I wish debating skills were taught better in schools. A lot of people see debates as a personal attack on themselves and are set to win, no matter the cost. Then comes every dirty manipulation, trick and foul play. This is infuriating.
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.
Derek's right here. Being willing to be wrong is one of the best ways to grow. I have a lot of strong opinions and a lot of knowledge, and I used to think that meant I had to be an absolute warrior defending my side of an argument. Turns out you're stronger if you're willing to consider that you don't know everything.
Yet another Derek Sivers post that makes me think he's a freaking genius.
Usually losing the debate means losing to the pig who has better experience. I prefer to just avoid debates. they tend to never be productive except maybe in academia. A common criticism you see online is people avoiding debate and blocking, but consider that usually this is from being tired of bad faith, obtuseness, etc. At some point, patience runs thin. You don't have time for the one or two good, productive debate out of dozens bad, pointless ones, so blocking or ignoring is easier. And no one changes their mind anyway.
It's not a debate but a conversation. Treat it like an exchange of information, not something you can win or lose. If the other person doesn't follow, then you can stop replying.
"Debate" doesn't have to mean just an organized discussion between two people in front of an audience. If two people are having an argument where they're trying to convince each other of their own position, that's also a debate.
That's missing the point. The author is not taking about a heated exchange, but mostly just listening so closely to the point you actually get convinced you agree with someone else, at least from their perspective.
hmm...but just listening is not a debate though. it's part of a debate, but the debate is the back and forth process. I have found the 1-10 ratio to hold up and this is as being as polite as possible.
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 girls, if asked, would have told a nice story of "I earn good money out of this! It's liberating!" to any Westerner techie client who would have bothered to ask, what else could have they said? They were still the victims of human trafficking.
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 very difficult to have sex workers who are not somehow a product of sex trafficking. However, in societies where it's not really a taboo, some people will pick that profession, at least for a while.
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 for religious or moral reasons (because they have internalized that sex is sinful or bad), reasons they then lie about.
> 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...
> Which makes me convinced these people are just anti-sex work for religious or moral reasons
If it matters I'm an atheist. I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.
I see this "sex work" non-sense mostly coming from people who have had no direct contact with the reality/materiality of it all, i.e. mostly from the Western middle-classes.
Later edit: Because this has touched a close nerve with me, copy-pasting some stuff related to that reality/materiality I had mentioned from a news article about Romanian prostitution rings in Spain [1]:
> The women were freed from brothels in Malaga and Girona where they had been sexual exploited by their compatriots and made to work for up to ten hours a day under the threat of violence.
> Some had come to Spain after being falsely promised better lives by the Romanian sex traffickers while others had fallen victim to the so-called 'lover boy' scam, according to a police statement.
> This method involves one of the sex traffickers forming an intimate relationship with the woman to earn her trust before later forcing her into prostitution.
> One of the women freed, who was only 18 years old, had been reported as missing by her family in Romania.
> Police described the 'iron control' exerted by the 'well-organized' sex-trafficking ring and said that the women had been kept completely isolated from the outside world.
I don't know of any sane person who would call that legit "work" and "liberating".
It's just when I pragmatically think about solutions to the very real problem of human trafficking, banning sex-work seems like the least effective thing to do. And what constitutes sex-work? Any sex where payment is involved? Any sex act outside of marriage?
Human trafficking is already illegal. Fund investigators and get rid of traffickers.
Empower sex-workers instead of banning the practice, because it will still happen but just more in the shadows. Bring it to the front and truly regulate it.
Why would sex outside of marriage be considered sex work? For something to be work you need to receive some sort of material compensation. Usually it's just money. But I guess if someone gives you a car or some jewelry in exchange of sex it could classify too. I don't see how having sex with someone in a party where both people wanted it could conceivably be considered sex work
> I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.
That's a very naive and harmful take.
Criminalizing sex work means that only criminals would be involved in it, hence the trafficking.
Given that you can't do anything about supply and demand, the only sane solution to trafficking is decriminalizing sex work. Not being "against it".
Perhaps we should credit OP with enough intelligence to assume that their debate with the sex worker didn't happen in a context where OP was their client.
Also the fact that sex work can be linked with human trafficking doesn't necessarily mean that sex work is bad. Working on a construction site can be a meaningful and rewarding career, but could also be utterly miserable if you've been trafficked there and are working in conditions of modern slavery. But that means human trafficking is bad, not that construction work is bad.
If anything, I think the human trafficking thing is an argument for NOT demonizing / criminalizing sex work, so that it becomes part of the visible, regulated economy, which would it turn make it harder for traffickers to exploit and control people.
I totally assumed it was a friend of
his, for some reason. Having read his stuff I get the impression he spent a portion of his life being highly social and trying to meet a lot of people. In an intentional way. His life is a bit like a lab!
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...)"
You're opening a can of worms, but that's basically what every debate does. The idea of "sex work" has other, larger implications.
For example, in my country, if you are unemployed, the government gives you some money, but less money if you don't try to find work. If "sex work" is a legitimate form of work, can the government suggest you seek such a job, if you can't find work otherwise? Will your friends and your family pressure you?
It may seem far-fetched at first, but if I think back to all the other things that were liberating alternatives and now have become mandatory. Cars gave us the freedom to quickly get from A to B, but now a commute of 1 hour is acceptable. Phones gave us the freedom to reach everyone almost instantly, but now you have to be available 24/7 for everyone else. You can get the latest news at any time, but you also have to stay up-to-date. It is no coincidence that most women put on make-up every single day.
What I'm trying to say is that everything that is "liberating" only shackles you to a new framework eventually.
Do you oppose agriculture as an industry? Do you oppose factory work? Globally a lot of forced labor ends up being used to cut costs for international companies.
What about just young women making stupid life choices? Like putting off meaningful relationships or long-term careers for easy short-term cash to fund their vices. Would they count as liberated individuals that middle aged men should feel no qualms about availing themselves of?
Even if it's normalized, women will just be tossed aside when they get old (pass 30) in such environments...
If you value freedom and equality you cannot be against sex-work. Being against sex-work means that police someone elses bodily autonomy. Human trafficking is a framework issue, not specific to sex-work.
Ah, the good old cognitive dissonance between striving to be right and the higher goal of learning and progressing as humanity. For those interested, I recommend this article from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/maybe-its-just-me/...
It requires energy to pay attention to others and walk in their shoes. Attaching a stereotypical label and switching off / ending the debate is the low cost option
Ergo, we must reclaim quality time for engaging with others if we want to live in quality societies
Yeah, couldn't agree more. They also can be annoying online, so people just ignore. On Reddit you often see very long, deep, threads with 1-karma posts that nobody even bothers to vote for. On HN those long debates not only take a lot of space, and you often see moderators telling people to stop.
Sometimes you gotta preemptively "lose" a debate, by not answering at all. At most a "Alright, I get your point but I disagree" which also doesn't really add much to the discussion.
Great point. A lot of people debate for debate's sake, because their opinion is out there. That's probably what I do on HN, I post and never look back or respond to any replies. Not a good trait, but anyway.
Best thing to do, if you detect you're about to enter a debate, is to ask "What would it take for you to change your opinion?". If they reply with "nothing" or a vague answer or whatever, exit the debate. Likewise though, ask yourself the same question.
Listening and taking someone's point of view has nothing to do with debating. When you're actually listening, you're not debating anymore. It's a life skill.
That might be your preferred way of learning. As for myself, I can't take someone's POV without understanding. And I can't understand without exposing my current model to be shaped by someone's counterarguments. For me there's no better way to learn (apart from explaining and being met with unexpected questions, which I enjoy even more).
Some comments higher up conveyed it better than I did myself.
I feel like losing a debate and understanding someone else's point of view/learning from them are separate things. In my own experience a debate is not the ideal means of communication if I want to empathize or understand someone better. But as groestl points out, this is a personal matter.
Clickbaity way to say it, but yes, I like to "lose debates" in the way Sivers describes here. For the same reason, I'm very tolerant of rudeness and disrespect if and when it comes with an insight that makes my understanding of something click.
Also for the same reason I like to say, "Don't tell me I'm wrong; instead, improve my worldmodel to the point that you no longer have to, because the wrongness will be obvious."
But I'm not sure that what Sivers describes here is coterminous with "losing a debate". Rather, it's just one way you might "lose a debate". In practice, losing a debate more often looks something more like:
1) The other side stubbornly refuses to engage with your point while effectively signaling you're a bad person despite endorsing the same tradeoffs you do. [B]
2) The other side points being so muddled that you can't untangle what they're disagreeing with or what makes your point wrong, but they speak with that confidence that everyone wants to agree with them. [A]
The article's title is about debates, but all he gives are examples of conversations (except maybe one). I don't think you can really compare debates with discussions, thus drawing this conclusion from unrelated lived experiences does not make much sense to me
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 like to imagine this is obviously because I'm the most intelligent, objective, and insightful individual to have ever lived. Of course I suspect the actual reason is because anything worth debating will always have reasonable arguments for both sides. And so long as your arguments are reasonably factually based, it's never really possible to lose a debate, unless you choose to. You can learn new things, expand your worldview, but losing will only happen if you want it to. Hence the reason I added that qualifier about swapping worldviews as opposed to enhancing a prior held one.
Of course this doesn't preclude major worldview shifting change from happening, but it happens over long periods of times for reasons that I don't think any of us can really pin down. It's going to be a butterfly effect of a million little factors.
> 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 of loss wears off, it will sometimes (not always) move my position, sometimes a little bit, sometimes completely. It can take days, months, sometimes years.
> But once the emotional hurt of loss wears off, it will sometimes (not always) move my position, sometimes a little bit, sometimes completely. It can take days, months, sometimes years.
That's exactly it; I'm convinced people's opinions can and will change over time, but they take time.
This is used in subtle ways too with modern-day internet and social media (and before that, newspaper headlines); people will scan the internet's headlines and depending on what they see, form an opinion. If all you see is headlines about police brutality, you will be convinced that the police is corrupt and violent and shit. If all you see is headlines about a demographic being involved in crime, you'll form prejudices about them.
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.
I've definitely had debates where I became a lot less sure of things I was reasonably informed on. A discussion that ends with "I'll have to go away and think about that" is a good one.
At a younger and more formative age, I’d engage in online discussions with people who had completely opposite views from mine. And I’ve had my mind changed plenty of times.
It’s happening less in the past decade or so, because I’ve already had many of the same discussions, and I’m sure partly because I’m becoming more rigid as I age.
But many online forums also reduce visibility of unpopular comments, and it’s harder to engage in some of those discussions. This is the reason I never downvote, even the most awful takes.
I've probably never changed a deeply held belief after a single conversation, but my beliefs have changed over time and those changes have been aided by discussions I've had along the way. I think it takes me a long time to form a strong view on something and, once formed, it also takes a long time to change or abandon that view. Even if I participate in a conversation where relevant new information is imparted to me or my reasoning is shown to be flawed, I'm likely to take that away and chew it over (and do my own research) before changing my position.
> And so long as your arguments are reasonably factually based, it's never really possible to lose a debate, unless you choose to
That's the trouble with the expression "losing a debate". There is the notion that you've been defeated. So what actually happened is not a debate, but a fight. A debate is something you can learn from, a gain.
> When was the last time you lost a debate on a topic you felt strongly about?
Why would you talk about something you feel strongly about in the first place? If you are sure you have got it all figured out, there is nothing left to talk about. Discussion is only useful when you recognize gaps in your understanding and are able to learn more about it.
> it's never really possible to lose a debate
It is. If you cannot compel the other party to offer you information that you can successfully learn from, you've lost. A debate is only won if you've learned something from it. Which, again, is why it would be rather illogical to debate something you feel strongly about. What can you learn if you already have it figured out? If you truly know it all you are guaranteed to lose every time, and at that point why waste your time?
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 the harm it did to my relationships with other people.
If you want to grow like OP here suggests—which I think is a valuable, worthwhile goal—you will do yourself a great service in learning to listen. I know we all think that we do this, but I don’t think many of us actually do.
When you talk to others, take note of how much of the time you spend formulating a response. I know that for me, I find that frequently I’m already generating my rebuttal before they finish speaking. I am effectively listening to respond, not to hear what they have to say. I’m much much better at listening to hear today than I was a decade ago, but I still have to correct myself on this routinely.
It’s important to note that you can listen to hear and still be free to respond; if you want to have an interesting conversation you will definitely need to put in some effort too. Just make sure that you’re internalizing what they’ve said before you form a response to it. It will almost certainly slow down the pace of a conversation but stands a decent chance of making each exchange a lot more interesting for both of you.
I really believe that the most profound realizations of my life have come when I shut up and put in the effort to internalize what other people around me were doing and saying.
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).
While this is good advice, it is still in a debate-mindset where, ultimately, it is about "winning" a conversation. But if you argue with someone who holds factually wrong opinions is it truly winning "if you showed them" and they think "what an asshole" and move on? That type of person is practised at brushing off a debate loss. That means if you enjoy winning such a debate it tells more about you than about the person opposite.
The best conversations I had with the worst people stemmed from me not even telling them my opinion at all. I just asked them to explain theirs to me and asked the questions that occured to me in a respectful manner. Leaving them in healthy confusion and doubt afterwards (and learning a thing or two about them on the way) is more rewarding than winning a debate with them. Sometimes those people really surprise you as well, because they hold a combination of opinions that seem incompatible to you.
"Winning" a debate can have value if there's an audience and where there's something important at stake, but people need to consider that if you get into "debate mode", there's virtually zero chance the other side will consider your viewpoint for a second, so it's a tradeoff with respect to whether convincing an audience matters or having a good conversation where both sides are open to learning something.
I absolutely agree with you that the best conversations tends to come from the latter approach you describe. Unfortunately, it can often be difficult and take some skill to avoid pushing the other person into "debate mode" by making them feel like they're losing. Especially if there's an audience, however small.
Debate can be fun (for some) as a game, and force you to articulate your position well, and you can learn from it. But there are different modes of engagement which are often much more helpful.
What people often don't realize is that winning a debate doesn't necessarily mean you side with the truth. A debate is aimed at winning on your existing opinions and the other losing. It is not aimed at discovery, validation or learning. Victory is more important than truth, and a lot of 'good moves' in a debate actually bring you further away from the truth.
If you engage in a conversation where you are both curious and submit to what's true (whatever that means), this conversation will rarely be a debate.
If a debate is in public between skilled debaters who show sportsmanship, then I think the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point.
> A debate is aimed at winning on your existing opinions and the other losing.
That's true of the sort of debate that's practiced competitively by "debating teams", but I don't think it's always true of debate as the word is used in an everyday context. A debate can also be more like a dialectic.
That's the problem with how we see a debate. It's just about that. There's no need to present your position in a compelling way or find common grounds with whoever you're debating.
If you read any books by professional negotiators - you'll notice that they conduct themselves very differently than you would in a debate.
Getting to Yes and Getting Past No have been eye opening to me. I no longer feel like I even need to "win an argument".
> the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point
I recall reading some articles stating, that debates fail to convince anyone of anything. Public debates only encourage tribalism, IMO. If you watch a presidential debate - no amount of "winning" changed people's opinions.
I can even argue, that just hearing "X won the debate" will cause more impact; compared to listening to them.
Very good advice. A classic debate tactic is to coerce the opponent to hastily misspeak and then force them to defend their poorly worded statements. Cooler heads usually prevail. The classic defense is to slow it down by asking them to clarify their position. You can take it from there if you want to debate or not.
Most people aren't debating you on purpose so there's no point as they continue to rubber duck (and maybe even thank you later). In case they really are in it for a debate, then by all means proceed.
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, potential pitfalls, and benefits of different answers such that the "bad answer" is avoided, more than "the one right answer" is somehow discovered.
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.
I think you need to be mindful if your "adversary" enjoys the "adversarial" method or, like many introverted software devs, is simply expediting the conversation to get away from you.
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
One won't know, of course. I thought the whole point of saying "Imagine" is given such a situation, how to deal with it. Of course, while listening if it isn't an out-there idea, listen, converse and follow up.
It's a hypothetical, sure. Imagine a debater who feigns being open to your viewpoint, with the actual purpose of steering the conversation into territory you may be less familiar with so they can in their view "beat" you there. I'd refer to this as a debating tactic, not listening. Or maybe listening à la Ben Shapiro.
"Debate" and "listen" are not the only two options.
Debate, specifically, comes from a mode of communication called rhetoric, or persuasive argument.
There are other forms of communicating, including simply narrating or relating an event or position, entertainment, and others, one of which is dialectic.
As I've commented a few times over the years here, confusing dilectic and rhetorical conversation is one of the oldest confounding points of conversations in the book --- it's what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrote on at length (particularly Plato railing against the Sophists, that is, rhetoriticians, and Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations, a/k/a "bullshit arguments that must die" to put a contemporary spin on it.
Derek's entire premise strikes me as ... extraordinarily blinkered here. If you find you want to impart your own wisdom, it's possible to do so other than through raw debate. In particular, the mode of simple discussion or Socratic Method, in which you ask questions which (might) lead your interlocutor to reach the conclusion you're suggesting on their own seems especially valid.
"Had you considered X" or "How would you address Y" being possible entry points for that.
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 years now after hearing or reading something similar. I haven't been able to change this, but sometimes it's helped me move back to listening and not missing important details because of it.
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.
> Coming to an 'agree to disagree' is really hard for some people
In many cases the person you talk to don't really disagree, but pretends to due to ideologic or some BS reason. Maybe they don't want to say the real reason they think X.
The "agree to disagree" is often used as an escape hatch for hypocrisy.
> The "agree to disagree" is often used as an escape hatch for hypocrisy.
Sometimes. Other times it's a great way to point out that hypocrisy by pointing out you all have the same information, yet you come to different conclusions/opinions.
Sometimes it's a conscious decision to have all the facts and ignore them. It's not hypocritical in that case.
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 <summary here>" or "It seems like <summary here>". 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 agree with the other persons believes, this seems to build good relationships.
Reminds me of the interview with Jordan Peterson, where the interviewer said "so you're saying that <some invented bullshit that J.P. never actually said>".
So I agree with you as long as you don't fall into that trap of putting false words in the other mouth.
It is also useful if the other person won't accept any other phrasing that word-by-word quoting, even if in good faith, and accurate. It shows they are not willing to compromise.
In situations where someasks "so you're saying that..." followed by something they didn't say it might very well be on purpose, but in other cases being explicit about how you understood someone can allow them to elaborate and correct your understanding.
It's much better than just continuing the conversation under a false assumption.
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 version of his position.
The subsequent Joe Rogan interview of Jordan Peterson was illuminating. Joe Rogan is, against the odds, a good interviewer, because he listens and engages, and only occasionally challenges.
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 and come up empty handed. Why is it hard for people to admit he’s just a really good podcaster?
Interviews, especially televised ones, are a performance. You're explicitly not trying to convince the interviewer of anything, you're trying to give a good interview, ostensibly for the benefit of whoever is watching. Politicians, for example, are famous for doing whatever they can, in more and less elegant ways, to talk about the things that they are interested in conveying (the "talking points") and not about whatever it is the interviewer is asking.
This is not the point of this technique. This technique is about actually talking to a person, one-on-one, and trying to understand what they mean. No one else is watching, or at least the interview isn't being recorded.
That sounds like the public debates which seem to be more of a thing in the US in general, but go back to e.g. the Greek and Roman traditions; two people debating with an audience taking in both sides.
The problem I have with modern-day debates (I mainly catch the political ones) is that they're not at all good or in good faith, there's a lot of "but YOU did this", a lot of dismissals, and no good structure; the moderator does not do their job very well in a lot of cases.
Mind you, that depends on the politician as well. Populists (e.g. Trump) are not good at all in debates.
Populists (e.g. Trump) are not good at all in debates.
Depends what you think the point of the TV debate actually is. Trump, for all his flaws, instinctively understood the actual point of the televised debate, and crushed all his primary opponents. He knew that his target audience didn't care if he was right or wrong on any of the facts or detail, they want someone who looked strong and confident and commanding, so that's what he focused on.
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 group has one) picks up on something and decides it's time to flex his master debater skills yet again.
Related absolutely cringe inducing behaviour includes the following:
- the "I am very smart" contrarian (so half of this website)
- the "gonna then everything into politics" (liberal) one
- the "gonna turn everything into politics" (conservative) one
- that guy who says "let's not get political" (proceeds to get extremely political)
- "uhm ackshually" overcorrecting guy
- guy who doesn't know dick about a topic but will pontificate on it
Its entirely possible to unlearn these behaviours. The first thing is to realize you don't always have to respond.
Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.
Someone says something you disagree with? Evaluate if the inevitable unresolved and probably heated argument that will happen when you make it an issue is worth the time, effort, and awkwardness for everyone else present.
Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.
Debate clubs have you argue points that you don't necessarily agree with, they compete in rhetorics, not proving they are right.
A wise man argues not to prove he's right, he's arguing to become right.
Assuming (or at least allowing) your "opponent" knows something you don't is about all it takes to take a casual debate from a nuisance to learning experience.
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?
It's entirely possible to have a conversation about all those topics but gets increasingly difficult when your friends fall in the cliche 80/20 category. 80% great people 20% not so much. I think parent poster has more of a problem with those types. You can chill and have fun but certain taboos open a can of worms that nobody wants to deal with especially when you just wanna decompress and have a few beers.
There's a time and place for everything and friendship dynamics get...complicated.
It feels to me that's the crux of it. Friendship dynamics are not universal even within a friendship group. It might be the desire not to "debate" makes the GP author the 20% outlier. It feels a bit like "well that's just like your opinion man".
There is still usually some disagreement, but in many social settings (eg, having a few pints at the pub with people you rarely see), topics of discussion usually are what people have been up to, and other "light topics".
In most social situations "heavy" discussion or "debating" is entirely unwarranted and brings the overall mood down.
There are plenty of discussion groups and meetups if you want to hotly debate politics or suchlike!
There are also "third ways", so to speak, ways to have people feel comfortable without resorting only to least-common-denominator "harmless" topics.
I have been a regular at several places (sometimes coffee shops) across the country where I can sense very real substantive conversations. Sometimes people just need a little nudge to get out of their comfort zone.
Such interactions can help bring people even closer. It takes intention and some experimentation.
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.
I don't hate debaters, but there is a particular dismissive type that doesn't want to give you an inch or agree to disagree and theirs has to be the last word.
I have an aunt who seems to have a need to disagree at all times. The most amusing example was while she was talking politics with my father and he said “I completely agree with everything you just said.” Her response - “Well you must not have understood me.”
I have your aunt's problem. Speculations like oppositional-defiance disorder and Narcissism have been thrown at me as possible explanations.
I'd argue (heh) that what this behavior boils down to is: I'm restating what you're saying, only in terms I can understand, which makes me come across as argumentative. You're "wrong" only in that what you're saying doesn't compute with me-- I'm really shouting down my own lack of comprehension, which presents as me arguing with you (if that makes any sense). Her response "Well you must not have understood me" is classic Me, but in reality that's textbook projection, which backs me into into a corner I try to get out of...with more arguing!
Even knowing I do this, I can't ever catch myself doing it early enough to stop it; dopamine rush from outrage trumps my ability to dial it back. So I just avoid in-person debates altogether. I'm not aiming to offend anybody and can express my position more clearly in written form.
I have the same issue with understanding code other people write. I don't "get" larger architectures unless I wrote the entire stack myself (again, understanding someone else's concept by reinventing it myself). If I didn't write every goddamn class in the framework, I don't remember they exist or how they work together. Once I realized this I pivoted away from software development; nobody has time or need for another TempleOS.
Unfortunately this behavior is commonly found on the #mentalhealthawareness Narcissistic personality disorder checklists so everyone calls it out as malicious. I suspect autism though, since (for me) this always stems from information-processing difficulties. Make of it what you will.
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 doesn't even know!
I have been really contrarian for most part of my life. But i realized how annoying that behaviour is and made an active effort to change it. Through repetition it became a habit to respond positively or neutral.
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.
Voss' stuff would usually be pretty shitty to use on people you're friendly with (and I found a lot of the anecdotes in his book... strained credulity, let's say, to be polite) but in this case might actually be great for breaking those "nobody can decide what to do" sorts of situations. Make people actively choose what they'd rather do than what you suggested. Could work.
I enjoy watching the occasional political twitch/youtube streamer or speaker. I couldn't tell you why; I don't feel that most of them leave me feeling any wiser after the conversations end. But the times I come across positions that I haven't traditionally considered or agreed with being well-stated and expounded upon is really enjoyable and usually makes it worth the minutes or hours burned having it playing lightly in the background. Very much in the spirit of this post, like the author I too enjoy being "wrong" or losing debates. The rush of new insight is thrilling. Vaush and Douglas Murray come to mind as some of the recent ones that have said things I find very compelling.
Not long ago as I was exploring those circles I kept hearing this name repeated. A streamer named Destiny. So I started consuming some of his material. And it was absolutely insufferable. This person treated every single statement as a drawn battle line that is to be defended by every last ounce of mustered anger and blood. No matter how infinitesmal or semantical the focal point of discussion was it was torn apart to shreds. There was no intent to learn, no hoping for new perspectives. It was solely a sport about feeling correct. It was awful to listen to.
I was shocked to see how popular this person is (given their streams and subscribers). Not only because I felt that overall they were a garbage person to have a parasocial relationship with but because if I found him as awful to listen to as I did, surely a large amount of others would feel the same. And while no doubt others feel like me about him, on the other hand I must be neglecting something. There must be a cadre of people that find (arguably) well defended positions thrilling and almost narcotic. I do not associate with many of those types of people in meatspace and I suppose I had slowly forgotten that there's a significant number of them out there.
But yeah, I'm right there with you. I'm here to learn, and there's others that aren't and will knowingly or otherwise prey upon that willingness by digging their heels in on the most miniscule of points. Makes no sense to me. If the only purpose served by me opening my mouth was to convince the world of my correctness, I would just assume everyone else was as obsinate as myself and wouldn't bother to open my mouth in the first place. Save the calories.
Totally agree re. Destiny. Between him, Vaush, Hasan (ugh), and the rest of them, I feel like we’re intellectually stunting an entire generation of teenagers.
I had a friend in NYC who used to read a tonne load of books but now just watches the 3h Hasan stream every day and then parrots every take the video game streamer says as if it’s gospel. I ended up cutting him out of my life because he just grew so tiring to be around; any conversation had to be directed to how idiotic the other side (code for republicans) is. As a non-American, it grew really old hearing rant about how stupid 40% of their fellow countrymen are.
Listening to someone pretend to get angry and punching down on people less educated isn’t intellectually nourishing, it’s reddit prison slop.
What's interesting to me is how I've started to really dislike people in that mindset/space even when they offer points that I agree with. Take Hasan for example. He says a number of things I agree with when I hear them. But the delivery of them is awful, to the point that it corrodes the foundation on which he stands. It's hard for me to accept that you promote a position of shared empowerment and broad equality when you reject a large contingency of people (based solely on their beliefs no less) as borderline sub-human. Those two things don't mesh. I, like him, am often left bewildered by the positions his opponents sometimes take. But that bewilderment is a sign that I'm lacking information and context, not a sign that I'm dealing with a person who isn't to be treated with at least a modicum of respect.
It reminds me of an exchange between Neil Degrasee Tyson and Richard Dawkins in which Neil tells Dawkins that, while he makes good points, perhaps he should soften his delivery? Because it's hard for the realm of science to pull in new defenders when their staunchest proponents are telling its detractors they are imbeciles. And dawkins fires back with [...]"Science is interesting, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off". EDIT: This exchange must have been in the mid 00's? The birth of the Four-Horsemen-of-Atheism era. The absolutist cultural debate position has a rich history.
There's a time and place to cut ties and not waste time interacting with people that disagree with you. Sometimes the right move is to reject an ideology or group outright. But it seems like the modern concept of that time and place is very skewed.
Reads like these streamers are the left-wing equivalent of conservative AM radio and about half of Fox News' air time. Interesting. I didn't know we had those sorts on "our" side (Maddow and such are a bit similar, but the tone's still not quite like a Shapiro or a Levin or even a Limbaugh). But then, I've spent a grand total of maybe 15 minutes on Twitch, ever. I didn't even know there was political commentary on there.
Since those folks (the AM radio / unhinged Fox News guys) have been wildly successful at getting people to vote a certain way and swing rhetoric hard in the direction they promote, I'm torn on whether or not to be upset about this. If it eventually gets us a developed-world healthcare system and typical-in-most-of-the-rest-of-the-OECD worker protections and benefits, I guess I don't care if shitty psychological manipulation is what does it, if the alternative is that we continue not to manage to achieve those for several more decades. It'd be cool if my elementary-aged kids could have some nice things before they're middle-aged—I've only got 30-40 years left, probably, so have given up hope on any of this happening before I'm ancient, but maybe my kids' kids will fully reap the benefits, on the back half of this century.
This is quite interesting, because I find Vaush to be a perfect match for your description: absolutely insufferable debate bro and a hypocrite (the whole "living your values" discussion was very showing).
And Destiny to be a fairly reasonable mostly good-faith debater.
> Its entirely possible to unlearn these behaviours. The first thing is to realize you don't always have to respond.
> Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.
This is a skill I've worked on for years. Not every conversation needs to be a teaching moment or life or death. Most are just people bullshitting around with each other. Constantly correcting or arguing doesn't help anyone.
This is a whole chapter in "How to win friends and influence people."
Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.
Someone says something you disagree with? Evaluate if the inevitable unresolved and probably heated argument that will happen when you make it an issue is worth the time, effort, and awkwardness for everyone else present.
Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.
As someone who did high school debate competitively for four years and still judges competitions nearly every weekend... I really don't think this tracks in reality. It really sounds like you're describing a caricature, and maybe it's based on someone you know, but I don't think it's really the normal outcome for people who debate.
There are surely former debaters who still feel the need to prove themselves to their friends and colleagues and will go out of their way to seek an argument. It is a competitive activity and so it attracts competitive types. But part of the process of becoming a well-adjusted adult, and yes, debaters all go through that process too in time, is recognizing where and when their skills are welcome.
> What a lot of people failed to learn from debates club, is that a formal "win" is a net loss of a relationship.
In US competitive debate, debaters learn very quickly that whether you "win" or "lose" is not decided by themselves or their opponent but by the judge. You don't measure your success by whether being argumentative made you feel good or whether you felt like you won but by whether the judge evaluated what you said and what the other person said and signed a ballot in your favor. That actually involves a lot of "reading the room" and self-awareness about how other people will hear you when you talk. Good debaters solicit feedback from their judges and coaches to ask them how they can do better. And good judges look past the bluster, penalize debaters who use bad faith tactics, and reward debaters who succeed on substance. Judges are accountable for their decisions too - they have to explain to the debaters why they voted the way they did, which encourages judges to evaluate debaters carefully and give good feedback.
Again I think it is a caricature to say that a person who does debate structures their personality around it and tries to turn everything into an argument. I concede as a high schooler I went through a phase like this; then I went through college, matured a bit, got other hobbies and priorities and came to understand how to use the skills I learned as a debater in a positive-sum way.
That whole wall of text completely ignoring my point. Not only that, I now have a very negative opinion of you... simply because you completely ignored what I wrote.
What I learned from your response, is that debates in US teach you - ignore the principles of the argument, fail to follow up and say(or write) a lot of words. (to "win")
Funny, that to me you've become the caricature that you're complaining about.
The irony of someone arguing about high school debate being bad and then making piss poor arguments of zero substance is not at all lost upon me although it looks like it whizzed past you. I think someone like you would've benefited more debate than anyone else.
I wrote what I wrote because I thought you had some sense of curiosity about the people you complained about and I thought this was an appropriate space to talk about each other's beliefs and experiences. I did not expect your hostility!
This describes passivity not social skills. I can't really say that doing nothing or walking away in the face of an unpleasant situation while privately declaring the other people involved "cringe" and "dickheads" and "weenies" really demonstrates great social skills honestly.
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.
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.
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).
Sorry, in hindsight I shouldn't have capitalised that. It isn't a recognised name for something that I'm aware of.
That said I found Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication quite eye opening because it articulated the idea that it is possible and sensible to approach conversation strategically. Then after getting a feel for a do-no-harm approach it is relatively easy to start categorising what people say into tactics and there are some things that work and others that really don't. It seems pretty obvious that effective people are very good at listening, asking questions and what sort of evidence they treat as persuasive or unpersuasive.
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.
an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., especially to explore solutions; informal debate.
Discuss is first recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, either from Anglo-French discusser or directly from Latin discussus “struck asunder, shaken, scattered,” past participle of discutere, equivalent to dis- dis-1 + -cutere (combining form of quatere “to shake, strike”).
I think this is what I dislike most about Jordan Peterson. He appears to behave as if it's your fault if when you paraphrase what you think he's said back to him is not something he wants to agree with. IMHO, you haven't understood someone if you can't repeat it back to them in your own language, and there's a good probability that this is the fault of the explainer not the explainee.
> He appears to behave as if it's your fault if when you paraphrase what you think he's said back to him is not something he wants to agree with.
I don't think that's unique to JP. Most people are very bad at paraphrasing without veering into misrepresentation. I'm still working on getting better.
Yes, it is. I quoted you and the source post is unmodified.
Ironically, my interpretation may not be what you meant, despite it's simplicity.
>> IMHO, you haven't understood someone if you can't repeat it back to them in your own language, and there's a good probability that this is the fault of the explainer not the explainee.
So I guess we just talk past each other. Sounds good.
If it's a lecture and not a conversation, I will usually end up thinking of counterpoints to what they said. And I believe that they have a good response to any counterpoint I have, and I want to hear it.
Otherwise I'm left with my counterpoints and I'm less engaged and less convinced.
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.
aw man, you're gonna force me to read this? fuck. ok. give me a minute.
...
Okay, I think that as expected the word salad doesn't do anything to expand on the subject; it's another grossly compact attempt at telling everyone what a crazy and interesting life he's had without going into detail beyond the barest mention that he was somewhere and talked to someone; serves yet again as a form of name-dropping; proves absolutely nothing about debate but somehow oddly inspires people here to go way out of their way debating what the author meant.
In general? I think debate is just a byword for civil discussion, and the concept of winning or losing one is stupid. Discussions are meant to elucidate and digress and open both people to one another's point of view, but that's no reason they shouldn't be contentious. To describe a contentious conversation as a debate in which someone has to win and someone has to lose is reductive and misses the point of conversation. To cast oneself as the ultimate martyr in such conversations by way of [losing one's ego on the road from Patpong to Nepal and] creating ranking click bait topics is pure Derek Sivers. There ya go.
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.
Thanks for your comment. I thought I was going crazy with all the responses to what reads essentially like a self-help quality article.
Also, some of the examples are infuriating. So someone thinks poverty is not upsetting? Well, screw them. And the rest of those examples are so bland, how about "losing" every debate with these:
- Nazism is right.
- Rich people should become richer and poor people should become poorer.
- Women should not have equal rights or vote.
Go on, "listen and lose the debate", I'm sure it will be illuminating and productive.
Losing doesn't have to mean you 100% agree with another party at the end. Learning something new and changing your original position is good enough.
> someone thinks poverty is not upsetting
Someone was able to find happiness in non-material things. Good for them.
> Nazism is right
Ok, but was it absolutely wrong? Should we dismiss anything that even remotely resembles Nazism? Were there any good parts that Nazism had? E.g. patriotism or anti-communism? Short-term dictatorship can be better than alternatives (especially during wars). Eugenics on it's own is also not bad (e.g. most people are pro-abortion when fetus has a deadly disease, which is a form of eugenics).
> Rich people should become richer and poor people should become poorer
Poor in US are among most wealthy people in the world. Instead of fighting laws of nature (a battle you cannot win), maybe it's better to focus on improving well-being of "poor"? I.e. you should be able to live a good life even if you are poor.
> Women should not have equal rights or vote
Unequal rights doesn't necessarily mean someone is being taken advantage of. In theory, an optimal distribution of rights could very well be unequal. You can also do a thought experiment on how society would look like if only families are allowed to vote (with highest earner in the family voting, which essentially means "women cannot vote").
> Someone was able to find happiness in non-material things. Good for them.
Poverty is not having to eat. Poverty is a self-compounding problem: you cannot eat, you cannot work (or not enough), you get sick, so you cannot work, etc. Every accident impacts someone living in poverty way more than someone who is not. "Find happiness in non-material things" is something only those who have their basic necessities covered have the possibility to contemplate.
> Ok, but was it absolutely wrong? Should we dismiss anything that even remotely resembles Nazism? Were there any good parts that Nazism had? E.g. patriotism or anti-communism?
"Yes", "yes", "no", and "no".
> Poor in US are among most wealthy people in the world
That doesn't address the worldview I mentioned, it's complete misdirection. The view is that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer. Engage with that.
(Also, poverty is not "a law of nature" and it's not true that every poor person in the US is among the most wealthy people in the world).
> Unequal rights doesn't necessarily mean someone is being taken advantage of.
Yes it is. Your proposed experiment is bullshit.
PS: you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me. I don't care to debate with you about those awful, made-up and purposefully stupid statements. I don't want you to "teach me" anything, either.
Poverty has many definitions, but generally it's not being able to meet a certain standard of living. It may include nutrition standards, but again, malnutrition in US is very different from malnutrition in Africa. Again, if someone is "poor" by US standards, but lives a happy life - good for them. I could learn a thing or two from them. You could too.
> "Yes", "yes", "no", and "no".
Absolutist views are rather boring and a clear indication of a closed mindset. The exact opposite of what the post is about.
> That doesn't address the worldview I mentioned, it's complete misdirection. The view is that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer.
But it does. Rich are getting richer is the natural effect of positive feedback loops. You are rewarded for the value you produce, which allows you to produce more value. Streamlining those loops allowed us to create enormous amount of wealth in the last century.
The only way to fight it is to create an artificial compensating negative feedback loop, i.e. punish people for creating value. Evidently, not a good idea if you look at famine in USSR (google for "Dekulakization").
People like you seem to focus on a few outliers without recognizing that "rich getting richer" has benefitted billions. If having a few billionaires is the cost of moving billions out of poverty, I'll gladly take it. So yeah, rich should be getting richer, because the only alternative is everybody being poor.
> Yes it is. Your proposed experiment is bullshit.
No, that's poverty. Poverty is a self-reinforcing loop, this is well studied. Malnutrition is malnutrition, you die from it in North America, Africa or whatever. I don't care for your new age "find happiness where you can" mumbo jumbo.
I don't live in the US nor anywhere close to the US, so stick your assumptions where the sun don't shine!
> Absolutist views are rather boring and a clear indication of a closed mindset
I'm sorry you find denouncing and rejecting Nazism is boring.
> "rich getting richer"
You conveniently forgot "the poor must get poorer".
> (google for "Dekulakization")
I'm puzzled, is "assuming people don't know a term I'm using and need googling it" part of your "just listen, do not try to win debates" strategy of TFA? Thanks for teaching me though, I didn't know anything about the history of the USSR!
It must be that I am not "producing value", haw haw haw!
I wrote a longer post to your bullshit reply, but I won't bother, since you decided to ignore this: "you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me". Since you failed to engage with pretty simple instructions, and instead you chose to go your own way -- funnily enough, breaking the premise of TFA, which was "to listen"; instead of doing so you launched into an attempt to refute what you guessed were my objections -- I'll bid you adieu.
> I'm sorry you find denouncing and rejecting Nazism is boring.
Evidently, simply denouncing and rejecting does nothing to prevent it from emerging again. All the raping and murdering in Ukraine is currently done in the name of denouncing Nazism, yet it looks very much like Nazism.
> you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me
Turns out debates don't always happen on your terms. Despite your best effort, you still learned something today.
> All the raping and murdering in Ukraine is currently done in the name of denouncing Nazism.
Ah, yes, I guess if we had debated the "good parts" of Nazism then the invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened.
> Despite your best effort, you still learned something today.
Do you really think that's an honest debate tactic? Do you think that, when reading your last line, I will think "gee, this guy truly taught me something!" or rather dismiss your remark entirely? And do you feel your way of debating is in line with what TFA proposes, or is it possible that you are trying to "win" here, therefore rejecting the whole article?
> Ah, yes, I guess if we had debated the "good parts" of Nazism then the invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened.
Kind of. If more time was spent deconstructing Nazism/Fascism, instead of simply repeating "Nazism bad" it would be much easier to notice it right under our (their) nose.
> I guess I learned this conversation is futile?
I'd suggest you to re-read your messages in this thread. Analyze their tone. You never attempted to have a conversation.
I'm not using debate tactics and not accusing others of doing it. I'm just debating.
If you do want to switch topic to debate tactics, you should first re-read your own comments: they are full of strawman arguments, deflections, condescension and are quite demeaning in general. Hopefully acting like a butthurt teenager is a debate tactic too, not your personality.
> Could you summarize what you think my initial comment was arguing?
In a lame "gotcha" attempt you took author's words extremely literally: "Let's see how you lose a debate against 2 x 2 = 5 believer. Haha, I'm so smart."
Now, which one do you think is more likely:
- Author meant to say that literally every debate is worth losing
- You (likely on purpose) misunderstood the point author is trying to make
What do you really think is the point author was trying to make? Can you explain in your own words?
> In a lame "gotcha" attempt you took author's words extremely literally: "Let's see how you lose a debate against 2 x 2 = 5 believer. Haha, I'm so smart."
Have you read the HN guidelines?
> You (likely on purpose) misunderstood
Ah, we have a mind reader!
> Can you explain in your own words?
I can, but I won't for you, because it would be fruitless.
No need to reply: you won. You won big time. Have a cookie.
> 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've always enjoyed arguing (in the sense of a polite dialogue between two who disagree). But for me, even though I enjoy arguing, being right is more important -- which includes trying to cultivate the discipline to recognise and acknowledge when my interlocutor makes a good point, and trying to understand why they think what they do.
At university, I checked out the debating club, thinking it might be a good fit for me, but I was wrong. There, the goal seemed to be purely to win, correctness be damned. I found the arguments they marshaled towards their goal to be dishonest and contrary to the goals of increasing understanding and getting to the heart of a matter.
I can see how that could be seen as a sport or competition of sorts, but I worried about the kind of habits it might form. It is too similar to the kind of arguing I enjoy that it would be easy to slip from one mode to the other if those debate club type skills were developed and honed.
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.
thank you. If I'm ever in a position of choosing a co-founder again, I'll probably ask potential candidates their opinions on debate and treat any positive sentiment towards debate as a negative signal. Few things are more tiring in an already difficult slog than needing to go to war every time you'd like to introduce a change.
I know some people are energized by debate, but I'd rather work with someone who builds my confidence rather than constantly attacks my ideas and, if those don't have any weak corners, my character and judgement. Nothing wrong with either preference, but the two shouldn't work together in my experience.
Your position/preference seems to arise from your identification with your own ideas, which is one of the most fundamental differences in the realm of people's response to "debate". There's absolutely nothing wrong with identifying with your own ideas, and indeed, it will naturally lead to a negative experience if you have to interact with someone who attacks those ideas.
However, there are people who don't experience as much, if any, attachment or identification with "their own ideas", and instead view "debate" (or indeed, any sort of exploration of ideas, truth, and so forth) as a chance to be, to use an over-used phrase, "less wrong". It doesn't bother me if someone demonstrates to me that what I thought is wrong (as long as they do it in a way that respects me as a person), and in fact I welcome the correction (though sometimes it may be difficult to process if it is a long-held idea with wide consequences).
As usual, there's a spectrum (or two) here: a spectrum of identifying with your own ideas, and a spectrum of levels of personal respect when "debating". Certainly a very bad combination is one person with a high level of self-identification with their own ideas being debated/attack by someone who (a) has no concept that this self-identification experience is real (b) cannot engage with the ideas without criticizing the other person.
1. Co-founder who clearly signals respect and self-reflection, and who much later reveals they have a penchant for the occasional debate and dis-attachment from their own ideas.
2. A co-founder who signals they like debates in a candidate meeting.
I rankly speculate here on HN that if OP always avoids #2, not only will nothing bad happen as a result, but they will also decrease the chance of choosing a bad candidate.
I further rankly speculate this for any founder.
HN debates are fun, but they hide the fact that debate is a low-effort tool. Like drinking alcohol, it can be useful. But if it moves from being a mere implementation detail to becoming part of the API in a candidate meeting: run!
There's a bit more to it than that. Identifying with my ideas makes challenging them stressful, yes, but debate changes a potential eustress into distress. A dialectic where we're trying to leverage different initial perspectives to both arrive at a better understanding of the truth feel like I'm risking something valuable to win something more valuable. It's stressful but exhilarating. A debate just feels like I'm protecting something of value from someone who brings nothing of value to the interaction. Because I assign value to ideas, debate feels inherently destructive and negative-sum.
debates, even though I prefer the term discussions, are held between at least two parties.
I might sometime be the part who listens, but we can't both be listening, there will be no discussion.
So if you have something to say, say it and don't let anyone interrupt you.
Listening to what other people are saying means donating your time and attention, not everybody deserve it, there's a reason why "professional listeners" such as psychologists charge a lot of money to do it.
Most of the time people don't want to discuss, they simply want to talk about themselves.
I think that depends on how familiar they are with your perspective. You don't want to think of the interaction as unequal, with you taking the higher perspective of observing both their ideas and yours, appreciating and integrating them, while they only exist in their own point of view, the observed to your observer.
If they understand your perspective but you don't know theirs, it makes sense for them to do most of the talking. But if they don't understand where you're coming from, then a one-sided conversation is one-sided in a bad way. It's like looking at them through a telescope. You'll have your reactions to their ideas, but you won't have their reactions to yours, their reactions to your reactions.
I was told, by someone I was dating, many years ago, that they thought that when they were speaking, I was thinking about what I was going to say next. I didn't fully understand that comment for more than a decade.
This is a highly insightful take. Thanks. You nailed it.
Learning to listen may not come naturally for some of us. It's a skill that requires practice and reinforcement.
>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.
This would also be the reason in settings where debate is formalized, e.g. a courtroom, there are elements of pageantry and pantomime. All playful exaggerations, nonetheless serious (because play can be serious business, look at any child absorbed in a game).
Debating as a means to avoid combat then follows quite naturally. It's sublimation of a primal instinct, channeling dangerous antagonistic behaviors into the realm of harmless play.
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.
We listen to a great many things that we objectively know aren't true. Or which have no specific bearing on truth.
Listening is critical to all communication (there's at least one speaker and one listener to any conversation involving one or more sentiences). I'd suggest that the goal of listening is to understand the other party, at least within the universe of their story or experience. You don't have to believe, agree, sympathise, or even empathise. You may have entirely selfish reasons for doing so (is this person a threat / kook / messiah / ...?). If we choose to listen, though, the principle goal is only occasionally seeking truth.
> It will almost certainly slow down the pace of a conversation but stands a decent chance of making each exchange a lot more interesting for both of you.
Deliberately slowing conversations down to one 100th of their normal pace might produce some interesting results. In a sense, this is one of the techniques that science uses, and it seems to reliably produce excellent outcomes in fairly complicated problem spaces.
If you perceive there is sufficient trust and interest in engaging in some kind of debate, sure, consider it. Debate, in its many forms, can have many advantages, but it is not categorically preferable.
Also consider all your other options: pure listening, mutual bonding, offering emotional support, even walking away (from a no-win situation).
If / when debate falls apart, there are many options to reconnect.
Someone states their position, while you're expected to undermine their position with a retort. It is one of the least productive ways of resolving differences.
Every discussion is not a debate. Perhaps this is what Sivers was trying to communicate, in which case, he did so rather poorly.
The examples offered all revolve around lived experiences, lifestyle preference (taste), and articles of faith, for which there really isn't much of an objective truth, let alone one which can be demonstrated through evidence and reason.
There's something to be said for simply choosing to absorb a story, to bear witness, even to validate a person's view or choices (though that last isn't necessarily always appropriate).
From my experience, some years back I encountered a ... local character ... who was known for accosting strangers on the street and ranting about various topics, generally rather fantastical. I'd seen this happen several times over the years, and one day it was my turn. After the tirade slowed, and unsure how to respond, I simply said "thank you". The transformation was immediate and profound: they were immensely grateful and their entire demeanor changed.
I don't pretend that this is universally applicable. I do know that there was no point in rational argument with the person. The circumstances were such that there was no obvious danger to myself or those around me. But I've thought more than once over the years of how a simple acknowledgement might often be an excellent choice of response.
Every debate you lose is one where someone else won (and by the author’s logic, was deprived of the chance to lose).
Some debates I want to win, for the simple joy of teaching someone something new.
While it would be an optimal use of my time (from an information-theory point of view) for me to lose every debate I participate in, some debates are worth taking up for the chance to share.
I am wrong constantly. yet somehow I and others, who are also wrong, function and get by in life. It's kinda amazing how society works when so many people are wrong. If I had to guess it's the correcting mechanism from the exchange and discussion of ideas. Bad ideas tend to be weeded out or turn into better ones.
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 through a viewpoint you may even call it evil. Though not comically, because everything here is still just following the forces and inventives of our economic system - profit at every non-monetary expense. If you want change, your solution needs to address systemic issues (not neccessarily abolishing capitalism, but focusing on different inventives and making other alternatives viable/profitable though taxes)
(I hope the point I picked is uncontroversial enough, but you can probably apply it to your least favorite policies of your least favorite flavor of political party, organization, movement or institution)
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 it to happen.
"Following the incentives of our economic system", so your actions are indistinguishable or worse than those of a comic book villain, *is* comically evil. Literally. The fact that so much of our economic system defends this behavior says a lot.
"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.
Not-fracking gives an enormous leverage to the Saudis, who are textbook comic evil as well. A medieval theocracy slowly transforming itself into a modern authoritarian country, dissolving dissidents in acid on the way.
Or to another major producer, Putin's Russia stuck in the Stalinist imperial mindset.
There's a method for deconstructing an opinion to eliminate bias and examine it through as objective of a lens as possible. This generally helps ground a lot of irrationality. Their conclusion might not necessarily be correct, but as you said, if you understand the perspective you can structurally address it.
One great advice I've heard is that, before even going into a debate, you ask someone "What would it take for you to change your mind on this subject?"
People won't change their mind if they don't have an open mind to begin with, or if they're not open to debate on a subject matter in the first place.
A lot of people - online and off - will engage in debate for debate's sake, even though all parties involved are not willing to change their opinion. They just want to be heard.
I mean who here would have an open mind about e.g. flat earth or whether the Holocaust actually happened (to invoke Poe's law)? I sure don't, and I don't feel guilty about it either; I don't need to consider anyone's point of view if I find their opinion morally reprehensible, and if they strongly hold those beliefs and are unwilling to accept alternatives, they're not worth the effort or time. They can go back to their echo chambers.
There's a sort of hidden weakness to "losing": it's extremely difficult for people to correctly filter out BS at scale.
I'm not talking about on an individual encounter level - BS almost always loses to truth. But the percentage isn't so high that smart and/or successful people never fall for BS in their lifetime.
Especially since BS is under evolutionary pressure to be extremely believable.
That's a big part of the benefit of being part of the mainstream of knowledge. It's almost certain that large swaths of the mainstream are BS. But the mainstream is also exposed to the most criticism (at least the parts where criticism is acceptable), which means that BS tends to get filtered out more quickly as well.
In contrast, looking at "alternative" knowledge communities, they all generally have that whiff of being scammy. There's probably some truth in there, at least in some of those communities, but there's also a lot more BS.
So, I'm not saying to never lose. Losing is generally good. Just take care to make sure that you're actually losing.
> But the mainstream is also exposed to the most criticism (at least the parts where criticism is acceptable), which means that BS tends to get filtered out more quickly as well.
This is what I worry in relation to ChatGPT. Producing quality, believable BS is currently expensive, and the price of exposing it is relatively manageable. But with ChatGPT, it will be possible to produce huge amounts of BS which will be extremely believable and simply uneconomical to critique and expose.
BS can be tailored to the audience, imagine a Wikipedia written by ChatGPT specifically for your which takes into account your own biases. It doesn't even have to be factually wrong, it can just modify the writing style, a word here and there to evoke a different sentiment, play on your personal preconceptions to move slightly your political position in a certain direction. People will claim they are immune to such subtle manipulations, but I don't believe that.
> at least the parts where criticism is acceptable
This is an important effect to note. If criticism of an idea is not socially allowed then you cannot rely on mainstreamness as a proxy for truth.
There's also another effect worth noting: if an idea is relies on building blocks outside daily experience (e.g. anything about the large scale) and requires quantification as part of the argument then its going to struggle to propagate (both the guys with the megaphones and your average Joe are bad at thinking quantatively). Incorrect ideas about the dangers of nuclear power being the classic example.
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.
The point I'm making is that you should redefine "winning a debate". Learning (and hopefully coming to a consensus) is exactly what winning should mean in your head. Just altogether abandon the notion that you win by convincing the other party you're right.
Remember, if you're winning, if you're correct, if you're talking, then you're not learning. Only when you're wrong and you recognize you don't have the full picture can you grow. I think our education systems and parents often frame being wrong as bad, but it's precisely the opposite.
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 time he shoots you down is if he thinks you don't have an explanation around some aspects of your point. But his job is done the audience can make up its own mind.
To follow the spirit of the original linked article I will choose to accept that a debate can be defined as a conversation where one person presents their ideas and another person listens and asks clarifying questions in a generally non-argumentative manner.
With the JRE you seem to be saying that the guest is arguing that their ideas are correct and JR is arguing the negative but only through the use of questions and occasional direct counters to the guests argument.
Seems like a debate to me although also fits the definition of an interview.
I always thought the socratic method was where somebody (Socrates) was teaching something to a student. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that doesn't seem right for describing the JRE
But I think Louis Theroux has a not dissimilar style.
All of these "debates" are about how someone else's way of life makes sense for them. The world would be a better place if we assumed this is the case most of the time instead of having to be convinced of it.
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.
I've heard a good one about that; there's opinions and there's morals. You can debate about whether, idk, donuts are good or not; that's a personal opinion, the stakes are pretty low with that.
But other disagreements are on a moral level; things like racism, some people are morally bankrupt and have Strong Beliefs about what should happen with people not like them. I don't believe you can (or should) debate with people like that.
And I think that the anti-science 'debates' can also hit people on a moral level; how DARE you hold these strong beliefs that do hold up to scientific scruteny? (think flat earthers etc).
I completely disagree. Silence is implicit agreement in some (and I would argue most, at one time or another) people's minds. A fringe mentality that doesn't encounter any push-back will tend to exacerbate itself further and further. If an idea is not factually wrong anyone can be convinced of it. Anyone can be made racist or tolerant given the right argument.
385 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 318 ms ] threadThis 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.
Yet another Derek Sivers post that makes me think he's a freaking genius.
"I don’t want to convince anyone of my existing perspective."
That's not a debate
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 girls, if asked, would have told a nice story of "I earn good money out of this! It's liberating!" to any Westerner techie client who would have bothered to ask, what else could have they said? They were still the victims of human trafficking.
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 very difficult to have sex workers who are not somehow a product of sex trafficking. However, in societies where it's not really a taboo, some people will pick that profession, at least for a while.
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.
> 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...
If it matters I'm an atheist. I'm against "sex work" because women (it's women in the majority of cases) are trafficked and taken advantage of, in both a material and a direct physical way.
I see this "sex work" non-sense mostly coming from people who have had no direct contact with the reality/materiality of it all, i.e. mostly from the Western middle-classes.
Later edit: Because this has touched a close nerve with me, copy-pasting some stuff related to that reality/materiality I had mentioned from a news article about Romanian prostitution rings in Spain [1]:
> The women were freed from brothels in Malaga and Girona where they had been sexual exploited by their compatriots and made to work for up to ten hours a day under the threat of violence.
> Some had come to Spain after being falsely promised better lives by the Romanian sex traffickers while others had fallen victim to the so-called 'lover boy' scam, according to a police statement.
> This method involves one of the sex traffickers forming an intimate relationship with the woman to earn her trust before later forcing her into prostitution.
> One of the women freed, who was only 18 years old, had been reported as missing by her family in Romania.
> Police described the 'iron control' exerted by the 'well-organized' sex-trafficking ring and said that the women had been kept completely isolated from the outside world.
I don't know of any sane person who would call that legit "work" and "liberating".
[1] https://www.thelocal.es/20140812/spanish-police-smash-romani...
Human trafficking is already illegal. Fund investigators and get rid of traffickers.
Empower sex-workers instead of banning the practice, because it will still happen but just more in the shadows. Bring it to the front and truly regulate it.
That's a very naive and harmful take.
Criminalizing sex work means that only criminals would be involved in it, hence the trafficking.
Given that you can't do anything about supply and demand, the only sane solution to trafficking is decriminalizing sex work. Not being "against it".
Also the fact that sex work can be linked with human trafficking doesn't necessarily mean that sex work is bad. Working on a construction site can be a meaningful and rewarding career, but could also be utterly miserable if you've been trafficked there and are working in conditions of modern slavery. But that means human trafficking is bad, not that construction work is bad.
If anything, I think the human trafficking thing is an argument for NOT demonizing / criminalizing sex work, so that it becomes part of the visible, regulated economy, which would it turn make it harder for traffickers to exploit and control people.
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...)"
What I'm trying to say is that everything that is "liberating" only shackles you to a new framework eventually.
Even if it's normalized, women will just be tossed aside when they get old (pass 30) in such environments...
Ergo, we must reclaim quality time for engaging with others if we want to live in quality societies
Sometimes you gotta preemptively "lose" a debate, by not answering at all. At most a "Alright, I get your point but I disagree" which also doesn't really add much to the discussion.
Best thing to do, if you detect you're about to enter a debate, is to ask "What would it take for you to change your opinion?". If they reply with "nothing" or a vague answer or whatever, exit the debate. Likewise though, ask yourself the same question.
I feel like losing a debate and understanding someone else's point of view/learning from them are separate things. In my own experience a debate is not the ideal means of communication if I want to empathize or understand someone better. But as groestl points out, this is a personal matter.
Also for the same reason I like to say, "Don't tell me I'm wrong; instead, improve my worldmodel to the point that you no longer have to, because the wrongness will be obvious."
But I'm not sure that what Sivers describes here is coterminous with "losing a debate". Rather, it's just one way you might "lose a debate". In practice, losing a debate more often looks something more like:
1) The other side stubbornly refuses to engage with your point while effectively signaling you're a bad person despite endorsing the same tradeoffs you do. [B]
2) The other side points being so muddled that you can't untangle what they're disagreeing with or what makes your point wrong, but they speak with that confidence that everyone wants to agree with them. [A]
I don't like losing a debate those ways.
[A] Example of this kind of misdirection from Thank You For Smoking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuaHRN7UhRo
[B] Recent example from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33900804
In my case, the answer is never. Now I'd like to imagine this is obviously because I'm the most intelligent, objective, and insightful individual to have ever lived. Of course I suspect the actual reason is because anything worth debating will always have reasonable arguments for both sides. And so long as your arguments are reasonably factually based, it's never really possible to lose a debate, unless you choose to. You can learn new things, expand your worldview, but losing will only happen if you want it to. Hence the reason I added that qualifier about swapping worldviews as opposed to enhancing a prior held one.
Of course this doesn't preclude major worldview shifting change from happening, but it happens over long periods of times for reasons that I don't think any of us can really pin down. It's going to be a butterfly effect of a million little factors.
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 of loss wears off, it will sometimes (not always) move my position, sometimes a little bit, sometimes completely. It can take days, months, sometimes years.
That's exactly it; I'm convinced people's opinions can and will change over time, but they take time.
This is used in subtle ways too with modern-day internet and social media (and before that, newspaper headlines); people will scan the internet's headlines and depending on what they see, form an opinion. If all you see is headlines about police brutality, you will be convinced that the police is corrupt and violent and shit. If all you see is headlines about a demographic being involved in crime, you'll form prejudices about them.
It’s happening less in the past decade or so, because I’ve already had many of the same discussions, and I’m sure partly because I’m becoming more rigid as I age.
But many online forums also reduce visibility of unpopular comments, and it’s harder to engage in some of those discussions. This is the reason I never downvote, even the most awful takes.
Well having kids can change how you view things quite abruptly.
That's the trouble with the expression "losing a debate". There is the notion that you've been defeated. So what actually happened is not a debate, but a fight. A debate is something you can learn from, a gain.
Why would you talk about something you feel strongly about in the first place? If you are sure you have got it all figured out, there is nothing left to talk about. Discussion is only useful when you recognize gaps in your understanding and are able to learn more about it.
> it's never really possible to lose a debate
It is. If you cannot compel the other party to offer you information that you can successfully learn from, you've lost. A debate is only won if you've learned something from it. Which, again, is why it would be rather illogical to debate something you feel strongly about. What can you learn if you already have it figured out? If you truly know it all you are guaranteed to lose every time, and at that point why waste your time?
No one changes their mind in real time. Even if they know they are wrong their ego digs in in the moment.
Truly consequential shifts in your thinking happen gradually over time.
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 the harm it did to my relationships with other people.
If you want to grow like OP here suggests—which I think is a valuable, worthwhile goal—you will do yourself a great service in learning to listen. I know we all think that we do this, but I don’t think many of us actually do.
When you talk to others, take note of how much of the time you spend formulating a response. I know that for me, I find that frequently I’m already generating my rebuttal before they finish speaking. I am effectively listening to respond, not to hear what they have to say. I’m much much better at listening to hear today than I was a decade ago, but I still have to correct myself on this routinely.
It’s important to note that you can listen to hear and still be free to respond; if you want to have an interesting conversation you will definitely need to put in some effort too. Just make sure that you’re internalizing what they’ve said before you form a response to it. It will almost certainly slow down the pace of a conversation but stands a decent chance of making each exchange a lot more interesting for both of you.
I really believe that the most profound realizations of my life have come when I shut up and put in the effort to internalize what other people around me were doing and saying.
The best conversations I had with the worst people stemmed from me not even telling them my opinion at all. I just asked them to explain theirs to me and asked the questions that occured to me in a respectful manner. Leaving them in healthy confusion and doubt afterwards (and learning a thing or two about them on the way) is more rewarding than winning a debate with them. Sometimes those people really surprise you as well, because they hold a combination of opinions that seem incompatible to you.
I absolutely agree with you that the best conversations tends to come from the latter approach you describe. Unfortunately, it can often be difficult and take some skill to avoid pushing the other person into "debate mode" by making them feel like they're losing. Especially if there's an audience, however small.
What people often don't realize is that winning a debate doesn't necessarily mean you side with the truth. A debate is aimed at winning on your existing opinions and the other losing. It is not aimed at discovery, validation or learning. Victory is more important than truth, and a lot of 'good moves' in a debate actually bring you further away from the truth.
If you engage in a conversation where you are both curious and submit to what's true (whatever that means), this conversation will rarely be a debate.
If a debate is in public between skilled debaters who show sportsmanship, then I think the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point.
That's true of the sort of debate that's practiced competitively by "debating teams", but I don't think it's always true of debate as the word is used in an everyday context. A debate can also be more like a dialectic.
That's the problem with how we see a debate. It's just about that. There's no need to present your position in a compelling way or find common grounds with whoever you're debating.
If you read any books by professional negotiators - you'll notice that they conduct themselves very differently than you would in a debate.
Getting to Yes and Getting Past No have been eye opening to me. I no longer feel like I even need to "win an argument".
> the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point
I recall reading some articles stating, that debates fail to convince anyone of anything. Public debates only encourage tribalism, IMO. If you watch a presidential debate - no amount of "winning" changed people's opinions.
I can even argue, that just hearing "X won the debate" will cause more impact; compared to listening to them.
Most people aren't debating you on purpose so there's no point as they continue to rubber duck (and maybe even thank you later). In case they really are in it for a debate, then by all means proceed.
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, potential pitfalls, and benefits of different answers such that the "bad answer" is avoided, more than "the one right answer" is somehow discovered.
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.
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
>Imagine someone has an out-there idea
How would one know the idea is out-there until one has listened and understood what someone else is saying?
>And you play the nice, slightly curious, but not too curious person that has an open mind...
I don't have to "play" this part, unless I were someone who isn't naturally nice and curious.
"Debate" and "listen" are not the only two options.
Debate, specifically, comes from a mode of communication called rhetoric, or persuasive argument.
There are other forms of communicating, including simply narrating or relating an event or position, entertainment, and others, one of which is dialectic.
As I've commented a few times over the years here, confusing dilectic and rhetorical conversation is one of the oldest confounding points of conversations in the book --- it's what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrote on at length (particularly Plato railing against the Sophists, that is, rhetoriticians, and Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations, a/k/a "bullshit arguments that must die" to put a contemporary spin on it.
Derek's entire premise strikes me as ... extraordinarily blinkered here. If you find you want to impart your own wisdom, it's possible to do so other than through raw debate. In particular, the mode of simple discussion or Socratic Method, in which you ask questions which (might) lead your interlocutor to reach the conclusion you're suggesting on their own seems especially valid.
"Had you considered X" or "How would you address Y" being possible entry points for that.
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 years now after hearing or reading something similar. I haven't been able to change this, but sometimes it's helped me move back to listening and not missing important details because of it.
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.
It can be, but sometimes it isn't. Those are the cases I was talking about where agreeing to disagree can be a good outcome.
Even more -- it is not mandatory to have an opinion on everything.
In many cases the person you talk to don't really disagree, but pretends to due to ideologic or some BS reason. Maybe they don't want to say the real reason they think X.
The "agree to disagree" is often used as an escape hatch for hypocrisy.
Sometimes. Other times it's a great way to point out that hypocrisy by pointing out you all have the same information, yet you come to different conclusions/opinions.
Sometimes it's a conscious decision to have all the facts and ignore them. It's not hypocritical in that case.
So I agree with you as long as you don't fall into that trap of putting false words in the other mouth.
It's much better than just continuing the conversation under a false assumption.
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 version of his position.
The subsequent Joe Rogan interview of Jordan Peterson was illuminating. Joe Rogan is, against the odds, a good interviewer, because he listens and engages, and only occasionally challenges.
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 and come up empty handed. Why is it hard for people to admit he’s just a really good podcaster?
This is not the point of this technique. This technique is about actually talking to a person, one-on-one, and trying to understand what they mean. No one else is watching, or at least the interview isn't being recorded.
https://youtu.be/O6N9nvk8bvE
The problem I have with modern-day debates (I mainly catch the political ones) is that they're not at all good or in good faith, there's a lot of "but YOU did this", a lot of dismissals, and no good structure; the moderator does not do their job very well in a lot of cases.
Mind you, that depends on the politician as well. Populists (e.g. Trump) are not good at all in debates.
Depends what you think the point of the TV debate actually is. Trump, for all his flaws, instinctively understood the actual point of the televised debate, and crushed all his primary opponents. He knew that his target audience didn't care if he was right or wrong on any of the facts or detail, they want someone who looked strong and confident and commanding, so that's what he focused on.
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 group has one) picks up on something and decides it's time to flex his master debater skills yet again.
Related absolutely cringe inducing behaviour includes the following:
- the "I am very smart" contrarian (so half of this website) - the "gonna then everything into politics" (liberal) one - the "gonna turn everything into politics" (conservative) one - that guy who says "let's not get political" (proceeds to get extremely political) - "uhm ackshually" overcorrecting guy - guy who doesn't know dick about a topic but will pontificate on it
Its entirely possible to unlearn these behaviours. The first thing is to realize you don't always have to respond.
Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.
Someone says something you disagree with? Evaluate if the inevitable unresolved and probably heated argument that will happen when you make it an issue is worth the time, effort, and awkwardness for everyone else present.
Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.
- agreed, though, that these are all flavours of trying to ‘win’ rather than actually contributing meaningfully
A wise man argues not to prove he's right, he's arguing to become right.
Assuming (or at least allowing) your "opponent" knows something you don't is about all it takes to take a casual debate from a nuisance to learning experience.
There's a time and place for everything and friendship dynamics get...complicated.
In most social situations "heavy" discussion or "debating" is entirely unwarranted and brings the overall mood down.
There are plenty of discussion groups and meetups if you want to hotly debate politics or suchlike!
I have been a regular at several places (sometimes coffee shops) across the country where I can sense very real substantive conversations. Sometimes people just need a little nudge to get out of their comfort zone.
Such interactions can help bring people even closer. It takes intention and some experimentation.
I'd argue (heh) that what this behavior boils down to is: I'm restating what you're saying, only in terms I can understand, which makes me come across as argumentative. You're "wrong" only in that what you're saying doesn't compute with me-- I'm really shouting down my own lack of comprehension, which presents as me arguing with you (if that makes any sense). Her response "Well you must not have understood me" is classic Me, but in reality that's textbook projection, which backs me into into a corner I try to get out of...with more arguing!
Even knowing I do this, I can't ever catch myself doing it early enough to stop it; dopamine rush from outrage trumps my ability to dial it back. So I just avoid in-person debates altogether. I'm not aiming to offend anybody and can express my position more clearly in written form.
I have the same issue with understanding code other people write. I don't "get" larger architectures unless I wrote the entire stack myself (again, understanding someone else's concept by reinventing it myself). If I didn't write every goddamn class in the framework, I don't remember they exist or how they work together. Once I realized this I pivoted away from software development; nobody has time or need for another TempleOS.
Unfortunately this behavior is commonly found on the #mentalhealthawareness Narcissistic personality disorder checklists so everyone calls it out as malicious. I suspect autism though, since (for me) this always stems from information-processing difficulties. Make of it what you will.
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 doesn't even know!
I have been really contrarian for most part of my life. But i realized how annoying that behaviour is and made an active effort to change it. Through repetition it became a habit to respond positively or neutral.
Not long ago as I was exploring those circles I kept hearing this name repeated. A streamer named Destiny. So I started consuming some of his material. And it was absolutely insufferable. This person treated every single statement as a drawn battle line that is to be defended by every last ounce of mustered anger and blood. No matter how infinitesmal or semantical the focal point of discussion was it was torn apart to shreds. There was no intent to learn, no hoping for new perspectives. It was solely a sport about feeling correct. It was awful to listen to.
I was shocked to see how popular this person is (given their streams and subscribers). Not only because I felt that overall they were a garbage person to have a parasocial relationship with but because if I found him as awful to listen to as I did, surely a large amount of others would feel the same. And while no doubt others feel like me about him, on the other hand I must be neglecting something. There must be a cadre of people that find (arguably) well defended positions thrilling and almost narcotic. I do not associate with many of those types of people in meatspace and I suppose I had slowly forgotten that there's a significant number of them out there.
But yeah, I'm right there with you. I'm here to learn, and there's others that aren't and will knowingly or otherwise prey upon that willingness by digging their heels in on the most miniscule of points. Makes no sense to me. If the only purpose served by me opening my mouth was to convince the world of my correctness, I would just assume everyone else was as obsinate as myself and wouldn't bother to open my mouth in the first place. Save the calories.
I had a friend in NYC who used to read a tonne load of books but now just watches the 3h Hasan stream every day and then parrots every take the video game streamer says as if it’s gospel. I ended up cutting him out of my life because he just grew so tiring to be around; any conversation had to be directed to how idiotic the other side (code for republicans) is. As a non-American, it grew really old hearing rant about how stupid 40% of their fellow countrymen are.
Listening to someone pretend to get angry and punching down on people less educated isn’t intellectually nourishing, it’s reddit prison slop.
It reminds me of an exchange between Neil Degrasee Tyson and Richard Dawkins in which Neil tells Dawkins that, while he makes good points, perhaps he should soften his delivery? Because it's hard for the realm of science to pull in new defenders when their staunchest proponents are telling its detractors they are imbeciles. And dawkins fires back with [...]"Science is interesting, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off". EDIT: This exchange must have been in the mid 00's? The birth of the Four-Horsemen-of-Atheism era. The absolutist cultural debate position has a rich history.
There's a time and place to cut ties and not waste time interacting with people that disagree with you. Sometimes the right move is to reject an ideology or group outright. But it seems like the modern concept of that time and place is very skewed.
Since those folks (the AM radio / unhinged Fox News guys) have been wildly successful at getting people to vote a certain way and swing rhetoric hard in the direction they promote, I'm torn on whether or not to be upset about this. If it eventually gets us a developed-world healthcare system and typical-in-most-of-the-rest-of-the-OECD worker protections and benefits, I guess I don't care if shitty psychological manipulation is what does it, if the alternative is that we continue not to manage to achieve those for several more decades. It'd be cool if my elementary-aged kids could have some nice things before they're middle-aged—I've only got 30-40 years left, probably, so have given up hope on any of this happening before I'm ancient, but maybe my kids' kids will fully reap the benefits, on the back half of this century.
I left a FOSS project that I liked a lot hacking on, because of a person like that. It was painful, but better for my mental health overall.
And Destiny to be a fairly reasonable mostly good-faith debater.
> Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.
This is a skill I've worked on for years. Not every conversation needs to be a teaching moment or life or death. Most are just people bullshitting around with each other. Constantly correcting or arguing doesn't help anyone.
Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.
Someone says something you disagree with? Evaluate if the inevitable unresolved and probably heated argument that will happen when you make it an issue is worth the time, effort, and awkwardness for everyone else present.
Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.
There are surely former debaters who still feel the need to prove themselves to their friends and colleagues and will go out of their way to seek an argument. It is a competitive activity and so it attracts competitive types. But part of the process of becoming a well-adjusted adult, and yes, debaters all go through that process too in time, is recognizing where and when their skills are welcome.
What a lot of people failed to learn from debates club, is that a formal "win" is a net loss of a relationship.
In US competitive debate, debaters learn very quickly that whether you "win" or "lose" is not decided by themselves or their opponent but by the judge. You don't measure your success by whether being argumentative made you feel good or whether you felt like you won but by whether the judge evaluated what you said and what the other person said and signed a ballot in your favor. That actually involves a lot of "reading the room" and self-awareness about how other people will hear you when you talk. Good debaters solicit feedback from their judges and coaches to ask them how they can do better. And good judges look past the bluster, penalize debaters who use bad faith tactics, and reward debaters who succeed on substance. Judges are accountable for their decisions too - they have to explain to the debaters why they voted the way they did, which encourages judges to evaluate debaters carefully and give good feedback.
Again I think it is a caricature to say that a person who does debate structures their personality around it and tries to turn everything into an argument. I concede as a high schooler I went through a phase like this; then I went through college, matured a bit, got other hobbies and priorities and came to understand how to use the skills I learned as a debater in a positive-sum way.
What I learned from your response, is that debates in US teach you - ignore the principles of the argument, fail to follow up and say(or write) a lot of words. (to "win")
Funny, that to me you've become the caricature that you're complaining about.
Literally evoking the feeling of being attack, by introducing thinly veiled insults into your comment.
What do you think would result from such a retort? (specifically after you called my perspective "piss poor")
PS: I have debated many times at school and afterwards. Your condescension is poorly hidden
You're not wrong but I think you're overstating things. Honestly if you're that miffed about these conversations maybe it's you.
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.
The "cooperative" debate is what we call a conversation.
Throwing the word constructive in front of debate, does not change the adversarial nature of it.
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).
That said I found Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication quite eye opening because it articulated the idea that it is possible and sensible to approach conversation strategically. Then after getting a feel for a do-no-harm approach it is relatively easy to start categorising what people say into tactics and there are some things that work and others that really don't. It seems pretty obvious that effective people are very good at listening, asking questions and what sort of evidence they treat as persuasive or unpersuasive.
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.
an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., especially to explore solutions; informal debate.
Discuss is first recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, either from Anglo-French discusser or directly from Latin discussus “struck asunder, shaken, scattered,” past participle of discutere, equivalent to dis- dis-1 + -cutere (combining form of quatere “to shake, strike”).
I don't think that's unique to JP. Most people are very bad at paraphrasing without veering into misrepresentation. I'm still working on getting better.
Yes, it is. I quoted you and the source post is unmodified.
Ironically, my interpretation may not be what you meant, despite it's simplicity.
>> IMHO, you haven't understood someone if you can't repeat it back to them in your own language, and there's a good probability that this is the fault of the explainer not the explainee.
So I guess we just talk past each other. Sounds good.
Otherwise I'm left with my counterpoints and I'm less engaged and less convinced.
Please stop talking as if his writing is profound.
...
Okay, I think that as expected the word salad doesn't do anything to expand on the subject; it's another grossly compact attempt at telling everyone what a crazy and interesting life he's had without going into detail beyond the barest mention that he was somewhere and talked to someone; serves yet again as a form of name-dropping; proves absolutely nothing about debate but somehow oddly inspires people here to go way out of their way debating what the author meant.
In general? I think debate is just a byword for civil discussion, and the concept of winning or losing one is stupid. Discussions are meant to elucidate and digress and open both people to one another's point of view, but that's no reason they shouldn't be contentious. To describe a contentious conversation as a debate in which someone has to win and someone has to lose is reductive and misses the point of conversation. To cast oneself as the ultimate martyr in such conversations by way of [losing one's ego on the road from Patpong to Nepal and] creating ranking click bait topics is pure Derek Sivers. There ya go.
Like others, I have no idea who Sivers is.
Also, some of the examples are infuriating. So someone thinks poverty is not upsetting? Well, screw them. And the rest of those examples are so bland, how about "losing" every debate with these:
- Nazism is right.
- Rich people should become richer and poor people should become poorer.
- Women should not have equal rights or vote.
Go on, "listen and lose the debate", I'm sure it will be illuminating and productive.
> someone thinks poverty is not upsetting
Someone was able to find happiness in non-material things. Good for them.
> Nazism is right
Ok, but was it absolutely wrong? Should we dismiss anything that even remotely resembles Nazism? Were there any good parts that Nazism had? E.g. patriotism or anti-communism? Short-term dictatorship can be better than alternatives (especially during wars). Eugenics on it's own is also not bad (e.g. most people are pro-abortion when fetus has a deadly disease, which is a form of eugenics).
> Rich people should become richer and poor people should become poorer
Poor in US are among most wealthy people in the world. Instead of fighting laws of nature (a battle you cannot win), maybe it's better to focus on improving well-being of "poor"? I.e. you should be able to live a good life even if you are poor.
> Women should not have equal rights or vote
Unequal rights doesn't necessarily mean someone is being taken advantage of. In theory, an optimal distribution of rights could very well be unequal. You can also do a thought experiment on how society would look like if only families are allowed to vote (with highest earner in the family voting, which essentially means "women cannot vote").
Poverty is not having to eat. Poverty is a self-compounding problem: you cannot eat, you cannot work (or not enough), you get sick, so you cannot work, etc. Every accident impacts someone living in poverty way more than someone who is not. "Find happiness in non-material things" is something only those who have their basic necessities covered have the possibility to contemplate.
> Ok, but was it absolutely wrong? Should we dismiss anything that even remotely resembles Nazism? Were there any good parts that Nazism had? E.g. patriotism or anti-communism?
"Yes", "yes", "no", and "no".
> Poor in US are among most wealthy people in the world
That doesn't address the worldview I mentioned, it's complete misdirection. The view is that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer. Engage with that.
(Also, poverty is not "a law of nature" and it's not true that every poor person in the US is among the most wealthy people in the world).
> Unequal rights doesn't necessarily mean someone is being taken advantage of.
Yes it is. Your proposed experiment is bullshit.
PS: you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me. I don't care to debate with you about those awful, made-up and purposefully stupid statements. I don't want you to "teach me" anything, either.
No, that's famine.
Poverty has many definitions, but generally it's not being able to meet a certain standard of living. It may include nutrition standards, but again, malnutrition in US is very different from malnutrition in Africa. Again, if someone is "poor" by US standards, but lives a happy life - good for them. I could learn a thing or two from them. You could too.
> "Yes", "yes", "no", and "no".
Absolutist views are rather boring and a clear indication of a closed mindset. The exact opposite of what the post is about.
> That doesn't address the worldview I mentioned, it's complete misdirection. The view is that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer.
But it does. Rich are getting richer is the natural effect of positive feedback loops. You are rewarded for the value you produce, which allows you to produce more value. Streamlining those loops allowed us to create enormous amount of wealth in the last century.
The only way to fight it is to create an artificial compensating negative feedback loop, i.e. punish people for creating value. Evidently, not a good idea if you look at famine in USSR (google for "Dekulakization").
People like you seem to focus on a few outliers without recognizing that "rich getting richer" has benefitted billions. If having a few billionaires is the cost of moving billions out of poverty, I'll gladly take it. So yeah, rich should be getting richer, because the only alternative is everybody being poor.
> Yes it is. Your proposed experiment is bullshit.
Is this really your best argument?
No, that's poverty. Poverty is a self-reinforcing loop, this is well studied. Malnutrition is malnutrition, you die from it in North America, Africa or whatever. I don't care for your new age "find happiness where you can" mumbo jumbo.
I don't live in the US nor anywhere close to the US, so stick your assumptions where the sun don't shine!
> Absolutist views are rather boring and a clear indication of a closed mindset
I'm sorry you find denouncing and rejecting Nazism is boring.
> "rich getting richer"
You conveniently forgot "the poor must get poorer".
> (google for "Dekulakization")
I'm puzzled, is "assuming people don't know a term I'm using and need googling it" part of your "just listen, do not try to win debates" strategy of TFA? Thanks for teaching me though, I didn't know anything about the history of the USSR!
It must be that I am not "producing value", haw haw haw!
I wrote a longer post to your bullshit reply, but I won't bother, since you decided to ignore this: "you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me". Since you failed to engage with pretty simple instructions, and instead you chose to go your own way -- funnily enough, breaking the premise of TFA, which was "to listen"; instead of doing so you launched into an attempt to refute what you guessed were my objections -- I'll bid you adieu.
Good luck with your debate tactics!
Evidently, simply denouncing and rejecting does nothing to prevent it from emerging again. All the raping and murdering in Ukraine is currently done in the name of denouncing Nazism, yet it looks very much like Nazism.
> you also misunderstood my prompt, which was to debate with people who believe what I listed, not debate with me
Turns out debates don't always happen on your terms. Despite your best effort, you still learned something today.
Ah, yes, I guess if we had debated the "good parts" of Nazism then the invasion of Ukraine wouldn't have happened.
> Despite your best effort, you still learned something today.
Do you really think that's an honest debate tactic? Do you think that, when reading your last line, I will think "gee, this guy truly taught me something!" or rather dismiss your remark entirely? And do you feel your way of debating is in line with what TFA proposes, or is it possible that you are trying to "win" here, therefore rejecting the whole article?
I guess I learned this conversation is futile?
Kind of. If more time was spent deconstructing Nazism/Fascism, instead of simply repeating "Nazism bad" it would be much easier to notice it right under our (their) nose.
> I guess I learned this conversation is futile?
I'd suggest you to re-read your messages in this thread. Analyze their tone. You never attempted to have a conversation.
If you do want to switch topic to debate tactics, you should first re-read your own comments: they are full of strawman arguments, deflections, condescension and are quite demeaning in general. Hopefully acting like a butthurt teenager is a debate tactic too, not your personality.
"Despite your best effort, you still learned something today."
How would you say the above line ranks in the goal of "I hope to lose every debate" and "just listen" mindset?
Again, re-read your own comments. I've matched a fraction of your insults and you're already getting upset.
> How would you say the above line ranks in the goal of "I hope to lose every debate" and "just listen" mindset?
It doesn't rank well at all. Good thing I never claimed to have a "just listen" mindset. In fact, I said I disagree with it.
Am I upset? You sound upset yourself.
> Good thing I never claimed to have a "just listen" mindset. In fact, I said I disagree with it.
It raises the question of what you were trying to debate with me then.
Could you summarize what you think my initial comment was arguing?
In a lame "gotcha" attempt you took author's words extremely literally: "Let's see how you lose a debate against 2 x 2 = 5 believer. Haha, I'm so smart."
Now, which one do you think is more likely:
- Author meant to say that literally every debate is worth losing
- You (likely on purpose) misunderstood the point author is trying to make
What do you really think is the point author was trying to make? Can you explain in your own words?
Have you read the HN guidelines?
> You (likely on purpose) misunderstood
Ah, we have a mind reader!
> Can you explain in your own words?
I can, but I won't for you, because it would be fruitless.
No need to reply: you won. You won big time. Have a cookie.
I've always enjoyed arguing (in the sense of a polite dialogue between two who disagree). But for me, even though I enjoy arguing, being right is more important -- which includes trying to cultivate the discipline to recognise and acknowledge when my interlocutor makes a good point, and trying to understand why they think what they do.
At university, I checked out the debating club, thinking it might be a good fit for me, but I was wrong. There, the goal seemed to be purely to win, correctness be damned. I found the arguments they marshaled towards their goal to be dishonest and contrary to the goals of increasing understanding and getting to the heart of a matter.
I can see how that could be seen as a sport or competition of sorts, but I worried about the kind of habits it might form. It is too similar to the kind of arguing I enjoy that it would be easy to slip from one mode to the other if those debate club type skills were developed and honed.
I know some people are energized by debate, but I'd rather work with someone who builds my confidence rather than constantly attacks my ideas and, if those don't have any weak corners, my character and judgement. Nothing wrong with either preference, but the two shouldn't work together in my experience.
However, there are people who don't experience as much, if any, attachment or identification with "their own ideas", and instead view "debate" (or indeed, any sort of exploration of ideas, truth, and so forth) as a chance to be, to use an over-used phrase, "less wrong". It doesn't bother me if someone demonstrates to me that what I thought is wrong (as long as they do it in a way that respects me as a person), and in fact I welcome the correction (though sometimes it may be difficult to process if it is a long-held idea with wide consequences).
As usual, there's a spectrum (or two) here: a spectrum of identifying with your own ideas, and a spectrum of levels of personal respect when "debating". Certainly a very bad combination is one person with a high level of self-identification with their own ideas being debated/attack by someone who (a) has no concept that this self-identification experience is real (b) cannot engage with the ideas without criticizing the other person.
1. Co-founder who clearly signals respect and self-reflection, and who much later reveals they have a penchant for the occasional debate and dis-attachment from their own ideas.
2. A co-founder who signals they like debates in a candidate meeting.
I rankly speculate here on HN that if OP always avoids #2, not only will nothing bad happen as a result, but they will also decrease the chance of choosing a bad candidate.
I further rankly speculate this for any founder.
HN debates are fun, but they hide the fact that debate is a low-effort tool. Like drinking alcohol, it can be useful. But if it moves from being a mere implementation detail to becoming part of the API in a candidate meeting: run!
debates, even though I prefer the term discussions, are held between at least two parties.
I might sometime be the part who listens, but we can't both be listening, there will be no discussion.
So if you have something to say, say it and don't let anyone interrupt you.
Listening to what other people are saying means donating your time and attention, not everybody deserve it, there's a reason why "professional listeners" such as psychologists charge a lot of money to do it.
Most of the time people don't want to discuss, they simply want to talk about themselves.
Like the author of this piece.
I think that depends on how familiar they are with your perspective. You don't want to think of the interaction as unequal, with you taking the higher perspective of observing both their ideas and yours, appreciating and integrating them, while they only exist in their own point of view, the observed to your observer.
If they understand your perspective but you don't know theirs, it makes sense for them to do most of the talking. But if they don't understand where you're coming from, then a one-sided conversation is one-sided in a bad way. It's like looking at them through a telescope. You'll have your reactions to their ideas, but you won't have their reactions to yours, their reactions to your reactions.
This is a highly insightful take. Thanks. You nailed it.
Learning to listen may not come naturally for some of us. It's a skill that requires practice and reinforcement.
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.
This would also be the reason in settings where debate is formalized, e.g. a courtroom, there are elements of pageantry and pantomime. All playful exaggerations, nonetheless serious (because play can be serious business, look at any child absorbed in a game).
Debating as a means to avoid combat then follows quite naturally. It's sublimation of a primal instinct, channeling dangerous antagonistic behaviors into the realm of harmless play.
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.
Listening is critical to all communication (there's at least one speaker and one listener to any conversation involving one or more sentiences). I'd suggest that the goal of listening is to understand the other party, at least within the universe of their story or experience. You don't have to believe, agree, sympathise, or even empathise. You may have entirely selfish reasons for doing so (is this person a threat / kook / messiah / ...?). If we choose to listen, though, the principle goal is only occasionally seeking truth.
but if all people with this mindset, improvement never comes
Deliberately slowing conversations down to one 100th of their normal pace might produce some interesting results. In a sense, this is one of the techniques that science uses, and it seems to reliably produce excellent outcomes in fairly complicated problem spaces.
> I never want to debate, but if I had to, I would hope to lose.
I disagree (pun intended).
Debating allows you to understand your own position better, e.g. is it based on information, intuition, values, preference, experience, or bias?
And it forces another party to do the same, which allows you to better decide how to handle disagreements.
E.g. if their position is based on preference, we can agree to disagree and move on.
If it's based on a bias, I will value their opinion less.
If someone has a different knowledge, that's something we can (and should) resolve asap.
If our values are different we will never be able to resolve it and it's better to avoid conflict.
Also consider all your other options: pure listening, mutual bonding, offering emotional support, even walking away (from a no-win situation).
If / when debate falls apart, there are many options to reconnect.
Someone states their position, while you're expected to undermine their position with a retort. It is one of the least productive ways of resolving differences.
What you're describing is a lack of debate culture. A good example of that was already referred here (the infamous "so you're saying" interview).
Every discussion is not a debate. Perhaps this is what Sivers was trying to communicate, in which case, he did so rather poorly.
The examples offered all revolve around lived experiences, lifestyle preference (taste), and articles of faith, for which there really isn't much of an objective truth, let alone one which can be demonstrated through evidence and reason.
There's something to be said for simply choosing to absorb a story, to bear witness, even to validate a person's view or choices (though that last isn't necessarily always appropriate).
From my experience, some years back I encountered a ... local character ... who was known for accosting strangers on the street and ranting about various topics, generally rather fantastical. I'd seen this happen several times over the years, and one day it was my turn. After the tirade slowed, and unsure how to respond, I simply said "thank you". The transformation was immediate and profound: they were immensely grateful and their entire demeanor changed.
I don't pretend that this is universally applicable. I do know that there was no point in rational argument with the person. The circumstances were such that there was no obvious danger to myself or those around me. But I've thought more than once over the years of how a simple acknowledgement might often be an excellent choice of response.
Some debates I want to win, for the simple joy of teaching someone something new.
While it would be an optimal use of my time (from an information-theory point of view) for me to lose every debate I participate in, some debates are worth taking up for the chance to share.
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 through a viewpoint you may even call it evil. Though not comically, because everything here is still just following the forces and inventives of our economic system - profit at every non-monetary expense. If you want change, your solution needs to address systemic issues (not neccessarily abolishing capitalism, but focusing on different inventives and making other alternatives viable/profitable though taxes)
(I hope the point I picked is uncontroversial enough, but you can probably apply it to your least favorite policies of your least favorite flavor of political party, organization, movement or institution)
Our world is full of perverse incentives which are embedded into society itself. It’s been one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned.
Truly evil people are rare. Selfish people not so much. But selfish people nevertheless will generally follow the law and social convention.
Unfortunately it’s hard to change either of these things.
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 it to happen.
"Following the incentives of our economic system", so your actions are indistinguishable or worse than those of a comic book villain, *is* comically evil. Literally. The fact that so much of our economic system defends this behavior says a lot.
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.
Or to another major producer, Putin's Russia stuck in the Stalinist imperial mindset.
Pick your poison.
People won't change their mind if they don't have an open mind to begin with, or if they're not open to debate on a subject matter in the first place.
A lot of people - online and off - will engage in debate for debate's sake, even though all parties involved are not willing to change their opinion. They just want to be heard.
I mean who here would have an open mind about e.g. flat earth or whether the Holocaust actually happened (to invoke Poe's law)? I sure don't, and I don't feel guilty about it either; I don't need to consider anyone's point of view if I find their opinion morally reprehensible, and if they strongly hold those beliefs and are unwilling to accept alternatives, they're not worth the effort or time. They can go back to their echo chambers.
I'm not talking about on an individual encounter level - BS almost always loses to truth. But the percentage isn't so high that smart and/or successful people never fall for BS in their lifetime.
Especially since BS is under evolutionary pressure to be extremely believable.
That's a big part of the benefit of being part of the mainstream of knowledge. It's almost certain that large swaths of the mainstream are BS. But the mainstream is also exposed to the most criticism (at least the parts where criticism is acceptable), which means that BS tends to get filtered out more quickly as well.
In contrast, looking at "alternative" knowledge communities, they all generally have that whiff of being scammy. There's probably some truth in there, at least in some of those communities, but there's also a lot more BS.
So, I'm not saying to never lose. Losing is generally good. Just take care to make sure that you're actually losing.
This is what I worry in relation to ChatGPT. Producing quality, believable BS is currently expensive, and the price of exposing it is relatively manageable. But with ChatGPT, it will be possible to produce huge amounts of BS which will be extremely believable and simply uneconomical to critique and expose.
BS can be tailored to the audience, imagine a Wikipedia written by ChatGPT specifically for your which takes into account your own biases. It doesn't even have to be factually wrong, it can just modify the writing style, a word here and there to evoke a different sentiment, play on your personal preconceptions to move slightly your political position in a certain direction. People will claim they are immune to such subtle manipulations, but I don't believe that.
This is an important effect to note. If criticism of an idea is not socially allowed then you cannot rely on mainstreamness as a proxy for truth.
There's also another effect worth noting: if an idea is relies on building blocks outside daily experience (e.g. anything about the large scale) and requires quantification as part of the argument then its going to struggle to propagate (both the guys with the megaphones and your average Joe are bad at thinking quantatively). Incorrect ideas about the dangers of nuclear power being the classic example.
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.
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.
The point I'm making is that you should redefine "winning a debate". Learning (and hopefully coming to a consensus) is exactly what winning should mean in your head. Just altogether abandon the notion that you win by convincing the other party you're right.
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 time he shoots you down is if he thinks you don't have an explanation around some aspects of your point. But his job is done the audience can make up its own mind.
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.
I'm bothered that you describe that as a debate.
The problem is that the other definition of 'debate' is competitive and people have interests to appear correct more than to be correct.
With the JRE you seem to be saying that the guest is arguing that their ideas are correct and JR is arguing the negative but only through the use of questions and occasional direct counters to the guests argument.
Seems like a debate to me although also fits the definition of an interview.
But he leaves the direct criticism to the audience.
He will almost never use the phrases "I don't think that's correct" or similar.
Louis Theroux?
But I think Louis Theroux has a not dissimilar style.
(Unless you're asking me if I'm Louis... I'm not)
But other disagreements are on a moral level; things like racism, some people are morally bankrupt and have Strong Beliefs about what should happen with people not like them. I don't believe you can (or should) debate with people like that.
And I think that the anti-science 'debates' can also hit people on a moral level; how DARE you hold these strong beliefs that do hold up to scientific scruteny? (think flat earthers etc).