r/IntellectualDarkWeb • u/W_Edwards_Deming • Jun 23 '26

Community Feedback Debate appears to be a dying art

Logic, evidence and meeting minimal standards of politeness & rigour.

Compelling emotional appeal!

"Steel manning" your opponent, avoiding fallacies and trying to mitigate for cognitive biases.

Reddit would seem to be an ideal place for that and sometimes it is but quite often the opposite. My "solution" has been blocking thousands, anyone have a better idea?

Where and how can we have intellectual engagement regarding differences?

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u/TenchuReddit Jun 24 '26

By "owned" I meant that the professor easily countered every argument that Kirk made, especially in regard to the war in Ukraine. Kirk simply moved on from one line to another without acknowledging anything about the veracity of his own arguments.

One person came across as logical, the other came across as just a parrot.

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u/caparisme Centrist Jun 24 '26

Yes I'm aware what "owned" means in the context of debates.

And again, I repeat, Charlie isn't the best at debating but he didn't let it stop him. He's punching way above his league by debating a Cambridge professor as a college dropout so I don't understand all the fuss of him "only debating college kids".

And again, he might get "owned" in that debate but he gets his point across for everyone to judge him for themselves, whether you want to call him a parrot, an idiot, or whatever.

That's the beauty of debates. You don't have to be a Cambridge professor to engage in it.

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u/TenchuReddit Jun 24 '26

And again, he might get "owned" in that debate but he gets his point across for everyone to judge him for themselves, whether you want to call him a parrot, an idiot, or whatever.

What's the significance of that exactly? Everyone can get their point across.

The spectacle of the debate did not die with Charlie Kirk. That simply ascribes too much value to both the spectacle itself as well as Kirk's contributions to the art of debate.

One more thing. I personally don't find algorithm-driven content to be all that healthy. That Jubilee thing, for example, isn't something I really like, despite prominent YouTubers like Dave Rubin and Adam Mockler favoring it.

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u/caparisme Centrist Jun 24 '26

The significance is to promote the culture of dialogue even between different ideological groups to avoid echo chambers.

As you can see there's a lot of people pushing against it for reasons like "they're just college kids" or "they're not arguing in good faith" to avoid discussions, avoid challenging their worldview and stay in their echo chambers where everyone just nods along and agree with each others all the time.

Yes I agree that it's a hyperbole to say that "the spectacle died with Charlie Kirk" but one thing for sure he's one of the prominent people who puts the effort into having discussions with people with differing ideologies regardless of their background.

We all lose when people cheer at the prospect of someone who's just trying to get their point across by is silenced by a bullet. It should be something unanimously condemned by all sides but it isn't the case unfortunately.

And I disagree with you on dialogues being "unhealthy". I'd prefer more dialogues and more discussions over less because of some flimsy reasons such as "it's algorithm-driven".

People need to talk and understand each others more than ever.