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?
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?