The Debate Gladiator Arena
Worthy competition
You must accept challenges from worthy competition and win. You must face the Devil's advocate.
The neutral turf
You must win on neutral turf, in a fair game.
Devil's advocate
You should treat the opposing team respectfully. You should respect the devil's advocate.
Don't hate the devil's advocate if he kicks your ass. He's doing his job.
Be sportsmanlike.
Don't straw-man the opposition.
Defend the title
If you win, you must defend the title against challengers. New data roll
in. Science advances and paradigms change.
If you refuse challenges, then some other jerk will declare himself the champion and
refuse challenges from you.
Debate formats
You need multiple formats of debate, for example:
(*) Neutral debate, with no moderator. Each side gets to invite half the audience.
(*) Seminar. A speaker delivers an argument in detail. The opposition may ask questions, but
the speaker is dictator and moderator. The speaker may silence anyone.
(*) Sermon. A speaker delivers an argument in detail, with no interruptions. The presentation is a
polished work of art, like a movie.
This totals 7 debates. A neutral debate, a seminar for each side, and a sermon for each side.
A seminar has 2 stages. In stage 1, questions are allowed but they should be
synergistic with the speaker's case. It's inappropriate to attack the speaker's
case during stage 1. Stage 2 is for attacks on the speaker's case.
The sermons should happen first, then the seminars, and then the neutral
debate. By the time of the debate, both teams should be aware of the other
team's case, and of the other team's rebuttals to your case. If you don't do
this, you're wasting the time of the audience.
Chess clocks
Moderators are rarely neutral. Do away with them and use chess clocks to limit the total time
that each speaker may speak.
Lincoln-Douglas debates
The Lincoln-Douglas debates didn't have a moderator and there was ample time
for rebuttal. Each side got 1.5 hours to speak and there were 9 debates. If you
fib, the other candidate had plenty of chances to zap you for it.
The newspapers printed what each candidate said. Partisan newspapers tended to
polish the grammar of their candidate and leave the other candidate's words
raw, but they would still print the other candidate's words. Today, censorship
abounds.
Oversimplification
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| Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
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Much to learn, you still have |
Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers |
Embrace complexity and raise the level of the game.
You can't solve complex problems with simple tools.
If a problem is simple, you have to prove it's simple, and this usually requires complex analysis.
You can't escape complexity.
"Complexity deniers" refuse to accept the existence of complexity. They assume that everything that
matters is easily understood. They refuse to study and are therefore negligent.
Cherry picking
Cherry picking is considering only a subset of the data. Know all the data. Be a forest, not
a tree.
Straw man foul
To "straw man" is to make a negative assumption. Call out the assumption and call out the bias.
You want to win convincingly. If you have no choice but to assume, lean to the
positive. Lean toward complexity, not simplicity. Use the "steel man" strategy.
To straw-man is to assume guilty until proven innocent.
Rebuttal
You must think many moves ahead. Plan in advance for the rebuttal.
You must respectfully allow the opposition to rebut your statements.
Chances are that the foe has already published rebuttals to your arguments before the debate.
If you don't study them, you are negligent. You're wasting the audience's time.
Scientific revolution
Mario Andretti: If things seem under control, you're just not going fast enough.
If things seem well understood, you're just not discovering fast enough. If things are going
well, things feel chaotic and there is little consensus.
A field should have frequent paradigm revolutions, otherwise it's stagnant.
It's okay to challenge the consensus. Science requires it.
Science values discoveries that are ahead of their time. Be far ahead of the pack.
Don't fret about what's right or wrong today. What matters is knowing the right direction to
go. You want your hard work to pay off.
Honor
Thomas Payne: He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
It's more important to be honest than inoffensive.
Don't be a wuss. Don't be a crybully. Science doesn't care if you're offended.
Raconteurship
Conversation is a team sport. Be a team player and make the people around you more interesting.
Pass the conversational ball. Give other people a chance to lead the topic. Support other people's topics.
Be a human therapy animal.
Theory and experiment
Science needs both theory and experiment, and there needs to be synergy between them.
Experiments alone are not enough. Facts alone are not enough. If someone is bullying you with
facts, chances are that his theory is weak.
Theory tells you where to look for better facts. Theory doesn't just interpret experiments.
It guides them as well.
Fact checkers usually cherry pick.
Fact checkers are widely mocked. If fact checkers are your best card, you should fold. Find better cards.
Wizards check facts themselves.
Not even wrong
It's not about right or wrong. It's about specific or vague.
If you are vague, you are not even wrong.
You are "more than right" if your theory proves to be worth study.
What counts is knowing the direction of the next discovery. You want your hard work to
pay off. If you don't have good guidence from theory, your hard work will become obsolete.
Do the reading
You should study the opposition's case before the debate, otherwise you're wasting the
audience's time and you're being negligent.
Dr. Jay's debate rules
The goal is to be entertaining. Be jovial and be polite to the foes. Have good conversational
chemstry and be synergistic to the conversation.
After the debate, we're going drinking, and that's why only fun people are invited to debate.
The following are disallowed:
Personal attacks
Straw man attacks
Assumptions about the personal character of the opposition
Crybullying. Crybullies will be mocked for acting like babies.
Gish gallop
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