I entirely agree. This is how my philosophy class and rhetoric class were presented. One point of view at a time. Much more effective way to attempt to understand the positions without the distraction of comparison. That happened after the positions were presented.
Love this reasonable, civil format that promises to promote same in the viewing public. My only critique is of the American binary bias. Having several viewpoints would add more options, nuance, and creative challenges, potentially.
I sympathize with the experiences and your conclusions; in particular I think the civil-discourse programs mostly demonstrate that when the *goal* is to demonstrate civility (most) people can do it. But as your experience at PPD shows, that goal is contextual, and when the context is over it's very attractive to become uncivil but persuasive. The "serial debate" approach you suggest (opposing voices one at a time, not together) makes sense in some ways, but I worry that it avoids one important goal: developing arguments that listen to and respond productively to opposing arguments. I don't think there's any one perfect approach for handling these, but I think I generally favor more debates, but ones in which the audience and/or moderator can intervene; in which there are multiple disagreeing content experts; in which the time pressure is relaxed; and in which the dialogue continues past the end of the event, either through future events or through online mechanisms. Each of these focuses on rewarding evidence, good listening, and appropriate responding over strategic use of time and space.
I agree that these debates are quite useless. I attended one with a political scientist and a professor from the School of Public Health where I am studying. There will always be two sides to every issue and elegant arguments from both . But there’s no way to validate the weight of evidence in favour of one or the other during live debate, and there’s no guiding principal for how we wish to resolve the disconnect, such as considering planetary health or considering marginalized people, etc.. Everyone just chooses the statistics that make their argument sound the best, and very few consider whether their ideas are good for the majority of people, or only a small handful of elites. I find that the ideals and worldviews of the debaters are incompatible with each other. It’s like they’re speaking a different language and seeing a different reality, because they are and they do. Maybe an LLM can rephrase ourselves and highlight the common ground. There are a lot of things wrong on this planet and a lot of people suffering, and we need a hero to unite us in moving forward. I just didn’t expect that hero to be AI. Bring it on. I’m ready for the revolution.
I entirely agree. This is how my philosophy class and rhetoric class were presented. One point of view at a time. Much more effective way to attempt to understand the positions without the distraction of comparison. That happened after the positions were presented.
Love this reasonable, civil format that promises to promote same in the viewing public. My only critique is of the American binary bias. Having several viewpoints would add more options, nuance, and creative challenges, potentially.
Amen to that. There's no reason why you only need two talks about anything.
I sympathize with the experiences and your conclusions; in particular I think the civil-discourse programs mostly demonstrate that when the *goal* is to demonstrate civility (most) people can do it. But as your experience at PPD shows, that goal is contextual, and when the context is over it's very attractive to become uncivil but persuasive. The "serial debate" approach you suggest (opposing voices one at a time, not together) makes sense in some ways, but I worry that it avoids one important goal: developing arguments that listen to and respond productively to opposing arguments. I don't think there's any one perfect approach for handling these, but I think I generally favor more debates, but ones in which the audience and/or moderator can intervene; in which there are multiple disagreeing content experts; in which the time pressure is relaxed; and in which the dialogue continues past the end of the event, either through future events or through online mechanisms. Each of these focuses on rewarding evidence, good listening, and appropriate responding over strategic use of time and space.
I agree that these debates are quite useless. I attended one with a political scientist and a professor from the School of Public Health where I am studying. There will always be two sides to every issue and elegant arguments from both . But there’s no way to validate the weight of evidence in favour of one or the other during live debate, and there’s no guiding principal for how we wish to resolve the disconnect, such as considering planetary health or considering marginalized people, etc.. Everyone just chooses the statistics that make their argument sound the best, and very few consider whether their ideas are good for the majority of people, or only a small handful of elites. I find that the ideals and worldviews of the debaters are incompatible with each other. It’s like they’re speaking a different language and seeing a different reality, because they are and they do. Maybe an LLM can rephrase ourselves and highlight the common ground. There are a lot of things wrong on this planet and a lot of people suffering, and we need a hero to unite us in moving forward. I just didn’t expect that hero to be AI. Bring it on. I’m ready for the revolution.