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I see the parallels that are being drawn to politics, but debate IS a scorable game. There's a winner and a judge. Of course game tactics are going to play a ma

I see the parallels that are being drawn to politics, but debate IS a scorable game. There's a winner and a judge. Of course game tactics are going to play a major role, and of course more arguments are going to be advantageous compared to fewer arguments. You might want debate to a Socratic exercise in truth-seeking, but if you wanted that, you wouldn't declare one team the winner. None of this is related to the current political climate, which has a much stranger problem around the rejection of facts and evidence and logic entirely. If you want make debate about convincing an audience of laymen, the judgement needs to be done by an audience of laymen. Do that, and the pace of the debate will slow significantly, since there's no benefit to making an argument that the audience can't hear or understand. But then your complaint will become "these people are dumbing down their arguments and winning, how can we fix this?!"

elefanten 9y ago
This is, in my experience, exactly on point. I debated and coached debate in high school and college -- same format being critiqued. The reason debates keep evolving that way is because of the rules of the game. The HUGE point this author leaves out that makes the activity so amazing is that there are essentially no rules but the speech times. And in that 'free market' environment, the incentive to go fast has often been optimal. But there are many ways to play and win the game, perhaps the most important of which is framing the debate for the judge... convincing them how they should evaluate and score it. If you want to argue for absurdity, you can... but you have to do some combination of 1) proving it rigorously with documented evidence, 2) being more convincing and 3) framing the debate for the judge and persuading them to evaluate the big picture a certain way. It is a completely acceptable and successful strategy to answer nonsense by pointing out it's nonsense. You just have to know how to do so within the parameters of the game, which has its own 'language', style and conventions. It is definitely not the best arena for truth-seeking on specific issues. It absolutely is a game. But it's a difficult and deep and brilliant one.

elefanten 9y ago

This is, in my experience, exactly on point. I debated and coached debate in high school and college -- same format being critiqued. The reason debates keep evolving that way is because of the rules of the game. The HUGE point this author leaves out that makes the activity so amazing is that there are essentially no rules but the speech times. And in that 'free market' environment, the incentive to go fast has often been optimal. But there are many ways to play and win the game, perhaps the most important of which is framing the debate for the judge... convincing them how they should evaluate and score it. If you want to argue for absurdity, you can... but you have to do some combination of 1) proving it rigorously with documented evidence, 2) being more convincing and 3) framing the debate for the judge and persuading them to evaluate the big picture a certain way. It is a completely acceptable and successful strategy to answer nonsense by pointing out it's nonsense. You just have to know how to do so within the parameters of the game, which has its own 'language', style and conventions. It is definitely not the best arena for truth-seeking on specific issues. It absolutely is a game. But it's a difficult and deep and brilliant one.