I personally don’t intend to use these techniques because I already have a hard enough time getting called on my mistakes. On multiples occasions I have convinced people of unintuitive correct contrarian ideas while forgetting to mention a crucial and nonobvious premise. If anything, I need to lose arguments more often.
In an ideal world, I’d agree with you, but sometimes, especially in live conversation, let alone public debate, you just don’t have the time to go through all the premises and the syllogisms. Plus, it’s unfair to expect everyone to be able to properly counter your arguing and point out its flaws. That’s something you should reserve to your Worthy Opponent of choice. Wasn’t there a figure like that in (Hassidic?) Judaism? A “comrade of studies” or something like that?
I don’t think my advice necessarily applies to everyone, I just thought that this is an important con to consider. For me, the cons currently outweigh the pros.
That’s something you should reserve to your Worthy Opponent of choice. Wasn’t there a figure like that in (Hassidic?) Judaism? A “comrade of studies” or something like that?
I want one! This could be a useful rationalist institution too.
That’s something you should reserve to your Worthy Opponent of choice. Wasn’t there a figure like that in (Hassidic?) Judaism? A “comrade of studies” or something like that?
In many forms of Judaisms one often studies with a chavruta, with whom one will debate and engage the same texts. Such individuals are generally chosen to be about the same background level and intelligence, often for precisely the sort of reason you touch upon (as well as it helping encourage them to each try their hardest). In modern times, as the levels of interest have become much more divorced from the level of actual knowledge (due to the baal tshuvah movement as well as some other modern social effects) this last aspect has broken down somewhat.
Care to elaborate? A cursory reading of the article doesn’t reveal any mentions of the topic’s effect on the chavruta institution. I’m not sure if you mean that highly intellectual Jews are more enthusiastic about “returning to their roots” or the inverse, that Jews with very little academic level have invaded the Synagogues in a religious version of Eternal September.
Something closer to the Eternal September, but a little more complicated than that. (Disclaimer: I don’t have any sources for what I’m about to say. I’m more generalizing based on my own experience when I was Orthodox and the general impression of the community.)
One has among those who have become Orthodox a large number of very different people. Some of them are very intelligent but have little to no background knowledge. Others are not so bright and have no background. Others have are not so bright and have a little background, etc. Moreover, the general lack of background means that most of them can’t form chavrutas on their own, since they didn’t grow up with the large amount of basic experience about how the system works, what sort of approaches work and which don’t. Much of that knowledge is procedural and not stated explicitly. So, as a result, a lot of these people are pairing with people of much more background knowledge than they have but might be not as bright. There are other complicating factors; for example, some Orthodox Jews form chavrutas with less religious, less educated, Jews deliberately trying to rope them in further.
The whole situation is really quite complicated, and there’s an unfortunate lack of serious anthropological or sociological work on what is happening at a broad level, so I don’t have any thing to rely on other than my own impressions.
Would you care to repost this on the chavruta thread? I think this system could pique our interest, and if we’re going to emulate it we might as well learn more about what works and what doesn’t, what fits us and what doesn’t, and how we can improve on it in our own special way and make it ours.
I personally don’t intend to use these techniques because I already have a hard enough time getting called on my mistakes. On multiples occasions I have convinced people of unintuitive correct contrarian ideas while forgetting to mention a crucial and nonobvious premise. If anything, I need to lose arguments more often.
In an ideal world, I’d agree with you, but sometimes, especially in live conversation, let alone public debate, you just don’t have the time to go through all the premises and the syllogisms. Plus, it’s unfair to expect everyone to be able to properly counter your arguing and point out its flaws. That’s something you should reserve to your Worthy Opponent of choice. Wasn’t there a figure like that in (Hassidic?) Judaism? A “comrade of studies” or something like that?
I don’t think my advice necessarily applies to everyone, I just thought that this is an important con to consider. For me, the cons currently outweigh the pros.
I want one! This could be a useful rationalist institution too.
In many forms of Judaisms one often studies with a chavruta, with whom one will debate and engage the same texts. Such individuals are generally chosen to be about the same background level and intelligence, often for precisely the sort of reason you touch upon (as well as it helping encourage them to each try their hardest). In modern times, as the levels of interest have become much more divorced from the level of actual knowledge (due to the baal tshuvah movement as well as some other modern social effects) this last aspect has broken down somewhat.
Care to elaborate? A cursory reading of the article doesn’t reveal any mentions of the topic’s effect on the chavruta institution. I’m not sure if you mean that highly intellectual Jews are more enthusiastic about “returning to their roots” or the inverse, that Jews with very little academic level have invaded the Synagogues in a religious version of Eternal September.
Something closer to the Eternal September, but a little more complicated than that. (Disclaimer: I don’t have any sources for what I’m about to say. I’m more generalizing based on my own experience when I was Orthodox and the general impression of the community.)
One has among those who have become Orthodox a large number of very different people. Some of them are very intelligent but have little to no background knowledge. Others are not so bright and have no background. Others have are not so bright and have a little background, etc. Moreover, the general lack of background means that most of them can’t form chavrutas on their own, since they didn’t grow up with the large amount of basic experience about how the system works, what sort of approaches work and which don’t. Much of that knowledge is procedural and not stated explicitly. So, as a result, a lot of these people are pairing with people of much more background knowledge than they have but might be not as bright. There are other complicating factors; for example, some Orthodox Jews form chavrutas with less religious, less educated, Jews deliberately trying to rope them in further.
The whole situation is really quite complicated, and there’s an unfortunate lack of serious anthropological or sociological work on what is happening at a broad level, so I don’t have any thing to rely on other than my own impressions.
Would you care to repost this on the chavruta thread? I think this system could pique our interest, and if we’re going to emulate it we might as well learn more about what works and what doesn’t, what fits us and what doesn’t, and how we can improve on it in our own special way and make it ours.