Talk:The Parody of Debate

About the allegedly absurd debates

I find none of the following absurd:

• Should humans use tools?
• Is AI a good thing?
• Should we abolish government?

I can figure out Wikidebate-like debates for all of them, as an analytical exercise. Let's have a look:

• Should humans use tools?
  • No. They should go back to pre-industrial age, in fact pre-agricultural revolution age. Humans have too big brains, which, together with the ability to use verbal communication interfaces to create complex coupled communication and control systems (groups, tribes, nations, empires, armies, corporations, etc.) spell trouble down the road, something like an environmental catastrophe. (I am making this up based on things I must have read elsewhere.)
    • This is extremely pessimistic. There are much less radical mitigation strategies available.
      • There is no evidence less radical mitigation strategy can work.
• Is AI a good thing?
  • No. It spells disaster. For instance, if AI figures out humankind is a bad species (not all too implausible a proposition), it may eliminate humankind altogether as a risk-averse risk mitigation strategy.
    • But then, if humankind is a bad species, arguably, its elimination is a good thing, we ought to develop super-human AI and defer to it (given its supreme intelligence) whether it wants to eliminate humankind or put it into an analogue of a zoo, with AI human-keeper preventing mischief of the lowly mere animals, as it were.
• Should we abolish government?
  • Yes, per arguments of anarchists. Government necessarily tends to be top-down bureaucratic, eliminating human liberties, turning humans into analogues of slaves or cogs in the socio-economic machine. (Again, making this up as I speak based on something I must have read somewhere.)
    • The anarchist arguments are implausible/unconvincing and have never been empirically shown to work.
    • It is too likely that the power vacuum that the anarchist envisage will going to be filled in by rogues.

--Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:50, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Surely you'd grant that such debates are mostly an exercise in dispute rather than a productive discourse that might help build political, moral or ethical consensus. I am not saying such debates should be removed or any such thing. AP295 (discuss • contribs)

I should mention that I'm not taking for granted that "AI is a good thing", but the question is simply too vague. Even the term AI is grossly broad in its definition and practically a media buzzword at this point. A few decades ago, it meant classical planning, various applications of search algorithms like A*, automated inference, NLP, probabilistic models, and so forth. Now it has also come to include machine learning and pattern recognition, which is also a very broad area of research and application. And "good" in what sense? Good for whom? It is almost impossible to form an intelligent answer to this question without making a lot of presumptions. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 19:41, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

About consensus, there is a specific section below. To my mind, the debates help explore argument spaces and broaden one's vision. One may want to conveniently discard all arguments in favor of "humans should abandon all use of tools", but the arguments supporting that motion may be enriching even if one does not find them convincing. Some may see idle dispute; I see the ingenuity of the human mind in the field of argumentation. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

As for "good", I provided an implicit interpretation in my response above. Sure enough, the word "good" is most productively interpreted as "good with respect to ultimate objectives/desiderata X, Y and Z". I implied that destruction of humankind is a bad thing, and if this is so, AI may be a bad thing. This is how I acknowledged the relativity of this kind of meaning of "good" (good for human existence, well-being, etc.) without saying something like "Since 'good' is relative to an objective and none has been stated, this cannot be productively debated". --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Specific actionable consensus

As for "questions do not bear out any specific actionable consensus": that does not matter at all. The debates are an analytical exercise, not an attempt to resolve offend irresoluble foundational differences. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:54, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point. It was always my understanding that building consensus is (or rather, ought to be) the point of any debate, rather than simply presenting a dispute. The latter seems like a debased simulant of the former. Of course televised debates are mostly an act, but there's no need to take after that example. It's the difference between productive discourse on one hand, and rhetorical exposition on the other. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 19:30, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

And know that this essay is just something for readers to consider. I'm not calling for any particular debate to be removed or anything to be changed. Otherwise I would have published this or something similar in the colloquium. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 20:16, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

This question can in part be tested empirically. One can look at e.g. Intelligence Square debates and ask: are they designed to aim at "specific actionable consensus"? I don't think so. Let's take "Neville Chamberlain Did The Right Thing", "Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War" and "The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World". The chance that the debating parties will achieve consensus or that the answer is going to lead to specific actions seems very small. Yet these debates are interesting at least as an analytical exercise and expanding one's limited awareness about possible arguments. Instead of one living in one's own bubble and small universe, one registers arguments one may dislike, in part since they may create cognitive dissonance. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 14:11, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

My statement is not an appeal to the empirical status quo, which itself may not accurately be represented in the media anyway. In other words, my point is that a debate whose subject (in the general sense) relates to the public interest and which the public has a say in, and whose object is ultimately consensus, is more socially productive than the sort of debate one sees in the media, in which an "irresoluble foundational difference" is typically presumed. There is no need to follow this example, because it impresses upon people the wrong frame of mind. One should expect or at least aim at a resolution, not presume the contrary. Otherwise what's the point? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

And if such differences are truly foundational and irresoluble, why should either group be living under the same law, in the same nation? Do we not all have the right to self-determination, particularly in the case where there are fundamental ideological differences? I suspect though that this is often not the case. Even if the subject has nothing to do with politics per se, debate should still aim to be productive. The portrayal of a dichotomy is a very different thing than a productive discourse. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 16:02, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, I had never heard of "intelligence squared" so I checked it out. Their tagline reads "Intelligence Squared - Where Great Minds Meet". I'd like to point out that when media uses terms like "Intelligence", "Great Minds", "Rational", "Neutral" and so forth in such a context, it's arguably an instance of question begging language or an appeal to one's ego, the implication being that the reader/viewer/listener is "intelligent" for choosing such media sources. It's at least a bit patronizing. I forget who it was that used the term "The Intellectual Herd", but it comes to mind here. Perhaps the most important point I'm trying to make here though is the one in my paragraph just above. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

If we focus only on the word "consensus", in a democracy, consensus is not required to affect a policy change; for many policy changes, mere 50% majority is required. If a debate is convincing enough to lead to 55% majority, or even 52% majority in the case of Brexit, that is all that is required.

About foundational differences, people may have foundational differences about whether slavery is acceptable, and debate can fail to change many minds, but in the end, it may suffice that the debate changes the minds of those with the most powerful army. This also is not a matter for consensus, and not even for democracy.

Therefore, debate that has the power to change some minds can be causally significant even it has nothing to do with consensus. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 16:36, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yet this is hardly satisfactory, much less ideal. Democracy serves the public best when participants are roughly on the same page. It is debased when half of its participants have "foundational irresoluble differences", which at present don't seem to include a moral disagreement on slavery. Secession would arguably be a more favorable outcome than eking out a majority vote and forcing the remainder to comply. I suspect though that many such differences are resolvable but that such resolution is subverted by the media, and that is the hypothesis of my incomplete essay "Bipartisan Fraud". AP295 (discuss • contribs) 17:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

As a side note, there's also an argument to be made that the civil war was not precipitated by a moral disagreement over slavery, but caused at least in part by external pressures applied by Europe on behalf of the European central banking system. The abolition of slavery was a morally-just yet incidental result. I propose in my other essay a simple basis for morality defined by two principles, namely the right to non-association and the right to self-determination. Both would preclude slavery. Lest anyone think secession or separatism are bad words for their association with dixie... AP295 (discuss • contribs) 17:49, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I submit that the question of whether slavery is acceptable cannot be resolved by argument or logic. It depends on foundational ethical differences, on ultimates. However, this does not make certain reduction operations in the field of this question impossible: one can still reduce (via quasi-proof) the statement "slavery is acceptable" to a different statement, such as "collective considerations such as greatness of the empire should override individualistic ethics such as inviolable human rights". Arguments are possible, but from the logical standpoint, they have limited force. This is rather typical for philosophical questions.

One charm of the debates, for me anyway, is that rather than finding the ultimate truth, they explore the reduction operations possible in the relevant portion of the argument space. They also stand a chance of exploring rhetorical devices some may want to employ, such as inapplicable or misleading metaphors, hyperbole. etc. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Naturally an argument against slavery requires a moral basis (or at least, it greatly benefits from one), and I provided one such basis in my earlier reply. I see nothing wrong with playing the devil's advocate for the sake of argument. In general though, I don't consider debate to be merely a rhetorical exercise. Considering again the hypothesis of my other essay, I also have concern that debate is often used in such a way that it portrays foundational irresoluble differences when none exist in practical or material terms. In other words, it can be used to encourage such divisions when none need exist, if there's at least some baseline moral consensus, which I don't think is terribly unreasonable to expect in most cases. This is only possible if people consider debate in such a way though. If one participates or observes with the expectation (rather than presumption) that discourse should resolve differences when possible, or demonstrate such differences are irresoulble when they are, then it seems like a more productive endeavor altogether. Perhaps I should edit this into the essay. That is really all I'm trying to say with this essay, not that your debate format is "wrong" per se. Given such an expectation, many of the current questions seem simply too outlandish, vague, or overly-broad to be especially productive in any capacity, and I think this also sets the wrong precedent. I'm conflicted over the debate format itself and whether or not it helps to have itemized, unsigned arguments. My instinct tells me "no", as it makes a debate seem very impersonal and more a simulacrum of discourse than discourse itself, but my mind isn't completely made up. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Here's an example: Rather than "is slavery a good thing?" which nearly anyone with well-adjusted moral imperatives would answer with "no", I think it would be more interesting to see a debate along the lines of "Is the civil rights act a good thing?" Taking as a moral basis the two principles I stated in my earlier reply, one could very reasonably argue "no". But then you get into a real argument that has not-so-abstract implications. For the record I haven't read the act in full, and so I'm not making a statement one way or the other here. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 12:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

This isn't to say that all questions must be specific or narrow in scope. For example, the debate "Should civilians be prohibited from owning firearms" seems appropriately defined, if I do say so myself. It's not my debate but I renamed it from "Should civilians be allowed to own firearms" or something equally Orwellian to that effect. I do not speak in absolutes here, simply that the average debate question is too broadly or vaguely stated. For the record, my answer is "no, they should not be prohibited from doing so." AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:41, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Do forgive all the edits, it seems hard to resolve the point in my own mind without writing about it and refining it in the first place. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 13:41, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Notes

I should give credit to Omphalographer for raising the point about vagueness, which is similar but not quite the same as the point I'm trying to make. It seems like we're getting at something similar though. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 23:22, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Hitchens made a relevant statement about the use of the word "we" in mass media that I could probably reference. Similarly, I don't think resolution can always be the outcome of a discourse, but then debate should demonstrate this as well, and this is also a productive result in a sense. The portrayal of debate for the purpose of unnaturally reinforcing or conversely downlplaying differences is something of a separate issue and I should probably take care to address each issue individually to make my point clear. The issue of poorly-worded debates is yet another problem, specifically in debates which solicit the public to comment. The latter is the issue I had in mind specifically when I had started this essay, but I suppose I'll have to address the rest as well. Again, the issue comes up of where to put this content since it would all be relevant to include in my other essay yet I don't want to have the same material copied verbatim over several essays. I could just reference it, I suppose. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Another angle I could take is just to move the other points into footnotes, keeping them for the sake of completeness and focusing specifically on the wording of the debates. This might give the essay more focus. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:43, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I've covered the problems with the guidelines and am tentatively satisfied with that part. The way it's shaping up, I think there will be two essential ideas to cover: 1) problems with the guidelines and how they should be improved, and 2) an abusus non tollit usum argument to refute the idea that a few spam topics with political shock value justify broad censorship and the selective enforcement of policy. Otherwise anyone in any website that hosts discussions can first have someone make a few offensive topics as a strawman and then use this as a pretext to censor inconvenient discourse. It would be trivial, and I've seen it happen elsewhere. I'd rather it not happen anywhere, least of all here. Finally, maybe a few more examples of how one might construct a good title for a debate, perhaps using a few existing wikidebates to start with and then reworking the title into something more sensible. I'd also like to thank Dan Polansky for our back-and-forth on this discussion page. Such discussions are helpful and without them I feel like I'm talking to nobody. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 20:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Vagueness

I don't see vagueness as a serious problem. Sure enough, the word "good" is, if not vague, then ambiguous. Thus, the question "Is slavery good?" is ambiguous. But some interpretation can be ruled out, and one interpretation can be selected by the debating parties. Eventually, one may rename the debate if wished, but a debate being created for an ambiguous question can teach the reader that questions can sometimes be productively analyzed and answered even if they are ambiguous and vague. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 14:14, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I did recommend Orwell's essay to you earlier on one of your own talk pages. Personally it made an impression on me, and I feel that it's rather to the point. I don't think I could address the question about vagueness any better than he did, and if you haven't read it yet I recommend that you do. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 15:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I do acknowledge that the use of vague terms in argument and intellectual discourse can be a problem. I merely contend that when the question uses a vague or ambiguous term for brevity, the debate participants can operationalize the vague term to the extent required, and thus address the problem. Thus, a debate participant can propose to replace the vague term T with its operationalization T_1. Whether this is always necessary is unclear. For instance, in sociological research, the term "suicide" may be too vague and may need to be replaced with specific detection criteria, but for a philosophical discussion about e.g. whether suicide should be illegal, the vagueness of the term may be unproblematic. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 16:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Unless the debate participant at least acknowledges this substitution, then it comes off as a presumption, which is suggestive of equivalence. This sort of vagueness may or may not be an issue depending on the context, but at any rate it seems like something to avoid if possible. It's only part of my point anyway. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 18:40, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Operationalization is not suggestive of equivalence: a vague term is never semantically equivalent with its operationalization, and a competent debater will not suggest as much. With ambiguous terms, the situation is similar: when one explicates an ambiguous term to create an unambiguous meaning, the left-hand side is not semantically equivalent with the right-hand side.

One can very well say something like this: "The word 'good' is ambiguous. Nonetheless, if destruction of humankind is bad (not good), X". This is rather explicit. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggestive in a psychological sense, not in the sense of any formalized logic. When one presumes a given meaning for something vague, then I think that absolutely is suggestive of equivalence unless it's also somehow made explicit or obvious that the question is less specific than the presumed interpretation (which you seem to have done). Incidentally I'm quite familiar with mathematical logic i.e. FOL, but not so much terms like operationalization or explication, though I can guess what you mean by them. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:30, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, one necessarily (or in most cases) has to explain why something might be good in order to answer a question like "is x a good thing?" In your example, it's easy to take for granted that the destruction of humanity is bad. But my parody question about AI requires that one make a lot of presumptions about what AI means, and this I think is the greater problem. If the average person's opinion of AI is informed only by scifi, they're likely to make presumptions to that effect, and this in turn reinforces that perspective. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 12:31, 17 October 2023 (UTC)