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I want to lose every debate

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Re: I want to lose every debate

#51

Post by nibbleshifter »

noud wrote: post #42
tsuujin wrote: post #21

I’d like to offer an alternative framing: don’t debate at all, just listen. While high school debate did teach me many positive lessons and I am thankful that I spent four years of my life doing it, many years later I have come to understand that it also taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win. I have put a lot of time in my adult life unlearning that trait, and reflecting on th…

When someone tries explaining something to me, I try to summarize what this person said when they are finished. E.g., "So you're saying that " or "It seems like ". This forces me to actively listen and remember what the other person has said. Afterwards, I'm looking for a response in the lines of "That's correct!" or "That's right!", or a correction and explanation that I haven't heard it correctly. Even if I don't a…

That is what is called active listening, and is a good way to do it.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#52

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pdpi wrote: post #35

I don't like the position of "losing is good". I want to win every debate, because I define winning a debate as coming out of it knowing more that I did going in. Debating isn't a zero-sum game, me winning doesn't make you the loser.

Yeah but what if you're wrong and you "won" by attrition? This is the problem with a lot of debates; they don't end with one party being convinced of the other party's point of view, they often end because one party just gives up.

I mean your point does apply if you actually acknowledge your lack of knowledge on a subject and do your research before bringing in an argument, but a lot of people don't, they have a standpoint and will stick to it.

Losing isn't good, but neither is winning if that was your goal going into a debate; the goal should be to learn and come to a consensus.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#53

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nicbou wrote: post #3

Great perspective. This is why I love browsing HN. Despite its relatively homogeneous userbase, people manage to stay civil when they disagree Elsewhere it's harder, but it still happens.

To a point; I have seen some greyed-out comments that just devolved into trolling. Thankfully, HN is self-regulating and has good moderators that help filter out these things.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#55

Post by wnkrshm »

You can understand people and where they come from, information about why they believe what they believe. But it's naive to think this can always foster common ground - some beliefs are entirely incompatible with the existence of the listener.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#56

Post by vidarh »

tsuujin wrote: post #21

I’d like to offer an alternative framing: don’t debate at all, just listen. While high school debate did teach me many positive lessons and I am thankful that I spent four years of my life doing it, many years later I have come to understand that it also taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win. I have put a lot of time in my adult life unlearning that trait, and reflecting on th…

I think the important thing is to be aware that there are several different types of debates or discussions with different purpose. School debate teams focus on combative debates - debates where the goal is to convince an audience, not the other side. The type politicians tends to engage in during campaigns.

But it'd be good if people got better training in "cooperative" debates, where the purpose is to learn and listen. I can't recall many instances where that was encouraged in school, but there were a few. All of them were focused on a subject, though, rather than actually teaching the skill of listening and debating constructively.

There's a space for both - sometimes you need to be combative -, but people switch to combative mode way too readily.

To your point on the time formulating a response: Online I find a good measure of whether I'm "listening" or gearing up to being combative is whether I end up significantly re-writing my reply while writing it as I process the comment I'm replying to, or if have it "ready and loaded" to fire back at someone by the time I hit the reply button.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#57

Post by Cthulhu_ »

psychphysic wrote: post #40

It bothers me that people argue so poorly. That's why debate exists. And why some people excel at podcasts Joe Rogan being an examplar. His best debates have very similar formats. "Tell me about"/"why do you think" "What about X" "So you're saying Y?" "Wouldn't that mean Z" People are bothered because he rarely ever seems to shoot others down just gets them to lay out their points and fleshout reasoning. The only tim…

That's the mark of a good host (or debater), instead of arguing directly (confrontational), they encourage the other party to think.

You don't win a debate with arguments and counter-arguments, you win it by letting the other person come to and change their own conclusions.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#58

Post by _cenw »

mandmandam wrote: post #43
_cenw wrote: post #23

Understanding perspectives is a useful skill. But it's not where having an educated opinion ends. I understand the desire of US fossil fuel companies to do fracking. They're not stupid or comically evil. But they can be greedy, misguided, selfish and too focused on short term gains (if you want to be extra accustory, "within their lifetime"). If you then move over to how much astroturfing is involved in pushing throu…

Fracking is textbook comic evil. Say there's a comic book where fossil fuel co's worked to permanently ruin the groundwater and increase earthquakes in a region - bribing lawmakers and fucking over the people who lived there, gagging scientists, etc - all just for a resource that is literally burning the planet... So they can upgrade their megayacht/private jet... I'd find it hard to believe that others could allow i…

"Comically evil" usually refers to a character that is evil for the sake of being evil, without external motivation. Like the stereotypical first D&D character some people make.

Such people are somewhere between rare and nonexitent. You could say the fossil fuel company executives are pretty high on the evil scale, but they are not evil for the sake of being evil. And I was careful calling them evil because HN is a politically diverse bunch and sometimes saying things diplomatically is the right choice over being technically or morally correct but getting downvoted into oblivion for invoking a certain kind of language.

If you need an example: I basically never say I'm trans or an anarchist in any top level comment to explain the origin of my perspective or my claim to knowing more context than others because these two words got me outright dismissed too much in the past.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#59

Post by mnsc »

paganel wrote: post #6

> The sex worker explains why she loves her job. I'm not going to comment on the other stuff, but we should stop with the sociopathic neo-liberal glorification of "sex work", which in the majority of cases is just human trafficking. I come from a town in Eastern Europe where one of the local mob guys has been caught with trafficking hundreds of (I guess mostly local) girls in Spain. I'm pretty sure many of those girl…

Sex work is a very good example of a topic where you can change your mind completely from one debate/conversation to another depending on examples and framing and the ulterior motive of the conversation partner.

I think it has to do with morality of course and the problem of defining "sex work" but mostly I think it's the fact that we humans are sexual beings and that our sexuality often is a "dark" place. In the sense that we don't shine a light there ourselves out of fear what we could discover (eg. why did I get a tingly sensation when two people of the same sex kissed in the latest mega hyped tv show everyone is talking about).

Edit: and due to this our reasoning abilities are kinda off and we are more subject of swaying to different sides based on subconsious feelings. Eg. "so you are saying prostitution should be legal and protected by laws and unions, YES, that seem like better for the sex workers (then I could hire a male sex escort and finally find out...)"

Re: I want to lose every debate

#60

Post by atoav »

donkeyd wrote: post #38
tsuujin wrote: post #21

I’d like to offer an alternative framing: don’t debate at all, just listen. While high school debate did teach me many positive lessons and I am thankful that I spent four years of my life doing it, many years later I have come to understand that it also taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win. I have put a lot of time in my adult life unlearning that trait, and reflecting on th…

> the point of a conversation is to win I have a feeling that a lot of people think this. Coming to an 'agree to disagree' is really had for some people. Sometimes there's no other option though, because both people seem to know the same facts, they just have differing opinions on how to deal with those facts. > take note of how much of the time you spend formulating a response I've been paying attention to this for…

The point is you don't even have to agree to disagree — it is not mandatory to tell the other person your opinion. You can also just listen to theirs and ask questions etc.

A conversation can be much, much more than a clash of opinions. Going into a conversation with the idea of "the other guy is wrong" is a sure way of never understanding how they arrived at that wrong opinion to begin with. Yet sometimes precisely this is the most valuable thing you could learn from them.

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