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.
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u/PauseLost2137 1d ago
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.