F Al
F Al
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

So, your “right way to hold a debate” is not to argue about things already proven to be true, in the first place. Incidentally, those happen to be your own beliefs.

By this token, the only thing that’s left to debate about are the other party’s ideas. And since we already know that you are right, they can only be wrong. All the time.

I agree that a public healthcare, for instance, is better for society than a private one. That just means that I find the pros of public healthcare better than the cons — according to my own sets of values.

You are doing debate wrong because you are not willing to put under scrutiny the set of values you use to determine “correct” from “mistaken”. That just means that, according to you, the only things worth debating about are things that people other than you have gotten wrong.

That is bullshit of the highest order.

Being honest about debating means being willing to put your own assumptions, data, beliefs to the test against the opposing side’s. If you are refusing to do that, you are not having a debate.

If we didn’t go about questioning things that have been proven to be true, as you claim, slavery would still be legal to this day, Earth would be flat and that sitting center of the universe and women should listen to their husbands.

When you are debating you aren’t trying to dismantle the opposing side’s ideas. That’s just a byproduct, that hinges on the other side admitting that they have come short. It’s something over which you’ve got no control whatsoever.

When you are debating you are bringing down the hammer upon your own ideas.

If they come out of it broken, or chipped (provided that you’ve got the honesty to admit it) then you have the moral obligation to go back and revisit your assumptions, no matter how dear you held them.

A place where some things are not up for debate is a totalitarian regime.

Everything is up for debate. At all times. It’s how we’ve gotten as far as we did, by putting the Truth under scrutiny.

It’s one of the principles of modern science. If you can prove something wrong, go ahead, show us.

It’s funny, though. All of the things I said above I thought didn’t need any debating whatsoever.

Turns out I was just as mistaken as you are.

    F Al

    Written by

    F Al