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Debate Guide


snow

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Debating

 

All debate whether on or offline, verbal or written is considered by many to be an art form, for the majority of forum members the discussion or debate forum is a place where they can express their opinions on a wide variety of subjects. However, of all the places on a forum the discussion areas are the place where people fall into some very common behaviour patterns and some very common debate errors. Usually because they allow their emotions to over ride their reasoning or even dictate their reasoning.

 

What tends to make this even problematic is that many people feel that debate is some kind of “must win by any and all means competition” rather than an opportunity to learn, share experiences and reach a common understanding.

 

One of the commonest mistakes I see people making is reacting, when this occurs rather than constructing a logical and reasoned argument based on the facts and information before them, emotion clouds the issue and the rebuttal is constructed around the emotional trigger rather than the facts. Transference plays a major part in this type of response; it’s more about what is going on for the writer, or what raw nerve the poster touched than about the context. For example, as I have posted elsewhere, how we “hear” the written words in our head plays a huge part in whether the actual words themselves are offensive or insulting to the individual reader.

 

Then too there are the fallacies, these tend to litter debates, yet go unrecognised by the less experienced debaters, which allow a more experienced person to attempt to use these techniques to “win their point”. On dedicated debate forums, they would quite often be pulled up and challenged on each and every fallacy, which for those less familiar with such tactics can leave one completely bewildered, and wondering where the topic went *laughs*.

 

Some of the more common fallacies which often crop up in online debates are:

 

An ad hominem argument or attack; literally from the Latin this translates as "argument against the person" or in other words attacking the messenger rather than the message.

 

Irrelevant Conclusions; instead of addressing the fact or opinion expressed which they dispute the poster attempts to divert attention to some fact or opinion that has not even been stated. There are various methods that can be used, appeal to sentiment, appeals to fears, commonalities, political correctness, peer pressure etc. You may recognise this type of technique by its more common names “smoke & mirrors” and “muddying the waters”. Essentially it’s a distraction technique, and once you learn to recognise this particular one, then you’ll find it much easier to ignore and stick to your point.

 

Argumentum Verbosium or Argumentum Ad Nausea; more commonly called blitzing, or blitzkrieg, essentially its posting reams and reams of “fact” often with links to sources which the poster knows won’t be followed simply because of the boredom factor, thus they can claim to be right even when the evidence does not support what they have asserted. They depend on the glazed eyes and often limited time of their readers, so that they “give up” and thus by default leave the poster the “winner”.

 

“Accent” now this one is widely used in oral debate, it’s the way of saying something completely innocuous in such a way as to make it sound the opposite of the words actual meaning. Online this is often used by posters who will intentionally chose to put words together which on the face of it seem to say one thing, usually something innocent, knowing full well that certain individuals reading the thread are going to “hear” quite a different tone and meaning. Most clever flamers and trolls will have mastered this technique and honed the skill to a very fine art indeed. The counter to this is to practice reading the words out loud using many different “voices” some of which will undoubtedly remove the emotional trigger response. It’s extremely hard to counter this one as each individual will have read the words and heard them differently; you are then playing into the hands of the original poster by reacting emotionally. They have won that point. Conversely, some posters will choose to hear your words in quite the opposite way to your intent when writing them; this is another form of the “distraction technique”. If you allow yourself to be provoked into trying to defend yourself then the debate has been successfully derailed.

 

Generalisations; there are dozens of different types, but the ones you tend to see more often than not are “hasty” – aka “leaping to a conclusions” essentially it’s reading one or perhaps 2 posts and asserting that the views presented by those 2 individuals represent the opinion of everyone in the discussion. Next we have “biased” these are assertions presented as facts whereby the poster claims to be representing the opinions of many others, none of whom will ever be named because e.g. “they prefer not to get publicly involved”. Even where they are able to produce others to back their argument, it is invariably because they have deliberately chosen to seek out those they already know they could count on rather than an unbiased control group formed from a cross section of the posters in the discussion.

 

Strawman; of all the various fallacies I see used in online debates this one is perhaps the commonest. This is where the poster completely ignores their opponent’s actual statements and position in favour of debating a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresentation of what has been said.

 

Red herring: probably the second commonest used distraction technique; this is the introduction of something completely irrelevant to the current discussion in an attempt to divert attention from the original issue.

 

Appeals to emotions; pretty self explanatory really, it is an attempt to trigger emotions in others and manipulate those emotions so that they respond and react in the manner which the poster intended. Again a distraction technique as it once again takes the focus away from the actual discussion and ensures that the poster doesn’t need to provide any evidence to back up their claims. Everyone is far too busy responding to the emotions, I see this one often online, commonest emotion played upon is guilt.

 

Peer Pressure aka grandstanding or playing to the gallery; this one works because most of us do not feel comfortable being portrayed as someone that’s not very nice, or we are associated with views which the majority find uncomfortable or not politically correct. Hence by grandstanding and seemingly obtaining majority support, the opponent is not only isolated, but very often emotionally blackmailed into publicly renouncing their position, even if they genuinely still believe in it. Once again the individual rather than the content is under attack.

 

As a general rule in debating, it is best to concentrate solely upon the content of the post, the facts and assertions as opposed to who made it or the way in which they stated their argument. It is the evidence and content which determines the truth or reality of the claims made and not the personality of the person making them. That way you can hopefully avoid being distracted or emotionally manipulated to your disadvantage.

 

Happy debating!!

 

Snow :flowers:

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