The Flow of a Debate
As much as I enjoy the process of debating, the goal of argument is, in my opinion, to arrive at truth, or if that can’t happen, at least get to the point where both points of view are understood and agree to disagree. The latter ideally only happening in certain cases, for example when there is not enough data to form a conclusion or when there is a moral dilemma where the desired outcome is a reflection of values rather than an objective good/bad judgement.
I’m not a big fan of formal debate. I don’t see much of a purpose in being tied to a set format or being judged on style or debating an issue you don’t agree with just for the sake of debate. If the ultimate goal isn’t to arrive at a conclusion, to actually convince someone or to at least cause them to seriously consider changing their point of view on a subject, then I think there are better things to do with your time.
Something I haven’t found online however is a format where debates can take place with some constraints but with the ultimate purpose of discovering the truth.
I’ve thought a lot over the last year about creating a forum online where this type of debate can be facilitated in such a way that intelligent debate can take place in a fairly structured environment, but that would still be fun. After thinking along those lines, this morning I created the following chart illustrating a possible flow for a debate. Yellow is the debate initiator, blue the opposition and the rounded rectangles are where the debate/argument (or in certain cases a ’round’ of the debate) ends in possible outcomes. I’m considering creating some type of web application where I could test and refine this flow.
Convinceme.net is a new site dedicated to debate that I think is decent idea, but if the type content that is on there now is any indication of how the site is going to end up, it’s definitely not what I had in mind. I also think their debates are too loosely structured and the idea of having anyone in the public judge any debate definitely is not going to work. Most people will just vote for whatever they thought before they read the debate if they bother reading it at all. Despite the flaws, kudos to the creators for the work they’ve done, and hopefully it will get to a point where it’s useful but it’s not there yet.
I also found another good resource on formal debates that has helped give me ideas for structuring an online debate. It’s a full book written by an experienced formal debater.
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