My experience at DDO

Miscellaneous General
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Common wisdom is that even if you can’t convince your opponent, you are arguing for the benefit of the audience. I have come to believe this is much less favorable is usually imagined.

For a couple of months, I’ve been at debate.org. I’ve had 7 debates. The debates are judged by whoever. This is a good example of a time when you probably can’t convince your opponent, but your goal is to appeal to an audience. The end result is revealed when people in the audience vote, so it gives an insight into what goes on in people’s heads when they observe arguments.

So what are the results? Here is what happens. You can beat your opponent. I mean really clobber them to within an inch of life. You can hit back every one of their arguments with 3 strong counter arguments. They can fail to address 95% of your case and be completely off topic. Don’t think I’m exaggerating. It happens all the time.

And then, people don’t vote for you. They side with the other guy. Why? Because while listening, they thought up with an argument that you didn’t address. You can address all your opponent’s arguments, but you’re not psychic, so you can’t address the arguments the audience makes up. For example:

A: The war in iraq is stupid because it kills lots of people
B: But it stabilizes the middle east for democracy
A: No it doesn’t. There is political chaos now forever and ever. Also, it kills people.

Audience: “But Saddam was bad” “What about the oil?” “What about Israel?” “What about 9-11?” “What about my uncle who’s over there?”

Those are all dumb things for the audience to think. You could rebutt them in 10 seconds, but you can’t because you’re not arguing with them and you’re not psychic. The end result is that the audience thinks what it thought before.

I mean really - how many debates have you seen between free markets and socialism? Both sides have probably won flawless victories against each other. Does it convince anyone? No. Because the times when free marketers lose I’m thinking “damn the free market guy didn’t say X”. But maybe the socialist could have rebutted it!

So the audience can always run away from the truth. They can hide behind hypothetical arguments that never ocurred in the argument. You have to draw people out into a 1 on 1 debate so that THEY can see that THEIR arguments don’t work.

Sorry to be so pessimistic, but I have to be honest about the limits of discourse. People are outrageous and incorrigible. The human race has cognitive dissonance. It must be engaged directly.

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And even then they won’t agree with you. You shouldn’t allow yourself to be convinced of something you don’t believe in one sitting. If we were to live like that, we would get tricked all the time. Skepticism is good and needs time to overcome. You can convince people who sit on the fence, but even that victory might be temporary since they can revert later.

BTW, that site sounds interesting.

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That’s the moral of the story.

Good job on getting out there and debating. It helps with the few open-minded people who haven’t heard such arguments before. Most readers are often quiet, and you don’t know they’re there. But the debate will be read again and again by people who are interested.

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The point is that to change minds you have to get out there and engage people. You can’t let anyone be part of the audience. In the audience, they can argue against you in their heads and you can’t fight back because you’re not psychic and you’re not debating them.

Think about it. There’s probably someone who’s an amazing debater who can beat basically anyone. Why haven’t we heard of them? Why haven’t we heard of ANY amazing debaters? Because convincing people is a psychological, not an intellectual feat. Liberal audiences would be completely unphased if they saw Maddow get owned by Block.

Audiences fantasize about arguments that can maintain their beliefs. We all do it. That’s why Maddow doesn’t bug me. Because she’s not addressing MY arguments. Its all highly personal. You have to get people in the ring and prove to THEM that THEY are wrong to make any headway.

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And the more you surpress this urge and cast doubt on things you “know” the more you can learn.

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You’ll either have people who debate on an appeal of logic, those who debate with intelligence, and those who make the appeal to emotion, and if the audience is registered for an appeal to emotion, and not intelligence, then the best argument will lose to someone who ran with the best rhetoric they could. I believe that a majority of people are like this. They run with emotion instead of what can actually be explained in a scientific way. I could explain why the min wage and unions hurt workers all day to someone who’s for those things, but if I don’t trigger their emotions they will still go on with their ways.

In debates it does happen to be the audience will come up with something you didn’t address, even the most trivial things they believe to be important, and if you didn’t address it, you’re null and void. This is one of the blunders of debating on something like a public forum (or in public). Emotional outcry is an annoyance. I don’t know how many times I had to question someones stance on FaceBook (or any other website or open forum) and get battered with the most ridiculous statements.

For example, not too long ago, a friend posted she was going vegetarian, and I, being vegetarian, mentioned a couple things to her about it, and then you have 5 people jumping in providing “insight” trying to debate with me about it. Two asinine responses were (on organically grown food) “Since all food is sprayed with pesticides you’re still eating chemicals so it doesn’t matter” and “If we don’t eat meat the cows will over populate”. No matter how much I could explain factory farming (or farming in general since one person believed all food is sprayed with chemicals regardless of who grows it) they would still believe I’m wrong.

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THIS.

You’ve articulated something that I’ve felt for a long time. Almost everyone debates for two general reasons. Either they want to feel superior to their opponents or they want to appeal to their audiences. Very few people try to engage their opponents directly, audience be damned. I’m one of them.

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The way you go at people is irrelevant to congitive dissonance. Most people enter arguments in which they either have a vested material interested in the position that they began with being true or it makes no difference to their lives at all. In the latter case they have nothing to gain by changing their minds, buyt they do have to lose some face by the admission. As long as you can get by being wrong, wrongs there will be. In other words, debate audiences are largely there for positive psychological reinforcement.

In any case that you expect smart as the rule rather than the exception you will be disappointed. Learn to live for the needles, not the haystacks.

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Yeah for a while I had been contemplating leaving the community. Instead, I’m going to stay and not worry about whether people give me the win. I am lucky to win any debates on anarchy. And its no longer about the audience. You can’t reach them for reasons articulated above. I’ve had rounds where I lost but my opponent gains (sometimes great) respect for me. That’s the goal.

One by one…

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Check out this student debate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb07gcu-qSc

Although the socialist/anti-capitalist debater clearly won this debate, as a member of the (online) audience I do not come away believing him to be correct. I simply come away with the awareness that the guy defending capitalism was a useless debater! It’s frustrating to watch.

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isn’t it a perfect example how democracy is flawed? :smiley: People vote.. jesus christ…it’s idiotic. Have you seen votes on IMDB? Many good movies are voted down with 1s and 2s… that’s power democracy.

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My main goal in arguments is selfish pursuit of knowledge. If the opponent “wins”, I win by adjusting my position to a stronger one. If the opponent “loses”, I win by confirming the strength of my position.

Win/lose (1/0) determinations are meaningless. Speaking for myself, ideas and concepts (and combinations thereof) need to simmer in my mind for a period of time before a new, original, and complex position starts to develop. This process takes time and is never a result of a crisp “win” or “loss” at a specific time or place (a debate).

Similarly, it is unrealistic to expect that opponents or audiences would drastically change positions during/after a debate. The best you could hope for is that your genuine search for knowledge is recognized as such by your opponent/audience and that your arguments plant ideas/concepts in their minds which they can develop further on their own.

Opponents with motives like the ones described above are rare and should be respected and cherished in a debate.

Just some thoughts…

Z.

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You call it idiotic I call it subjective valuation. Not all people have to and do like what you do for many reasons and to call them idiotic for that is not very mature and leads to nowhere.

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To answer Sieben’s original post I will say this: If you have an audience you will likely not change anyone’s mind, but even if you can light a tiny spark in their mind that they will perhaps draw upon at a later date that would be a small victory (unknowing to you of course) for you and them. I do not post a whole lot on this forum, but I do follow it almost daily and you and a few others words do carry weight as I think your posts always provoke thought. If your arguements are too heavy for some people to carry and chew on for a while then there is nothing you can obviously do about that. Keep debating like you said. At least it will keep you sharp

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I worded it wrongly, yeah, but the point is voting doesn’t work. And one of the reason’s it doesn’t work because it denies subjective valuation. You just proved my point.

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“Debating brings plenty of heat, but not too much light.”- Yusuf Estes

I have always felt that talking to people without trying to “win” changes minds more then debates. I think the reason behind this is, in debates, the two sides tend to want to win a debate, instead of hear the other persons argument. It goes from understanding opinions to sport.

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