These questions seem intentionally crafted to cause intellectual chaos.
That seems to misunderstand the rules of BPS debating. It’s completley okay for the headline to be broad because it’s the job of the person who first speaks to give more specifity.
It seems to me like all those topics are more specific then the topic of your post.
Let’s break down Thatcher’s work into several clusters, then select the clusters that are relevant to the decisions we are making today, and figure out what we can learn from each cluster individually
This is obviously a pretty poor debate title by most ideas about what titles are for.
Thanks for the clarification here. That said, I have watched a few of these debates (partially) on Youtube, and haven’t been very impressed by their abilities in practice to actually give much specificity.
This is obviously a pretty poor debate title by most ideas about what titles are for.
I don’t understand what you mean here. Personally I find many of these debates rather poor for real intellectual progress, and I think that a structured attempt at specificity could be an improvement (or at least a useful alternative), but I could definitely be wrong.
Thanks for the clarification here. That said, I have watched a few of these debates (partially) on Youtube, and haven’t been very impressed by their abilities in practice to actually give much specificity.
Watching debates partially if you don’t hear the first speaker, means that you miss the point where terms are defined.
The first government (which means the 1st and 3rd speaker) has as Wikipedia calls it the semi-devine right of definition. Usually, the 1st speaker is supposed to define anything that’s unspecific. If the first speaker leaves anything important undefined, it’s the job of the 2nd speaker to point out unclarity in the terms so that the 3rd speaker can clear that up.
In addition to defining the terms the 1st speaker usually also put forward a bunch of tests. That takes the form of “To show this motion is correct I will demostrate, A, B and C”.
Let’s take the debate on toxic masculinity. The first speaker defines the terms by saying: “we are rejecting traditional masculinity because it’s toxic and it’s toxic because it’s powerful tradition is rarely strayed from and remains unchallenged, tradition is an unspoken rule that people are happy to observe, tradition is power, the point of an evolving society is that no construct can stay traditional forever some traditions you can nudge along others need to be dragged into the 21st century”.
Those are a bunch of very specific claims that are supposed to define the terms of the debate:
Being toxic means:
It’s a powerful tradition are rarely strayed from and remains unchallenged.
tradition is an unspoken rule that people are happy to observe
Tradition is power
In addition:
No construct can stay traditional forever; some traditions you can nudge along others need to be dragged into the 21st century
Then you get the tests “traditional masculinity is harmful to men, that it is the cause and the result of a power imbalance which continues to propagate and that the power playing field is being levelled out due to changing gender roles and controlling traditional masculinity unleashes tremendous benefits for society”
Those are four here:
traditional masculinity is harmful to men
that it is the cause and the result of a power imbalance which continues to propagate
that the power playing field is being levelled out due to changing gender roles
controlling traditional masculinity unleashes tremendous benefits for society
Basically 50 seconds are spent for specificity.
You can argue about how well this particular speaker did her job of specifying the topic and that’s part of what the judge evaluates when it comes to the rankings at the end.
Personally I find many of these debates rather poor for real intellectual progress, and I think that a structured attempt at specificity could be an improvement (or at least a useful alternative), but I could definitely be wrong.
Basically, the claim here is that a “structured attempt at specificity” is better then one where it’s the responsibility of one person to provide specifity (and be graded on it).
I think you are guilty here of what you are charging given that I don’t have any idea what the phrase “structured attempt at specificity” means and how it differs from the incentive based one of the BPS rules.
You also conflate the question with specifity with the one about whether the debates are good for intellectual progress. We have classic LessWrong arguments that debates generally aren’t good for intellectual progress which seem to me more central then issues of specifity in debates under BPS rules (or slight variations to make the debate more fun for an audience).
I don’t understand what you mean here.
A title of a book, a title of a scientific paper or the title of a LessWrong post all are a lot less specific then the content of the posts. There’s no reason for that being any different for the topic of a debate.
I added a flag to the debate section of this post to show that the example is contested. If I were to ever discuss this in further detail, I’d look into finding other examples.
There’s a whole lot here, so I’ll try to address some of the points I might be able to help clarify.
You also conflate the question with specifity with the one about whether the debates are good for intellectual progress.
I’m less sold that debates are bad for intellectual progress than others on LessWrong. I definitely think that some debates are poor, but have hope that there could be ways to structure them a bit differently to make some types quite good. One thing debates are great as is for demonstrating multiple sides of an issue. Around EA/rationalism, sometimes it feels like there’s a lot of uniformity of opinion. I did debate in High School and College and found them quite interesting, though suboptimal.
There’s no reason for that being any different for the topic of a debate.
One of the reasons I wrote this post on LessWrong is because I’d like to see such precision being used more here (and in the EA sphere). I’m not saying I’m particularly good at it myself. I imagine it’s a skill that takes time to improve.
I agree that many areas are lacking in precision, I just used debate as an example because it seemed particularly on the nose. Debate is definitely less relevant or important than those other areas, I don’t really care about it in particular.
I think you are guilty here of what you are charging given that I don’t have any idea what the phrase “structured attempt at specificity” means and how it differs from the incentive based one of the BPS rules.
I’m not trying to claim I’m great at discernment or precision. Part of why I investigated it was because I was interested in improving. Virtues are kind of meant to be aspired to. Sorry if this was confusing.
I agree that many areas are lacking in precision, I just used debate as an example because it seemed particularly on the nose. Debate is definitely less relevant or important than those other areas, I don’t really care about it in particular.
If I go on Metaculus I have a title of a metaculus question that’s fairly unspecific. Then I have a few paragraphs explaining the question and often a fine print that add additional precision about how the question gets resolved. Criticising the title for not being precise enough misses the point, given that precision is not the purpose of a title.
When it comes to “debate” there are multiple different rule sets and some events that call themselves debates which don’t really have a rule set. If you argue that a debate should be structured differently, then the question is about whether it should have different rules.
The Oxford debate union uses BPS rules (and it seems on the video’s that they have some additional factors that get the first speaker to introduce contestants in the debate for events with an audience like the one on the Youtube channel).
One big problem with debates whether under BPS or APDA is that it doesn’t matter at all whether or not there’s empirical evidence for claims but it only matters whether or not claims seem sensible.
They train people in a mindset that devalues science as a way to resolve uncertainty. As a result very accomplished and smart debaters believe stupid things that no rationalist would. There’s one example of a person who was amazing to me in the amount of debating skill and intelligence combined with conspiracy theory beliefs.
For the record APDA has additional problem where it focuses on whether points that were raised were addressed or not and little on the quality which gets people to speak extremely fast because the faster a debater under APDA speaks the more points the can make and address. BPS cares at least about argument quality and not just quantity.
Part of why I investigated it was because I was interested in improving.
To the extend that’s true, how about making a proposal about how you think specificity should be brought into debates if you don’t like the way BPS rules do it?
That seems to misunderstand the rules of BPS debating. It’s completley okay for the headline to be broad because it’s the job of the person who first speaks to give more specifity.
It seems to me like all those topics are more specific then the topic of your post.
This is obviously a pretty poor debate title by most ideas about what titles are for.
Thanks for the clarification here. That said, I have watched a few of these debates (partially) on Youtube, and haven’t been very impressed by their abilities in practice to actually give much specificity.
I don’t understand what you mean here. Personally I find many of these debates rather poor for real intellectual progress, and I think that a structured attempt at specificity could be an improvement (or at least a useful alternative), but I could definitely be wrong.
Watching debates partially if you don’t hear the first speaker, means that you miss the point where terms are defined.
The first government (which means the 1st and 3rd speaker) has as Wikipedia calls it the semi-devine right of definition. Usually, the 1st speaker is supposed to define anything that’s unspecific. If the first speaker leaves anything important undefined, it’s the job of the 2nd speaker to point out unclarity in the terms so that the 3rd speaker can clear that up.
In addition to defining the terms the 1st speaker usually also put forward a bunch of tests. That takes the form of “To show this motion is correct I will demostrate, A, B and C”.
Let’s take the debate on toxic masculinity. The first speaker defines the terms by saying: “we are rejecting traditional masculinity because it’s toxic and it’s toxic because it’s powerful tradition is rarely strayed from and remains
unchallenged, tradition is an unspoken rule that people are happy to observe, tradition is power, the point of an evolving society is that no construct can stay traditional forever some traditions you can nudge along others need to be dragged into the 21st century”.
Those are a bunch of very specific claims that are supposed to define the terms of the debate:
Being toxic means:
It’s a powerful tradition are rarely strayed from and remains unchallenged.
tradition is an unspoken rule that people are happy to observe
Tradition is power
In addition:
No construct can stay traditional forever; some traditions you can nudge along others need to be dragged into the 21st century
Then you get the tests “traditional masculinity is harmful to men, that it is the cause and the result of a power imbalance which continues to propagate and that the power playing field is being levelled out due to changing gender roles and controlling traditional masculinity unleashes tremendous benefits for society”
Those are four here:
traditional masculinity is harmful to men
that it is the cause and the result of a power imbalance which continues to propagate
that the power playing field is being levelled out due to changing gender roles
controlling traditional masculinity unleashes tremendous benefits for society
Basically 50 seconds are spent for specificity.
You can argue about how well this particular speaker did her job of specifying the topic and that’s part of what the judge evaluates when it comes to the rankings at the end.
Basically, the claim here is that a “structured attempt at specificity” is better then one where it’s the responsibility of one person to provide specifity (and be graded on it).
I think you are guilty here of what you are charging given that I don’t have any idea what the phrase “structured attempt at specificity” means and how it differs from the incentive based one of the BPS rules.
You also conflate the question with specifity with the one about whether the debates are good for intellectual progress. We have classic LessWrong arguments that debates generally aren’t good for intellectual progress which seem to me more central then issues of specifity in debates under BPS rules (or slight variations to make the debate more fun for an audience).
A title of a book, a title of a scientific paper or the title of a LessWrong post all are a lot less specific then the content of the posts. There’s no reason for that being any different for the topic of a debate.
Thanks for the response.
I added a flag to the debate section of this post to show that the example is contested. If I were to ever discuss this in further detail, I’d look into finding other examples.
There’s a whole lot here, so I’ll try to address some of the points I might be able to help clarify.
I’m less sold that debates are bad for intellectual progress than others on LessWrong. I definitely think that some debates are poor, but have hope that there could be ways to structure them a bit differently to make some types quite good. One thing debates are great as is for demonstrating multiple sides of an issue. Around EA/rationalism, sometimes it feels like there’s a lot of uniformity of opinion. I did debate in High School and College and found them quite interesting, though suboptimal.
One of the reasons I wrote this post on LessWrong is because I’d like to see such precision being used more here (and in the EA sphere). I’m not saying I’m particularly good at it myself. I imagine it’s a skill that takes time to improve.
I agree that many areas are lacking in precision, I just used debate as an example because it seemed particularly on the nose. Debate is definitely less relevant or important than those other areas, I don’t really care about it in particular.
I’m not trying to claim I’m great at discernment or precision. Part of why I investigated it was because I was interested in improving. Virtues are kind of meant to be aspired to. Sorry if this was confusing.
If I go on Metaculus I have a title of a metaculus question that’s fairly unspecific. Then I have a few paragraphs explaining the question and often a fine print that add additional precision about how the question gets resolved. Criticising the title for not being precise enough misses the point, given that precision is not the purpose of a title.
When it comes to “debate” there are multiple different rule sets and some events that call themselves debates which don’t really have a rule set. If you argue that a debate should be structured differently, then the question is about whether it should have different rules.
The Oxford debate union uses BPS rules (and it seems on the video’s that they have some additional factors that get the first speaker to introduce contestants in the debate for events with an audience like the one on the Youtube channel).
One big problem with debates whether under BPS or APDA is that it doesn’t matter at all whether or not there’s empirical evidence for claims but it only matters whether or not claims seem sensible.
They train people in a mindset that devalues science as a way to resolve uncertainty. As a result very accomplished and smart debaters believe stupid things that no rationalist would. There’s one example of a person who was amazing to me in the amount of debating skill and intelligence combined with conspiracy theory beliefs.
For the record APDA has additional problem where it focuses on whether points that were raised were addressed or not and little on the quality which gets people to speak extremely fast because the faster a debater under APDA speaks the more points the can make and address. BPS cares at least about argument quality and not just quantity.
To the extend that’s true, how about making a proposal about how you think specificity should be brought into debates if you don’t like the way BPS rules do it?