I like disagreement because it forces both sides to question their own opinions and why they feel that way.
~ Sam Hunt
I like Disagreement
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When I was a kid in small town Silver City — before we moved to Albuquerque in 1965 after the VA Hospital in Fort Bayard was shut down, and mom was reassigned to the the VA in Albuquerque — I stumbled across a real debate team going through their paces.
A real debate team is made up of three parts, Pro, Con, the audience, with all of them equally aware of the issues under debate.
Everyone prepares for the debate. When the time comes a coin is flipped to choose who is Pro and who is Con. If you find yourself on the wrong side of the debate, and try to cheat, the audience sees it and scores penalty points.
– You don’t attend a debate to learn something new, you attend a debate to focus your understanding.
I have never seen a real debate since. Not even on PBS. When you watch a so called debate from Intelligence Squared, you see how the so called debate is rigged by the way the audience scores the “debate”. The audience votes at the start and at the end. The side with the greatest change wins the “debate”. In reality the audience lies at the start, then votes their real opinion at the end, and thus rigs the “debate”.
Amazon Is The Reader’s Friend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwEAYIEIHAU
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching John Donvan running the show, but that is not a debate.
When someone says, “I want to debate you,” they actually mean they want to simply argue with you. An “argument” is when one or both sides are ignorant of the facts.
Yes, a real debate is filled with “arguments” but they are not done from ignorance, otherwise the informed audience scores points against you. If everyone is ignorant of the issues, Pro, Con, audience, then it’s just a food fight. HA!
I don’t know the context of this remark but on the face of it it seems like wishful thinking. It’s more likely that both sides will just shout louder and that no minds will be changed.
At least PV is a bit more civilized though I’m not sure how many minds are changed.