Debating Persuasion

It is daring, some might say suicidal, to write an article that considers the subject of debating. However, I consider myself a daring person and although many people consider dare devils suicidal I think that if they are well trained enough, that they are in fact just thrill enthusiasts. So here I go.

I have no doubt that practiced debaters will rip this article to shreds. They will have many reasons to disagree and disregard this article. But, given the nature of this article and given that this article is looking at a single subjective good a debater in doing so will have proved my article to be in fact true.

I truly believe that there is no evil, only differing and sometimes contradicting subjective goods. The problem that I have found is that it is up to debaters to persuade – not inform – the population as to which of these goods are higher and better.Most of the time our sets of subjective truths are based on how convincing the arguments are and not the factual merits of one side or the other. Among many fallacies in reasoning a prime example of this is in politics (ie. Conservative buzz saws attacking liberal party members based on nothing that has to do with the ability to run a Country – or in the case of international experience could actually help them run the Country).

In my opinion the public should be given fact based opinions by a neutral third party, then decide for themselves who to vote for. Logistically however this may be impossible. So my question to you is how do we make decisions and remove the politics and debating?

The bottom line – assuming that we cannot overcome this logistical nightmare – is that if you are going to debate something, you better be damn sure that your subjective good is better than the subjective good of your opponent.

This can also be found on the Winters Free Press website