A fabulous subject for raising with the competitive. Debate, long used to determine who has the better argument, who’s in the stronger position… however isn’t it all just meaningless hocus pocus which could just as easily be replaced by the pudgel stick system from the TV series Gladiators.
In a debate there are manoeuvres and tactics designed to lead your opponent down a certain path so you can verbally and mentally ambush them later with your killer come back. There’s winners and losers and people deciding this fate sitting as impartial judges on the process. But isn’t this a logical process? Aren’t the great debaters seen as having sharp minds and an excellent grasp of logic?
A bunch of hooey… and I’m only being polite because this is public.
If a debate is to decide whom has the strongest argument then riddle me this, what precisely has this to do with whomever is presenting the idea? If I debated the ideals of socialism against a right wing extremist who happens to be a prize winning mind then it is very conceivable if not inevitable that he would win the debate. What does this say about his argument?
Let’s consult logic then shall we, the two debaters know they are going to be debating their pet projects and know the enemy they’ll be debating against and the details of their idea. So it should be fairly easy to predict what they will bring up and the counter points which will sink their argument. So there fore your idea is better if it’s points sink your opponents ideas right? Well yes that’s logical as long as the points involve proofs and objectivity. If they are not objective, measurable and provable then logic would not be sufficient to answer. Yes an INTP just said that logic was insufficient… get over it 
Logic works as a process and in cases where the information was not provable then any answer it leads to is similarly constrained. Logic itself is often mistaken for proof or a result in and of itself where as in truth it is merely a means of going from a certain pool of information to an answer in a fashion which is communicable to others and should make sense to everyone, in other words it’s a standard. If you say that a persons argument is logical, if you’re correct, then all you have actually said is that their conclusion follows on from their information in a logical fashion. Not exactly the be all and end all it’s often made out to be.
So if you can’t rely on logic to tell you whether what they’re saying is actually true or not and you most certainly can’t rely on what the people say as a persuasive person will make more headway than someone who’s perhaps brilliant but socially unskilled how can you decide who wins debates and whom to believe?
Well that’s the kicker, you can’t. I’ve often said that certainty is for idiots and this is one reason why.
In the wider world of political issues and big decisions it pays to remember to not only listen for what sounds like the best idea but also to ask why it seems like the best idea. Whether or not the speaker is relaying the information well and is formulating a decent argument is not as important as forming your own idea from what you glean from what they said. To cut out the spin and to get past the presentation to the information is a hard and error fraught process but to choose the easy route and simply to believe or disbelieve the points presented based on some personal intuition or read of the context is to invite deceit and redundancy. Even in the passive activity of reading the news you are engaging in forming politics. Put down the papers which spoon feed and take up those with in depth analysis and the government will change it’s interaction style to suit. In fact I guess you could blame the current spate of spin doctors and image on the world interest in stars and their lifestyles. After all who really thinks that politicians are that interesting? Their own mothers?? Perhaps.
So next time you’re watching two people bat the conversation back and forth in combative manner, try to see if there’s a point in there somewhere. Are they just butting heads in a verbal form of combat for their own amusement and ego, or is there some point to this?
