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I want to lose every debate

sive.rs

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Re: I want to lose every debate

#71

Post by atoav »

paulpauper wrote: post #36
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’d like to offer an alternative framing: don’t debate at all, just listen. There are two wanys of looking at this. Doing nothing means you lose the opportunity to possibly correct an innocent mistake or to set the record. But it's also possible you may have no clue what you are talking about.

Listening doesn't mean you say nothing, otherwise the other side will (eventually) just stop. Listening means asking the right questions.

Imagine someone has an out-there idea. Listening means you go along with them and have them explain it to you. And you play the nice, slightly curious, but not too curious person that has an open mind and ask the doubting questions. You know more Judo, less boxing, instead of punching and dodging you just make sure when they come at you, their own energy carries them into positions they have to deal with.

I tell you, a big fraction of the people's strongly held opinions completely fall apart when you just make them explain it in detail. And if they realized it is bullshit themselves that is a much more valuable thing than any fact you could ever provide.

Especially naive people with wrong opinions have a strong reactance. That means if you tell them they are wrong (something they are used to being told), they will now treat this as a fight and you as the enemy and they will proudly lie to themselves (1+1=3) just to one-up you.

That means the best way to get into productive territory with those people is to not swallow the bait and slowly go from where they are into a direction that is completely new to them.

That also means leaving arguments like "I studied $X" or "scientific journal $Y says $Z" at the door. Those basically trigger them back into learned talking points

Re: I want to lose every debate

#73

Post by [deleted] »

vidarh wrote: post #56
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 lis…

[deleted]

Re: I want to lose every debate

#74

Post by vidarh »

The_Colonel wrote: post #37
somenameforme wrote: post #20

I believe I feel this way. I think many, if not the vast majority of us do. Now for a little test. When was the last time you lost a debate on a topic you felt strongly about? And not a debate that further reaffirmed your own biases (I used to believe X was bad, but wow I was wrong - it's WAY worse than bad) but actually a meaningful swap from (X is bad) to (X is not bad). In my case, the answer is never. Now I'd lik…

> but actually a meaningful swap from (X is bad) to (X is not bad). In my case, the answer is never. I think you did, otherwise you would never change your opinions, which I doubt. But I think it works more subtly. I've noticed that when I lose a debate, my immediate emotional response is rejection - the person is wrong, my opinion is right, even though I couldn't effectively justify it. But once the emotional hurt o…

I tend to see this as down to how heated the debates are. For combative debates, I tend to be far more likely to move my position if I'm audience than participating. For less heated discussions, I may well move my position during the discussion itself. Keeping the temperature down matters if you want to convince the other person(s); letting the temperature rise sometimes works if your goal is to convince an audience.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#75

Post by roenxi »

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…

There is a gradient of Advanced Conversational Techniques that nobody seems to ever discuss. If someone hasn't got a real grasp on the basics then just listening is certainly a great start and gets people about half way there. Life gets easier. Most people are so desperately instinctual at social tactics that anything which involves thinking about what other people think will yield great dividends.

But if the goal is self improvement, it can't be done with just listening. Like learning can't be done by just reading. It is far to slow finding the gaps in your own understanding; arguing is orders of magnitude quicker. People will explain an argument's flaws right quick, and often helpfully repeat themselves a few times.

Although what you're leading towards here might be persuasion, because it is a great tool for learning and people often don't realise the subtle way a persuasive argument pushes back. Those aren't as much fun as the hot flush of a robust debate but they are a lot more powerful (especially since many people may not realise that there is an argument going on).

Re: I want to lose every debate

#76

Post by eggie5 »

Years later, still puzzling over Thomas Jefferson's passivity at Philadelphia, John Adams would claim that "during the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentence together"

Jefferson, himself would one day advise a grandson, "when I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine." And "Why should I question it. His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion?... Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics."

Re: I want to lose every debate

#77

Post by brmgb »

I find this article amusing. I think it puts forward something interesting but frame it completely incorrectly.

The author doesn't actually want to lose debates even if it doesn't seem to realise it. He doesn't want to have debates at all. He just wants to have conversations with people and less preconceptions. That's something I'm completely in line with. I believe we suffer as a society from a collective excess of opinions.

The funny thing is that even when he tries to describe is prejudice in an unprejudiced way, he horribly fails at it.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#78

Post by jonathanstrange »

To each their own, but I prefer argumentative and opinionated people and have nothing against discussions even when they become heated. In my experience, there is much more to learn from others by discussing a topic than by "listening" to them. Good discussions take a certain emotional detachment from the topic, though, and when that is lost it can become unpleasant. But in my opinion "pleasant" isn't a major criterion for good conversations.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#79

Post by throw_m239339 »

glogla wrote: post #32
aflag wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that some prodtitutes are victims of human trafficking doesn't mean that all are. In fact, there are countries where sex work is legal but not human trafficking. So it's possible to even have a legal distinction there. I don't know how things are in Spain, but in the US there's a huge stigma associated with being a sex worker besides it being illegal and actively enforced. In these conditions it would be ver…

I'd like to believe that the people who are against sex work are actually thinking of the good of the sex workers and because of human trafficking. Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it. Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work fo…

> Yet there is a lot of human trafficking in other areas, like farmwork or maids in the Western world, and the non-Western world is filled with sweatshops and literal slaves. And you never hear them mention it.

> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.

> thinking of the good of the sex workers

Good for whom? for the johns and a handful of high profile female "socialites"? It certainly brings nothing good for females as a class.

You blame "religious" morals for opposition to prostitution, but even Marx was opposed to prostitution, nobody can't accuse him of being very religious...

Re: I want to lose every debate

#80

Post by bambax »

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…

> don’t debate at all, just listen

This is what the OP says; while the title of the post is "I want to lose every debate" that's what he says in the end:

> I never want to debate, but if I had to, I would hope to lose.

And I get it, I think; but there is something to be said in favor of debating, not as a competition, but as a method of refining each other's ideas.

Someone exposing a theory of theirs that's apparently well polished is less interesting than people discussing, exchanging ideas and poking and exposing possible holes.

That's what debating should be: not a sport with "winners" and "losers" (what does that even mean in the realm of ideas??) but as a joint effort and journey in search of the truth.

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