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rawstorm posted:If two people are arguing, it is because they misunderstand each other, or they disagree at a fundamental level. Or they are just arguing for fun. This is the most intelligent thing I've read all week, and I just finished an article on the theory behind triaxial induction logging of resistivity in oil well formations. This fact is what ultimately burned me out on competitive debate after 4 years on the high school circuit back in the day. After a certain level of intellectual and technical competency on the parts of the debaters, the decision lies entirely in the hands of the judge's preconceived preferences on style and philosophy. That's a clusterfuck, and real-life debates don't even have such an arbitrary judge. How can you expect them to be "perfect," let alone useful for the participants? Two rational people can take the same set of facts and use similar lines of logic to come to radically different conclusions, which should not be possible in a coherent system. The disagreement arises because all people start with fundamental assumptions about values which are either too vague or too intangible to be rationally debatable. "Freedom vs Safety" is a pretty classic example of an argument in which both sides can be equally honest, informed, and rational, and have there be no clear way to come to any sort of agreement aside from "well, it depends on the situation." What topic can we find that has no arbitrary value-based component, yet is subject to debate, i.e. considerations aside from basic facts and figures? I assert that there are few or no topics which are both devoid of inarguable value-based statements, and also subject to more than formal/axiomatic logic. I think what A.N.42 is really suggesting is that we have a dispassionate debate over an issue about which no one involved is emotionally invested. I think that's the necessary condition for an intellectually-honest, "perfect" debate. And that, my friends, is an extremely uninteresting debate.
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Dec 20, 2008 03:15
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:45 |
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