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I want to lose every debate

sive.rs

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Re: I want to lose every debate

#181

Post by fluoridation »

robalni wrote: post #137

I feel like there are two different things that are often talked about as the same thing: 1. Wanting to understand and learn. Here you use the help of another person to figure out what the best solution or the right answer to something is, or just to understand how something works or in other ways improve your knowledge. There is no winner or loser; the only outcome is whether the discussion was successful or not. 2.…

Consider this: You have an idea about how things are and this other person has another idea in direct contradiction with yours, such that at most one of the two can be right. If you want to treat their idea as if it has merit then you have to argue with them to understand why they think what they think and how well their idea fits in with other facts you already know. If you care about the truth then you will need to subject their idea to the same harsh trials your own idea (presumably) passed, and if there's any possible flaws or inconsistencies you'll want to dig in to thoroughly understand everything. You might that in fact you were wrong all along and this idea is actually better than yours.

Do you see how and why one might want to learn something new while outwardly appearing to want to prove themselves right (or, more accurately, to prove the other person wrong)? An idea that one can't prove wrong is certainly worth considering seriously.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#182

Post by BlueTemplar »

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…

Yeah, even though "agree to disagree" is the admission of a stalemate anyway rather than anyone "winning" or "losing"...

Re: I want to lose every debate

#183

Post by noam_compsci »

How self congratulatory. So many people, most people hope and assume they are this way. We all think we are super progressive and smart and just want “growth”. It’s a bit redundant to spell it out. So what? Big clap. You have a growth mindset. You want to embrace “regret”. How intellectual of you.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#184

Post by SuoDuanDao »

scns wrote: post #121
nibbleshifter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing more tedious in adult life than some debate club weenie trying to turn every random fucking conversation into a debate. I strongly suspect debate club has a net negative impact on peoples social skills. It teaches a bunch of anti patterns to successful social interactions. Like, you will be shooting the shit with the lads down pub the once or twice you see them per year when this dickhead (and every…

It might originate from brain physiology. Daniel Amen had done 5000 brain scans 20 years ago, no idea how many until now. From one of his books i learned that contrarian behaviour can come from a disfunction in the Cingulate cortex. Whatever i say, the first thing my mother says 95% of the time is "No" or another dismissal. It was astounding to see my son acting the same way, answering "No, thats wrong" to things he…

there's a talk on persuasion - I believe Chris Voss is the presenter - where one of the techniques is to phrase your question so that the answer you want is 'no'. E.g. rather than say 'would you like to go to the movies' you'd say 'is there anything you'd rather do than go to the movies'. It's interesting that this works - he said that saying 'no' is a defensive mechanism that enforces boundaries, maybe more so with some people than others. Then again, his background was hostage negotiation so he probably trained on a skewed sample.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#185

Post by SuoDuanDao »

hgomersall wrote: post #91
nibbleshifter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing more tedious in adult life than some debate club weenie trying to turn every random fucking conversation into a debate. I strongly suspect debate club has a net negative impact on peoples social skills. It teaches a bunch of anti patterns to successful social interactions. Like, you will be shooting the shit with the lads down pub the once or twice you see them per year when this dickhead (and every…

What do you talk about if not these issues? What is a conversation to you? It feels like you've successfully eliminated any disagreement from your conversations. Or is that just relevant to "shooting the shit with the lads down the pub once or twice a year"? When can we have discussions that might show disagreement?

one can disagree in open mode (socrates) and disagree in closed mode (Ben Shapiro). If both people are looking forward to learning from the disagreement I find that a lot more fun than if both people are looking forward to appearing smarter than the other person.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#186

Post by onos »

mihaic wrote: post #95

The first time I saw US-style collegiate debate, it seemed like a great mind-game. Over time I've come to consider it though as the sign of a bullshitting culture, where the truth is irrelevant, and winning the argument is all that matters. Professional debating and the article both feel wrong since they're missing the key element to me: synthesis of opposing ideas into something more than each individual side. It mi…

I agree. The fun thing for me in “debate” is understanding the arguments for and against something. Most often, arguments differ through either (1) the axioms used, or (2) there is a subjective preference at play. In these cases, there is no right side.

Of course, there are cases with an answer, often scientific type questions.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#187

Post by sebzim4500 »

nhooyr wrote: post #130
mihaic wrote: post #95

The first time I saw US-style collegiate debate, it seemed like a great mind-game. Over time I've come to consider it though as the sign of a bullshitting culture, where the truth is irrelevant, and winning the argument is all that matters. Professional debating and the article both feel wrong since they're missing the key element to me: synthesis of opposing ideas into something more than each individual side. It mi…

What do you mean US-style? As far as I'm aware, such debate clubs exist all throughout the world. The most famous of which are probably the Cambridge Union and the Oxford Union both in the UK.

I don't know about the Oxford Union, but the people arguing in the Cambridge Union generally believe the arguments they are making. This makes it quite different from debate clubs in school.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#188

Post by noduerme »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #177
noduerme wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Derek Sivers never listened to anything, he's a narcissistic maniac who floods the email boxes of everyone on every list he's ever had with self-help advice that's never more than the most thinly disguised self-promotion. Please stop talking as if his writing is profound.

Even a broken clock is right once in a while. I can understand your reaction if that is your experience with him (first time I hear of the guy), but it at least seems to have created some constructive discussion here.

fair. The discussion is good. Mostly projection on a shell through which some think they can hear the sea, but maybe better than a dead silent room.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#189

Post by kqr »

steveBK123 wrote: post #180
sokoloff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read a similar point phrased in a way that really resonated: “if you’re right, you’ll still be right in five minutes” (so you might as well listen carefully in case you’re wrong).

These sorts of mindsets are predicated on the assumption that two people "talking it out" or possibly appealing to google will arrive on "the right answer". While in reality for many things there are judgement calls, trade-offs, unknowns and basically "it depends". In software, POCs, trial&error, R&D, etc help you test out the options. Many would do better to frame a discussion as surfacing the risks, trade-offs, pot…

Yes, this is the real purpose of debate. It's an adversarial method of ensuring all important factors in a decision are brought up and heard by all involved, so they can go on to make the tradeoffs they think are right on their own. Nobody has to win or convince anyone of anything.

Re: I want to lose every debate

#190

Post by BlueTemplar »

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…

Yeah, it can work great one on one, sadly it's much harder to do as the number of interlocutors increases, as the time spent thinking things out instead of immediately answering is time that someone else can "hijack" the conversation (for bad or good reasons, nobody owes you a lot of time to formulate an answer), at which point it could be hard or sometimes even rude to come back to that point.
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