Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. I didn't "admit" it; I just said it.
Yes my apologies - that wasn't aimed at you specifically, just a poorly phrased observation.
No worries!
I want to lose every debate
251–260 of 386 posts
Re: I want to lose every debate
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree - especially in an interview situation where many of us still have a vestigial instinct that an interviewer is not biased and is informed, we can assume that what they say is an objective interpretation. In that instance, doing that actually exposed it quite well. Jordan Peterson is able to respond off the cuff, so a reasonable percentage of the audience didn't walk away having assimilated the interviewer's v…
Always found it funny how admitting that Joe is a good interviewer is some type of a concession. He’s probably the highest paid interviewer on the planet, of course he’s good at what he does! If he hadn’t found the ire of the online progressive crowd by letting on some unsavories, he’d probably be regarded super positively across the board. It’s crazy how many times I’ve seen web-activists go for blood with this guy…
He is a good podcaster, but he has a habit of publishing misinformation also, which his audience seem not to scrutinise.
Re: I want to lose every debate
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
All the team projects have that as an implicit element, don't they? In order to arrive at a solution, the team has to talk, divide labor, etc.
Or one person takes charge and steamrollers everyone else, or one person ends up doing the work because the rest can't be bothered, etc. You're right there's often some implicit element of it, but how to do it well seems to be rarely taught. At least it wasn't made explicit at my schools, and I've heard little to indicate it's been made explicit at my sons schools either. It seems pretty arbitrary how well people pick up those skills.
Re: I want to lose every debate
#254How peculiar that every "debate" this person has lost is in the same ideological direction. How would this person respond to:
- the Christian explaining that the resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact?
- the prosecutor describing the heinous crimes of the people she's put behind bars?
- the sibling of an addict denouncing opiates & opioids, meth, crack and the drug trade?
Where's the limit for this person when encountering:
- the pederast who describes his perversion as "love?"
- the practitioner of FGM who praises it as a "tradition?"
- the religious fanatic who believes God has told him to kill?
I hope the person would be at least open to the first set of people, and would be willing to "win" against the second set.
Overall, I think the framing is a bit wrong. Having an open mind doesn't mean you have to stick your finger in the wind, and having firmly held beliefs without experience, knowledge or wisdom doesn't mean you need to preach them vociferously. Certain things are true, and certain perspectives are not so valuable.
Re: I want to lose every debate
#255Vigorous debate is a good thing. It's about learning to turn it off afterwards. Debate at its best is where the issues are at stake -- not the relationship. Getting clear on that is an important communicative and emotional skill. The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions. If both sides can put their cards on the table, that's a mo…
> The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions.
A better way might be to say, "losing can be good" If you put your best forward, and still lose, then you learned something, and hopefully became stronger. In the same way tennis players always want to play people better than them, because they will get better playing a superior player even when they lose.
Re: I want to lose every debate
#256Im reminded of the book “Getting to yes” by Roger Fisher.
“ In any negotiation, he wrote—even with terrorists—it was vital to separate the people from the problem; to focus on the underlying interests of both sides, rather than stake out unwavering positions; and to explore all possible options before making a decision.”
Re: I want to lose every debate
#257This is all fun until you talk to someone who is absolutely brainwashed or alien to a peaceful behavior. Do you really want to lose the debate to flat earth advocate? Do you want to lose a debate to a war aggressor supporter? Do you want to lose a debate to a serial killer? I bet you don't. PS. Maybe I didn't get something right, but I suffered a lot in conversations with close relatives who are denying that killing…
>close relatives who are denying that killing other people is bad Nobody, except people with legitimate mental health issues, thinks killing is a "good" thing. Your close relatives believe Russia is on defense. Kind of like how the US was on defense in Iraq. So, from their perspective, the way to save lives is to negotiate an end to the war where Russia takes that tiny bit of land, and Ukraine stops being considered…
That bit of land isn’t tiny, and the russians aren’t going to stop at 20% of Ukraine.
The aim of fascist russia is the total erasure of Ukraine. That means genocide. Trying to make a “peace deal” means more dead civilians, not fewer.
Anyone who does not understand this is clueless, and it is quite frustrating how many Chomskys love to indulge themselves pontificating on such a serious issue with sweet fuck all real insight.
Re: I want to lose every debate
#258This is all fun until you talk to someone who is absolutely brainwashed or alien to a peaceful behavior. Do you really want to lose the debate to flat earth advocate? Do you want to lose a debate to a war aggressor supporter? Do you want to lose a debate to a serial killer? I bet you don't. PS. Maybe I didn't get something right, but I suffered a lot in conversations with close relatives who are denying that killing…
>close relatives who are denying that killing other people is bad Nobody, except people with legitimate mental health issues, thinks killing is a "good" thing. Your close relatives believe Russia is on defense. Kind of like how the US was on defense in Iraq. So, from their perspective, the way to save lives is to negotiate an end to the war where Russia takes that tiny bit of land, and Ukraine stops being considered…
> Nobody, except people with legitimate mental health issues, thinks killing is a "good" thing.
But what if a woman wants to kill her unborn child?
Re: I want to lose every debate
#259I’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…
>high school debate [...] taught me something truly negative: that the point of a conversation is to win.
The etymology of "debate" is "de-beat", i.e what you do to avoid beating each other, so in principle it's closer to negotiation than to mutual battering.
Re: I want to lose every debate
#260I’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…
Charitably, I get what you and the author of the article are describing, but I would make at least this comment.
The point of listening is ultimately to know the truth. The fact that listening to others is ipso facto social means that we learn a great deal in community. But it's one thing to learn about what someone else believes. It's another to accept those beliefs as true. The person you are listening to could be in error. Listening is, therefore, a kind of data collection, and data need to be interpreted, after which some kind of verification generally ought to take place (of course, we cannot verify everything, hence for practical reasons, we often trust, e.g., the authority of tradition and its authoritative "keepers", at least until we have reason to doubt).
W.r.t. debating, there's a time and place for it. Classically, it is a formal and public affair reserved for certain circumstances. You don't debate during data collection.
I think Socratic dialogue is a better fit for exploration and discussion, though that, too, and trivially so, has a time and a place.