There are definitely people who have spent orders of magnitude more time thinking about the topic of debate than myself; but I daresay the majority of folk have thought about it less than me. From my particular vantage point and life-experience, it seems clear that publicly arguing about a topic is a really poor way of raising the level of discourse and understanding on that topic. Imagine if, in science, instead of papers and conferences we had public debates, where scientists were expected to engage in a ceaseless half-thought out back-and-forth superficial point-scrabbling style policy debate. It would be a nightmare—I mean, I hope that’s obvious. For some reason this is a preferred mode of political dialogue.
For some reason this is a preferred mode of political dialogue.
The reason is pretty obvious. The goal of the participants in a political dialogue is to become more liked and to make competitors less liked. It has nothing to do with “raising the level of discourse and understanding on that topic”—that’s just NOT the point of the exercise.
That’s a great point! So what if someone held a “written debate”? Where the candidates outlined a dependency tree of their claims, and went through each of them logically?
For a politician to be interested in doing something, it has to translate into political power. How many voters would traverse a logical dependency tree?
Not many. But consider this: it might lead to a lot of academics and journalists doing analysis, which might lead to news stories that the general public would pay attention to.
My impression of US politics is that academics and journalists, like everyone else, either have their bottom line already written (i.e. they search for arguments to help their party) or the facts and science themselves become politicized (how do you win with facts if voters deliberately vote against facts?)
If two opposing beliefs are affiliated with the two parties, one of the beliefs being objectively true makes surprisingly little difference, because they are only being used as attire in the first place. At best you get one party labelled as more pro-science than the other. And even then most people think “anti-science” means “anti-scientist-funding”, not “anti-truth” or “anti-objectively-correct-policies”.
It’s not really expected for people to base their opinions on major issues just on what they hear in a debate. But as a source of information for citizens to use to help them improve their decision-making process about which candidate to vote for, it seems reasonably effective to me. Both candidate give their stances on all the major issues, and it communicates to the voters where the candidates stand on them all, a little bit about why they think that and what some major arguments are, and also what the major issues are thought to be in the upcoming election.
Offhand I can’t think of a more cost-efficient and time-efficient way to learn a little bit about the political stances of all the candidates on all the major issues then watching a 90 minute debate. That shouldn’t be your only source of information, of course, but I think it a very useful starting point for a voter to then do more research on their own.
Offhand I can’t think of a more cost-efficient and time-efficient way to learn a little bit about the political stances of all the candidates on all the major issues then watching a 90 minute debate.
It’s interesting to which degree our views differ.
I would call watching a 90-minute debate to be among the least useful, never mind time-efficient, ways to learn about the political stances of the candidates.
I view it as a useful way to find out what the currently stated political stance of a candidate is. Once you know that, then if it’s an issue you care about, you can take some time and look into the candidate’s background and see if his record matches his current political stance. It’s also worthwhile to use to keep track of a candidate’s positions and see how they change over time based on the next state to have a primary election or from the primary season to the general election season; every politician has some issues he is firm on and some issues on which he is willing to bend on in order to get votes or political support, and it’s useful to know which are which.
I view it as a useful way to find out what the currently stated political stance of a candidate is.
It not useful for me. An hour and a half of frantic signaling at the stupider half of the electorate, a popularity contest driven by the necessity to pretend to be the BFF of everyone? I can get a much better idea of a candidate’s political stance after spending 10 minutes with Google, compared to cringing and feeling my brain cells atrophy for 90 minutes X-/
Fair enough. There certainly are plenty of things in those debates that are cringe-worthy.
After the 2012 debates, I half-jokingly suggested that there should be a set of referees at each debate fact-checking each statement made by each candidate, who then blow a whistle and throw a flag when a candidate says something that is just factually untrue. “15 yard penalty- roughing the constitution.” ;)
Good point. I think, though, that even in the academia there is too much focus on oral communication. It’s often easier to get away with vague ideas in seminars (if you’re confident and respected) than in written communication. Of course there is a place for talks and debates in the academia but I think what I’m pointing to is too often neglected. So what you say holds true of academic oral discussions as well, though to a lesser degree. For this reason I’ve sometimes played with the idea of replacing the seminars with online written texts on chats or fora. I think, though, that most academics would find that less fun—for much the same reasons people would find written political debates less fun. People are very social and like to interact irl, and see others interact irl.
In science you are primarily trying to figure out what is true.
In politics, you are primarily trying to gain support for preferences which are neither true nor false. It is a much harder problem. At least in science, there is a single standard for truth external to the participants. In politics, pretty clearly different people have different preferences.
There are definitely people who have spent orders of magnitude more time thinking about the topic of debate than myself; but I daresay the majority of folk have thought about it less than me. From my particular vantage point and life-experience, it seems clear that publicly arguing about a topic is a really poor way of raising the level of discourse and understanding on that topic. Imagine if, in science, instead of papers and conferences we had public debates, where scientists were expected to engage in a ceaseless half-thought out back-and-forth superficial point-scrabbling style policy debate. It would be a nightmare—I mean, I hope that’s obvious. For some reason this is a preferred mode of political dialogue.
The reason is pretty obvious. The goal of the participants in a political dialogue is to become more liked and to make competitors less liked. It has nothing to do with “raising the level of discourse and understanding on that topic”—that’s just NOT the point of the exercise.
It probably continues because of the expectation of debates—no one would introduce them if they didn’t already exist today.
That’s a great point! So what if someone held a “written debate”? Where the candidates outlined a dependency tree of their claims, and went through each of them logically?
Thats what manifestos and policy documents are for.
For a politician to be interested in doing something, it has to translate into political power. How many voters would traverse a logical dependency tree?
Not many. But consider this: it might lead to a lot of academics and journalists doing analysis, which might lead to news stories that the general public would pay attention to.
My impression of US politics is that academics and journalists, like everyone else, either have their bottom line already written (i.e. they search for arguments to help their party) or the facts and science themselves become politicized (how do you win with facts if voters deliberately vote against facts?)
If two opposing beliefs are affiliated with the two parties, one of the beliefs being objectively true makes surprisingly little difference, because they are only being used as attire in the first place. At best you get one party labelled as more pro-science than the other. And even then most people think “anti-science” means “anti-scientist-funding”, not “anti-truth” or “anti-objectively-correct-policies”.
It’s not really expected for people to base their opinions on major issues just on what they hear in a debate. But as a source of information for citizens to use to help them improve their decision-making process about which candidate to vote for, it seems reasonably effective to me. Both candidate give their stances on all the major issues, and it communicates to the voters where the candidates stand on them all, a little bit about why they think that and what some major arguments are, and also what the major issues are thought to be in the upcoming election.
Offhand I can’t think of a more cost-efficient and time-efficient way to learn a little bit about the political stances of all the candidates on all the major issues then watching a 90 minute debate. That shouldn’t be your only source of information, of course, but I think it a very useful starting point for a voter to then do more research on their own.
It’s interesting to which degree our views differ.
I would call watching a 90-minute debate to be among the least useful, never mind time-efficient, ways to learn about the political stances of the candidates.
Interesting.
I view it as a useful way to find out what the currently stated political stance of a candidate is. Once you know that, then if it’s an issue you care about, you can take some time and look into the candidate’s background and see if his record matches his current political stance. It’s also worthwhile to use to keep track of a candidate’s positions and see how they change over time based on the next state to have a primary election or from the primary season to the general election season; every politician has some issues he is firm on and some issues on which he is willing to bend on in order to get votes or political support, and it’s useful to know which are which.
It not useful for me. An hour and a half of frantic signaling at the stupider half of the electorate, a popularity contest driven by the necessity to pretend to be the BFF of everyone? I can get a much better idea of a candidate’s political stance after spending 10 minutes with Google, compared to cringing and feeling my brain cells atrophy for 90 minutes X-/
Fair enough. There certainly are plenty of things in those debates that are cringe-worthy.
After the 2012 debates, I half-jokingly suggested that there should be a set of referees at each debate fact-checking each statement made by each candidate, who then blow a whistle and throw a flag when a candidate says something that is just factually untrue. “15 yard penalty- roughing the constitution.” ;)
Good point. I think, though, that even in the academia there is too much focus on oral communication. It’s often easier to get away with vague ideas in seminars (if you’re confident and respected) than in written communication. Of course there is a place for talks and debates in the academia but I think what I’m pointing to is too often neglected. So what you say holds true of academic oral discussions as well, though to a lesser degree. For this reason I’ve sometimes played with the idea of replacing the seminars with online written texts on chats or fora. I think, though, that most academics would find that less fun—for much the same reasons people would find written political debates less fun. People are very social and like to interact irl, and see others interact irl.
In science you are primarily trying to figure out what is true.
In politics, you are primarily trying to gain support for preferences which are neither true nor false. It is a much harder problem. At least in science, there is a single standard for truth external to the participants. In politics, pretty clearly different people have different preferences.