= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
CronoDAS comments on The Sin of Underconfidence - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (176)
I urge you to prepare properly. Not only Hitchens but Richard Carrier and several other atheists have been humiliated in debate with him, by their own admission. Winning at all is challenge enough, and would be a great service to the world. Given how much of a blow you would find it to lose having fully prepared, I urge you to to reconsider whether you're self-handicapping.
Scientists are frequently advised to never participate in a live debate with a creationist. This is because being right has absolutely nothing to do with winning.
Debates are not a rationality competition. They're a Dark Arts competition, in which the goal is to use whatever underhanded trick you can come up with in order to convince somebody to side with you. Evidence doesn't matter, because it's trivial to simply lie your ass off and get away with it.
The only kind of debates worth having are written debates, in which, when someone tells a blatant lie, you can look up the truth somewhere and take all the space you need to explain why it's a lie - and "cite your sources, or you forefeit" is a reasonable rule.