I did college debate, pretty successfully. I think one of the best "tactics" is identifying an area where your side of the argument is in fact weak, and then obfuscating. E.g., making arguments that are wrong, but where it takes a good deal of sophistication--sophistication your audience may well not have--to see why they're wrong. The point isn't necessarily to convince the audience that you're right, it's just to convince the audience that this is a tricky enough set of issues that, on this point at least, they can't form a firm opinion. Then the debate can be settled on the points where your side is stronger.
I believe I saw this tactic employed in a published paper in a very good philosophy journal recently. My interpretation of what went on is that the authors identified a devastating objection to their position, clearly raised it, and then offered a response that, while in fact utterly inadequate, was not obviously so. This made it possible for referees--at least, referees who I can only imagine weren't particularly comfortable with thinking probabilistically--to think of the objection as prima facie powerful but not obviously fatal, the kind of objection that you expect to see in interesting and ambitious philosophy papers, as opposed to the decisive refutation it in fact was. (I don't claim the authors were doing this cynically. I suspect they wanted their position to be right, so they were happy enough to leave things be once they found a response to the objection, without really probing the response.)
This is not a general purpose, subject-matter independent tactic. If you're going to use it cynically, you still need to have a lot of substantive knowledge of the subject matter, to know where your side is in fact weak, and to know how to raise objections whose faults are hard for an unsophisticated audience to see. But it is still a "trick" in the familiar old Sophistic sense that it's a strategy whereby the weaker argument can be made to appear the stronger.
Yeah it seems like there is still a gulf between "good debates" and "good discussion of a topic". People in debates often seem way too focused on what their side looks like or trying to scrabble to defend their points rather than figure out what is actually true.
If you read Bryan Caplan’s work on social desirability bias you realize there is a huge chasm between what is actually good and what merely sounds good at first blush. The latter has an unfair advantage in brief debates such as anything appearing on television. People are lazy and it is easier to judge policies by their hoped for results than by the second order consequences of the incentives and constraints that the policies create.
I find that in British Parliamentary debate, a lot of effective “debate tactics” just end up being methods the best debaters – like Chomsky – already have, because they’ve picked them up in other contexts (e.g., being good at thinking on your feet, understanding how arguments work or having an intuitive sense of something like Bayesian updating, being able to answer objections to arguments preemptively, or explain why premises are true rather than merely asserting them). I think most people are actually quite bad at thinking through arguments carefully or precisely.
For instance, in BP debate, you often spend a bunch of time learning about “internal burdens of proof,” which is just jargon for “breaking an argument up into many logical steps, so you are careful about offering evidence for each step” (because judges are expected to not credit you if you fail to explain an argument – reading many blippy arguments is pretty much a surefire way to lose a BP round). Chomsky wouldn’t need to study BP debate, because he’s a good philosopher who already knows how to think through arguments in this fashion! But this is a separate skill from simply knowing the subject.
I’d even be willing to say that even a good philosopher might require some specific skills to be good in a debate context (e.g., memory of arguments, being *clear* at communicating rather than relying on field-specific jargon, managing your time well, or being able to think on your feet). For instance, William Lane Craig routinely convincingly beats philosophers on public debates about theism. It’s not because his arguments are always fantastic – he often beats philosophers (besides Kagan) with the moral argument! – but because he’s good at communicating clearly, having word economy that allows him to manage his time and not miss important substance, and taking good notes of his opponents’ arguments. These are debate tactics! Managing your time well in a somewhat-extemporaneous rebuttal speech is not something you’ll learn just by having excellent domain knowledge and clear thinking.
I find that using those competitive debate tactics in philosophy papers is actually quite effective. Last year, my professor accidentally conceded one of the a prioris I hid in footnote 17; needless to say, it did NOT end well for him.
Is there really a good way of judging if someone won a debate or not? Clowns like Vaush or discord randoms can flounder, but a sufficiently composed person who repeats enough talking points will probably convince their side that they're right regardless of what the other person says.
"But there aren’t special writing “tactics,” that involve deliberate trickery."
This is the Bailey, and just completely false. The Greeks and Romans identified dozens of rhetorical devices like anadiplosis, anaphora, chiasmus, praeteritio, isocolon, ellipsis, and on and on. They were studied *for millennia,* and Shakespeare uses them *constantly.* See, for example, Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric, which provides a suffocating number of examples of the "figures" being used by, e.g., Lincoln, Churchill, Chesterton, Melville, Dickens, Burke, Emerson, and other extremely eminent British and Americans writers and politicians.
"Generally the best writers are clear, clever, and write about popular topics."
Debate tactics? Maybe not. Debate strategy? Definitely. The smart decision Ben Shapiro (and your friend) does is to get into debates with people who are less prepared, less knowledgeable, less used to speaking their arguments fluently. If you only care about winning, pick your battles. Similarly Trump made the smart decision to not debate Kamala again (not that I think that would have been enough to change the election outcome).
Although I am not a big Shapario watcher whenever I have seen him he talks quickly, loudly and mostly over his appoinent. Donald Trump seems to do the same thing except that he speaks slower. They both ignore the facts and steamroll opponents.
If this is not typical of them then it's my mistake yet from my limited experience these people do seem to have tactics unrelated to knowledge or facts.
The best bit of advice I'm aware of is to avoid unnecessary commitments. People generally make all sorts of commitments in the process of arguing they don't have to, and these are unnecessary weaknesses.
Also, however clear you think you should be- you should actually be way clearer than that.
As Jonathan says, part of what makes a particular stylistic choice or “tactic” work is audience-dependent. It’s not just a question of whether the argument is persuasive simpliciter, but persuasive to who? There are undoubtedly arguments that will be very persuasive to some people and not at all persuasive to others. I think when people talk about tactics, they’re usually concerned with what sorts of rhetorical moves you can make that will persuade the “average person” who doesn’t have specialized knowledge in the subject matter. It’s clear that bad arguments sometimes “win” in persuading average people because they have some sort of rhetorical strength that doesn’t rely on an actual grasp or understanding of the data. Of course, as you debate in front of audiences that are more and more knowledgeable and able to pick out intellectually scummy maneuvers, a good grasp on the relevant literature and information does become paramount.
Tactics seem much more relevant to presentation than substance. If your goal is to genuinely persuade people, dressing up and formatting arguments is important.
I think that’s why your raging about animal welfare, while certainly very logically sound, doesn’t seem all that persuasive.
I think overall this is correct, but Shapiro absolutely does have a debate tactic. It's called talking really fast. It's an impressive move, but not undefeatable.
I mostly agree, but want to pick a nit.
I did college debate, pretty successfully. I think one of the best "tactics" is identifying an area where your side of the argument is in fact weak, and then obfuscating. E.g., making arguments that are wrong, but where it takes a good deal of sophistication--sophistication your audience may well not have--to see why they're wrong. The point isn't necessarily to convince the audience that you're right, it's just to convince the audience that this is a tricky enough set of issues that, on this point at least, they can't form a firm opinion. Then the debate can be settled on the points where your side is stronger.
I believe I saw this tactic employed in a published paper in a very good philosophy journal recently. My interpretation of what went on is that the authors identified a devastating objection to their position, clearly raised it, and then offered a response that, while in fact utterly inadequate, was not obviously so. This made it possible for referees--at least, referees who I can only imagine weren't particularly comfortable with thinking probabilistically--to think of the objection as prima facie powerful but not obviously fatal, the kind of objection that you expect to see in interesting and ambitious philosophy papers, as opposed to the decisive refutation it in fact was. (I don't claim the authors were doing this cynically. I suspect they wanted their position to be right, so they were happy enough to leave things be once they found a response to the objection, without really probing the response.)
This is not a general purpose, subject-matter independent tactic. If you're going to use it cynically, you still need to have a lot of substantive knowledge of the subject matter, to know where your side is in fact weak, and to know how to raise objections whose faults are hard for an unsophisticated audience to see. But it is still a "trick" in the familiar old Sophistic sense that it's a strategy whereby the weaker argument can be made to appear the stronger.
Yeah it seems like there is still a gulf between "good debates" and "good discussion of a topic". People in debates often seem way too focused on what their side looks like or trying to scrabble to defend their points rather than figure out what is actually true.
I think the format could better incentivise this.
If you read Bryan Caplan’s work on social desirability bias you realize there is a huge chasm between what is actually good and what merely sounds good at first blush. The latter has an unfair advantage in brief debates such as anything appearing on television. People are lazy and it is easier to judge policies by their hoped for results than by the second order consequences of the incentives and constraints that the policies create.
I find that in British Parliamentary debate, a lot of effective “debate tactics” just end up being methods the best debaters – like Chomsky – already have, because they’ve picked them up in other contexts (e.g., being good at thinking on your feet, understanding how arguments work or having an intuitive sense of something like Bayesian updating, being able to answer objections to arguments preemptively, or explain why premises are true rather than merely asserting them). I think most people are actually quite bad at thinking through arguments carefully or precisely.
For instance, in BP debate, you often spend a bunch of time learning about “internal burdens of proof,” which is just jargon for “breaking an argument up into many logical steps, so you are careful about offering evidence for each step” (because judges are expected to not credit you if you fail to explain an argument – reading many blippy arguments is pretty much a surefire way to lose a BP round). Chomsky wouldn’t need to study BP debate, because he’s a good philosopher who already knows how to think through arguments in this fashion! But this is a separate skill from simply knowing the subject.
I’d even be willing to say that even a good philosopher might require some specific skills to be good in a debate context (e.g., memory of arguments, being *clear* at communicating rather than relying on field-specific jargon, managing your time well, or being able to think on your feet). For instance, William Lane Craig routinely convincingly beats philosophers on public debates about theism. It’s not because his arguments are always fantastic – he often beats philosophers (besides Kagan) with the moral argument! – but because he’s good at communicating clearly, having word economy that allows him to manage his time and not miss important substance, and taking good notes of his opponents’ arguments. These are debate tactics! Managing your time well in a somewhat-extemporaneous rebuttal speech is not something you’ll learn just by having excellent domain knowledge and clear thinking.
As a former policy debater, you should know there are debate tactics — it’s called reading non-T affs and hiding NIBs in the taglines of cards!
Those are tactics involved in competitive debate, nor normal, casual debate of the sort I was talking about in this article.
I find that using those competitive debate tactics in philosophy papers is actually quite effective. Last year, my professor accidentally conceded one of the a prioris I hid in footnote 17; needless to say, it did NOT end well for him.
You say you were talking about casual debate yet mention professional debaters like Chomsky and Shapiro.
Is there really a good way of judging if someone won a debate or not? Clowns like Vaush or discord randoms can flounder, but a sufficiently composed person who repeats enough talking points will probably convince their side that they're right regardless of what the other person says.
Indeed and isn't that just what people like Shapiro do?
Here is a debate tactic:
"But there aren’t special writing “tactics,” that involve deliberate trickery."
This is the Bailey, and just completely false. The Greeks and Romans identified dozens of rhetorical devices like anadiplosis, anaphora, chiasmus, praeteritio, isocolon, ellipsis, and on and on. They were studied *for millennia,* and Shakespeare uses them *constantly.* See, for example, Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric, which provides a suffocating number of examples of the "figures" being used by, e.g., Lincoln, Churchill, Chesterton, Melville, Dickens, Burke, Emerson, and other extremely eminent British and Americans writers and politicians.
"Generally the best writers are clear, clever, and write about popular topics."
This is the Motte, and almost entirely unrelated.
Gish gallops are a pretty effective debate tactic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
Debate tactics? Maybe not. Debate strategy? Definitely. The smart decision Ben Shapiro (and your friend) does is to get into debates with people who are less prepared, less knowledgeable, less used to speaking their arguments fluently. If you only care about winning, pick your battles. Similarly Trump made the smart decision to not debate Kamala again (not that I think that would have been enough to change the election outcome).
Although I am not a big Shapario watcher whenever I have seen him he talks quickly, loudly and mostly over his appoinent. Donald Trump seems to do the same thing except that he speaks slower. They both ignore the facts and steamroll opponents.
If this is not typical of them then it's my mistake yet from my limited experience these people do seem to have tactics unrelated to knowledge or facts.
The best bit of advice I'm aware of is to avoid unnecessary commitments. People generally make all sorts of commitments in the process of arguing they don't have to, and these are unnecessary weaknesses.
Also, however clear you think you should be- you should actually be way clearer than that.
As Jonathan says, part of what makes a particular stylistic choice or “tactic” work is audience-dependent. It’s not just a question of whether the argument is persuasive simpliciter, but persuasive to who? There are undoubtedly arguments that will be very persuasive to some people and not at all persuasive to others. I think when people talk about tactics, they’re usually concerned with what sorts of rhetorical moves you can make that will persuade the “average person” who doesn’t have specialized knowledge in the subject matter. It’s clear that bad arguments sometimes “win” in persuading average people because they have some sort of rhetorical strength that doesn’t rely on an actual grasp or understanding of the data. Of course, as you debate in front of audiences that are more and more knowledgeable and able to pick out intellectually scummy maneuvers, a good grasp on the relevant literature and information does become paramount.
Tactics seem much more relevant to presentation than substance. If your goal is to genuinely persuade people, dressing up and formatting arguments is important.
I think that’s why your raging about animal welfare, while certainly very logically sound, doesn’t seem all that persuasive.
There are obviously people more talented/skilled at presentation. Knowledge helps, but presentation is paramount.
I think overall this is correct, but Shapiro absolutely does have a debate tactic. It's called talking really fast. It's an impressive move, but not undefeatable.
Idon'tthinkthisisreallymuchofatactic