What's good debating?
Is evading a point evidence of good debating skills?
I've read some brilliant debates online, but one thing I'm struck with is how many ways one can avoid addressing the issue.
For instance, someone says:
I think X, Y, and Z.Another person says:
You're wrong about X and Y [gives reasons why].The original person responds with:
Furthermore you haven't even considered the issue of A.
I'm not wrong about X and Y, and I'm giving a very detailed explanation of why, with some very snappy and yet elegant prose, all the while ignoring your point about A.Another person says:
Oh, yes, I see your point, well made. But what about A, which is really very important to the issue at hand?Original person:
[...]There's a certain brilliance to being able to successfully deflect and misdirect in order to win an argument. Lawyers do this all the time. People in debating societies do this, in order to win the debate. And it's considered good debating, because you want to win at all costs.
Did I mention how important Z is?
But in an online context, is evasion a good debating skill?
3 comments:
This may be why I've never cared for the idea of debating. I don't feel that it's particularly useful to try to "win" an argument. Subtlety gets lost, good information gets lost or shunted aside (as with the evasion technique), and it's all more focused on competition than on everyone in the conversation learning something.
I don't know that I'd consider the debaters separate emphasis on Z and A as evasion (ignoring the presented evidence for and against X and Y, though, would probably qualify). Sometimes different premises result in different fact-sets being important, and the fact that they are going in different directions suggests that they really didn't start in the same place, either.
I did the tiniest bit of formal debating in HS, and the best advice I ever got came from my father: "He who defines the terms wins the debate." In this case, it seems like you've got interlocuters who haven't agreed on terms, or even debated them, yet.
If the other person wants to change the focus of the discussion, there are graceful ways of admitting to it. I was part of a discussion that took a turn here and became a debate. When the commenter, Peter, wanted to change topics, he kindly wrote: "You raise some vital points in challenging my line of argumentation, which has the effect of forcing me to take a somewhat different tack."
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