Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Let Them Debate College Students - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 September 2009 06:15PM

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Comment author: woozle 11 September 2009 04:13:39PM *  21 points [-]

I'm very skeptical of the value of TV debates. Why not just insist that any debates be conducted online, in text mode, in non-realtime? Then they can't claim that evilutionists refused to debate them, nobody has to go stand on stage under hot lights and time pressure in a situation where they have minimal access to informational resources (thus giving a huge advantage to Teh Stoopid), and there will be a nice searchable record of the discussion when it's over.

...which begs the observation that we have been debating creationists, continually, ever since they started poking their heads up; they just choose to ignore those past debates because of the inconvenient fact that they always lose.

So perhaps whenever they challenge someone to a debate, the appropriate response is "Sure! Send me your opening argument in writing, and I will respond similarly until one of us gives in. Anytime, anywhere." Do ya feel lucky, punk??

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 September 2009 05:58:15PM 3 points [-]

I'm very skeptical of the value of TV debates. Why not just insist that any debates be conducted online, in text mode, in non-realtime?

That is probably a superior suggestion, especially if there were some standard format and repository for conducting such debates.

Comment author: woozle 11 September 2009 10:39:57PM 1 point [-]

See my suggestions here -- though ultimately I'd like to see more sophisticated software tools emerge for handling online debates. I've got a fairly detailed proposal for how this should work, I'm trying to get around to putting out some actual working code, but my coding time is absurdly limited right now.