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Lumifer comments on How big of an impact would cleaner political debates have on society? - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: adamzerner 06 February 2014 12:24AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 10 February 2014 08:55:43PM 0 points [-]

I view it as a useful way to find out what the currently stated political stance of a candidate is.

It not useful for me. An hour and a half of frantic signaling at the stupider half of the electorate, a popularity contest driven by the necessity to pretend to be the BFF of everyone? I can get a much better idea of a candidate's political stance after spending 10 minutes with Google, compared to cringing and feeling my brain cells atrophy for 90 minutes X-/

Comment author: Yosarian2 10 February 2014 09:27:28PM 0 points [-]

Fair enough. There certainly are plenty of things in those debates that are cringe-worthy.

After the 2012 debates, I half-jokingly suggested that there should be a set of referees at each debate fact-checking each statement made by each candidate, who then blow a whistle and throw a flag when a candidate says something that is just factually untrue. "15 yard penalty- roughing the constitution." ;)