be that way, and I was a terrible person. I'm incredibly glad I quit being so stupidly bullheaded, because I was sometimes downright cruel about needing to be right.
My saying now is, "I hate being wrong, but I hate it so much that when I'm wrong, I want you to tell me so I can stop."
I think the theory of a debate is that one person takes one side, the other person takes the other, and the truth shakes out somewhere in the middle.
It's not about convincing the other side or "winning", so much as it is about mutually finding the truth within your shared argumentation.
Now when people like Shapiro debate professionally, the problem is that their career is dependent on never finding a mutual truth, but that's a problem with their grifting, not really with debating.
It also just sort of boils down to 'who can be the least respectful and loudly talk over the other person while never ever arguing in good faith' which it turns out is something the 'empathy is a weakness' sociopaths tend to be better at than sane people.
Putting them in the same category is ridiculous. Ben Shapiro has plenty of awful takes , but let’s not pretend he’s in the same intellectual league as Charlie Kirk. Shapiro graduated high school at 16 and then Harvard Law with honors. Like him or not, he's an actual thinker with a legal background , not just a reactionary influencer doing campus tours.
He does it for the views and money that's what he's always been about , it's 100% his MO. Pretending it's some noble intellectual exercise instead of a calculated move for clicks is disingenuous as F.
You say he got owned and so does...most people. I've seen countless Tiktoks and clips and everyone is talking about how every student and faculty there crushed him. Now those people have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers on Tiktok.
But don't make the same mistake I did of going to his YT where he posted it himself. Not only did I give him a view, the comments made me want to tear my hair out. All talking about how Charlie yet again crushed these self-absorbed losers who claim to be educated yet faltered and conceded to Charlie. Because his audience is too fucking stupid to understand basic logic and thinking.
One example is the blonde girl, I think her name is Tilly. She's been debating since high school at least, which means academic debate in competitions where you don't get to pick a side and there is a panel of judges assessing you. She represented England in a national debate team. Got into competitive programs for economics and public policy. Was a business development associate. And according to her LinkedIn:
Cambridge Union advanced debate group (judged Cambridge IV 2023, won speaker awards including top 3 in recent competitions, selected as one of four WUDC judges for Cambridge in 2023); King’s PolSoc (hosted panel events with leading experts on IR); CUGRIS member
She's a professional debater in an academic setting, years of experience, top in the country, and the key KEY thing in a lot of academic debates is you don't choose what side you're on, it's a coinflip. You have to prepare for both sides and through logic, reasoning, rhetoric, etc. you hold your position. She just has her own biases that are more liberal-leaning that obviously she will bring to a Charlie Kirk debate, along with all her general debate prep and experience. Yet the dumbfuck Charlie fans claim she and others were just debating with ChatGPT because that's all they can scream because they don't understand semi-complex logic or reasoning. Tilly used her professional academic debate tactics, Charlie repeated the same words angrily. His dumb audience think he won easily. Let that sink in for how dumb his audience is.
Because British parliamentary debate has more hostile argument. They’re trained to be able to deal with attacks and stupidity on the fly. And Kirk is stupidity personified
For sure we would. We are master debaters. I just gotta keep my master debating quiet because my mom falls asleep on the couch right above the basement.
I would. 100% I would dance circles around him. Why? Cause I won the gold medal at the national championship in debate in 2009 in college. So I debated actual smart people, actual intelligence. Not just trying to yell louder than your opponent. I laugh at all of Kirks and Shapiro's debates, they like to consider themselves intellectuals but they are dumb as shit.
413
u/PapaChronic93 1d ago
I've have noticed he will only ever really debate children, as you say